Author Archives: Elizabeth

About Elizabeth

Hello! I'm glad to meet you! My name is Elizabeth. I am a wife and a stay-at-home mommy to three beautiful girls; I am a musician and a writer. I would love for you to visit with me at MadeSacred.com where I write and try to thoughtfully engage life and culture as a way of loving God and loving others. After all, God has made everything to be sacred, things in our daily lives and things in the world around us.

Stay

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I love to travel. I love seeing new places and I love experiencing new things.

I grew up in the same town all of my life until I left for college. Once I left for college, though, I didn’t stay in the same place for more than a year or two before moving on.

I have never liked the idea of settling down. It seems boring, too safe.

The reality, though? It is not safe at all. 

It is the staying, the investing, that is dangerous.

It is dangerous to stop in one place for a long time. Relationships have more of a chance to implode. Neighbors have a better idea of who you really are. Friends might reject you because they have more time to see deep inside of your heart.

I’d rather keep moving on.

I have tried to fool my own heart, convincing myself that my wanderlust is due to my love of excitement, due to my desire to not live life in safety.

That, however, is a lie. It is a lie that I have lived with for a long time.

It is because I love the safety of shallow, the security of anonymity, that I don’t remain in one place for long.

Now? I’ve been in the same house for almost five years, and in the same town for seven.

 I’m learning. I’m learning how to be vulnerable and how to help hold others accountable. I’m learning what community, long term community, really looks like.


I’m learning how to stay.

Eating

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Eating.

My girls are both mildly obsessed with eating. We often have to make them stop eating rather than having to persuade them to eat.

I don’t know what I’ll do if this third child is a picky eater. 

Eating.


Some think about it more than others. Some enjoy the act more than others. Some participate in it more than others.

We all consider it to some degree and we all (at least, those of us living in these First World sorts of places) do it fairly regularly.

We all do a lot more of it during this time of year than in any other season.

If all that we are, all that we do, is to be made sacred, then how does eating fit in? How can eating be a deliberately sacred event rather than being a piece of my day that has nothing to do with God?

So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God. ~ I Corinthians 10.31

Is eating simply how we sustain our bodily functions…or is there more to it than that?

I have noticed in the Bible lately that eating was meant to be much more. It is linked over and over again to fellowship with and enjoyment of God.

In the story of the Prodigal Son, the Father celebrates the son’s return with a feast.

Jesus shares His last supper with his closest friends and then tells them that He will not drink again until He does it with us in heaven.

The kingdom of heaven is compared to a king giving a wedding banquet to his son. 

The image of a banquet, especially a wedding feast, is used several times to illustrate our enjoyment of God when we are finally with Him in body. 

When we eat, we often are doing more than simply nourishing our bodies. We are sharing of ourselves with our family and our friends. This is sacred.

Perhaps eating is one of the last things that our culture hasn’t been able to take the sacred out of. 

Our world tries hard to take God out of all that we do, to make everything a matter of utility. Yet when we share a meal with our family or with our friends, there is a sacredness there that is felt even by those who do not claim to follow God.

Even the act of growing our food is sacred. I have learned this in the past couple of years as I began our little garden.

God is a gardener. 

In the second chapter of Genesis, He kneels down and breathes life into the soil. He then sustains Adam by the soil and invites him to join in His work of gardening.

We are invited to join in God’s work when we grow our food.

We are invited to join in the act of enjoyment of and fellowship with God when we eat food together.

As you eat with those you love, be deliberate. Be aware of the sacredness of what you share as you are eating. Be aware of the sacred work of those who grew your food. 

Be aware of God filling you up with His own sacredness. 

And enjoy.

Moments

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All that we live splinters into moments
Moments of grace
Moments of beauty
Moments of mercy
For which we give thanks.

Moments of grace when we deserve nothing
Sweet fat dimpled hands reaching up for a kiss
Wrinkled shaky fingers caressing my cheek
Strong hand holding mine all covered with prayer.

Moments of light, of color, of beauty
Dancing lights of fireflies below with streaking lights of electricity above
Colors of sky and sun filtering down through red and gold
Sounds of water dancing, sparkling, rushing, chasing.

Moments of mercy given at just the right time
Delighted laughter of child when sister gives a gift
Food brought when time and energy has been spent
A gentle whisper bringing knowledge of love from the divine

Our splintering moments rush together as one
Grace, beauty, mercy all show us His love
Even when in darkness I can open my eyes
To all these and more and give thanks to our Lord.

Confidence

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Music, writing, crocheting. Gardening, canning, baking. Volleyball, reading, learning.


There are many things I enjoy doing and I have always done well at most everything I have attempted. I’m one of those who is an expert at nothing but very good at many various skills and activities. The result of this? I am a fairly confident person.


I know that with anything over which I have control, I have a good chance at success. And there you see my trouble: “anything over which I have control”.

