Gindi Vincent

The Dish on Career, Fashion, Faith, and Family

Faith

Wrestling with an Angel

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We bought an angel.  One of those lighted tall twiggy angels for our front yard Christmas display.  I wanted a new lighted twiggy nativity scene but the one I found was sold out.  So I settled on this angel. 

We did not need any more yard décor.  But 2020. 

I felt we needed to go bigger and brighter to cheer up our street (or our family or the world, who knows).  We paid to have roof lights hung.  We bought a few more items for the front.  None of them go together.  We have a dog and a Santa.  An angel and a polar bear.  Charlie Brown and Snoopy with a Christmas tree.  We have white lights and colored lights.  It is happy. 

Merry and bright.

After it was all up, there was a big rain storm Friday and Saturday.  Then winds from a cold front hit on Sunday.  So the yard blow ups were all muddy and that brand new angel was splat on the ground. 

Her upper body did not want to stay connected to her lower body.  Her wings kept disconnecting.  I stood there in the cold with my arms wrapped around this angel begging her (in my head) to just stay assembled! 

At that moment, I almost stepped outside of myself and saw me and this angel in a wrestling match on my front lawn.  Her collapsing every time I let go.  God please let this angel stay connected so I can JUST GO INSIDE, I begged in my head. 

WAIT.

Excuse me, what was that?

YOU’RE GOING TO HAVE TO WAIT. 

Lest you think I’m losing my mind, I often have conversations with God in my head, over the big and small. A back and forth dialogue.  There’s no booming voice.  No audible whisper.  Really, it’s usually just an impression or a word. 

So here we were.  Me, a lawn angel, and God…

I’ve had to do some waiting the past few weeks. 

Waiting for news.  Waiting and praying that somehow, some way, God would just speed up the process of me getting the answer for which I’m doing all the waiting. 

No chance. 

I’m sort of terrible at waiting. 

I’m a woman of action. 

I need to DO. 

So, of course, God is constantly letting me wait.  Because He needs me to learn a lesson already for Pete’s sake!!!

I realized, while hugging a twiggy angel, that I’d been offered several messages about waiting over the past few days.  A sermon.  A post.  Podcast, song, reading, FB group, text… 

The message is something like this: Waiting = Hope. 

Don’t miss it.

Waiting = Hope. 

Waiting (apparently) expands your faith. 

I’m even doing an advent study right now and this week’s meditation is on silence/waiting. The author leading the study shared this passage from Henri Nouwen:

I still like to keep up the illusion that I am in control of my own life.  I like to decide what I most need, what I will do next, what I want to accomplish and how others will think of me.  While being so busy running my own life, I become oblivious to the gentle movements of the Spirit of God within me, pointing me in directions quite different from my own.  It requires a lot of inner solitude and silence to become aware of these divine movements.  God does not shout, scream or push.  The Spirit of God is soft and gentle like a small voice or a light breeze.  It is the spirit of love.

It’s the 1 Kings 19 description of Elijah’s encounter with God – not in the earthquake or fire but in the gentle whisper. 

Waiting.  In the quiet. 

There is so little quiet around these days.  I mean, even when we’re stuck at home, we fill it with noise.  So how on earth are we going to hear the still small voice of God over the din? 

All too often we’re stuck waiting way longer than we need to because we just can’t hear anything. 

Until we’re on our quiet front lawn cleaning and reassembling Christmas décor… or maybe that’s just me.

Taking time to wrestle with the things we can’t see, the things that test our faith (For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the cosmic powers over this present darkness…). 

I’m still waiting.

And wrestling. 

If you’re worried about the twiggy angel, well she’s standing up by herself now.  A combination of Bray’s garbage ties, some extra metal stakes, and persistence paid off. 

For now. 

Change of Plans

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I am a planner. 

This weekend I had a change of plans. 

Not a change of a plan.  But plans. 

I had a plan for every bit of this weekend on Wednesday and an allocation of how it was all going to play out with transport and hand offs and windows for the work that needed to get done too. 

Friday afternoon, the boys were going to fish with a friend for his birthday and then go to dinner, where the rest of us would join them.  Saturday morning was little bit’s last meet, but it was far from our house, so Bray would need to get the boys to the warm up for their football game.  I’d run through a drive though to get little bit food and then go to their game.  We had a few errands Saturday afternoon we’d need to run before the Saturday evening drive in movie and dinner we had on tap. 

Sunday I needed to be at church, then the boys football practice, then get some baking done, and get the kids into costume for our church’s drive by Trunk or Treat, immediately followed by hamburgers in a neighbor’s backyard.

Whew! 

A lot. 

Way more than usual, but lots fun, so I wanted to make sure it could happen. 

Until it didn’t. 

And it’s okay. 

2020 didn’t happen like we planned, friends. 

There are days that are so utterly and completely overwhelming we find ourselves crying our eyes out to our best friends.  That happened with my dear crew today.  It is so much.  It’s not one individual thing, it’s just the cumulative impact of all the things, so that one small thing like weather or a change in plans derails us entirely.

Especially moms.  Maybe everyone, but I’m having a lot of experience with derailed mommas. 

