free

all her debts were cast on me

and she must and shall go free

~  derek webb

freedom is the idea that no longer any body or act or thing can hold power over another being or another thing... removing power from something that once held control.  i have been reminded lately about how Jesus set us free.  he invites us to live in freedom... i believe a lot of people might understand the idea of "freedom in Christ" is the right to live however the hell you want, but "freedom in Christ" is so much deeper, so much grander, so much more valuable that living the way WE want.  that is the very thing we have been freed from.  freed from taking control of our lives, because, at least in my experience, once we do that, we begin to hurt ourselves and those around us.  we must understand that we are freed from the chains that have once held us, free from sin.  the three-letter word that makes most cringe.  not only are we free from the imprisionment sin holds in our life, we are free to live life in Christ.  a full life in Christ.  

Jesus came to set us free...  

He freed us from the control that has ruined our lives...

we must and shall go free...

enough

"i do not understand the mystery of grace- only that it meets us where we are but does not leave us where it found us" anne lamott~ traveling mercies

i was thinking of an email i received a few years ago from my sister.  i dont really know why i was thinking about it.  maybe my mind went there because it was her birthday.  i do not remember the email in its entirety.  just one reference.  to grace.  grace and its sufficiency.  grace is talked about often, so why did this email settle in my mind?  you see my sister has had some major healthy problems.  over the last ten years she has been in and out of the hospital every 6 months or so fighting a pain that continued to be unidentified and incurable to many, many doctors.  with any illness of great length, your mind and emotions experience just as much, if not more, pain as the body.  i spent most of this time completely and utterly confused.  confused at God.  confused at doctors.  confused at my sister.  confused at God.  drivingto the hospital one day in college when lindsay had to spend some times there after another attack, i remember crying out to God for answers.  an explanation of why my sister, who i love and believe God loves, had to experience such pain and for so long.  and more than an explanation, i wanted it to stop.  how could a God of love and care of gentleness and compassion, grace and mercy, allow her to time and time again sit in that damn hospital and have doctors continue to fail to bring about any real change?  i was not the one on the bed, but i was furious.  i was sad.  i was hurt.  and i was confused.  as we all do, i try to make a deal with God... as if there was something the Creator of the universe wanted in exchange for healing.  i had faith that God really did have the measures to make it go away.  my family and lindsay's friends cried out for help, for an answer and it just seemed like we were getting now response. a few weeks after she went home from the hospital, lindsay sent out an email to some people catching them up on her latest episode.  she is a brilliant writer and i'm sure the email was full of capturing thoughts, but one stuck out.  His grace is sufficient for me.  "My grace is sufficient for you" (2 Corinthians 12:9).  these words sprang of the page and pierced me in the heart.  how could this woman, my sister, who lived in either pain or the fear of pain arising, claim that God's grace was enough for her.  in the midst of a dismal picture of a life ahead that looked full of pain, she looked at the God who created her and loves her and said you are suffice.  the grace you have given me through Your Son on the cross, it is enough.  whether my insides are healed.  whether i will ever have children... Your grace is enough.  and i began to believe that His grace is enough for me.  i still doubt that and too often live my life trying to fill it with pride, success, money, and security, but remember that God loves me and He tells me His grace is enough.  He told me a couple of years ago in an email from a girl who had every right in the world to cuss God and tell him to take is sufficient grace straight to hell.  but in the midst of pain and suffering, she told me that His grace is enough.

endless

i was sitting with two dear friends today... friends you like to tell people about.  friends that stand beside you on your wedding day.  friends who, as my dad says, will carry your casket one day.  we were catching up on life and one friend was filling us in on somethings in his life that were really going well and then he continued to tell us how this one deal just was really messing with him.  i hated for him that he is having to process through this kinda sucky situation, but on the other hand i was jealous.  he is experiencing God's grace and unconditional in a way i am not even sure he knows yet.  as we was venting to us i ashamedly drifted off for a second to my own world,reminding myself how i have experienced this incarnational love and grace he is showing.  through my beautiful wife, my loving parents, a hurt sister, a life long friend, perfectly timed notes, and in so many other ways.  all of these moments that have been filled with grace came into my mind.  i finally waded back into the conversation after my selfish metal break and heard him talk about how he was not angry, but just saddened by the brokeness of our world.  i think this is how God feels most of the time. i do not believe in a God that has positioned himself on a throne with a iron scepter in hand, waiting to strike down vengeance on his children when they fall.  i believe in a God, who like any proud parent, watches while we learn to walk and picks us up and dusts off whenever we fall.  our God's heart breaks for the brokenness of the world.  the brokenness we all cause. but in the midst of us turning our back, saying no to his protection and freedom, he offers what we need most- love.  and through his dying love comes his saving grace.  grace that known no end.  

