...to grant to those who mourn in Zion - to give them a beautiful headdress in instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the garment of praise instead of a faint spirit; that they may be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the LORD, that he may be glorified.
Instead of your shame there shall be a double portion; instead of dishonor they shall rejoice in their lot; therefore in their land they shall possess a double portion; they shall have everlasting joy.
~Isaiah 61:3, 7
Regardless of which part or parts of our story you have heard up until now, you are probably aware that those promises from Isaiah 61 are music to our ears. Not every chapter written for us is to be shared with everyone but enough of them have been freely shared, leaving no doubt that there have been mourning, faint spirits and even shame.
Over the last few years, I have transitioned away from New Year's Resolutions, at to some degree even the "year of" idea I got from my brother and his wife. Instead, what has become more meaningful for me is asking the triune God to give me His words over the year ahead, to lead me to Scripture I can come back to again and again as each day, week, month passes, to remind myself of His purposes for me.
There have been some good ones, but this last year's blew me away. Not just the words themselves, but learning to see each and every circumstance through their lens: that is where my faith was challenged and grown, time and time again.
In the gospel of Luke, Jesus reads this from the first two verses of Isaiah 61:
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and the recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.
And He then goes on to tell the people He is speaking to that those words had been fulfilled that day in their hearing. He declared to them what He had come to do.
I can tell you, we have experienced that redemption in our family in some very profound ways, especially in recent years. Liberty from captivity and oppression. Recovery of sight. And yes, the Lord's favor. We are seeing more and more that that is a place we live every day of every year. We are experiencing our Father's delight, the friendship of Jesus, the comfort of the Holy Spirit.
And yet, as I asked God to lead me to His Word and what he had to say over our 2015, the Spirit took me straight to Isaiah 61 and the words, "The Year of the Lord's Favor." Whoa. In some particular way, this was His promise to us for the year that lay ahead.
In faith, I purposed to claim that, no matter what came our way.
When I asked the Father for words to share with Joseph at his 40th birthday celebration in January, I was led back to this passage in Isaiah 61:1-7, especially verse 4:
They shall build up the ancient ruins; they shall raise up the former devastations; they shall repair the ruined cities, the devastations of many generations.
Shortly after that, we had our first opportunity to take the words in faith as we were thrust onto an emotional roller coaster. We got news that Caleb's birth mom had had a daughter and they were looking for a family to place her with. After a brief high of hoping our family might be growing and embracing this little girl immediately into our hearts as our own daughter, we crashed down into a door slamming in our faces. A progressively deafening, no.
We took our words, the year of the Lord's favor, and chose to trust that our Father was not just toying with our hearts. He is authoring our story and there is a reason He wanted us to know - and come quickly to love - this precious girl who is known to us by the name we have chosen for her: Katherine Joy. And remembered always as our "Forget-Me-Not." We do not claim to understand all His purposes but we do see His hands in it and see much that He has used it for in our hearts and lives.
In late February came another opportunity to exercise faith and hold on to desires in spite of them going unmet. Since a visit to Boise, ID in September 2014, we had been praying and asking God if He would see fit to relocate us to this place that had won our hearts. We took another trip here :) in February. An investigative trip of sorts which left us all the more eager to live here but also more discouraged about the possibility of that ever happening. And yet we felt His invitation to keep that hope alive, to keep asking, to keep knocking on doors. Easier done for me (the endless optimist) than for Joseph. But I got to witness the Lord's favor as He was growing Joseph by leaps in and bounds in the area of holding on to desires he had no way to fulfill rather than just shutting his heart down.
If you have read the other posts on this blog, you know about my first pregnancy, discovered in March of last year. No sooner did we have that highest of highs than it slipped from our grasp. And yet, I absolutely experienced that as the Lord's favor and again felt His invitation to keep hope alive. The picture He gave me was of a Crocus. Those flowers the push their way up before the others, sometimes even through the snow, bringing their vibrant color to the often rainy (at least in WA) days of late winter. In fact, He led me to a passage of Scripture that painted a beautiful picture:
Arise, my love, my beautiful one, and come away, for behold the winter is past, the rain is over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth, the time of singing has come, the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land. The fig tree ripens its figs, the vines are in blossom; they give forth fragrance.
~Song of Solomon 2:10-13
The winter of infertility had past. The rain of tears of longing was over and gone. And flowers and figs is plural. Perhaps this was not the last I would see of life growing inside my body.
In the early months of summer, I experienced His favor in the form of some long overdue wise counsel from some godly women, the fruit of which played out in a number of significant ways in our family. More healing, more restoration.
And then, the oh-so-obvious favor. The opening of my womb a second time. The sustaining of that life to the seeing, then hearing of a heartbeat; to the discovery of a girl; to the last couple of months of waiting, everything progressing as one would dare to hope.
In August, we received the gift of precious time with my family at a lovely beach home in North Carolina. 10 adults and 6 kids (well 7 if you count "Lentil") under one roof, all getting along and enjoying one another's presence and the beauty of creation around us. Favor, indeed.
September brought us a transition for Caleb: from homeschooling to entering the public school system. We saw the Lord's favor in the teacher, principal and classmates He had waiting for him, as well as the ease with which he jumped right in and not least of all, a burst of enthusiasm in his learning. It was so clearly precisely where he needed to be.
Beginning in October, the "obvious" favor began raining down on us like a magnificent waterfall as Jesus threw wide open the doors for us to move to Boise and provided in such abundant, and downright supernatural ways to get us here (and has continued that as we settle in). This post is long enough without delving into all of that, though I do long to do so sooner rather than later.
Our first Thanksgiving and Christmas truly on our own are sweet memories I treasure in my heart. The deeper knitting together of our family of three going on four. Tender provisions of fellowship with friends new and "old."
And so, we came to the close of 2015 and I was quite honestly overwhelmed at how the Spirit's words to me back in January had absolutely been what He intended to shower upon us: His favor in all things, whether trials or joys or simply mundane.
Now that a new year is upon us, I will not cease to look for His favor. I believe He wanted to use this last year to teach me that that is where I always live, under His favor, being ever more set free and planted, dwelling in Him, His life flowing through me.
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