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For The Beauty…

I am realizing more and more each day how troubling and avaricious a lifestyle I have been living. I wouldn’t necessarily say that I’m deliberately choosing things before I choose God, but I am neglecting to choose anything at all (God included). The past couple have months have been pretty difficult months, and so, in light of being all dried up and without any words to complete my thoughts, I will crumble underneath His majesty and admit, “All glory to God.”

Physical health is an intimidating sea to sail. Especially when pain and discomfort are almost constant, almost daily. However, while He cares for my pain and died to prove it, life is not about what we feel, rather, what we have faith in and know to be true. What most nonbelievers don’t understand is that nothing, and I mean absolutely nothing, weighs heavier on you or makes you feel lighter than the love of God. There is no need to dwell on pain, because 1) His love covers it, and 2) He wants us to offer it up to Him. Glory to God.

In the span of roughly fifty days, I have managed to paint a picture of myself onto a perfectly beautiful and blank canvas as an impecunious, fragmented, ill-fated wretch with no purpose. That is depression for you. It distorts your vision so that all you see is regret and future self-neglect. I don’t remember waking up one day and thinking, “Man, I guess I am depressed now”. It was slow, gradual, and it loomed over my head day in and day out. And now, there seems to be a thick gray cloud that my puny arms can’t swat away. However, the joy of the Lord is my strength. He has told us His truths so that we may be filled with joy. Yes, our joy will overflow… (John 15:11 NLT) And 1 Thessalonians 5:16 (NLT) tells us something simple and heartbreakingly profound: Always be joyful. I know that the Lord doesn’t expect me to muster up artificial joy every morning. He knows my weaknesses, and He knows my heart. Joy is a gift from Him, and, believe me, my arms are wide open to receive. Glory to God.

Mostly, though, these past few months have been poison to my heart. It seems most people I encounter are willing to wage a war and spit some type of poisonous sin into the air and wait for the same thing to be returned. And if it’s not that, they are naturally expecting me to be the one spitting. And those who don’t take part are happily standing by with their own planks in their own eyes, firing off splinters and hoping to hit hidden targets. I have been feeling more than discouraged. Aren’t we meant to bear one another’s burdens? Aren’t we called to act in love, breathe it in and out and give it freely? If one person has a bucket full of love, and the other has only judgement and hate, the trade is obviously not fair. That is when we are called to give our buckets of love away, however much we can muster, and ask nothing in return. I guess that is grace. I guess that is what Jesus was literally dying to tell us. It doesn’t matter if I live my whole life trying to stomp on the agony that comes with being misunderstood by those who are called to mission by Christ. I don’t need to beg God to smite those who hurt me. He loves us just the same. Glory to God.

I have said time and time again… If God called me out into the desert to be utterly alone, by human standards, and give me access to nothing but Himself… would that not be an honor? What a joy to imagine a life without distraction, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord constantly, for the beauty of the Lord is so much greater than anything else… But we aren’t called to be comfortable and we aren’t called to be safe. Not in a physical sense, anyway. He is our comfort. He is our safe place. He is our ever present help in time of trouble. He knows our hearts when not a single person dares to. He is enough. Glory to God.

Here is an old hymn that I added to some music I wrote a couple of years ago. Thanks to my sweet friend Erica for the background image and being my company during this rough time. Your spirit is a contagious one.

Love to all.

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A New Year, Christ has Intruded.

Today, with enough God-given chilly breeze to blow away any lingering doubts, I am overcome with a new kind of joy. A new kind of peace has flooded in me, and I know I am being called to remain still as He fills me up to overflow.

I have a wonderful boyfriend. His name is Isaac, and he fears the Lord. We met while at Work Crew for Young Life in New York during the summer of 2013. Our story is funny, and I’m hoping it is one that I can share for the rest of my life. Anyway, the Lord uses Isaac in just about every way I can imagine to pull me off of my high horse and set me on the solid foundation that is Christ.

When I think of Isaac (I can’t lie, I don’t know if I ever stop thinking about him), I am reminded of promise and safety and hopeful strength. I never stop laughing when I am with him. He makes life enjoyable and fun. He reminds me that life is an adventure that is meant to be lived to the full. Such a blessing. And I hope and pray that all of my girl friends end up with someone that loves the Lord like Isaac does. Everyone deserves to be with someone who loves them because they are compelled and inspired by Christ.

