mess

“Will you awaken mothers to the glory of their calling?”

I keep hearing the Holy Spirit asking me that question. And I have to answer with a question of my own.

“What is the glory of my calling?”

Honestly, I am having trouble seeing it in the midst of one big mess after another. Courage’s birthday was a perfect example of this.

It had been a pretty peaceful day. I had time to get the house cleaned and ready for the party celebrating our fiery three-year old. All of his presents were wrapped. The supper was prepared in advance. I had gathered the ingredients for Courage’s heart’s desire; a chocolate dirt cake with gummy bears. I had also made two additional desserts with special ingredients to accommodate the more delicate members of our family.

I was sitting on the sofa, waiting for dinner time. “This is an important part of motherhood right here,” I thought. Celebrating my children and creating happy birthday memories for them. I was hoping that Courage would feel loved and special and that the entire family would have fun.

I started setting the table and getting the food ready when my perfectly planned birthday celebration began to unravel.

“Chai just threw up on the carpet!!!” I heard an excited child yell. At first I tried to ignore it and continued the dinner preparations. Maybe they were exaggerating as children are prone to do, or maybe someone else would take care of it. No such luck.

I went from working with food in the kitchen to scraping stinky puke off the living room carpet. Chai had suddenly gotten sick and ended up sleeping in his bed for the entire birthday party. The smell and the germs were not what I had planned. Thank goodness my mom was the only guest, and we didn’t have a house full of people!

As I began scrubbing the carpet with cleanser, I heard the sound of some sort of ball hitting the side of the house. This didn’t go on for long before I heard Chris yell out the window, “Cole, stop kicking the soccer ball against the house!”

Did Cole heed his father’s wise advice? No, the banging continued once more, twice more, and then…the sickening sound of shattering glass! Cole had just broken our living room window. Thankfully, it was the storm window so none of the glass came into the house. But there was glass all over the back patio.

“Oh well, I can’t worry about that right now,” I thought to myself. “I have to throw in some laundry, get the boys to take out this trash, scrub my hands about fifty times in hot water, and then finish putting the food on the table.”

Back into the kitchen I went. Then Areli came to me holding the cup used to measure the laundry detergent.

“Courage just handed this to me… filled with his pee!” she told me.

“Of course he did,” I thought. I was bracing myself for the next catastrophe that was sure to come.

Amazingly, the rest of the evening went just fine. We all sang “Happy Birthday” very loudly. Cake was eaten. Presents were opened and played with.

We made a big mess and cleaned up a big mess. We put all the children to bed and prayed that no one else would throw up during the night. We got into bed late to get up early and do it all over again. Doesn’t seem very glorious, does it?

“Will you awaken mothers to the glory of their calling?”

Rick Joyner heard a great Queen ask him this very question in a vision that he wrote about in The Torch and the Sword. He said that she was astonishingly beautiful and seemed to be motherhood in all of its glory. She explained that she was Jerusalem above, the mother of all who worship in Spirit and truth, the church as it was called to be.

She asked Rick, “Will you awaken mothers to the glory of their calling? Will you give my daughters swords and torches? They are the ones who keep the torches alive, and they will wield the sword wisely. My daughters will stop the death and bring back the life!”

Perhaps to see a bit of the glory of my calling, I should find out what these swords and torches are all about. Here are a few excerpts from the book and I hope it is encouraging to you!

The Lord handed Rick a torch and told him, “This is the light of My presence. If I was not close to you, you could not hold it. If you drift from My presence, it will become heavy. If you drift very far from Me, you will have to lay it down…It is yours to carry for as long as you stay close to Me…No power on earth can put it out if the torchbearer walks with Me in this realm. Its brightness and power depend on the life of the torch-bearer, and on how close he stays to Me.”

Then Rick met Tomas a Kempis who told him, “You can set people, cities, and even nations free with the light of this torch…The torch you carry has been the source of every true movement of the Spirit. The leaders of these movements were all torchbearers…If you are going to endure to the end, you must stay close to the Source of this light and fire.”

The Lord spoke about Thomas, “Men thought of Thomas as a humble laborer, one to cook, wash dishes, and weed gardens [sounds a lot like a mom’s job!], but he, too, carried this torch. From his post of washing dishes, he became more powerful than kings or emperors. He prophesied to millions over generations. Even today My message goes forth from his writings to help prepare the coming ones. You can be more powerful washing dishes and staying close to Me than you would be leading armies or nations but drifting from Me.”

