My best friend Stacie sent me this piece of writing and it was too good not to share with you! Which inspired something new for 2019 here at “My Race to Run” – every few weeks, I am going to bring you a hand-selected guest blog from a different person in my life. 

Stacie Van de Weghe is a beloved daughter, wife, and mom to 4 young boys. She homeschools her sons, and she also helps lead a group of high school girls called “Fight Club” that’s all about overcoming the enemy’s lies with God’s truth. Stacie speaks the truth in love; she challenges me to draw near to God and inspires me with her love for Jesus. And she’s the one who introduced me to The Story of With! We only got to live in the same town for a couple years, but we have so many memories together… from running outside to nacho dates to adventures with lice, she is a faithful friend that I am forever grateful for! 💗

Tension was high. One more squabble, one more kid acting out in anger, one more outburst, and the Mom Volcano was sure to blow. I had tried everything: building a fort, stories, talks, prayers, snacks, even a couple episodes of the old school Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood. The only option now was to escape.

“Everybody buckle up! Now!” I hollered.

“Where are we going?”

I had no idea. I just knew if we stayed a moment more, it was going to get ugly. But God had already prepared a place for us. A true friend and mentor was ready to welcome us. A change of scene. A warm smile. A cup of tea. A heart that would pray for us after we had gone. Yes. Somehow, God had told her that He had given her an extra hour for us that afternoon. And she was ready.

My boys thoroughly enjoyed the afternoon outing. They ran. They jumped. They raced matchbox cars. A couple nearly ate their weight in frozen blueberries. T-shirts and plump little fingers bore the purple evidence of the snack they had enjoyed.

About an hour later, we arrived home to find Dad mowing the lawn. One child shouted with glee at the sight of his daddy. The other slunk out of his car seat as his carefree spirit evaporated. The first could not get out of the car seat and into the hiking backpack fast enough. His urge to participate in the work of his dad and enjoy time with him was literally palpable. But something had shifted in his brother. He stood next to his bike with his helmet on, shifting his weight from foot to foot. When I inquired as to why he wasn’t out riding in the sun, he mumbled something so quiet that I had to kneel down to hear it.

He didn’t want Daddy to see his stained fingers.

I gave him a hug and told him not to worry. Then I rushed in to simultaneously reassemble the house we had left in shambles and attempt to make dinner. Little did I realize, I was feeling much the same way.

A couple minutes later, as I was on my way upstairs with a load of books and toys, I found him standing in the doorway, eyes down, hands twisting. I tried to quiet the compulsion to brush him aside in an attempt to rectify the state of our house BEFORE the lawn was mowed and Dad came in to see the state of it. To smell the failure in it. In me.

God answered an arrow prayer for patience, and we sat down to talk about the berry stained skin. I told him he had done nothing wrong. His fingers were not wet or sticky and he wasn’t leaving blueberry prints anywhere. I explained that Dad wouldn’t mind. I told him that, more importantly, he never needed to hide anything from Daddy because Dad loved him so much, and nothing could ever change that. It was clear he still felt unexplainable shame at the state of his fingers. So I took that purple hand in mine and we walked out into the sunshine to face Dad together.

I waved him down.

The lawn mower stopped.

The blue fingers were hidden in tight fists and the even bluer eyes were downcast. My little guy looked completely miserable as I explained the situation and then pried the little fists open to reveal the stains within.

Dad’s compassionate response was exactly what I had expected. My little guy was visibly relieved. So was I. Now I could get back to the pressing task at hand: covering up my own figurative berry stains.

The mess and chaos within my walls felt like symbols of the mess and chaos that had happened between me and my kiddos. It was as if the whole house reeked of my failures. Sin and brokenness on display.

We all find ourselves face to face with our reeking failures at some point. When I do, I fall for the lie that I can actually achieve the high standards that I set for myself. The enemy whispers in my ear, “Try again! Work harder! Be better! You can do it!” I fall for it every. Single. Time. I focus my attention on finding the solution. More organization? Better schedule and time management? More self discipline? But the frenzied brainstorms are always motivated by an intense desire to cram the evidence of my failures deep into my fist.

Well this particular day marked a turning point for me. This day I found a couple of deeper questions lingering in my heart. I was barely brave enough to ask them. I really did feel like a four-year-old with purple fists. For a brief moment, I set down my mental image of what I should be. I let go of my perception of what other people thought I should be. And I posed my vulnerable questions to my Father. Scrawled across the pages of a secret notebook:

How do You measure me?

What do I do with the areas You count as failure?

His compassionate answer took months to unpack.

He broke down failure for me into two categories.

• Real failure is when I have failed by choosing to love other things more than Him, and myself more than other people. (Basically, sin.)
• Perceived failure is when I have failed to meet human expectations. (My own or other people’s.)