i'm very proud of my friend.  and very thankful.  you see it was through him that i was reminded of a Father who stands waiting for me with open arms... with dying love... with endless grace.

sundays

their friends' love turned out to be the sound of God at the mouth of the cave, a breeze to sustain and help guide them.     ~anne lamott,  Traveling Mercies

 sunday my incredibly cute nephews were dedicated at Lindsay and daniel’s church.  in campbell and graham’s short nine months, pages could be filled with the ways in which God has shown up in their lives and the lives of their parents and their uncle and their grandparents and everyone who has been a part of their miraculous story.  sunday was a beautiful time of remembering God’s hand in their lives as the preacher told their story and prayed for them and challenged their parents.  but for a moment my attention moved from the beautiful baby boys and Lindsay and Daniel, to the ones who circled behind them, their friends.  these few dear friends surrounding them, laying their hands on then are the people that live life with them.  it was such a blessing to see the support they have outside our family. 

i have been blessed with people, beyond my family, surrounding me.  men and women who have dared to crawl into dark places in my life and remind me of the light that still lingers on the outside.  in our lives we need these people, these friends.  the ones who show up and have a distinct, loud voice in our life, one that sounds like God.

brandon, vans, and Jesus?

"The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to preach good news to the poor.  He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners."

~ Isaiah 61: 1-2

something is happening.  something bigger than me, bigger than my finite, limited mind can grasp.  my heart is breaking, and for the first time in my life i realize it is for a good reason.  a heavenly reason.  my heart is breaking for the literally billions of people around me that are hurting.  some live down the street and some live in a place where disaster as demolished there streets and some walk miles and miles on dirt streets to drink unclean water...

why does my heart break?

i found the answer this morning as i was reading my sister's blog.  my heart has been shaped and molded by a family who has shown me, what i believe is the very heart of God.  a heart that looks on the poor, the broken, the hurting, the forgotten, and the abused and offers life.  

i have seen this heart in a mother who dared to love brandon.  brandon, or at least i think that was his name, was a 5th grade student who was left out, poor, and i'm sure forgotten, but not by his 5th grade teacher mrs. teague. i remember her coming home and telling us one day how bully at school had purposefully ruined brandon's project he had been working so hard to finish and make as perfect as he was able.  i remember vividly two things about that conversation: the hurt i felt for brandon, not because i knew him and cared for him, but because i saw the hurt in my mother's eyes, in her voice, and in her tears and i remember how proud i felt when my mom told us she had stayed after school, after spending hours with annoying, pestering 5th graders, to help brandon remake his masterpiece.  i saw the same heart in my mom when she spent 47 in the NICU standing beside her daughter and over her sick grandsons, when i'm sure it brought back frightful memories of her standing in the same NICU over her own sick son.  standing over me. praying for me.  praying to a God she knew and loved to not her son away from her. to not take me away from her.  i have a mom, like my God, who still stands beside and protects her children.  

i have seen this heart in a man who has given his very life to tell people about a God who created them and a God who loves them.  this man, my father, who at fifty gets in a van and drives around the city of knoxville to pick up high school students so they may hear the good news of Jesus. to pick up the forgotten ones.  to pick up the african americans, the latinos, the poor, the lost, the broken.  to pick up santos.  my father loves santos and for a year he fed him, tutored him, cheered for him, cried for him, and most importantly told him on a weekly basis about how much God loves him and how much God desperately wants to have a relationship with him.  my father has shown me the heart of God by sitting in a racquetball court years ago and weeping with his son. a son who at that the time felt like he was not enough, not strong enough, athletic enough or good enough.  a heart that years later still breaks for the same son who falls into the trap of wondering if people will still love him despite the mistakes he has made.  i have a father, like my heavenly father, who gets down on the floor with me and weeps out of a broken heart for his hurting, confused, and scared son.

why does my heart break for those who are in need? why do i desperately want those who are unaware of God's love, forgiveness, grace and mercy to come running to Him to find life?  because for twenty three years i have watched two people who love Jesus flesh out the very heart of Jesus into our world and it has help create in me a similar heart.  a heart that loves Jesus.  i can love a God who heals the blind, looks after the widows, seeks justice for the lost, or stands inside a NICU for 47 days or loves a fatherless latino kid.  you see i hope my heart is breaking not because i selfishly want to change the world or i want to simulate actions congruent with those people who i admire... my heart is breaking because i believe Jesus's heart is breaking too. 

watching

... i can promise you, that by the time that we get through, the world will never, ever be the same...

