your story – Page 8 – Erin Ulerich

We Were Made for Meaning

Late one night when the noises in the dorm rooms around me faded, I sat on my floor asking big questions. Why am I here? What am I supposed to do with my life?

It was my Junior year at Belhaven College. Only one more year until graduation. Shouldn’t I know what I wanted to be when I grew up by now?

In those quiet moments I read 2 Corinthians 5:14.

For the love of Christ compels us, because we judge thus: that if One died for all, then all died; and He died for all, that those who live should live no longer for themselves, for but Him who died for them and rose again.

From this verse I gathered that I was supposed to live for Christ and not for myself.

But what does it mean to live for Christ?

If I had written this post on that night twenty-something years ago, I would probably have written a list, a “10 Ways to Live For Him” that would have sounded very spiritual and pretty near impossible. I’m sure an hour-long devotion at 5:00 am before your big toe hits the floor would have made the list.

Thank goodness blogging hadn’t been invented yet.

The truth is that “living for Him and not for ourselves” will probably look different for each of us. It even looks different in each season of our own lives. Living for Him may involve caring for your mother or father while they struggle with cancer or Alzheimer’s. It may involve changing 1,234 diapers in a season of caring for babies. It may mean waiting. Waiting for a relationship, waiting for a child, waiting for an answer. Waiting and clinging to His promises.

But behind the scenes “living for Him and not for ourselves” looks pretty similar in each of our lives. Living for Him involves getting to know Him and learning to hear His voice.

We get to know Him by talking to Him through prayer, by reading His Word, by being part of a community of people who are also living for Him, a place where our faith can be encouraged and strengthened.

The word for compels is a Greek word that means to hold together, to compress, to arrest. The love of Christ holds us together.

The word compels mean to force or drive, especially to a course of action.What action does the love of Christ drive us to?

When we grasp what He has done for us, the love of Christ toward us drives us to live for Him, and not for ourselves. We live for Him in response to His love for us.

My 10 ways – list-making-college-self lived for Him in order to earn His love. What a waste. The glorious truth is that We already have His love! The life He lived and the death He died is proof of His love for us. There is nothing to earn, but plenty to be thankful for.

In the process of living for Him we get to know Him. As we get to know Him we grow closer to Him. And no matter what our season of life looks like on the outside, growing closer to Him brings meaning to our life.

We Were Made For Wonder

I loved the television series Monk. Although he was a bit extreme in his long list of fears, I could relate to some of them, to a point.

In one episode, he and Natalie, his assistant, arrived at a crime scene where a double rainbow filled the sky. Monk couldn’t understand Natalie’s enthusiastic response to the rainbow.

His response was typical Monk.

“Not really a double rainbow, is it? “Double” implies equal. The top one is 40% smaller.”

Natalie looked at him, incredulously. “Don’t you have any sense of wonder?”

We were made for wonder. We were made to celebrate tiny details, experience tiny moments of pause in our fast-paced lives. We were made to see God’s fingerprints all over our lives.

And yet we lose this sense of wonder when our days fill up with projects and deadlines, tasks and events, when we are too busy doing to see wonder in the world around us.

Children are good at finding wonder. No matter what is going on, my children will stop what they are doing to look at the smallest bug. “Mama! You’ve GOT to see this!” When I don’t stop and look, I see the incredulous looks on their faces. They might as well be saying “Don’t you have any sense of wonder?”

We recently went to the Institute of Marine Mammal Studies in Gulfport, MS. On the tour, we went to a petting zoo, of sorts, where we could watch and lightly touch sting rays, crabs and sea stars.

I watched the sting rays swimming non-stop in the oval tank in the middle of the room. I noticed a little boy bending down at a section in the glass where you could see the sting rays underwater. He watched for so long that I grew curious. I bent down to see what he saw. Instead of swimming, the sting rays were gliding gracefully through the water. It was beautiful. “You’ve GOT to see this!” I grabbed my husband’s hand and pulled him down to share in a moment of wonder.

Nature often gives me moments of wonder. With animals, I’m amazed at the details, the color, the ways they act and survive. With the mountains or pictures from space, I’m amazed at the beauty. I feel small in the face of such grandeur, and, at the same time, I feel loved. God created the beauty around us and yet He knows the deepest parts of our hearts. And that thought fills me with wonder.

