Broken Knees and Listening Ears

Many of you know that I wrecked our car last week. I was not texting! I knew I had hurt my knee somehow but had no idea that I would end up with a fractured knee cap. I keep saying, "Who breaks their knee cap???" But clearly the answer is me and a surprising number of people that either I know or someone I know, knows. Fortunately at this point, its nothing more serious. Thank you Lord! 

I'm just going to be honest... it hurts! A LOT!!! I pretend I'm tough because anything else makes me feel like a baby. I try not to take the pain medicine because it makes me so sleepy. My muscles around it are bothering me because I can't use them. I have a hard time doing anything. There is no waiting until the last minute to shower, get down the stairs or even go to the restroom. Everything takes much longer. It's a ten or fifteen minute process just to get out of bed. 

I end up having some sort of emotional breakdown almost daily. Sometimes the breakdown is because I haven't taken enough of my pain medicine and the pain becomes overwhelming. Sometimes its because of my anxiety over the accident and surrounding issues. We have to find a new vehicle (although they haven't said yet that it's definitely totaled.) Of course, as most do, I have tremendous anxiety over the financial end of things. Sometimes its because I'm frustrated with all this. My frustration exists on several levels. I hate being in pain, as most people do. I get frustrated that my body won't let me do what it normally does. I hate feeling like an invalid! I hate the fact that Jimmy has to do everything for me. Or that if Jimmy and I are out somewhere, friends have to drive me home because I am in too much pain to stay. I need a pedicure or something but I can't reach my toes. I can't get a glass of water because I can't carry it back to where I was and work my crutches at the same time. 

The Lord is clearly teaching me to lean on Him more. I sure thought that I had done that the whole time. But obviously there is still part of me desiring to do things in and of myself. So as I sit here dependent on everyone else, I'm listening.

Don't worry about anything. Instead, tell God about everything. Ask and pray. Give thanks to Him. Then God's peace will watch over your hearts and your minds because you belong to Christ Jesus. God's peace can never be completely understood. Phil. 4:6-7 

Let's Get Real

Everyone has junk in their past that they aren't proud of. If you don't, then you must have lived an awfully sheltered existence. I'd be willing to bet, even you probably have something you regret. We are all afraid to let people know what it is, was, whatever. But that's just it... WE ALL HAVE SOMETHING! Why are some so quick to look down on someone else because that person's "something" is worse than their own personal "something?" It makes no sense to me. 

If you know anything about us, my husband especially, or the ministry of McMillan & Life, you know that we are brutally honest in concert. It isn't meant to make you feel bad for us but to let you know that we are real people with real problems and real pain. We have some real issues in our family these days. More than many of you know about. Some of the things that are going on we just don't feel we can share out of fear of it "getting out." Church people often disguise their gossip in "prayer requests." Because gossiping everyone knows is wrong but if we hide it in a prayer request then suddenly it becomes ok. You all know what I mean. You know when you are disguising it as a prayer request. I can sadly admit, I've been guilty of it before. By the grace of God, it's been a while.

I've been reading a book that I bought with the intention of giving it to someone else called, God in the Alley. I wanted to make sure that it was going to speak to the person I bought it for like I hoped (sometimes you just can't tell all you want to from the liner on the back) so I wanted to read it first. I'm not through it all yet but I can tell you already that I am more aware already of the need to be real.  The writer talks about how he had a deeper desire to be a living example of Jesus to the world. In order to be Jesus to someone else, he felt that he had to be willing to see Jesus in them too. He saw Jesus in a man dying of AIDS who wasn't even a believer in Jesus but in a moment of helping to clean up this man who had soiled himself, the man began to pray blessings on him. That is truly a moment to see Jesus in someone else whether or not they are a believer. It also shows that the writer did in fact become a living example of Jesus to this man.