We have been pushed to the very edge, and we super-competent, organized, planning, efficient, successful, job-kid-spouse juggling heroes have been taken down. 

But this weekend, God used it.  He used every ounce of the change to reframe my focus.  I found myself grateful in the unknown.  Maybe not on Friday when it was REALLY unknown and all in the air, but I got there. 

Thursday evening, we had the gift of having my mother in law with us through Sunday.  Since the farm’s devastation, Bray and his siblings have been asking her to spend some time with us because it’s all still so destroyed in Louisiana.  She is beautiful and artistic and her memory has been failing her.  We are very grateful when we can host her. 

Then Friday, the boys friend had a teammate whose family member tested positive for COVID, so the fishing and dinner was postponed.  Which just meant our family got to order dinner in and eat in our beautiful backyard oasis and watch the cool front blow in.  Literally watch God bring the cool air in with the wind.  Goose bumps.  There are days you feel like you can see Him. 

Saturday, my father in law brought some cows from the farm into town so Bray could drive them to the ranch.  So Bray left, and I made it back from Lillie’s meet in time for the boys football drop off, and we had the gift of having both my in laws with us.  That of course meant no drive in movie and no church, but the trade off was worth it.  We ate huge platters of Mexican food and we watched his favorite movie that night (what a gift to see him laugh) and he coached the boys on their football plays. 

I cooked Sunday and we sat around the table with dishwashers and washing machines running in the background.  The baby made a big breakfast and I made chili and cornbread for lunch. 

Bray made it back from the ranch by mid afternoon in time for my in laws to get home before dark and for our family to make it for Trunk or Treat and burgers in the backyard with friends. 

It was an utterly beautiful and priceless weekend.  I’m writing down all these details more for me than for you.  Because I want to see that God wants to use the changes to bring us something better. 

He is so in in all this. 

I know it doesn’t feel like it. 

We are threadbare and parched and we will not be able to be stitched back together by what this world has to offer us with anxiety and fear and chaos and fighting. 

But I knew peace this weekend.  I saw love and trust and reliability and hope. 

I had to write this as a reminder in case it helps just one of you.  It was burning on my heart this morning – we’re trusting in the wrong things.  We’re trying to cling to some semblance of normalcy or something we can control.  And by we, I mean me. 

I’m going to release that.  I’ll still struggle. Every single day I’m going to want to control it all.  Try to keep it from flying out of control.  But it’s in those out of control spaces, He holds us together.  He shows us what we should really be focused on. 

Happy Monday friends.  We will be okay. 

Fear

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I write a lot about fear.

It’s one of my tormentors.

I’ve mentioned this before, but I come from a long line of worriers, and I think I’m actually a little better than they even were.

Past blogs have tackled the difference between being fearful or scared, fear and worry that grips you over your kids, getting caught up in the minutiae and paralyzed by fear, and heck, I even wrote an entire 10 part bible study series called Breaking Fear!

After yesterday’s post on how we are all disappointed, I woke up this morning, ready to write again, and this word sat on me. Again.

Fear.

What really got me thinking about it was watching little bit on horseback with her brothers last night.

You see, she has been obsessed with horses since I can remember. She was on grandpa’s horse, Batman, as soon as she could walk, I have pictures on her walls of her on the assorted horses from farm and ranch life the past ten years.

But there’s a break in those photos. Probably for about two years.

We had family friends at the farm. She was riding with her friend who was two years younger. The saddle must not have been cinched tight enough, and when they brought Peanut in for some water, the saddle slid sideways and both girls fell onto the concrete base of the water trough. They were bumped up with a few minor boo-boos, but there was longer term damage.

Fear set in.

Something in her little brain told her that getting back up on the horse could result in her falling and getting hurt again. So when they would saddle the horses, she would decline the invitation. In time, she would be led around by her dad or aunt, but she wouldn’t just take off on a horse like she had done before the fall.

She still loved horses. But fear stopped her from doing what she wanted to do.

I think we are all intimately acquainted with fear these days. In addition to whatever political or justice fears we may have, every one of us (around the world) are united by a fear of a tiny spiky virus we know as COVID-19.

That fear is resulting in numerous reactions from complete isolation for fear of infection to complete denial of consequences and acting like nothing has changed.

Fear has shadowed our decisions about what to do about sending our kids to school or not. (I’m fearful they’ll get sick or get us sick if they go 🆚 I’m fearful they’ll struggle emotionally if they don’t have social interaction.)

Fear has set in to our workplaces. Our churches. Our neighborhoods.

And since fear sells, Lord knows that the news is using fear, on both sides of the political spectrum and even in apolitical spaces.

So what do we do about it?

I sat with that question this morning while my daughter threw on her boots and raced out with her brothers to saddle horses and go chase a bull that got loose (that sentence gives me fear!).

She chooses the gentlest horse now. She doesn’t get in the pens with the cows where the horse is more likely to hop or kick. Her horse doesn’t gallop quite as quickly as the ones the boys ride, and she’s happy about that.

She has chosen to do what she loves again, but to do it safely.

Could she still get hurt? Absolutely. Does she know that? Of course.