~ tom higgenson

a few weeks ago it happened.  the plunge, the jump, the push as some might call it.  i stood at the point of a beautiful garden spotted with sunlight beaming through the branches of tall and colorful trees and watched.  nature seems to capture me, it takes me to a place of awe and holds me in tranquility, yet in this photographers' daydream, the trees and flowers, birds and sunlight held none of my attention.  a far more dazzling, more personally knitted, gorgeous of a being walked toward me.  and i watched.  molly was the very essence of a bride on what was certainly a perfect day.  after hours of laughter, dancing, and delicious cake, we left.  we exited not as drew or as molly, but as our pastor told us, we left as drew, of drew and molly, and molly, of drew and molly... and it began... our lives.

one the parts of the week long celebration of our marriage, known to those involved as "wedding week", was a dinner the night before our wedding, where our closest friends and family gathered together to celebrate what was soon to happen.  i once heard a pastor say that in weddings there are no mistakes, only memories, and oh, how the memories began to form.  as dinner was winding down, the clouds that had been hovering, almost in anticipation for the last bit of key lime pie, brought forth a mighty storm.  maybe not as mighty as the storm that caused the disciples to wake Jesus in the middle of the night, but for emphasis purposes we will stick with the strong language.   and we watched.  soon the power was lost and my groomsmen, who also could be considered mighty, began lighting candles, moving chairs, and creating a very special, intimate environment that will never escape my memory.  our friends and family, in this unplanned, magical backdrop, began to shower us with unmerited praises as they talked of memories, both humorous and sweet, and spoke on the impact they believed molly or i had in their lives. and we watched. we listened.  i do not mention these praising words to boost any image of me or my wife, but to show how very powerful the words were and still are.  we left the next day, affirmed as individuals trying to love as we have been loved but more importantly affirmed as a couple about to take on the world. together. drew AND molly.  my friend josh said it clearly by telling us that separate we are great, gifted people, but together we can change the world.  and we will.  not just us, but partly.  for some reason, actually there are too many to list, God has given me molly and he has given me to molly, and it would be so easy for us to continue to watch.  we are so blessed by our families, jobs, friends, apartment, tv, safety, and watching would be easier than changing.  watching molly walk down the aisle was one of the best moments of my entire life, however, i am so confident that, although that moment was life-changing and capturing- a picture of Christ and his love for us, that from now on i will not be watching her but going with her... where?  to the ends of the earth, to "all nations".  i am so blessed to have a wife that wants to change the world; through her voice, her actions, our resources, our lives, her love, and our love.  we have no idea how, where, and when the God who created the world we long to change in His name will use us, but in the mean time we get to learn to love each other, in a way that our God loves us, and hopefully love those who are around us in the same light.  in the midst of confusion on where life is taking, finding new community, searching for answer, and essentially living a world of unknown, we refuse to only watch.

may we all be unsatisfied with watching the world around us break. may we stand up and change the world.

conversation

We have to test everything. I thank God for anybody anywhere who is pointing people to the mysteries of God.
But those people would all tell you to think long and hard about what they are saying and doing and creating. Test it. Probe it. Do that to this book. Don’t swallow it uncritically. Think about it. Wrestle with it. Just because I’m a Christian and I’m trying to articulate a Christian worldview doesn’t mean I’ve got it nailed. I’m contributing to the discussion. ~ Rob Bell

so i am very new at this... by this i am referring to the culture phenomenon known as "blogging" and by new i mean this post is my very first.  i have often wondered why people decide to write down their thoughts, feelings, and opinions on a neatly decorated background for the world (or at least the people with enough time on their hands, who know them, and care what they have to say) to read.  there are three reasons why i have joined the blogging world:

my sister

velvet elvis

ms. freeman

reading my sister's blog has not only made me proud of having a sister so talented and insightful, but has challenged me to join the discussion rob bell talks about in his look at christian faith, velvet elvis.   ms. freeman, my senior english teacher, cracked open a door that in the past 5 years has flown open... a door that led to my love for writing and my love for reading.  so here i am. adding to a conversation that i pray is going on in your life; at the dinner table, over peppermint mochas at Starbucks, on long evening walks, or in the spaces and time you and those around you have set aside to simply be together.  in no way do i claim to be an expert, a wise man who people should stop and stand in awe of his insightful and inspiring words... i am just me. and just what exactly does that mean?

i have a deep love for life, for the people who i am blessed to live beside, for the laughter that somehow continually surrounds me, and for the God i truly believe brings all of these three things, life, laughter, and relationships, together in beautiful harmony.

my hope for this blog is simply to discuss what i am learning about life, love, laughter and maybe a little faith... to add my part to the conversation.