The tears of years break surface when we least expect them.

We were all packed in, beginning our cross-country trip back home, the home they’d now known for months. Out of the blue the one most steady in our grip burst the silence of six sets of eyes absorbing the great-wide highway’s unfamiliarity with her cries.

“Why did she leave me?” she sobbed.

I absorbed the shock. This was a first for her. What triggered this?

“Why did my birth mommy leave me?” she bellowed, her tears turning to wails.

And while I was formulating my response the one behind her joined in, wet-cheeked already, himself. Sympathy or empathy, I wasn’t sure.

Still floundering, I was processing, while the third, beside her, chimed in “why did my birth mommy have to die? why didn’t I ever get to know her?”

By that time I was crying, too, just as I am now as I type. This moment has been suspended in my timeline. How could one car, one family, hold all this pain?

And, finally, the fourth found her voice, through whimpers. “Why is God letting my birth mommy die?”

Like steam painting the windows, their questions left me momentarily blindsided. I sat, holding the shards of stories that had only just begun to be rebuilt.

I had met my broken pieces in my twenties but their innocence was stolen before they lost their baby teeth.

Who was I to walk them over this glass?

++++

Hallmark-kind of love surrounds my world. Like second-hand smoke, I receive definitions of love, all throughout my week, that betray its Source. Love, like candy — lustrous and sweet, leaves me, still, depleted.

How much of this do I inhale, unknowingly?

The sugar rush doesn’t last long when scars run deep.

Adoption has given me permission to see Love in a different light. Better, it’s kindly coerced me to see Love in a different light. From me to her — but first, from Him to me.

And this love, His love, is not natural.

If you’re stuck in a place where your love isn’t working as it should or it can’t match the wounded one receiving it — if you can’t feel it and you can’t muster enough force to produce it — rather than believing that this adoption or this circumstance has gone sour, might I suggest He wants you to inherit another way? Another kingdom’s love.

Adoption is my golden opportunity. (What’s yours?)

I can’t love them into wholeness with candy love.

Have I subtly abandoned great expectations, for me and for her, because the hand-me-down love I’ve borrowed from the world around me doesn’t work?

Mary-go-round rides and tickles and teddy bears are shadows for my littles up against the kind of love that moves and changes them. And me. I come up dry if I expect that what I’ve learned from the world around me about love will be enough to heal a heart that’s been broken.

The answer isn’t, then, to forfeit my expectation that love can heal. 

It’s to find another source.

The only true Source.

A love birthed through blood and sweat and the mess of the world, but untainted, is this love. His love. His love that was a Person, is a God-Man.

“Fierce love” as my friend coined it.

It asks me for everything, but when I get close enough to it, to Him, I can’t shed extra weight fast enough. My everything feels like giving nothing compared to Love that melts me when it touches me. It makes the dull parts of me passionate. Alive. His love looks deep into my dark, not away from it. And His eyes, they heal me. My wounds don’t scare Him, they invite Him.

Fierce Love is not threatened.

His love is a love that wars and wrestles and consumes all in its path. It lifts, alights and gives flight. It doesn’t just free, it releases.

His love is her answer. And it is mine.

Adoption lays bare my lack. I can’t love her with this love unless I’m coming to know it myself. Daily. Hourly.

Enter adoration.

It takes His Word and makes it into my vernacular. My understanding of Him moves from the pulpit’s echo or a past story, retold as today’s testimony, to my food. My daily bread. Adoration is not natural and will, in no way, be easy to my flesh.

Just like, at times, loving her.

His love, too, takes practice.

Practice in writing His Words over my moldy understanding of Him and living His love over her wounds that need more than an ice cream run.

Adoration is pushing a pause button on the world around us and tuning our ears to the only sound that will give us real life.

It is training our hearts to know Love.

A wild love that, though work to receive and pour out at the onset, is infinitely better than any warm, fuzzy but fleeting love this world can offer me. Or her.

Every Monday my column to the right-side of my blog moves here, front and center, and I invite you to join me adoring Him from your kitchens, your cubicles, or on your morning commute. Because we had one of those weeks, my Monday turned into Wednesday. And now it’s Thursday. So here we are, wrapping up the week, with adoration.

I can’t think of anything better. Friends, this habit of adoration is re-writing my understanding of love. Might you consider giving it a try?

Here’s what it looks like written out:

“… that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith …” Ephesians 3:17**

How many times have I read this, studied it, yet You have new words for me today, tucked in Your Word.