For most of my life I have had control over all that I do. Then I became a mommy.


Suddenly I discovered that even when I read all the right books and learn all the perfect techniques, even when I master everything perfectly, my children may or may not respond as I was promised.

You may roll your eyes or shake your head at my naivety, but this truly rocked my world. My confidence had vanished.

I struggled and prayed and sought wisdom from many sources. After one particularly desperate session of prayer, though, my confidence was beautifully restored.

As much as I may have wished, God did not give me the perfect technique for parenting my little ones. My confidence in myself had nothing to do with my restoration.

Instead, God gently reminded me that He loves my girls even more than I do. Which is a lot. God wants, even more than I do, that they should love Him and love people.


And if God wants something to happen, who can stand in His way?

I still have children who refuse to respond properly to my masterful parenting techniques (which often involves stomping my foot at them), but as long as I remember God’s promises, my confidence can no longer be shaken.

But blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD, whose confidence is in him. He will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit. ~ Jeremiah 17.7-8

When My Heart Is Revealed

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I am flying to Dallas this week.


No kids, no husband, only myself.


I am traveling to visit my Papa and my Gram one last time before this baby inside me places limits on how far I may travel.


This is very possibly the last time I will see my Papa this side of death and Jesus’ return.


This is a difficult journey. One that I wish I did not have to take.

I heard it said on Sunday that storms rip away the surface and the shallow and expose what is truly there.

In both the storm of Kristina and the storm of Papa, I find that I do not like what is revealed.

I desire comfort above character; I want my own plans to be fulfilled even though I know that God’s plan is so much better; I want to avoid pain, for myself and for those that I love, at almost any cost.

Only God can change me, can fix my broken heart so that I am able to desire what He desires. 

I am brought back once again to the realization that God does not promise that we will have pain-free lives. He, in fact, promises the opposite.

(Jesus speaking to His disciples) In this world you will have trouble. ~ John 16.33

Yet I read the entire verse and I cling to the last of His words. I cling to what God does truly promise.

I have told you these things so that in Me, you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world! 

Take heart!

Part of me is able to recognize that those are much greater promises. 

A large part of me, however, still seeks that life without heartache and pain. 


All I can do for now is to cling to Jesus’ words, to the things that He has promised, as I wait for the day when my heart will be whole and undivided, the day when I truly will understand and know that it has all been worth it.

Peace I leave with you; My peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid. ~ John 14.27 

One day, John knew, Heaven would come down and mend God’s broken world and make it our true, perfect home once again… And he knew then that the ending of The Story was going to be so great, it would make all the sadness and tears and everything seem like just a shadow that is chased away by the morning sun. ~ The Jesus Storybook Bible

art credit: painting is Gethsemane by Carl Bloch

Tolerance or Love?

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 Personal holiness or justice in our world?
If we have decided that “both” is the answer we believe, if we resolve to strive for both ideals, what do we do with those who disagree?

What do we do, for that matter, with anyone with whom we disagree?

We are exhorted by our leaders, our culture, to show tolerance to those around us. Everywhere I turn, I am pleaded with to be tolerant, to show tolerance to anyone who is different, anyone who thinks or behaves differently than I.

Is this what we who are Christ followers are called to be? Tolerant?

Is this really all that we can manage, all that we can aspire to do?

Tolerance is easy. It costs me nothing.

Tolerance shrugs its shoulders and walks away, leaving you to your own devices. Tolerance doesn’t care.

And the second is like it: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” ~ Matthew 22.39
Love is much harder.

Love affirms the reality of the other person, culture and way of life.

Love takes the trouble to get to know the other person and find out what makes them special.
Love wants what is best for that person or culture.

It was love that brought the world to oppose an apartheid regime in South Africa, not tolerance.

It was love that lead Martin Luther King to pursue civil rights, not tolerance.

It was love that drove William Wilberforce to lead the British parliamentary campaign to abolish the slave trade, not tolerance.

It was love that sent Jesus to the cross on our behalf, not tolerance.
Before November 6th and afterward, as I live my life in contact with people who are different than me, I will pray for strength to choose the harder way.

If I am to be Jesus to those around me, if I am to make a difference for Him in this world, I must choose love, not tolerance.

Love must confront Tolerance and insist, as it has always done, on a better way. ~ Tim Keller in Generous Justice
art credit: The Three Crosses etching by Rembrandt

Holiness or Justice?

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I listen to them argue, watching as each shakes his head and smiles condescendingly while the other is speaking passionately about what he thinks is best.

Surface level respect doesn’t seem to go very far. Those who support each one seem to vilify the other, speaking ugly words of disrespect and hate.

Where should we who follow Christ fit in? 

One group is concerned with personal morality, the other is focused on social justice. 