He felt God calling him to a place where he could really minister to the "spiritually unloved" of society. You know who I'm talking about... the ones we claim to Jesus and everyone in our church that we "love unconditionally." When in reality God knows that many, in their heart of hearts, when they think nobody is watching them, they shun because they are afraid it may infect their lives. Those people to whom we say, "No of course I don't judge you, I just can't be around you." As though if they associate with the person who is a drug abuser, prostitute, alcoholic, (insert your inexcusable sin here) and dare I say, homosexual, the sin they have is contagious. Jesus fellowshipped with these people. Why do we feel like we shouldn't? I don't understand that. I have friends that know that I don't condone things in their lives (whatever those things may be) but they are still my friends. I don't have to condone everything someone does to love them as Jesus does. Jesus fellowshipped with the people that needed Him most. Why do we put categories on sin when the Bible plainly states, "No sin is greater than another?" Why is it that the above mentioned "sins" seem to carry so much more weight than someone who lies or "speaks evangelistically" because they want you to find them more successful than they truly are? These are just things that don't make sense to me if we are going to "be Jesus" to anyone. I certainly don't expect you to start walking up to people on the street admitting every time you lied or did something you knew in your gut was wrong. I do expect people to start being more aware of "the plank in your own eye," myself included. 

I've heard my husband say many times that as the church, we are so quick to sink our own its no wonder people don't feel like they can be honest. If we can't be real to each other as christians and let someone know that there is junk in our lives that we need prayer for or even to forgive ourselves for, then how can we hope to win a lost world to a Savior who loves us more than all our junk? I desire to love people as I love God. I desire to be and see Jesus in others. I desire to share my prayer requests with people in a way that will make me vulnerable but not food for vultures. Dear Lord, I hope I am the kind of person I wish for? Can you be that person? 

Everything Changed

We have heard Faith Hill and countless others sing A Baby Changes Everything. There is also a song I just heard this week that says, "Heaven's exalted King, in a manger lay, because a baby came and everything changed." I have often wondered what all would have gone through Mary and Joseph's minds on this night (as we celebrate it) over 2000 years ago. A new baby, new parents and your child is the Savior of the World. What an enormous responsibility on one so small. Did Mary cry? Did she wonder how long He would be able to just be her baby boy? I am not a mother so its even more incomprehensible for me to begin to imagine how Mary felt for those 33 years Jesus was alive. But she also knew that He was called to be something more amazing than she could've dreamed possible. How long did Joseph question Mary's faithfulness to him? How long did he ask why he should have to raise a child that wasn't his before taking her as his wife?

Yet all of Heaven was singing, "Gloria! Our God is with us! Gloria! He has come to save!" I'm so glad His ways are higher than ours. If His weren't, this world would be a very discouraging place by my estimation. Even more discouraging that it already can be. I think of a young couple I recently heard about who had a baby a few days ago. The young mother ended up having cardiac arrest and passed away. "When our dreams grow dim and our hearts grow cold, He is never far from our broken soul."

So many times we see "Jesus is the reason for the season." But how many times does it end up just being a slogan or catch phrase? Even to those of us who do know that its true? We can become so callous to the passion behind such a phrase if we aren't careful. This may be all very common place and not very profound and truthfully it's not. I can only tell you that I'm so glad that Baby changed everything for me. Merry Christmas to you and yours. May you always know that Baby that changed everything.

Pitiful Hearts & Bigger Pictures

I know, I know... it's been forever since I've blogged and frankly I just have no excuses. Today has just been one of those days. One of those days where I've been trying to not have a little pity party. Perhaps you are a better person than I and don't have days like that. Nothing necessarily spurred said party. Just woke up kind of down. Which is surprising seeing as this is one of my absolute favorite times of year. I love the holidays. I love time with family and friends. We had some friends over and I tried to pick my spirits up when I was around them but it just didn't change the fact that I felt pitiful. 