I worship You, God of new, who is always making new out of old. There is nothing stale in Your presence. 

Every moment is ready to birth new understanding of You. You pervade a room. Tedium is from man, so far from You, God. 

And it’s with this ever-giving life You ask to dwell. In me. 

Because love dwells. It doesn’t flit and flutter. It rests, within.

Who am I to hold You, inside of me? Your offer speaks more of who You are than what I’m not. You share Your home with the soiled so that we might know what it means to live clean. You don’t just brush over, sweep from a distance, You dwell.

My heart, so thick and often burdened, was made to know the freedom of being a dwelling place for Another. This current rough spot is not my end point, it’s Your opportunity. You are making Your home in me. So that I might drink, daily — hourly, of the Love I only barely know.

I adore You, oh God who loves tirelessly.

I worship You, Daddy, who seeks a place to dwell not just visit.

You make my life Your home. You expand my heart to receive You. You stretch and prod and push so that, after the pain of the moment, I might have more room to receive more of You. You purpose and Your eyes are on a dwelling, not just an overnight stay. You are shaping me — yes, me! — into one who can hold You, display You. You are allowing me to be a window into a beauty I’ve not yet fully known. 

I receive You as I reveal You.

You occupy my splintered floorboards and cracked walls and You restore, by Your very life, within me. I love You, willing Father to settle into my mess so that it is no longer mess, but You.

My heart was made for more than turmoil and strife, it was made to thrive, by You, inhabiting me. And every day, new ground is offered its opportunity to be won as You claim what was and is always Yours … me.

+++++++++

Photos compliments of Mandie Joy. 

You may have noticed I no longer have an option for comments on my posts. For a little explanation to this shift, read Why No Comments? 

**I absolutely treasure your stories. I love the memorials coming my way. What’s being erected over your lives, I am celebrating: He is good. With a life of four-being-restored and two of us not too far ahead of them, I don’t have as much time as I’d like to respond to every email, message and comment. Though the demands under my roof may not allow much time to respond to these, please know I am honored by what you’ve sent me and the time you took to tell me your story. They are gifts to me.

***For a context to this little space on my blog, read: Why I Adore. For a more detailed description of how to start adoring Him in your day-to-day, read: Showing Up. To see all my “Morning Chai” devotionals, use this link:  http://www.EveryBitterThingisSweet.com/posts/chai/. And you can easily subscribe to these devotional meditations as they are delivered, by using this feed: http://www.EveryBitterThingisSweet.com/posts/chai/feed or by entering your email address in the second box on the right-hand side.

I knew it would.

I’d been here before.

The most beautiful part of waiting is receiving His response after your heart chose expectation instead of fear. I’ve been in both shoes, frequently, and choosing the former always makes the bitter taste sweet.

She was in the middle of her contribution to our dinnertime banter, tentatively trying her hand at directing what she had, once, only just observed. Her “how about, Daddy, we …” wasn’t our typical fare but we jumped on board with her suggestion. She scootched herself against the back of her chair and sat up, tall. She wore ownership.

And as the quickened chatter (which happens when life just produced a day with oh-so-much to recount) continued, time stood still for me. Her eyes found mine in that moment, fire-sparks underneath their dark shades. What once were hollow sockets which held yellow-stained symbols of a life lived bare and broken, were now magnetic.

And that moment produced the feeling for which I’d been waiting and praying and expecting. She is mine.

First and second photo compliments of Mandie Joy. Third photo compliments 

of Cherish Andrea Photography.

When I am not, You are.

Where I fail, You perfect.

I teeter and You stand, bold, strong.

I fold, crumple and weep when poked and prodded by life’s mishaps — and You scoop me up and sing over me.

Father, You are all that I’m not and the end of me is where You begin. This is beauty. You breathe promise into my void.

I worship You, oh God of strength, whose strength could not be fully activated in me without my weakness. You replace me with You — at the moment my flesh might deem least likely — and I have all that I need and, even, want.

I am made empty — not to strive but to receive an infilling. Your glory finds opportunity for expression in me when I am bone-dry.

Who is this God-Man who makes my stone cold moments to be soft as clay for His hands to mold majesty?

I love You, Father, who finds a home in me by overshadowing me. You fill me with strength when I am most undeserving.

You love me into wholeness with a love that can’t possible touch without changing. When it’s really You exhaling over my rancid depravity, I receive the strength which transfigures.