But, I cannot bank on that. I am realizing for the millionth time this afternoon that these  promises don’t ring true because people like Isaac are willing to ring out. The same goes for anything else that I treasure and consider good. Nothing, and I mean absolutely nothing, remains except/without Jesus. It is enough to make me want to crumble up and fall to my knees. It is a strange kind of heartbreak to release everything but Jesus to Jesus. It is not a painful or lasting heartbreak (or maybe it is better labeled as heartache) simply because nothing is being lost. Nothing is being broken.

When we surrender everything (that we do not have ownership of in the first place) to God, peace floods into our hearts. Jesus can wash our feet, as He longs to. (John 13:1-7). The Holy Spirit will become more apparent in our lives. When God moves, we will not be able to just smile it off and say  “Thank You”. We will have no choice but to fall down (however that might look) and worship. It is a beautiful, beautiful thing when Jesus invades and everything is placed into His hands.

I, along with so many others that I know and love, have been trying too desperately to run away from this truth. I can laugh now because it seems like such a hilarious concept to run away from the only lasting and good thing in existence. I want to make this year (sorry for the cliche, but I am beyond determined and am not planning on letting anything get in my way) entirely about Jesus. It is our purpose to do that, anyway. I want Him to intrude and invade and make my life His dwelling place. I want to walk into a room and make others uncomfortable because they don’t see me, they see something too large and wonderful to grasp. I want to throw all of the things I love, good and bad (including myself), into the willing and capable arms of Jesus.

I hope this has encouraged some of you to do the same. Jesus is waiting for us. The least we can do is wait for Him.

In light of all of this, here is the most recent song I recorded. It’s a Judah Lee song, set up to sound like wedding vows to our Creator. I hope it blesses you as well.    Happy New Year!

-Rachel

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Let Heaven Shout

Let Heaven Shout (Bethel) – Rachel Shambaugh

Okay, God. I’m defenseless and tired. I’m failing others and others are failing me. I can’t hear You respond when I cry out, but I know You hear me. Now, I’m listening to You. I really am listening.

Yesterday I had the loneliest, most unbearably beautiful drive back into the Valley. Every mile became more and more glorious as I noticed Jesus in the scenery around me. I started looking toward trees and up at mountains hoping to see something more beautiful than the last. Eventually my eyes were tired and I couldn’t even remember my standards for beautiful in the first place. I realized, after a while, that my search didn’t make the beauty any more real. Beauty exists in things because God puts it there. If I’m not seeing Him in things, I can’t fully grasp the beauty before me.

With that being said, life has been hard. If I were to paint my current state, I’m not sure I would feel worthy enough to use any colors other than black and gray… which don’t seem to be colors anyway. I fear routine and legalism. I dread loss of excitement and freshness. Night time is daunting and mornings are a tease. Conversations begin to drown underneath expectations, or lack thereof.

I expect all the wrong things, and I think we all do that most of the time. I look at people the way I look at God. Or maybe it’s the other way around. When I think of comfort I imagine my house on a hill in northern Virginia, and I taste strong coffee and sweet oranges. When I think of love, I think of sacrifice… but the wrong kind. When I think of acceptance, I think of how many of my words are lost in cold air with no response.

I forget to look for God in those things. I forget that He is the reason I can feel comfort and love and acceptance. No daunting future or terrible present day can diminish His active presence in all things. It’s no wonder discomfort and sour tastes are all I’ve had, because I haven’t looked for or listened to the Lord in the things that are breaking me. I think I’m listening as I open up the Word and a few good devotional books. I think I’m listening when I babble in prayer. But I’m just creating noise to cover His voice. I’m painting black and gray over His colors.

But now, I’m listening. And I’ll let heaven do the shouting.

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Altars and flowers.

Hi friends.

I recorded a song in a stairwell at my school. I think I was so sick and tired of hearing how people were talking to each other that I literally couldn’t help but go and worship. And the stairwell has a cool echo.

