Too Tall

It is Spring Break in the Northwest Arkansas public school system.  For this reason, I have been helping out at my dad’s childcare center for a couple hours each day.  Yesterday, this was a conversation I had with two little guys:

First Boy:  Who are you??

Me:  My name is Caitlyn.

Second Boy: (gasps, with eyes wide.) Caitlyn is in my class!!

Me:  Oh really?  A different Caitlyn, huh?

First Boy:  Well, of course, you’re too tall to be a kindergartener.

Indeed, my little friend.  This might be the first time in my life I have been declared “too tall”.

First Day of Spring

I went running outside in shorts and and t-shirt on Friday.  As I headed back up to my house, I walked around the the yard rejoicing over the daffodils.

There is a particularly beautiful cherry tree, and when I saw that it had budded, I thought, “Spring has won again!  Victory!  Winter over.”

Pretty silly of me… I’ve lived in Arkansas many moons, and a March snow storm is the norm.  This is what that cherry tree looked like this morning.

Endless Miles & Hopeless Days

I’ve been studying Daniel with Beth Moore, and as she describes the journey of Israel into the
Babylonian captivity, she uses the phrase, “endless miles and hopeless days.”  It stuck with me because that’s how I often feel.  This season of preparation for ministry seems a journey of endless miles and many hopeless days.  I wrote in my journal this morning, “I’m so tired of feeling discouraged!”

And then, I remembered (or the Spirit reminded me) that I walk in freedom.  I am no longer a slave to sin, to fear and to despair.  These things are not my master and I am not subject to them.  In Christ, I have the freedom to choose joy.  Not just a step of obedience, but it is my right, my privilege as the adopted daughter of  God.  It is my inheritance to rejoice in the name of Christ Jesus!

It was for freedom Christ set us free; therefore keep standing firm and do not be subject again to the yoke of slavery.  Galatians 5:1

Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice!  Philippians 4:4

And I rejoice in Christ because of my inheritance:

Eternal Life.

All things being worked together for good.

God always with me.

Though my circumstances, my plans and even the earth on which I stand should change and shift, these things remain.  This is the hope we have.

Calculus Faith

Thankfully, I have not taken calculus (or any math at all) in the past five years.  Words are my thing, not numbers.

But when I was a senior in high school, I did take calculus.  I would sit in my desk, hunched forward, pencil poised, staring intently at the rapid marks my teacher made on the board.  He would turn, “See?”  No.  No, Mr. Calculus Teacher, I do not see.  And I would just keep staring, brow furrowed.

Obviously I graduated from high school, so you know that somehow I passed calculus.  Every once in a while–at least once before each test–the fuzzy haze around the marker board would clear and Mr. Calculus Teacher’s words would suddenly connect to the numbers and sign and I would exclaim, “That makes sense!”  (I’m not even kidding, ask anyone in Coach Mayer’s Calculus class of 04-05.  He even got in the habit of asking, “Caitlyn, does that make sense?”)

It’s like that in my life, too.  The haze around something I’ve been staring at will clear and it finally drops into my head or heart with a thud.

Through the recent circumstances of my life, the Spirit has been showing me how much fear is a part of my life.  How much it is a brick wall in my relationship with God.  Today, I flipped to Romans 8:14-16 because I remembered something about fear in that chapter.  You know the passage, it says:

For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, “Abba! Father!”

It has always been easy for me to relate to God as my heavenly Father because I am so blessed in my earthly father.  I have a great dad who is present, loving, strong and faithful.  And I grew up in church, so I know that I am God’s child.  But today I realized that I’ve been seeing this whole father/daughter thing as a metaphor:  God is like my father.  I am metaphorically a child of God.

Wrong.  This passage describes reality.  It is truth.  The reality is that I am much more God’s daughter than I am Bob’s daughter.  It is truer to identify me as a child of God than it is to call me a child of Bob.  And furthermore, this is the reality that God recognizes!  We see that I was born to this man, but God sees that He first created me and then actually adopted me.

There is a huge difference between believing that God is like a father and believing that He is Father.

There is a vast space between believing that metaphorically, you are like God’s child and believing that you are God’s child.

Romans 8 goes on to say that if we are children, we are fellow heirs with Christ.  Fellows of Christ.  Heirs with Christ.  Actually, His younger brothers and sisters.  This is staggering!  I almost can’t believe it.

I think The Message captures something of what this reality means for us today:

God’s Spirit beckons. There are things to do and places to go! This resurrection life you received from God is not a timid, grave-tending life. It’s adventurously expectant, greeting God with a childlike “What’s next, Papa?” God’s Spirit touches our spirits and confirms who we really are. We know who He is, and we know who we are: Father and children. And we know we are going to get what’s coming to us–an unbelievable inheritance!

February Painting- The Shore

I am so thankful it is March.  I never really enjoy February, and this year was no exception.  A few years ago, I began referring to the month as “Funky February” because it always put me in a funk (not a groovy one).  However, I’ve been wondering if February continues to be funky because it just is, or because I’ve labeled it and expect it to be…

I did this painting in one day because I waited very late to begin, but it was a fun painting.  I used most of the color wheel and that always makes me happy.

Original Painting

My Version