Indescribable also captures this sense of wonder

We Were Made for Creativity

I worked at the Iron Horse Grill in downtown Jackson, MS when I was in college. As I waited on customers, I would often look out the windows at the King Edward Hotel, which had been abandoned for quite some time. It was a grand building, and anyone could tell that it had been beautiful at one time. That building should be restored, I often thought, well aware I didn’t have the means or know-how.

Twenty years passed and a group of people with means and know-how restored the King Edward Hotel. I had to go see it.

It was as beautiful as I had imagined.

We ate supper at the Iron Horse Grill, and from our table we could see the King Edward Hotel, in all of its restored glory.

This nostalgic experience pumped up my confidence level. I have good ideas. I wasn’t able to do anything with the thought that the hotel should be restored, but it was still a good idea. So I bought a mug to remind myself to follow my ideas, even if they seem overwhelmingly huge.

Coffee by Jennifer Pendleton at Bricks, French Camp, MS — *Coffee by Jen Pendleton at Bricks in French Camp, MS*

What about you? Are you leaning toward a book idea? Is there a poem rattling around your head? Lean in toward your idea, explore the possibilities, even if it seems impossible and overwhelmingly huge. Someone needs to hear what you have to say.

Use your gifts to give others the gift of life. – Ann Voskamp

We Were Made For Community

The word community could mean a group of people who live in the same place or who work together, people who have common interests, people who think alike.

This is not the type of community I want to talk about.

To commune means to converse or talk together, usually with profound intensity, intimacy, etc.; interchange thoughts or feelings. 2. To be in intimate communication or rapport (Thank you, Dictionary.com)

ity is a suffix used to form abstract nouns expressing state or condition.

Commune-ity – The state or condition of being in intimate communication or rapport.

Now, this is what we were made for.

This was my first commune-ity. These are the friends who knew me. The ones I played with, fought with, and leaned on. With these girls I learned that friendship means apologizing, and forgiving, and speaking the hard truth even when no one is listening. These are the first friends who became “my people.” They taught me the importance of friendship and the richness of knowing and being known.

Of course, we were just kids. We didn’t know we were forming the building blocks of friendship in each other. We didn’t know we were teaching each other about commune-ity so that we would know how to find friends throughout our lives.

These are the girls I played Charlie’s Angels with on the third grade playground, giggled over crushes with in Junior High, and struggled with life, relationships, and Chemistry in High School. These were my people for late night talks, school projects (THAT time line in 10th grade Humanities Class), MTV (Thriller and Nothing’s Gonna Change My Love For You). We went to scary movies and made each other laugh during the scariest parts. We were silly and obnoxious and we loved each other fiercely.

Then we lost touch for over 25 years.

Could we reconnect? We had missed so much in each other’s lives: marriages, divorce, children, mommy moments, miscarriages, marriage struggles.

Had we missed too much, I wondered. Will the gap be too wide?

As we planned our mini-reunion, I found letters written during those lost years. Letters that helped us through the first lonely months of college, letters that grew sporadic as marriage and kids and careers filled our lives. And these letters poured over with life-giving words.

You are a blessing. I am praying for you.

I know you can succeed. Don’t throw away the abilities and opportunities that God gives you.

I’m so thankful for your friendship.

And when the four of us finally re-connected, those words hadn’t changed.

Though years had gone by, and there were many details to fill in, our heart for each other hadn’t changed.

We were made for this type of community, for knowing and being known. We all need “our people” in our lives. People who know who we are in the depths of our being. People who love us for our strengths and weaknesses, who encourage and support us. People who are good for our heart, and refreshing for our soul.

We Were Made For Hope

Here we are! Day 22 of Truths That Make Life Beautiful.

Your “likes” and your comments have encouraged me to keep plugging away at this series. (Thank you!) I’ve enjoyed walking with you through the first two truths: You are loved and You are not alone.

I believe that the more we allow these truths to soak into our bones and permeate our lives, the more readily we will believe the third truth: You have purpose.

You have purpose. You matter. You were made for wonderful things. Let’s explore a few of these wonderful things in the remaining days of this series.

We were made for hope.

The Hope We Were Made For And The Hope We Settle for.

I Will Praise You In This Storm

God is with us. We are not alone.

Even When We Feel Helpless, We Are Not Alone

We sat in the school hallway with 30 other people, waiting for the tornado.

