Resurrecting Motherhood

Seeing the Signs

/ Jana / Leave a comment

The Lord often stretches my listening skills. I think you know what I mean. He wants to know if our antennae are up and active. Are our ears tuned to hear and move with Him? I shared about our recent refining fire and wanted to tell you the next step in that journey, as well as a fun game with the Lord. 

After I released  the very tender story about Trust and Joy, God provided quite miraculously. From completely unexpected places. It’s not all magical and wonderful now, like a cheap sitcom. But It is a beautiful next step in our faith and His care. I can’t help but  wonder if the two are connected—the vulnerable blog and His provision. Was God waiting for us to hit bottom and be honest about it, so He could blow our mind? 

I mean— money is a raw topic. Like sex and politics, it is booby-trapped with shame and judgement and oughts. Yet, God is so above all that. He is ever, always, and perfectly leading us into more and more of His love and wisdom. The pursuit of more is why we share about of all of life, even the ugly, messy, parts, because there is no area that God is not with us. 

Here is one takeaway from our present journey.
Miracles come into the weakest places. 

If you or I have it handled, we don’t need God.
He is re-writing my hard drive about dependence on Him. Again. 

Sometimes what mankind calls failure, God calls freedom.

Now, on a lighter note, when I was first learning to hear from God outside of the Bible, He highlighted billboards. Literally as I was going down the road, a billboard would catch my eye, or I would feel pulled toward a phrase. 

We haven’t played that game in years, but as we were driving to and from Knoxville, including in my own Gulf Breeze area, God started pinging me with billboards. The following is a beautiful message. You literally can’t make this sh#t up. He is so funny.

Grow with us
We’re here for you
Shelter strong
That’s gold.

Best gift is time together
Search. Book. Go.

Because your foundation is cracked
Rest your wings
Three spaces. One powerful experience

Become a history maker
You are bigger than this moment

Redefine your staycation
Window world, We’ll get you ready
We see you dream chaser

Jesus is Lord
Small steps. Big change.

We see you and we’ve got you
Building dreams, Sustaining waters

This is loaded with meaning for me, it corresponds to words, scriptures and prayers. I love not only that He is with us but that He TALKS with us any way He chooses. Listen for Him. He has a lot on His mind. 

He is already planning for your 2025. So listen as He shares His heart with you.

Strong Water

/ Jana / Leave a comment

There is an essence of a Woman —God-ordained actually. Even if you don’t believe in God, there is an unmistakable quality of a woman that goes far beyond body parts and hormones. 

A woman is a life-giver.  Hear me. Not just a baby maker. But a Life-Giver. 

For decades,  I have been on a deep dive into the heavenly Who of a woman. The world’s Who of a woman reduces us to breasts and bottoms. And frankly, the church’s answer of Who relegates us to the high (and only allowed) calling of motherhood. Both left cavernous gaps in my heart. 

Don’t get me wrong. I am undone by my children. Still love-wrecked by them today, though they are grown and flown. I prayed desperately to have them and have been completely overhauled as a human by being a parent. Nothing brings me to my knees faster than the threat of danger or harm to my babies. Likewise, when they laugh and soar, whether they are 20 months or 20 years, my heart sings a song that is worthy of angels. 

And yet. My own children gave me clues to this bigger Who of a woman. But they did not satisfy the God-sized holes and hunger in my soul. 

As I sought the Lord and tried to make sense of the tension, God began to reveal some beautiful secrets of His feminine masterpiece. 

It starts with the names. In Genesis alone, we see the names: female, help meet, woman, and mother. Goodness, we could have fun unpacking all of these. But for today, let’s look at Mother.

In ancient Hebrew, the letters are pictures. So each word is a collection of images that creates vast meaning. The two letters/pictures depicting the word “mother” is an ox and water. Ox signifies strength and water signifies life. Translated mother means strong water. 

 

Scholars say the expression strong water is attributed to the process of boiling the skin of an animal down until it makes a glue that is used for making tents. Lovely, yes? But hold on. Like its image, it is rife with meaning. 

A woman is uniquely equipped to connect people, hold relationships together, create strong emotional and spiritual attachments so that the family, tribe, or camp can weather the seasons of life. A woman is the glue of her home. Whether single or married, with child or without, she has been heavenly wired to carry this life-building and life-sustaining essence into her world. 

She carries this Holy Glue that brings hearts together, cements ideas or dreams, and provides foundational strength in various expressions.

When Adam named Eve, which happened after the fall, and before children, he called out the original Who that God created. Not just for the first woman, but for all of us, since she would be named the mother of all the living. 

We, women, are her daughters, all women are called Strong Water. We carry the life-giving glue of Heaven. 

Thank you, Lord, for revealing your beautiful heart through us. 

Dependance Is A Dance

/ Jana

Something happened yesterday and it was simply incredible. I was talking to a friend about financial things. There was absolutely nothing emotionally charged about our conversation but I kept seeing something on her face. It almost looked like she had been crying. It wasn’t a mascara run but it looked like fresh tears without the glisten. I was becoming increasingly distracted by it so I finally interrupted her and said, “Have you been crying?”