You ignite me when I am just ashes and I’m afforded the chance to burn at the very moment I was waning.

Your newness writes new over me, at my lowest. I find You when I’ve lost me.

I love You, God who is not strength from afar — but strength welling up from within.

You speak a new word over my frailty and instead of wasted, I am able.

All because of You, inside of me.

Photo compliments of Cherish Andrea Photography.

**So what do I do with these posts, you ask, other than just read them? First, if you haven’t yet, read: Why I Adore and Morning Chai, Explained to give you a context for this little space on my blog. 

If you are compelled, I invite you to participate. Set up a space and time in your own life to begin adoring. Over laundry or dinner dishes, on your commute to work, or in the wee morning hours — five or ten minutes is a great start. You can use the verse I list here every day or two as a launch pad for your own adoration. (Showing Up gives you some practicals.)

Then practice praise.

I promise your weary soul won’t regret it.

You can see all of the Morning Chai posts with this link: http://www.EveryBitterThingisSweet.com/posts/chai/ and you can easily subscribe to these devotional meditations as they are delivered, by using this feed: http://www.EveryBitterThingisSweet.com/posts/chai/feed or by entering your email address in the second box on the right-hand side… (scroll up a bit)

This moment was humorous to me.

I pray in secret before the sun comes up to have a primal life-devotion which moves the heart of God — for His fire to consume all of me and for my life to spread His glory … and I spend my daylight hours separating laundry, cleaning toilets, training hands to peel cucumbers and teaching mouths to say “will you forgive me” and “thank you.”

The quick snapshot reveals anything but glamour in God.

I need to moonlight with something else to really find Him, is the thought that drops into my mind. Make an impact, outwardly, or just to escape from the prison of mundanity into hours of solitude to really, deeply, connect with His heart.

Others around you are making a dent, moving His heart with their hours, while you sweep up another pile of grass from outside that made its way into your kitchen – that voice comes again.

I’m allured into counting minutes until my day job is over so I can find myself, again. And find Him.

This, because I don’t really know what it means to find myself or to find Him.

We read the end of the story in His Word — fulfillment, impact, every spiritual blessing, His kingdom come down – and assume all those lines between here and there to be poetic language, theory not reality.  Or, we mamas (though many of you reading this are not mamas but still living your own form of seeming mundanity), shelve our secret passions for the glory of God to manifest in us — and assume we can’t have both: dinner on the table at 5:00 and a fiery heart that’s turning the heads of angels. Eighteen years from now, we think.

Consummation starts with a spark.

One ember, aflame. Even just a slow burn.

I have one hundred opportunities (at least) in a day to ignite that spark or to give it more fuel. And the hot lie is that life is about gaining some sort of configuration of devotion I’ve formulated — that life I used to have or that life I’ve always wanted — which overlooks the most important opportunities, those unseen to all eyes but His.

He hides us to form us.

He consumes me in the moments when no one is looking and in the tasks that no one will notice but Him. These days are His set-up, purposed for this very thing.

It’s a life lived upside-down — one to which we might pay lip-service, but when it’s moved from theory to reality, our flesh often revolts.

But it’s also this very life which introduces the sweet aroma of intimacy between the Father waiting to affirm our still, small yes and His daughter or son who has been craving that unseen affirmation for an entire lifetime.

Real identity in Him can only be found when no one is looking. It’s very nature is singular, His perspective on us and our received understanding of that perspective.

We were made to hear His whisper into our mundane, and our flesh and the enemy work furiously to tell us that “real life” is lived outside of those pregnant moments.

Do you dream about moving to another city, finding another job, or finally being granted that promotion that’s just around the corner? Are you itching for one year from now when she isn’t so immobile or he doesn’t need your help as much? Do you count down minutes until they go to bed? Are you waiting for that next baby, or that next adoption, to bring a new rush (oh, this is one I know so well!)?

If so, might I suggest that this drawn out seemingly boring moment is your divine meeting place. One the world scorns, but that you can count as gold.

This closet you’re in, for this season, is holy.

Enter adoration.

Taking your hidden moments, the ones even your mother might not be interested in , and holding them like paper over the flame.

I’ve written several posts on Why I Adore and some of the minutiae of this practice, this habit, that is taking my before-dawn prayers and then making them real over my kitchen sink. There’s no formula; it’s simply carrying His Word off the shelf or from your bedside table into and over the hundreds of thoughts which steal those minutes meant for Him (and meant for your heart to be alive).