Then I got online tonight and checked my email for a church that I do some graphics and layouts for remotely. I saw an email prayer request update for a little boy that was born 2 or 3 months ago. He was one of twin boys. One of the boys is, as far as I know, perfectly healthy. Then this little boy is having to undergo his third open heart surgery in thirteen days. His parents are desperately praying because he is going to need a heart transplant, most likely, in order to survive. They are praying for a touch from the Divine Healer. They are praying also for a family, who they don't know, who may lose a child that would be willing to donate that child's organs. They are praying already for the Divine Comforter to be a comfort to a family in time of pain. 

Then I felt worse. Not for me, but because I am so blind sometimes with my "light and temporary trials." As I sit here, I'm reminded of something my mother said to me a thousand times. Something, I know,  her mother said to her. "Whatever you think is going wrong in your life always know, someone has it worse." The grief and pain of losing a child is something I am completely unable to comprehend. The pain of seeing your child hurt is something I can only imagine. I only know that my own little pity party was rained on by a family with a bigger need than mine. So even though I know, not everything in my world is how I want it to be, regardless of its trials (some that are much bigger than most know about), my heart and soul pray for a little boy that I've never met, a family I may never know to an Almighty God that's bigger than you and I. 

I am a Pomise

Most of you will look at the title and think I spelled it wrong. Technically, I did. But when I think of this old children's song, all I hear anymore is my friend's three-year-old little boy singing, "I am a Pomise. I am a possibility. I am a Pomise, with a tapital 'P.'" I love it!  It takes me back to myself singing it as a little girl. It may have just been me singing it in the mirror to my millions of adoring fans, alone in my room, into a hairbrush or barbie doll. But I know, even then, I knew it. My parents were wonderful about telling me that I could do anything I put my mind to and to my daddy, I would always be prettier than Miss USA.

Fast forward fifteen to twenty years, you would have found me feeling beaten down by the social pressures of college and what was deemed as "acceptable beauty." Somehow, some way, the cutest boy in school was interested in me. He was a little older and quietly mysterious. I just knew that I had "hit the jackpot." He was amazingly talented, had been a boxer and a bit of a bad boy and was now sold-out to God. How could I have found someone better? He asked me to marry him and of course I said, "YES!" Less than a month after we were engaged, our relationship fell apart. He had a nervous breakdown. He was admitted to a hospital and his admitting diagnosis, so I was told, was paranoid schizophrenia. I sat there dumbfounded, wondering what had just happened. Looking back it was a total whirlwind of emotions, hurtful accusations, pain, countless apologies on every side imaginable, questioning God and me feeling more beaten down than I had ever been in my life. I couldn't figure out what I had done to have caused this because naturally I must have contributed. It left me destroyed. I couldn't even remember the little girl singing "I am a Pomise" anymore. I left school mid-semester and cowered in my room at home because I couldn't face the world. I went to therapists who sometimes hurt as much as the helped. I had confrontations with people I felt had done the most wrong to me. I stopped driving because I would end up places and have been so engrossed in my head that I couldn't figure out how I got there. 

I read every book I could find that would encourage me. I read 2 that really did. The first one was by Sheila Walsh called "Honestly." In this book, she speaks very openly about her battle with depression. I can remember going through it and highlighting it every time I felt the same way. It seemed as if I highlighted most of the first half of the book. She described it by saying something to the effect of, it's like standing in front of a mountain that's crumbling and saying "don't do this" when you know there is nothing you can do to stop it. I remembering thinking, "Yes finally someone is saying how I feel." I can remember telling my mom, "If you want to know how I feel and what I'm going through in my head, read that book." I also remember the look on her face when she said, "I tried and I can't." It hurt her to know that I was so broken. I know that she and my dad had to be wondering how this could have happened because they worked so hard to be encouraging. A few people and a horrible situation had destroyed what they'd worked so hard to instill. I was a promise!

I then read a book, called "Water in the Wilderness" by T.D. Jakes. Based on Isaiah 35:6, he talks about how God is with you even in the wilderness. He talks about how the wilderness is a place of dying and a place where He can instruct us on what to do next. The wilderness is a place where all the things that cause you to stumble in your walk with God are killed. I knew that I was supposed to read this book. But I also knew I couldn't have read it and received what God was trying to tell me right away. This was probably a year after the initial, for lack of a better word, "drama" began. I kept praying and asking God, what is it that You are asking of me. FINALLY He spoke! "Elizabeth, you are dying to all things you thought you had to have to get through life. All you need is ME!" 