She said, “What?”

I said again, “Have you been crying?”

She said, “No. Why?”

I said, “It just looks like you have been.”

She said, “Do I have makeup on me or something? Are my eyes red?”

I said, “No. Actually, this may be in the Spirit. Are you sad about something?”

She froze, “What?”

I said, “Are you sad about something? Is something bothering you?”

She said, “How did you know?”

I said, “I think I’m seeing tears on your face in the spiritual. Tell me about it.”

She proceeded to share with me a story about something that has been really causing her pain. She had wounded a friend and wasn’t sure what to do about it. She felt like she was swimming in a sea of grace about it but there was something about that that made her uncomfortable, she just didn’t want to depend on the Lord so much. She was believing a lie that He was disappointed that she needed Him so much.

Her words reminded me of a time when I was breastfeeding. I had seen all the successful moms who would breastfeed and pump enough to have freezers full of milk. I wanted to provide for my daughter and save some for later in case she needed it. It took me almost a year to be able to save anything. I distinctly remember standing at my kitchen sink in the early months of my breastfeeding journey and saying to Jesus, “I just don’t want to have to ask You every day to provide this. What is wrong with my body that I can’t seem to produce enough without asking You for help? I just don’t want to need You.” In that moment I heard the Spirit whisper, “I am your daily bread. I am your daughters daily bread. I love to hear you ask Me. I long to provide for you. I am drawn to the need in you.” I want to tell you that I swooned and feel back in His arms. The truth is I flippantly responded, “I guess” and kept washing dishes.

And there is the stick: I don’t want to need Him all the time. I want to rule and reign and run my little kingdom. I want to fix my problems the way that I think they should be fixed. I want to provide for myself and have extra so I won’t need faith to live.

But I was, and you are, created to need Him and when our need meets His provision, this beautiful dance happens. There is no lacking. There is no striving. It is perfect, whole and holy. Heaven comes to earth.

So, friend, may I encourage you with 2 things today:

  1. He sees you. He is putting people in your path who will see your pain and help you carry it. Most importantly, He is working in the unseen. What is seen is temporary, what is unseen is eternal.

  2. He wants to be needed by you. Your dependance on Him is beautiful in His eyes. Will you offer your lack to Him and wait on Him to provide?

    Crystal Freeman

 

 

The Heart of a Mother

/ Jana

I was blessed to attend a baby shower the other day. A long-awaited miracle baby. A baby of promise.  The air was thick with celebration. It’s as if we all let out a collective sigh of relief that this prayer had been answered. Finally.

As we began a blessing and prayer time,  I looked around the room of women and choked back a sob.

This was holy ground.

 

 

There were so many stories. Some had no children of their own. Others had birthed children. Many had miscarried babies. A couple of women grieved babies lost through abortion. Several had adopted children. Some had glowing little toddlers, some had heart-wrenching prodigals.

Despite these stories, our own hurts, and sorrows, we still rose up to prophesy over this new mama.

But what to pray?

Why pray some pie in the sky future that every woman present already knew would not happen?

There would be terrible, sleepless nights in the beginning.
And in the elementary years
And in the teen years.

The child would rend her heart over the years as much as he would rend her body in delivery.

The road would be blissfully filled with hand-drawn art and sloppy kisses. But the road most assuredly would also be filled with broken dreams and promises as this mother, like all mothers, weathered her child developing and testing his free will.

What to pray?

Do we pray for God to shield her and her child from all hardship?
We know that trials and hardships drive us into Him more deeply.

Do we pray for a fairytale birth story and golden child reality?
We know full well that our enemy thrashes our faith with a weapon called disappointment, so why fill her head with unrealistic expectations?

And tell me what on earth does God have to say about all this?

Enter the Heart of a Mother.

If you are a woman, you know what it means to be a mother. Child or no child, there is an innate God-given fiber of your very being that rises up around the weak and defenseless. We somehow don’t have to be taught to nurture, teach, tend, or protect.

Some women are warm hugs and soft places to land. Some women are more like fierce pioneers who cut a new path for others to follow. Regardless of the varied expressions of a woman, one common thing to watch is what she does if her loved ones are at risk. Think mama bear with cubs.

I have been walking out a beautiful revelation from the Lord about the feminine side of God. I am writing a book on it actually.

But for today—because it is nearly Mother’s Day—because of the days we live in, when many already-born persons want to debate the validity of un-born persons—I want to speak truth.

God is a God of Life.

God, even uniquely expressed in the Holy Spirit, holds all the tenderness and nurturing we need to exist but also to model. The Holy Spirit contains and holds our sorrow, strengthens and undergirds our weakness, teaches and leads us into Truth. The Holy Spirit defends and protects. The Bible draws so many parallels of the Holy Spirit to women that finally, FINALLY,  we find our feminine place in the Godhead.