Today, on this Monday when my Morning Chai devotions move from the right-side of my blog to center stage, I am going to keep it simple and suggest you do the same, as a starting point: One simple verse, about Him, put into your own words and whispered quietly — and often — in place of those moans which cry really, God? isn’t there more? when can I move up and out?

An ember against His spark.

Monday is the perfect starting place.**

+++++

“When Jesus heard it, He marveled, and said to those who followed, ‘Assuredly, I say to you, I have not found such great faith, not even in Israel!’” Matthew 8:10, excerpt from Matthew 8:5-10***

A man can make You marvel. A man, then, made You marvel. You saw his faith, the faith of the one that You made, and You marveled. You stood in awe of Your child. He was imperfect, but he still moved You.

Who are You, God, that Your people can move Your heart? I praise You for being a God who marvels.

Your love doesn’t stand distant, disconnected, but Your heart moves when I move. You move in.

“When Jesus heard it, He marveled.” I adore You, the Father who marvels when His children move towards Him. I love the way You show Your love. Make me one who makes You marvel. [My adoration phrases for this Monday, written in my moleskine journal, propped on my counter top, fresh on my tongue, ready to replace their opponents.]

++++++

First and third photo compliments of Mandie Joy. Second photo compliments of Cherish Andrea Photography.

You may have noticed I no longer have an option for comments on my posts. For a little explanation to this shift, read Why No Comments? 

**I absolutely treasure your stories. I love the memorials coming my way. What’s being erected over your lives, I am celebrating: He is good. With a life of four-being-restored and two of us not too far ahead of them, I don’t have as much time as I’d like to respond to every email, message and comment. Though the demands under my roof may not allow much time to respond to these, please know I am honored by what you’ve sent me and the time you took to tell me your story. They are gifts to me.

***For a context to this little space on my blog, read: Why I Adore. For a more detailed description of how to start adoring Him in your day-to-day, read: Showing Up. To see all “Morning Chai” devotionals, use this link:  http://www.EveryBitterThingisSweet.com/posts/chai/. And you can easily subscribe to these devotional meditations as they are delivered, by using this feed: http://www.EveryBitterThingisSweet.com/posts/chai/feed or by entering your email address in the second box on the right-hand side.

This moment reflected her heart.

She cut lettuce and stirred sauce and mimicked what she’d seen me do. She’d learned so much in 9 short months. But hours earlier, He’d pulled back the curtain on her mystery, to me. Her heart was too small for her body. Lanky limbs reflecting her age disguised a heart much younger in years. We poured out from the wells He was pouring in, but her heart could receive only droplets.

She couldn’t comprehend love. She wasn’t yet growing in love because she had never learned the art of receiving. Love, to her, was transactional. Sterile. Give and take. Fair, maybe, for most — but not for her.

Was it a coincidence that all of this surfaced just days before I set my heart to meditate on His last days?

I was once like her.

I forced myself to go through the motions I’d learned of giving, pulling from a dry well. I poured out what I didn’t have and my parched heart pruned like a raisin. He was give and take to me and, by my skewed assessment, my life was defined by lack.

The trajectory began to change when my heart began to receive. Not a new circumstance or a new set of “yes’s” over my life’s “no’s”, but a God-Man.

Adoration is forming a life-habit of receiving. Him. It’s pulling the stop valve on circumstance as the primary means of receiving who He is to us and, instead, informing our perspective on all of life first by studying the lines on His face and adoring what we see.

He has great light to shed on our circumstances, but we often muddle it with our own interpretation. Adoration is this relationship’s — His and mine — greatest starting point. It’s not about what I’m not (something I’m reminded of every day, my weak flesh speaks loud), but who He is.

Praise God for Mondays, when the column on the right-side of my blog moves front and center here. Would you consider the challenge so many others have taken** to adore Him, with me, through the gospels?***

Today, I’m pulling from the fourth of my Holy Week Morning Chai posts. If you haven’t yet, you can read the others here:

Holy Week’s First Outpouring

A Death-Life Exchange, Even Before Your Death

Marvelous Silence

You Said Her Name In That Way

+++++

She, supposing Him to be the gardener, said to Him, “Sir, if You have carried Him away, tell me where You have laid Him, and I will take Him away.” Jesus said to her, “Mary!” She turned and said to Him,“Rabboni!” (which is to say, Teacher). – excerpt from John 20:11-18**

You conquered the world’s limitation, and You called her by name.