I'd love to tell you that things changed for me over night. That I woke up a stronger person, knowing once again that I was a promise. But the truth is, I didn't. Because this is a blog and not a novel, I will try to sum it up. I spent years destroyed, unsure of myself and incredibly lonely. I had moved to Nashville before I started to regain some sense of myself. I know I had my parents scared to death, living in a strange city with nobody but my brother (thank God for him). Eventually I started to remember that little girl in her room, singing to her millions of adoring fans in the mirror. Eventually I realized that I didn't need anybody but God to make me happy or complete. Eventually I even realized that I liked myself and thought I was, at least, a pretty cool person. 

Once I knew where my "complete-ness" was found, He gave me the other stuff. Not because I thought He had to, but because He wanted to. He knew my focus wouldn't shift from where it needed to be, on Him. I did get to marry another "cutest boy in school." Jimmy was the one that God designed just for me. God was preparing him differently than me. God knew when I was 31 that I was ready for him. Not the boy that I thought I was ready for when I was younger. God knew that I had to get the focus off of me. So He does what He has to do to get through to us, even though sometimes it hurts. Kind of sounds like a parent disciplining a child. I certainly don't mean to say that my life hasn't had its fair share of hardships. I know there will be some until the day I die, but that's what makes me want to go to Heaven. More than anything, I remember, "I am a Promise. I am a possibility..."

My "story" being out there now reminds me... I need to go clean. My mom will be here tomorrow. :)

3 Years Later

That day has rolled around again and it's 3 years since my grandpa went to live with Jesus. Sometimes I feel like I should not let it still get to me like this and yet when I think about what I'd say if someone said that to me, I find myself thinking, "You must not have known him." I know my grandpa is with my Uncle Bob and the rest of his family. They are probably looking down at us singing, "Wait 'til you see me in my new home!" This was originally written October, 2008. I still miss him and I just don't think I could write it any better than I did then. 

    The little things that seemed so small, 

    are now like gold in a memory vault

    I cherish every one I have with you

    Now I can see and recognize the part you played to shape my life

    I often see you in the things I do...

     

    I sure miss you; life will never be the same with you not here

    Each passing day has brought much pain

    But with God's grace my strength remains

    I sure miss you, but heaven's sweeter with you there

           -- "I Sure Miss You" Crabb Family

Today is one year since my grandpa passed away. It doesn't seem possible that the time has gone that quickly. There are days when it's ok and there are days when it feels like it was yesterday. There are nights that I get up and sing "What Heaven Means to Me" and it seems like I can actually hear him standing next to me singing, "What will it be when we get over yonder…" It makes my heart ache.

The words to the song "I Sure Miss You" by the Crabb Family have become more poignant to me in the last year, specifically the second verse. "The little things that seemed so small are now gold in a memory vault. I cherish every one I have of you." My grandpa, every time I sang that he was there, would always tell me, "Honey you did a good job. I'm proud of ya." He always emphasized the word "good" in a very specific way as he shook his head. I am so grateful for those memories. He even said it when I had cried through a song more than I sang it. Nobody understood the calling on my life or what it actually means like he did. He did what I do… traveling, singing, ministering with the Blackwoods and then with the Toney Brothers. He was ALWAYS in my corner. He always knew what I was going to do because I believe he saw in me what he knew in himself. "Now I can see and recognize the part you played to shape my life. I often see you in the things I do." He would sit and tell me, and everybody who would listen, stories about when he was singing or just about his life in general; traveling with the Blackwoods in his suit, in a car, suitcases under their feet in the backseat (and we think we have it hard…) for hours to go sing; when he was little and living on the farm in Wilson’s Creek, West Virginia; how his mom died when he was only 18 and he had to come home from boot camp to go to her funeral; how he fought in the Battle of the Bulge; (watch Saving Private Ryan and you will see what he went through) how on a Father's Day when he was older, the Toney Brothers were singing in West Virginia and their dad got saved; how that same man was the one who taught them to sing shape notes. (He tried to teach me one time, I still don't know how)