Are we speaking of parties or churches? Is it telling that we sometimes cannot discern a difference? 

When we bring religion into politics, can it turn people away from Christ? If I cannot agree with one set of ideas, yet that same idea set is anchored to Jesus, I may conclude that following Jesus is impossible.

Surely this breaks the heart of God.

Yet surely one passion is more important. Surely either personal morality or social justice should be our highest priority.

If I have a passion for justice, personal holiness may be simply a distraction.

If I desire to cultivate personal holiness, I may yet ignore working for justice in our world.


Perhaps, just perhaps, a balance is needed.

In describing what brings the wrath of God, Amos says

They trample on the heads of the poor as upon the dust of the ground and deny justice to the oppressed. Father and son use the same girl and so profane my holy name. ~ Amos 2.7

Personal holiness or justice in our world?

When describing the wickedness of Israel, Isaiah says

…He looked for justice, but saw bloodshed; for righteousness, but heard cries of distress. Woe to you who add house to house and join field to field till no space is left and you live alone in the land…Woe to those who rise early in the morning to run after their drinks, who stay up late at night till they are inflamed with wine. ~ Isaiah 5.7-8, 11

Personal holiness or justice in our world?

Jesus, when teaching the crowds how to live, spoke of refraining from lust, adultery and divorce. He also spoke of giving to the poor, refraining from overwork and resisting the siren call of materialism. All in the same chapter of the Bible. ~ Matthew 6

Personal holiness or justice in our world?

Perhaps, just perhaps, we should not choose one to the exclusion of the other. Perhaps we should strive to attain both ideals, following all of what Jesus teaches us rather than excusing away half of His commands.

And what should we do with each other? What do we do with our brother or sister who insists that another course is highest?

Perhaps we should speak of that next week.

I Don’t Have Enough Time

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I tell my eldest that this is her last soccer game of the season. 

A loud “Hurray!!” is flung into the air and she spins wildly, sending shin guards flying.

Why so excited for the end? The answer lies in past conversations. Each time we pull out socks and shin guards, she pleads for more time to play. “Please can we go to the park instead?”

Already, at the tender age of four, she rebels against the busyness of life. She doesn’t want activities and events, she simply wants to play.

What is one of the biggest complaints from people all over the country? According to Arthur Boers, author of Living Into Focus ,it is that they are too busy, that they have no time for what really matters.

Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is–His good, pleasing and perfect will. ~ Romans 12.2

How am I different from the world and culture around me? 

I fill up our days with activities and chores, avoiding the stillness of unplanned time.

I don’t take the time to craft God into our days, don’t leave empty moments open for filling with His Word.

I am not different. 

I have conformed and have not renewed. I stay busy and distracted, wondering why I feel so frantic with no time left over for those who really matter. 

My family, my neighbors, Christ Himself, get left in the dust of my busy life.

I live the same sort of shriveled life that is favored by contemporary culture. 

Would anyone in the world, harried and distracted and seeking peaceful stillness, look at my life and think that I am any different? 

No.

I don’t pose an inviting alternative. I don’t live out abundant life in a way that encourages others around me to take my Christian faith seriously. And why should they? I am living a life just as distracted and busy as everyone else.

How can I draw people to Jesus, how can I be the fragrance of Christ, if I am just as shriveled, just as focused inward as anyone else? 

There is no beauty, no enticement, no intriguing mystery of a life that is different in the middle of this busyness.

I have divinely revealed reasons and divinely promised power to live differently. Will I use my imagination and my courage to do so?

For pushing my own self (and hopefully for you as well!) to take the time to use my imagination and courage to be transformed and stop conforming to our world, I will end with this quote from the president of Missions Resource Network, Dan Bouchelle:

Where does it come from, this endless need to be preoccupied with something? … What is so wrong with our lives that we can’t be still and just be?

Yet, we find God’s grace an embarrassment because to receive it we must admit our need of it. Therefore, we keep going out on the Sabbath gathering manna which grows mold and maggots overnight.  We can’t be still because we cannot bear the unblinking eye of God not knowing it is the adoring gaze of a lover rather than the suspicious glare of a taskmaster. In our anxiety to prove our worth, we obsess over our productivity, seeking to earn the respect of everyone around us, including God. …

We don’t know how to be still and filled with God. We are unable to rest in the knowledge that he has declared us enough. We are loved. We are what he made us and is making us. … But, to accept his grace means letting go of our sense of self-sufficiently and, for many of us, that is just too expensive. It would end all comparison with others and banish boasting. We can’t have that. 

So we now live in a world where taking Sabbath has become a sin. We cannot be still without feeling guilty. We cannot have an unproductive day unless it is filled with working hard at play or we can justify it as “well deserved” by working excessively long and  hard before and after. 

We think our busyness more essential than God’s. After all, God rested on the Sabbath, but we don’t. 