I need to read that again!

“YOU CAN BE MORE POWERFUL WASHING DISHES AND STAYING CLOSE TO ME than you would be leading armies or nations but drifting from Me.”

To be torchbearers, to carry this fire that brings life rather than destroys, we must abide in Jesus.

Rick met Enoch who had so much of this life flowing through him that he never died. Enoch said, “The Lord makes His messengers flames of fire. You cannot walk with God, or fulfill His purpose for you on the earth, unless you keep this fire burning in your heart. Lukewarmness is your deadly enemy.”

Lukewarmness can easily creep into the mind numbing daily grind of a mother. It is the overwhelming hardships and challenges of motherhood that push us into his presence! How I want to be one of the chosen torchbearers!

Jesus told Rick, “You will know these chosen ones by the fire that already burns in them. They will never be content with religious practices, for they yearn for Me and the reality of this realm. Because they seek Me, I will be found by them. I will give them their heart’s desire – My fellowship. I will be their inheritance.”

Later in the vision, Rick found himself preparing for a battle. The only other warriors with him were a young girl and John Wesley. Wesley told him, “The Lord called a dozen men. He changed them and then they changed the world. In your time He is going to do the same with the children. It is also the time of the lioness. Great are the company of women who will preach the gospel. There will be many great men of God in your time – but the great marvel and great honor will be for the women and children who walk in the ways of the Lord.”

Later the Lord gave Rick a sword and said, “It will only become heavy if you wield it in your own strength. This is my Word of redemption. It cannot be destroyed, but will stand forever…No power on the earth is stronger than my redemption…This is the sword of the Spirit…You are holding my living Word…to receive my word into your heart must be your quest every day. Then you will begin to see. Then you will have understanding.

“It was by my Word that the universe was created, and it is by My Word that it is held together. My Word is the answer to every human problem…The sword that is being given to my messengers in the last days can break any yoke, and cut through any chain.”

“Will you awaken mothers to the glory of their calling? Will you give my daughters swords ad torches? They are the ones who keep the torches alive, and they will wield the sword wisely. My daughters will stop the death and bring back the life!”

“I am a woman. I am a mother. I am the keeper and sustainer of life here on earth. Heaven stands in honor of my mission. No one else can carry my call. I am the daughter of Eve. Eve has been redeemed. I am the opposition of death. I am a woman.” – Christianna Reed Maas

The reality is, we can carry the living fire of His presence and the powerful Word of redemption into every part of our day – the fun celebrations and the puking parties, the playtime and the hard work. That is glorious even if it doesn’t feel like it at the time. We don’t need any special skills or qualifications. All that is required is that we seek Him first, abide in Him, and receive His words into our hearts every day.

Sometimes we are expecting to see the favor of God. We have prayed very specific prayers and fully expect them to be answered in marvelous ways. The answers don’t come right away, so we strain our eyes to the horizon, looking for his goodness. Yet the rain of his blessing doesn’t come. Instead, a nasty storm blows in. We are knocked down by one thunderclap after another.

We believed for goodness, yet found ourselves soaked to the bone and laying in a muddy heap on the ground. After all of this, we conclude that our expectations were just too high. We should be content with the mud puddle and avoid all this needless disappointment. This is when his unexpected goodness takes us by surprise, like a lovely flower blooming in the mire!

Chris and I had to close our business, Signarama. We lost a lot of money and our good name; but what was worse, we had lost our dreams. We had lost our confidence in God’s voice and his goodness. Our bills had increased, yet our income had significantly decreased. Here we were in the place we had strived so hard to avoid: utterly absorbed each day in the excruciating work of survival.

To top it all off, our dishwasher started leaking; a slow, steady leak under the floor. Pretty soon we had water seeping out from all the floor tiles. The tiles were old, ugly PVC stick tiles and now they were wet, coming up, and probably growing mold. It took a week to get the dishwasher fixed.

“Oh well,” I thought. “It doesn’t make much difference. Our kitchen is so awful anyway.

The cabinets keep falling apart and are so dirty; we just can’t get them clean.

The sink is stained and scratched. The floor is just gross.

We trip over ourselves in this tiny space.

But there is nothing we can do about it.”

Enter the Unreasonable Goodness of God!