She stumbled, unknowingly, to the rock which held resurrection’s imprint. She hadn’t received Your words of promise. She lived her years beside You, but didn’t understand You. She wept for a loss that was, instead, great gain.

Mary’s easter Sunday was still the dark, black night.

This is the flesh You came to save.

You didn’t chastise her lack of expectation or her mourning as unnecessary.

You called her by name.

She didn’t recognize Your stature, or even Your voice. But she knew You by the way You called her name.

Oh, God, so personal — Your victory didn’t preclude You from leaning in to the world’s weakest. You still called her name, with that lilt in Your voice which revealed You not to be stranger with inside information, but friend.

You still call my name with that lilt in Your voice which reveals You, to me, as friend.

I adore You, the One who won with love, for loving me by name.

You saved the world and not one of them escaped Your sight. This first Easter morn, Your reacquaintance with her, provides a lifetime of  understanding, unfolding.

God most personal, God most powerful — You hold both.

You see me. You name me. You know that name.

You say that name in a way which only You can say it.

And when the world is trembling with great terror and strife or erupting with the glorious goodness of You coming forth, You still stop on the historic scene to say a name.

Rabboni, my great teacher. You are teaching me with Your love, bold to save humanity and quiet enough to whisper my name in a way that only I can recognize.

I adore You, Father who knows me.

Your resurrection … it’s personal.

Today for all mankind.

But still today for me.

Your eye, still on me.

You may have noticed I no longer have an option for comments on my posts. For a little explanation to this shift, read Why No Comments? 

**I absolutely treasure your stories. I love the memorials coming my way. What’s being erected over your lives is fuel in mine: He is good. With a life of four-being-restored and two of us not too far ahead of them, I don’t have as much time as I’d like to respond to every email, message and comment. Though the demands under my roof may not allow much time to respond to these, please know I am honored by what you’ve sent me and the time you took to tell me your story. They are gifts to me.

***For a context to this little space on my blog, read: Why I Adore. For a more detailed description of how to start adoring Him in your day-to-day, read: Showing Up. You can easily subscribe to these devotional meditations as they are delivered, by using this feed: http://www.EveryBitterThingisSweet.com/posts/chai/feed or by entering your email address in the second box on the right-hand side.

Photos compliments of Cherish Andrea Photography.

You conquered the world’s limitation, and You called her by name.

She stumbled, unknowingly, to the rock which held resurrection’s imprint. She hadn’t received Your words of promise. She lived her years beside You, but didn’t understand You. She wept for a loss that was, instead, great gain.

Mary’s easter Sunday was still the dark, black night.

This is the flesh You came to save.

You didn’t chastise her lack of expectation or her mourning as unnecessary.

You called her by name.

She didn’t recognize Your stature, or even Your voice. But she knew You by the way You called her name.

Oh, God, so personal — Your victory didn’t preclude You from leaning in to the world’s weakest. You still called her name, with that lilt in Your voice which revealed You not to be stranger with inside information, but friend.

You still call my name with that lilt in Your voice which reveals You, to me, as friend.

I adore You, the One who won with love, for loving me by name.

You saved the world and not one of them escaped Your sight. This first Easter morn, Your reacquaintance with her, provides a lifetime of  understanding, unfolding.

God most personal, God most powerful — You hold both.

You see me. You name me. You know that name.

You say that name in a way which only You can say it.

And when the world is trembling with great terror and strife or erupting with the glorious goodness of You coming forth, You still stop on the historic scene to say a name.

Rabboni, my great teacher. You are teaching me with Your love, bold to save humanity and quiet enough to whisper my name in a way that only I can recognize.

I adore You, Father who knows me.

Your resurrection … it’s personal.

Today for all mankind.

But still today for me.

Your eye, still on me.

**So what do I do with these posts, you ask, other than just read them? First, if you haven’t yet, read: Why I Adore and Morning Chai, Explained to give you a context for this little space on my blog. 

If you are compelled, I invite you to participate. Set up a space and time in your own life to begin adoring. Over laundry or dinner dishes, on your commute to work, or in the wee morning hours — five or ten minutes is a great start. You can use the verse I list here every day or two as a launch pad for your own adoration. (Showing Up gives you some practicals.)

Then practice praise.