There are so many things I could never forget. Being little and going over to their house in Michigan and climbing up on his lap because he had made cornbread and milk and I just knew he would give me a bite. "Interviewing" him when I was either in 5thor 6thgrade on a report I had to do on Veteran's Day. The day he walked into the kitchen at Durango Steakhouse because it was taking so long and saying to someone, "Uh what seems to be the problem back here?" Him completely making up a new verse to "Oh Little Town of Bethlehem" one year at a Christmas concert and if you didn't know, you would've NEVER guessed! "I love you so bad…" (I know it originated with Lisa but he was the one that said it to me) That night in his hospital room… him telling all of us individually how much he loved us and saying to me over and over, "Thank you for singing with me."

I recently heard Pastor Willy Rice of Calvary Baptist Church in Clearwater, FL in a sermon on grief say, "People always think they are saying the right thing when they say, 'You can't miss someone if you know where they are' but you can. Everyone's grief is different…. Just because it's been a year for someone and you think they should be over it, doesn't mean that they are. And it doesn't mean something is wrong if they aren't." Thanks for indulging me in my grief a little. It will get easier I know, but today… "I sure miss you; life will never be the same with you not here…"

Alden K. Toney – Dec. 1921-Oct. 2007

Always something

So there we were, sailing smoothly up I 65 on Friday morning. We were headed to a date in Indianapolis. I don't know what would've possibly had all of our attention for that brief second, but the next thing we knew there were tail lights as bright and red as Rudolph's nose stringing out for miles in front of us. There was no sound except squealing tires and me praying that Jesus help us. Jimmy swerved our 36 foot motor home off to the shoulder and Jesus kept us from hitting anyone else or from rolling down the bank next to us. I don't think any of us even breathed for that entire sixty seconds. We finally got stopped what seemed like miles down the road. The reality is it was less than half a mile. Once we got stopped, Jimmy realized the power steering and the brakes weren't working at all. So we were a tad stuck on the side of the road, adding to the back up that was already there. Jimmy called Good Sam. (side note: if you have an RV of any kind, get Good Sam. It's so worth it!) Good Sam unfortunately let us know that since it was Friday, they couldn't find anyone that was an approved repair person to work on it until Wednesday. 

Wednesday??? Don't they know what we do? We work on the weekends. We were leaving on a 10-day trip. Wednesday? Oh Jesus please help us! This can't be right. 

Upon my return to reality from my brief breakdown, I remembered Romans 8:28 and knew there must be a reason for all this. Maybe He was sparing us from some horrible breakdown later. Maybe He was sparing us from some awful, discouraging thing we would have encountered if we continued as planned. Maybe He just wanted us to rest knowing He had it under control. Maybe someday we will know what He spared us from and maybe we never will. I still KNOW there was and is a reason.

We eventually got off the highway. We had dinner at a greasy diner where we were afraid they may try to steal our teeth.  The world’s biggest pass-the-buck tow truck driver towed us to the repair place. That's a separate story in and of itself. We missed our date in Indianapolis. But then we were thankful. We thanked God we were safe and so were the others in our damage path. We thanked God for friends like Jeff Duffield, who drove from Nashville to Bowling Green, KY to pick us up and take us back home to get a vehicle. We thanked God that Devin has a vehicle that is big enough to let us take everything we needed to do our dates on Sunday. We thanked Him for family that let us stay with them Saturday and Sunday so we didn't miss our dates for Sunday. 

We are anxious as to what the repair bill will cost. We are thankful for the so-called "glamorous life" that we have. We know that the devil fights the threats to him so we are grateful to be a threat. We are thankful for the ministry to which we have been called.