Chris decided to make an insurance claim, and they gave us a good chunk of money!! We gave the money to a friend who is a contractor, and he got us an amazing deal on new cabinets, a new countertop, and a new sink! Chris organized his hardworking boys and his skilled and generous friends. They ripped out the old cabinets and the old floor. After tearing out the PVC tiles, vinyl linoleum, a very old layer of real linoleum, plus a layer of paper and glue…beautiful original hardwood was revealed. I had always dreamed about having this type of hardwood in my kitchen; thick, dark wood that reminded me of an old farmhouse. Chris worked hard to make my dream a reality. He and the boys pulled out several hundred screws and nails. He sanded 6 times to get rid of all the old glue and water stains. He tried a couple times before he found the stain color that reflected what I had imagined.

Chris rearranged the entire kitchen and created a pass-through so that the kitchen became more spacious and open.

I could finally cook in the kitchen while being able to see and hear what was happening in the dining room, sitting room, and living room. This completely unreasonable goodness of God came at a time when we didn’t know how we were going to pay our bills! Why didn’t God cause our business to flourish, or give Chris a new job that paid all our bills, or miraculously pay off all our debts? Why a new kitchen? God’s goodness is unpredictable and unreasonable! We just have to enjoy it.

God’s great goodness always comes to us in the midst of a mess. The perfect God works out his perfect plan with flawed people in a messed up world with imperfect conditions all around. How and why does he do this? It is a mystery, but I think it has something to do with the building and purifying of our faith. Faith can see that imperfections are just part of this life and recognize the goodness of God anyway.

It is easy to lose sight of the goodness. This kitchen remodel was no exception. I almost lost my faith in the midst of the junk. It is easy to look at the end product and see the goodness of God, but in the process, it is so challenging! Here is a list of everything that went wrong.

It took months to even be able to start the remodeling because the countertop I had chosen took so long to arrive.
As the demolition started, I found myself in panic mode. The dust found its way into every crack and crevice of the first floor. The mess was almost too much for me to handle. (The boys loved it and thought it was the best!) I was losing faith that my house would ever be clean and functional again!

3. We had to block off the kitchen, so we set up a temporary kitchen in the basement.

The only way to get to the basement was to walk out the front door, go around the outside of the house and enter again at the back door. Once the food was prepared, we had to walk it outside around the house again. Once the meal was finished, we had to carry all the dirty dishes outside and around the house again…you get the idea. All this work was to allow Chris to demo and then finish those hardwood floors. Sometimes when I was cooking on the electric skillet in the dark basement, I would notice a little face looking down at me from the top of the basement stairs. I realized that a little person had gotten through the barricade, and I felt like it was all for nothing and those floors were forever ruined!

4. We were getting close to the end. Chris had stayed up until 1am to put polyurethane on the newly sanded wood floors. I got up at 5am with my nursing baby. As I sat in the living room, I heard an unusual sound. I finally identified the sound of water dripping. But from where? I found water falling from the ceiling onto the loveseat. I went upstairs to discover that a radiator was leaking. A few hours later I entered the basement to make breakfast and found three streams of water all running into the drain in the center of the floor. Pipes were leaking everywhere! This turned out to be an unrelated problem with our heating system that was resolved within a few days. Yet, we were wondering what new damages and expenses were being incurred!

5. The new countertop had been made incorrectly so the cabinets had to all be changed and moved around. The result was an awkward corner cabinet, a drawer that could only open while scraping against the dishwasher, and a dishwasher door that could just barely squeak past the refrigerator.

6. A friend got our new-to-us gas stove hooked up on Thanksgiving morning so I didn’t have to cook the festive meal in a crockpot. Glorious! However, I kept smelling gas for the next two weeks until that same gracious friend went through the process of hooking it all up again just so I wouldn’t freak out. No more gas smell!

7. The ceiling in our dining room is so sloped that the brand new pass-through that was beautiful and perfectly level, looked completely crooked!

8. After we finally moved our refrigerator back in, it started dripping water all over the lovely, new floors. A month later, the pipes under new sink started leaking on the new cabinets and floors, threatening to begin this process all over again. What was it with all the water leaks!!!???

Chris and I thought we had ruined our new floors about 5 times in the process, because we had never refinished wood floors before and didn’t know what we were doing. It was so discouraging to get my dream floors only to sand them unevenly, sand too much, sand to little, put on the wrong stain, do the patching wrong, and so on. Finally we just decided that this was a RUSTIC kitchen, and that all the imperfections just added charm.

Our lives are not as messed up as we think.