I promise your weary soul won’t regret it.

***You can easily subscribe to these devotional meditations as they are delivered, by using this feed: http://www.EveryBitterThingisSweet.com/posts/chai/feed or by entering your email address in the second box on the right-hand side… (scroll up a bit)

Photo compliments of Cherish Andrea Photography.

Nothing.

You answered nothing.

They sent words which pierced before they pierced Your skin … and You did not justify. Completely justifiable, You are the world’s true king, and You hung Your answer in Your silence.

Father all-powerful birthed meekness onto the earth, into the earth.

You lived Your message at humanity’s worst moment. You were one with Your Father and that oneness trumped any other strength. You chose to subject Your flesh to human weakness, at the hands of Your sons and daughters, because a new day was coming.

I praise You, oh God, for showing me the way Your Son stood tall (in You) when the world battered Him, low. He didn’t work at meekness, He was meekness, because a Son who is one with His Father need not bolster. He tuned His ear to a different wavelength — Yours.

He didn’t lash back or revolt. He welcomed death with an awareness of Your life coursing through the blood You gave Him to hold before it spilled out on that black night.

I adore You, Father, for unveiling that the way up is down. Your Son led the path to life.

He fasted momentary fame for a message which would be declared in heaven and on earth, then and now. He lived alignment so that I might know its safety, so that I might know the safety of tucking myself into You.

Though in His perfection His “yes” was resounding, He subjected Himself to dreadful weakness so that we might see that His “yes” would not waiver. He took the extreme of life’s struggles and lived them, in flesh, looking up. That silence — His testimony — gave me my own fresh spring for when life closes in. He chose You when the world got loud and angry, so that I might form a pattern after His life. And this not to mention the deposit offered to me three days later.

Meekness in me, God in me — what a beautiful offering, Jesus, was Your silence.

When my flesh revolts, Your life’s last moments, lived in skin, give me a silence I can both mimic and know way down deep. The cacophony of the world’s accusations, within and outside, falls powerless against my connection to the Father. You lived the safe agreement with Him You’ve now bequeathed to me.

I adore You, God who didn’t turn in Your power for meekness. You held both and You promised me the same.

I can know great strength bursting through this bruised shell because You went before me. Your love laid down all, so that I might sip surrender’s sweet brew.

The people mocked, spit and struck and You let them lead You to Your death. The governor marveled at Your silence, but I imagine it was nothing compared to the multitudes marveling among the heavenly hosts.

You conquered flesh at its worst, magnificently. Humbly. With meekness resting heavily on Your shoulders.

The skin You put on was taut around the marvelous mystery being revealed to the sons of men on that dark night. It couldn’t contain You.

And, oh God, even just stepping into that account from way back when changes me. My insides cannot contain yet another year’s revelation being birthed out of this remembrance.

Oh the wonderful Man, who carried the cross.

I see that we’ve only just met.

**So what do I do with these posts, you ask, other than just read them? First, if you haven’t yet, read: Why I Adore and Morning Chai, Explained to give you a context for this little space on my blog. 

If you are compelled, I invite you to participate. Set up a space and time in your own life to begin adoring. Over laundry or dinner dishes, on your commute to work, or in the wee morning hours — five or ten minutes is a great start. You can use the verse I list here every day or two as a launch pad for your own adoration. (Showing Up gives you some practicals.)

Then practice praise.

I promise your weary soul won’t regret it.

***You can easily subscribe to these devotional meditations as they are delivered, by using this feed: http://www.EveryBitterThingisSweet.com/posts/chai/feed or by entering your email address in the second box on the right-hand side… (scroll up a bit)

Additionally, all of the Morning Chai Posts can be seen, in the order of posting, by clicking here or adding this address to your reader: http://EveryBitterThingisSweet.com/posts/chai

Photo compliments of Mandie Joy.

You knew Your authority, yet You knelt down. Your calloused fingers brushed their calloused feet and meekness breathed holiness through human touch. They would soon know the Father through Your emptying, but the cross wasn’t Your first kind of death.

You left all that was Him — holy, safe, secluded — to enter the mess of a stable as an introduction to the mess of the world. Your people made You weep; instead of turning from them, You washed their brokenness with Your skin against theirs.

You did what they didn’t understand, all for love. We, even now with all of You living inside of us, we don’t understand in full. And You still wash, patiently.