I didn’t bother re-recording or fixing mistakes. I sing a lot of the wrong notes and play a lot of the wrong chords. But I felt like I shouldn’t record it again to make it “perfect”. This song (Altars by Renee Schwab) is one of those songs that just makes me feel like I’m about to burst into tears or pass out or explode or something of that nature. Jesus really meets me in this song. When I’m singing it, I feel like I’m looking Him in the face.

Anyway, I’ve been thinking about flowers and love and other things that are normally too full of feeling for me to talk about outwardly.

If a flower were to never bloom, but rather become a bud and die, would it still be beautiful? What about if it never even passed the seed stage? Or what if it did bloom, but was overshadowed by the flowers around it and wilted too quickly for anyone to notice that it had bloomed?

I think the thing (the truth, the revelation, the need) that’s been hitting me the hardest lately is love. (blah). Normally, I would resent a sentence like that, but when love has pounded you in your metaphorical chest and twisted your way of thinking completely, you want to talk about it.

I’m not sure how much of my life I’ve spent with the knowledge of what love is. If I have ever known, it hasn’t been a continual thing. I’ve gone through stages of thinking… love is what parents give you at “all times”, love is a best friend, love is the embrace of someone who makes you feel wanted and brings you joy, love is selflessness and sacrifice. But as sad as it is to admit, all of those types of love fall short. None of them are eternal, or even consistent at times.

Maybe my biggest problem up until now has been that I haven’t felt like I deserve love. I think it’s rare for any of us to think we deserve love. But I’m learning something important: when you think you are a certain way, you pretty much become that way. So by thinking that I’ve been unlovable, I’ve made it rather difficult for others to love me. And that reflects onto the way that I love others as well.

Now here’s this image of love:
A man has a seed that he knows will grow into something beautiful. He knows what type of flower it will bloom to be. Every shade and hue and scent- he knows exactly what it will be, and loves the image. So he spends every moment of every day nurturing this seed. He waits patiently for it to become what he knows it should be. Even though he knows this seed could fall off of its natural course, he devotes all of his time to watching it grow. And no matter what this flower becomes, he calls it beautiful. He knows it’s beautiful, because he sees a perfectly pure beauty that could only come from this flower that he watched grow.

How strange and wrong would it feel if the flower grew a sad little voice that only said to the man, “You can’t love me. I’m not lovable or beautiful, or anything you spend all of your time trying to prove to me I am.”

If you can forgive the stupid metaphor, I hope this speaks to you in some way.

I’m pretty much feeling like a flower right now.

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Our God is Longsuffering.

This is a video that my church used as a testimonial about half a year ago.  I stumbled across it tonight and kind of broke down. Aside from the fact that my current stress, worry and sadness could easily be seen on my face, He really spoke to me through this.

I seem to be able to find the Lord the most through simple situations. When its cold and rainy, and a particular kind of glow comes through the windows… when I drive down a road surrounded by mountains and quaint little farmhouses… when my heart beats a little faster than normal because a few kind words were given freely to me. The most common, quiet and average times in life.

I’m thinking back over my relationship with the Lord thus far. I’m tempted to say that He found me when I was struggling, but something can’t be found if it isn’t lost. I had to do the finding. He’s always held me in His perfect hands, and His heart has always broken over my struggles. So, it goes without saying that the beginning of my relationship with Jesus was a sweet one, full of hopeful butterflies and a ton of warm peace. We can all learn from the times in which our stumbling turns into a graceful fall into the Creator’s hands.

Then, of course, I struggled through some massive highs and pitiful lows. I doubted, I ran away… countless times. It’s only been three years since I met Him, and I feel like I’ve already done enough to cause God to grow tired of me. But He doesn’t. He relentlessly chases after me while I run from Him. And on top of that heavy truth, He wants to spend eternity with me?

Our God is truly longsuffering. And I’m just now realizing that I don’t need to wait around for some monumentally huge, “life changing” moment. He meets us in the little middle periods of life in such precious ways. My mind is going crazy with songs to sing to Him, but all I can think to do is be silent in amazement. My prayers and thoughts are with you, friends and family. Our God is jealous for you, and waits for you to meet Him when you feel like He’s not there.