And because we find our place in the Godhead, the beautiful, powerful, life-giving God, we find our place in the world. We are life-givers. We are life protectors.

Would you like to know the theme that formed in our prayer time for this new mama, and actually every woman present? That we would come to embrace the overwhelming love of God.

This baby shower was a God shower. Reminding us that the Holy Three of Them created each one of us and delights to sing over us in every season, heartache, milestone, success or weakness. That’s what we prayed.

May each of us receive the love of God as fully as this new mama loves her baby.

Thanks, Mom.

/ Jana

Today I licked the icing off the beaters and said out loud to no one, “Thanks, Mom.”

Thanks for letting me lick the beaters from so many cakes and icings as a child. It’s one of those traditions I passed on. And there are no children around me to fight over who gets the spatula and who gets the beater, but still, I remember.

Thanks, Mom, for teaching me the “why” to cook. I had to learn the “how” to cook after a left her home, but what I learned was the love expressed through a homemade spread of favorite dishes. To be honest, I know I don’t cook the way she did. In fact, her frequent thing to say when eating the Jana version of her dishes was “well, it’s different.”

Yes, that is a kiss of death from the judges. Smile.

But now, making my dishes, still differently than hers and laughing as I hear her kiss of death comment, I am grateful. To know that more than one way can still be the right way. To know that I can honor her recipes and methods on some die-hard dishes like Thanksgiving dressing and cornbread, and to know that I can discover my own flair with equal success.

Thanks, Mom for the beauty of folks gathered around a table. These days my table is filled with friends more than family. It is a happy and a sad reality.  The changing seasons take getting used to, but she taught me, without ever saying a word, that Jesus loves to hang out and dine with friends. Some of my hardest and most tender conversations have been over a well-prepared meal.

I wonder sometimes if every time we dine, we re-enact the Lord’s supper. Bread, drink, friends.

Thanks, Mom. I understand better why you cried when you made Granny’s coconut cake the first Christmas without her. I did the same thing with your beef stew and oatmeal cookies. And yet we cook. Because we love. Because we remember. Because it’s worth the effort.

Thanks, Mom.

Resurrecting Motherhood: Value

/ Jana

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Resurrecting Motherhood. Just the words strung together send a tingle down my spine. And yet it is the rumbling that began in my spirit three years ago? Frankly, I just haven’t had the courage to do anything to release it. And now, in the quarantined days of April 2020, I see the time is here and the I also see the very big Why.

So in the strength God gives, let’s begin a journey of Resurrecting Motherhood.

Today’s topic is Value.

What do you value?

Ask any woman or mom that question and we would rattle off various answers. But most of those answers would revolve around people.

We are relational at our core. It’s in our spiritual DNA. Think of how women nurture, work behind the scenes, coach and counsel in countless conversations, spark connection, make things hum and whistle.

Hmmm. . .this sounds like Holy Spirit, but we will come back to that.

Women are wired for relationship. So then. Ahem. Here we are today and our kids/ husbands/homes are DRIVING US FREAKING CRAZY. lol But seriously.

I really don’t think it is Too Much time together.

I think it is Too Little connection being finally revealed.

Did I mention that this journey might be a bit difficult? Just stay with me. God is taking us somewhere.

And our first bite of truth is about Value.

Lately, I’ve heard mom’s say honest and powerful truths:

I don’t know who I am now. My identity has been stripped.

I see my family doesn’t really like each other very much.

In my own house, and heart, I have been confronted with we don’t really know each other. 

All of these, and so many more, have been flushed up by the shelter-at-home orders. God has a funny way of working, doesn’t He?

And just now, in the moment, the Spirit whispers, where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. Have you read Matthew 6 lately. I just read it again. The Lord’s Prayer. The teaching on fasting. The teaching on giving. The teaching on serving God and mammon. Uhmm it’s loaded.

But I want to pay attention to this verse today:

19 “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. 20 But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

22 “The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are healthy,[c] your whole body will be full of light. 23 But if your eyes are unhealthy,[d] your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!

God is telling us where His idea of value is. Heaven. Heaven’s ways. What does heaven value, treasure? People. Not bank accounts. Not houses. Not stuff. People.

When your kids say “Mom” for the billioneth time, when they spill it AGAIN, when you just need a moment to be alone, when you need a hug or a cry or a scream. . . you don’t need a sappy tidbit. You need a divine truth. Lean back into His Divine Presence.

He treasures YOU! He will show you how to treasure your kids.

And today, I want you to see the verse right before this passage:
“your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.”

He sees. He knows. He will provide you with what you need, moment by moment, if you will value what He values. He values relationship. He highly values connection. He has entrusted you with TODAY with your children and family. Keep your eye on Him today breathing in this prayer,

“Spirit, my ever-present Parent, you understand what is means to be with your kids 24/7. In the same way that You love me non-stop, without running away, or crushing me, strengthen me to love my kids. Give me the desire to be connected to them the way You desire to be connected to me. Thank You for seeing and rewarding my effort. Amen.”