That night, then, is my everyday, now. I adore You, sweet Jesus, who washes my feet. You give me an everyday cleansing with Your life. You start with my roughest parts.

You had power to raise the dead yet You took the lowest place. They slew You with their words before they scourged Your flesh — the flesh You put on so that they might know You and Your Father — and Your preparation was a foot-washing.

Jesus, so other, I adore You for living from Your Father’s heart.

You loved them. You loved me, then. And Your love wasn’t transactional.

Your singular focus on the will of the Father included a heart which bled for His children. You didn’t spend Your earth years, distant, waiting to perform that for which You came. You cleansed with Your life before Your life and death expunged.

You kneel with all that You are, Jesus. You carry the power to move the world in the same hands that washed their feet. Your life spoke a better way. Death, in the daily minutia of Your thirty-three years, was life to You. All of God in an earthly frame, every moment of Your time on earth was a sacrifice. Yet You walked in step with Your Father … and thus was life upspringing.

You loved while You modeled and You modeled love. I worship You, God who went before me in human form so that I might know how to live. I adore You, Jesus, who walked the way of the cross before Your day came to hang there. I praise You, One who demonstrated this death-life exchange for my witnessing.

I stare deep into the eyes that look up at me, from the God-Man kneeling to wipe clean my dirt, and I can’t help but receive more understanding of this love, so other.

I choose You, which means death — but for a moment — because You lived a life of risen-ness even before the world witnessed it.

In You, I lose all of me. I kneel, heavy against the pavement before life’s woundings and those that have administered them, because You went before me. And it was there, back hunched over all of their mess, that love cleansed. And love won.

You died, daily, so that I might see the precious victory in Your life’s love.

You lived a love I want to know. I adore You, oh God whose love is ever-unfolding before my eyes. I worship You, Father of bent-knees.

Thank you, Jesus, for Your sacrifice which changes me.

**So what do I do with these posts, you ask, other than just read them? First, if you haven’t yet, read: Why I Adore and Morning Chai, Explained to give you a context for this little space on my blog. 

If you are compelled, I invite you to participate. Set up a space and time in your own life to begin adoring. Over laundry or dinner dishes, on your commute to work, or in the wee morning hours — five or ten minutes is a great start. You can use the verse I list here every day or two as a launch pad for your own adoration. (Showing Up gives you some practicals.)

Then practice praise.

I promise your weary soul won’t regret it.

***You can easily subscribe to these devotional meditations as they are delivered, by using this feed: http://www.EveryBitterThingisSweet.com/posts/chai/feed or by entering your email address in the second box on the right-hand side… (scroll up a bit)

Additionally, all of the Morning Chai Posts can be seen, in the order of posting, by clicking here or adding this address to your reader: http://EveryBitterThingisSweet.com/posts/chai

Photo compliments of Mandie Joy.

Nothing which is poured out over You — no amount of time or devotion — is waste. You received her perceived squandering, then, just as You receive from me now.

I adore You, oh God who encourages my weak worship.

You didn’t merely tolerate her offering, in hopes she might soon learn to be the worker You need her to be — You embraced her then. There. That spilling over of love was her life memorial. You canonized her because extravagant love poured out over You is worth remembering. To You, this love was good work.

Life stopped for costly love, because You are costly love and this love paradigm — this love exchange, that she could give to You?! – that You have set up, is life.

I love You, Definer of life and love which works radically against my insides.

She knew, early, that her firstfruits were intended for Your person. Our best was made to be laid at Your feet.

Even the Son of God can receive. From her, from me. I have something to give You. Oh, God, I adore You for welcoming my weak worship.

She played a part in the world’s epic story, all because of her extravagant outpouring, and You linked her story — in every place, across the earth — to the very story of Your emptying. The memorial wasn’t just unto You, it was told “as a memorial to her.”

You share Your glory and yet this very parceling-out brings You more glory. Who is this God who invites my partnership, like it invited hers that day? My participation doesn’t require You to divide what is due to You, it sows into Your method of multiplication.

You make me shine! My story, woven to Your story, doesn’t threaten You, it exhibits You. You don’t need me, You want me.

And in shining, I bring You glory.

That day, You endorsed that which even those who shared Your days saw to be great waste. But she loved lavishly so that I might know Your cross wasn’t the only extravagant offering.

I get to pour out too.

I love You, God who not only gives, but receives. You give me reason to worship because my worship catches Your eye. She moved You in that fleeting moment where the earth witnessed Your last days. What moment am I in, now, which might also be fleeting?