God help us! Help us understand how small and non-essential we are so we can rest, truly rest, without guilt or anxiety, and just enjoy gazing upon your beauty and our blessedness as you gaze upon us with the adoration of a parent with a new baby. 

Searching for My Next Act of Worship

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Worship is central to who we are as disciples of Christ.

Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God–this is your spiritualact of worship. ~ Romans 12.1

Our entire lives are to be acts of worship. In church and during the week, inside our homes and outside in God’s creation, serving the homeless and cleaning my toilet, I am to be offering myself to God in worship. No matter what the task.

I have written about worship here before. Worship is part of our job as priests. We are to echo the praise and adoration of all creation back to the Creator. People are the only part of creation who are able to love God back, who are able to give voice to the wordless praise of all creation.

Worship. 

My heart has been aching over this for several months now. 

A large part of who I am is a musician. Music has been a part of my identity as long as I can remember, and a huge part of that musical identity has, from as early as grade school, been to participate in leading my Family in worship to our Father.
Then I heard God ask me to give that up.

I wasn’t sure I had heard Him correctly. Isn’t this the worship He has always asked of me? To use the gift of music that He gave me to serve His people?

Though I balked, I truly did understand what God was asking of me. He was asking me to stop using my music in our church worship service in order to spend more time with my little ones.

He was asking me to give up using my music as my current act of worship.

This made my heart ache to its very core. How would I worship now? In what aspect could my life still be an act of worship?

Then I listened to a video of Sally Clarkson, from I Take Joy, talk about laying the foundation for your children, for your home. She spoke a truth that I should have understood, one that instantly shot peace through my core.

Raising my children is an act of worship. 

My whole life is to be an act of worship. If God is calling me to give up one particular way of worshiping Him, then what is to take its place? 

Being with my little ones.

I breathe and think through this a little more deeply.

God gave me these babies. He gaveme these babies and asked me to raise them into people who bear His image.

Sons are a heritage from the LORD, children a reward from him. ~ Psalms 127.3

Fix these words of mine in your hearts and minds; tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Teach them to your children, talking about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates… ~ Deuteronomy 11.18-20

Aha.

My children are a gift to me and my husband, primarily to me and my husband. Our most precious task right now is fixing God’s Words in their hearts, setting them on the doorframes and gates of our home.

Raising my little ones is my current act of worship.

Suddenly, my heart is filled with peace and joy. 

No more aching, only a sense of gratitude that God has given me such a beautiful way to worship Him. 

I am filled with a sense of the immensity and importance of this act of worship, filled with the urgency that nothing should stand in the way of this worship during this season of my life.

Suddenly, I am not filled with loss for the act of worship I am giving up (for the present) but am filled with contentment for the fullness of the years of worship ahead of me.

May I be intentional about building our home on His Words. May I be purposeful about fixing God’s Words in the hearts and minds of my little ones. May I throw all my being into building our home on Christ Himself. May I let no other good thing distract me from this beautiful worship, from this making our lives sacred.

This. This is my living sacrifice, my sacrifice of praise. In this breathtaking and wondrous season of my life, this is my spiritual act of worship.

Why I Want To Join

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I am a logophile, a lover of words. I love the way that different words evoke different emotions, and even when two words have the same dictionary meaning, they can still have very different connotations. 



I love searching for just the right word that paints exactly the picture I want so that others can see what is in my mind.

Five Minute Friday


Every Friday, I get a writing prompt. Just one word, to challenge me to write for five minutes without editing. Just to practice my craft, to practice being able to find exactly the right words. A few Fridays ago, the word was “join”.

Join.

My heart was immediately flooded with emotion, just from that one simple word. Everything from sadness and self-doubt in remembering times I was not asked to join, to desire and longing to join…anything.

What is it about that word? Why does it evoke so much emotion? 

It makes me want to belong, want to be a part of something. Not just anything, although there is a part of me that might want to belong to anything, but to be a part of something that really matters. 

I want to join, to be an important part of an important group that is…I don’t know, changing the world?

It almost seems a bit ludicrous, that a such small, simple word can pull such complex feeling out of me. As I thought a bit more about it, though, I realized that this is probably something that God put into all of us. 

I wonder if God has placed a strong desire to join, to belong, to be a part of something, into each of our hearts in order to draw us closer both to Him and to each other and the community He has placed each of us in.

Yes, this is a difficult thing and involves risk and vulnerability on our part.  Yet, as I wrote last week, it is God asking us to do what He has already done.


Perhaps, if we who follow Christ can find the courage to also follow Christ’s example of opening our hearts to those around us, then God will use that desire to join, to belong, that He has placed into all of our hearts to draw those He is pursuing into His community.

I will pray for courage. I will open my eyes to discover those to whom God is asking me to open my heart. I will trust God’s Spirit to do the rest.

Will you join me?