But she has chosen a course of action that enables her to get back to her first love: horses. Her passion was bigger than her fear, eventually.

This will look different for each of us.

What drives me, what will beat back my fear, will be different than what drives you to overcome your fears.

I wrote yesterday I’ve been stuck in a bog. Maybe some of that bog was disappointment but a huge big sticky mess of it was fear.

We are making the best decisions we can. And our decisions will look different than yours. We decided to send our kids back to school. We are some of the few who actually have that as an option and our small private school has done so much to keep the amazing teachers and students safe. The boys are slowly putting their toes back into the sports world, outdoors of course, while little bit will wait until basketball season (which we pray will be able to proceed, but we know none of us know).

I pray for wisdom. For wisdom to make wise choices that are greater than the fear buzzing in my brain. I know Matthew 6 tells me I cannot add a single hour to my life by worrying.

I pray I would remember the 2 Timothy 1 gift God has already given me: God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.

The Ephesians 6 strength.

The 1 John 4 love.

I’ll slowly get back on my horse armed with strength and love and a sound mind and ride off in the direction God leads.

28 Days: Day 26, Lent

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Today is Lent.

I’ve written before about how I didn’t really grow up with a Lent tradition in my church.

But in my current church, it is a centerpiece. And I am learning so much.

There are years I have given up (sugar, alcohol…), and years I have given back, and last year I don’t think I did anything.

This year, I talked to the kids about it. What the season means and where we should focus. From dust we were born, and to dust we shall return.

A season acknowledging our humanness and seeking repentance and finding our way to the Resurrection.

As we talked last night, we talked about the places we needed to sacrifice to make more room for God’s work in our life. It wasn’t a deep and profound conversation. It was done in fits and spurts as kids darted and interrupted but we got to the main points.

The main point is one I was reminded of in a blog post by Ann Voskamp yesterday: There’s a giving up that only gains. There’s a sacrifice that only fulfills… When we know we are but dust, when our hearts have been crushed – is exactly when we are meant to entrust all into the hands of the Potter, so He can remake all to be more like Christ... Give up, whatever you need, to hear God speak.

What did we need to give up to hear God speak? What am I giving up to know God more?

This is where I believe we arrived. I am going to give up yelling, or try really hard. This is a struggle I grew into after I had kids. I never yelled until I became a parent. I didn’t lose my temper. I stuffed. But now, I yell. I grew up with a yelling parent and I really want to do it differently.

The eldest is going to give up yelling too. Because when a parent yells, a lot of times the kids yell too. The youngest, who originally was going to sign up for the same thing, has decided instead to give up t.v. This is huge because he is absolutely my t.v. addict. Little bit has not said what she is focusing on yet.

So, to slightly incentivize (and remind us), we are going to have four glass jars on the kitchen table. They will start with five one dollar bills in them. You flip on the t.v. or yell or whatever it is, you have to pay one of your dollars in your jar (and you’ll receive them based on when others forget about this season’s sacrifice). We’ll see how it works.

Granted, the money is a less spiritual aspect, but I’m hoping it will hold us accountable.

And in the giving up, we’re going to have to lean heavy on Jesus because I can tell you right now I can’t do this alone. None of us can give up part of our sin and self without a massive dose of God-strength.

The good news: He’ll give to all who ask.

So here’s to trying, not in our strength, but trying in His strength and to grow more like Him in the giving up of ourselves: Your strength will not get it done… Your power will not do it either. Only the power of my Spirit will do it,’ says the Lord who rules over all. (Zech. 4:6)

28 Days: Day 24, Rest

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I’ve written a lot in 2020 about rest. Stillness. Quiet.

But I was struck by something when sitting in my car waiting to go into my friend’s church yesterday morning. There, in front of me, was a building emblazoned with “Rest, Relax, Restore.”

It was a spa.

Now, I’m a big fan of spas. I’m sure I’ve written several blog posts from my favorite one in Houston.

But what truly is rest? And do you actually leave transformed after a massage? That was the juxtaposition I sat with there in my car.

I had also just received my morning devotional from Christine Caine entitled The Promise of God’s Rest. It’s probably why the sign struck me. Caine referenced Hebrews 4 and the SIX references made to rest in the first 11 verses of that chapter. In part, Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience…

It got me thinking about the ultimate purpose of rest.

In a culture that is rushing around like crazy, unable to do all the things we have on our to do list (I know, I’m chief among them), we’re craving rest. An extra hour to sleep in. A weekend retreat. A massage.

But that will not bring us deeply restorative soul rest.

It’s a bandaid over a gaping wound.

What we need is soul rest. The rest that only God can provide. God’s rest gives us a deep peace and healing.

And not rest for rest’s sake. Rest that compels us, propels us, to do His work that He’s preordained for us.

The verse in Hebrews 4 right after the 11 verses on rest? For the word of God is active and alive. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit…

It’s action. Rest gives us what we need to act. Because we were not created to sleep in and get massages. We were created to do His work. Reflect His glory. Shine His light. Go into all the world.

That’s exhausting work. Pushing back darkness results in some rough battlefields. Which is why He calls us to rest. But to rest IN HIM. And then to go. To act. To change the world.