Here is why it matters:

• My real failures are completely covered in the blood of Jesus!
• My perceived failures highlight places in my perspective that are out of alignment (misplaced priorities or focus).
• My real failures are areas to meet God at the foot of His throne, by the blood of Jesus, to receive mercy and find grace. His kindness leads me to repentance. Repentance leads me to freedom to start afresh (which is quite different than the Work Harder, Be Better mantra!) (Hebrews 4:14-16, Romans 2:4)
• My perceived failures can be debilitating because they actually derail me. They distract me from both the work that Jesus has done to make me His, the work He is currently doing in me, and the work that He has given me to do now! (Ephesians 2)
• Real failures are like fingers that are not just stained blue but dripping and sticky. Everything they touch is affected by their slimy state. They need to be washed. ASAP.
• Perceived failures are just stained fingers. They may be unsightly to some, but they are not actually causing any harm. More importantly, they have not offended the Father.
• Both failures are opportunities to reach for the Father and find that the depths of His compassion outweigh our expectations.

Remember the “girl that was lookin’ kinda dumb with her finger and her thumb in the shape of an L on her forehead”? There are triggers in every day that make me feel like her except with a giant neon F on my forehead. The trouble is, I usually can’t tell if the trigger I’m looking at is real or perceived. ESPECIALLY if I am consumed with working harder and being better. So the first step has been a tiny baby step of pausing to look up at my Father instead of down at my fingers. Where I used to cram my stained fingers into my fist, now I hold them out to Him. I ask Him if they are blue because I was enjoying His gift of berries, or if they are indeed sticky and spreading stains everywhere. If it is the former, I can let go of misplaced expectations and go on my merry way. If it’s the latter, I can trade my stains for the purity of Jesus and still go on my merry way. And in either case, I am inching my way to becoming like the toddler who dives out of the car, free to participate in the true work of my Father. (Matthew 18:3)

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Months passed and a verse began tumbling through my mind in a strangely uncomfortable way.

“The joy of the Lord is my strength.”

At first I assumed the discomfort was from the overzealous melody it sometimes brings to mind. But soon I realized that what was bothering me was that I had no sense of what that simple phrase could possibly mean! I’ve never felt so weak in my whole life as I do in this current season. The thought of finding strength in joy seems like a ploy to sell coffee mugs. Definitely not the reality I am experiencing. How can joy fuel strength anyway? And why in the world is that verse in the middle of Nehemiah? Shouldn’t it be something Paul wrote about Jesus or our heavenly inheritance or the seal of the Spirit or something? Maybe right alongside grace that is sufficient in weakness? What could this Old Testament leader possibly have meant?

So I dug a little deeper. And guess what! It was actually another layer of His answer to my original two questions posed all those months ago!

The first piece of the puzzle was the Hebrew word that is used for strength in this verse. I wrongly assumed that it would have to do with being tough, steadfast, mighty (ie. trying harder, being better). Here is what I found:

strength— ma`owz

1. Place or means of safety, protection, refuge, stronghold

A. Place of safety, fastness, harbor, stronghold

B. Refuge (of God)

C. Human protection

So instead of the joy of the Lord being my source of endurance and might, it is my safe place, my refuge. That means instead of allowing me to work harder and meet the standard with a smile, it gives me a safe place to actually expose my sin and shortcomings to the one who delights in growing me. His joy is an invitation to unfurl my heart. There is no failure, real or perceived, that can diminish either His love or His power to work in me.

The second piece was realizing that since this is an Old Testament verse, the word LORD is standing in for God’s name given all the way back to Moses: Yahweh. I Am Who I Am. That expands it from only the Son to the entire Trinity. Yahweh, the unchanging, preeminent, self-subsisting source.

The last piece was placing the verse in context. In Nehemiah 8:10, this small vagabond group of Hebrews miraculously finished rebuilding the wall around their ruined city. Ezra and Nehemiah gathered all the people together to read God’s law to them. Their hearts were rendered, cut to the chase, and they wept. Why? Perhaps they knew in that moment that they were incapable of meeting God’s standard. Perhaps they realized that they all had sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Perhaps they understood that there was no hope for them. They had failed. They were doomed. Sin stained their hearts as blueberry juice on young hands. So they wept. Ezra and Nehemiah responded by calming the people down. They told them not to mourn but rather to celebrate. They told them, “THE JOY OF THE LORD IS YOUR STRENGTH.” Literally, “the gladness of Yahweh is your safe place.”

Can you see it? The Gospel preached right here in the middle of the Old Testament.

The law.

The grief.

The delight of God to intervene.

The safety.

It’s our Jesus!

We are, all of us, stained and broken. He entered into our shame and nailed all of our failures to the cross. He applies His blood and we are clean. In our death and darkness He pursues us to bring us into His light and life. Into sonship. In fact, it was the Father’s will to crush Him on our behalf. And for the joy set before Him, He endured the cross, scorning its shame, and completed the work! Then He promised us that He would complete the work He began in us! It is the delight of the triune God, not just to save us, but to conform us to the image of the Son. So we can, we must, let go of the Work Harder, Be Better mentality. He has completed the work to save us. Now it is His delight to transform us from one degree of glory to another. (Colossians 1:21-22 and 2:13-15, Isaiah 53, Hebrews 12:2, Philippians 1:6, 2 Corinthians 3:17-18)

When we come face to face with our failure, the joy of the LORD is our strength. We can count on the compassionate purposes of the Father. We can count on the sufficiency of the work of Jesus. We can count on the continued work of the Holy Spirit in our hearts and lives. The joy of the LORD is our strength. The delight of Yahweh is our safe place.

What will you do with your blueberry stains?