You welcome worship — the kind of worship which interrupts my sense of normal — and my life, too, can become memorialized in Your eyes because of it.

I want to squander it all for You, God. I adore You, God, worthy of my greatest emptying.

I love You, oh Father-Creator of unorthodox participation.

**So what do I do with these posts, you ask, other than just read them? First, if you haven’t yet, read: Why I Adore and Morning Chai, Explained to give you a context for this little space on my blog. 

If you are compelled, I invite you to participate. Set up a space and time in your own life to begin adoring. Over laundry or dinner dishes, on your commute to work, or in the wee morning hours — five or ten minutes is a great start. You can use the verse I list here every day or two as a launch pad for your own adoration. (Showing Up gives you some practicals.)

Then practice praise.

I promise your weary soul won’t regret it.

***You can easily subscribe to these devotional meditations as they are delivered, by using this feed: http://www.EveryBitterThingisSweet.com/posts/chai/feed or by entering your email address in the second box on the right-hand side… (scroll up a bit)

Additionally, all of the Morning Chai Posts can be seen, in the order of posting, by clicking here or adding this address to your reader: http://EveryBitterThingisSweet.com/posts/chai

First photo compliments of Mandie Joy. Second photo compliments of Cherish Andrea Photography.

Wouldn’t you know it, the very thing set to derail me, is His opportunity to shine … in me. My weakness is His perfection. And a taste of Him, like this, in me makes me want to throw off the old and jump, bold, into His new.

And this perspective is what sparks my adoration.

If you haven’t yet, read my precursor to this Monday’s adoration**. This sweet God is using life’s most unlikely circumstances to scoot my chair right up next to His and give me a taste of His nearness.

While he was still speaking, behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them; and suddenly a voice came out of the cloud, saying, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. Hear Him!” And when the disciples heard it, they fell on their faces and were greatly afraid. But Jesus came and touched them and said, “Arise, and do not be afraid.” When they had lifted up their eyes, they saw no one but Jesus only. Matthew 17:5-7**

“But Jesus.”

The simple phrase You inspired which explains an eternal rescue. Your Words bring me healing.

They were afraid and You translated, through Your Son. I stumble to find You and You are still, now, translating … through Your Son. Life in word, life on page, is welling up life within me.

You are Trinity, all of You one, yet for one sliver of time, You appeared separately (without compromising Your oneness) so that I might have an invitation into this union. You sent Him, so that I might understand You. You made provision for me, before my conception, in Your Son’s birth. The night He broke from Your triangle of holiness through earth onto the straw floor of a stable was the night Your Word throughout history touched the skin of another.

What she first felt was what a world would have chance to receive — God’s living touch.

Father, powerful and overshadowing, and Jesus, the One who translates. His calloused hands reached out to fearful skin.

You reached down, You lived in skin. 

And Your Son, who wore You, carried peace in His fingers. All in one, yet separate for these moments, so that their hearts might know the healing touch of ages. That fingerprint on flesh, then, impresses itself on me, now. 

I love you, God who made Yourself real to them and to me.

Jesus, You stood between the Father’s expression of glory and man’s great inability to comprehend. You bore witness. You lived witness. By Your witness, their eyes saw.

I praise You that by Your witness, my heart has room. The brush against flesh they felt lives within me. I adore You, oh God who is still witnessing through Your Son. I can touch You — inside of me — like He touched them, all because You shared Your Son.

Your life was a bridge. All of Him, enfolded into You, so that I might see God. 

What tenderness, this great gesture that I have been invited to inherit. 

Holy translation.

Love became a Man, without comprising its nature. Glorious mystery.

And to this You say, seek, and I will unfold for You. You made it known, to them, with a Man who shared their steps and ate meals with them and slept under their roofs and You are making it known to me, inside of me. He wore You so that I might wear You. 

I adore You for Your committed brush with humanity.  And I see You, anew, through the Son who wore You for me.

**For a context to this little space on my blog, read: Why I Adore. For a more detailed description of how to start adoring Him in your day-to-day, read: Showing Up. You can easily subscribe to these devotional meditations as they are delivered, by using this feed: http://www.EveryBitterThingisSweet.com/posts/chai/feed or by entering your email address in the second box on the right-hand side… (scroll up a bit).

First photo compliments of Mandie Joy. Second and third photos compliments of Cherish Andrea Photography.