I tried to keep conversation light to mask my own worry. Anderson played a board game nearby with a friend. Maggie watched Frozen with a group of girls huddled around a tablet screen. But Ellen stayed by my side and asked the hard questions.

“Is the tornado close?” she whispered. I put my arm around her as we leaned against the wall. “It’s about 10 minutes away. You don’t have to worry. We are in a safe place. We are in the safest place we can be. ”

“Will it hit us?” She asked.

“I don’t know, sweetie, but we are in a safe place if it does.”

“Mama, do people die in tornados?”

In the 25 zillion parenting books I’d read, not a single book had a chapter on Speaking Truth During Tornados. I was not going to lie to my child, and yet I didn’t want to multiply her fears.

“Sometimes that happens, sweetheart. But we are in the safest place we can be right now.” I kept using the word safe hoping it would make her feel safe.

The wind howled. The rain pelted. And my husband walked past us, a grim look on his face. Ellen and I watched as he wrapped an extension cord around the handles of the double doors at the end of the hallway – the doors that could fly open if a tornado hit.

I felt the muscles tighten in Ellen’s little body.

“Are we going to die?” she whispered, her voice trembling in my ear.

Fear. Pure fear.

These circumstances were totally out of my control, and my child knew it. She immediately felt alone and helpless, and I could identify with that.

It is not unusual to feel alone when we feel helpless.

God knows what it is like to live in this broken world. He knows that we will face circumstances that we can’t change or control. And He knows we need Him to remind us that we are not alone.

Do not fear, for I am with you. Isaiah 41:10

His Word gives us assurance of His presence. We are not alone, because He is with us.

I did not want my child to feel alone, because we were not alone or abandoned.

The truth was that the tornado could hit. We could be injured or die. And God would still be good. He would still use it in our lives for something beautiful.

But how could I explain this to my 6 year-old who was gripped with fear, when I don’t even fully understand it myself? I’ve seen God bring beauty from bad things in my life. I’ve seen Him work in people’s hearts through the most difficult and horrible circumstances. I don’t understand it, but I trust His hand.

I pulled Ellen into my lap, held her, and said, “I’m not sure what will happen. But I know that God will do what is best, and I trust Him.”

The tornado went over us without touching down and Ellen and I whispered prayers of thankfulness for His protection.

God did protect us that day. But even if He had allowed the tornado to hit, it wouldn’t have been because He took His Hand away from us. As His children, we are secure in the palm of His Hand. He is with us.

I’m still not sure how to convey this complicated truth to my children. Maybe it’s enough to teach them to trust Him, because He is with us, even when we are sitting in the dark.

Have You Been Introduced?

The way we meet God seems backwards to me.

We are introduced to God through someone else. It’s amazing that God trusts this introduction to us, especially when we are so likely to misrepresent Him. It’s really an important introduction.

Our introduction to God is important because the way we view God and the way we think He views us are important. What we believe about these two questions influence our life: “How do I view God?” and “How does God view me?” Our answer to these questions determine our reaction to God’s words of “I am with you.”

I know people who are convinced God is out to get them. I know others who keep God at a distance because they are sure He looks at them with a disappointed frown. These people might say that God is good, loving, and forgiving, but their life shows what they deep-down, really believe. They don’t draw comfort from God’s words of “I am with you” because they don’t believe that God is for them.

I don’t remember my very first introduction to God. I remember the Gideons coming to our school and handing out New Testaments, I remember going to church with my grandmothers when I was younger, and I remember Sunday School at their churches. I remember going to retreats and lock-ins with my friends at their churches. My mother took us to church when I was in middle school, which was the first taste I had of being part of a community. I have no doubt that the seed of faith was planted and watered in the midst of all of these memories. And I am sure that these experiences played a part in me seeking out a relationship with God when I was in the ninth grade.

But the most in-depth, real-life conversations I had about God was with my tennis partner, Nona. I was a new believer, hungry to know God, and Nona spent time talking with me, answering my questions, and pointing me back to Him. (Just in case you don’t remember high school, there are LOTS of things happening that can make you question God’s presence, His care, His involvement in our every-day circumstances. AP Biology is only one of those things.)

We talked after tennis practice, often until dark, and the sunsets over the cotton and soybean fields were spectacular. I realize that the sun sets every night, but it felt like God painted sunsets with especially vibrant colors on the nights we sat on the tennis courts talking about Him. It felt like He painted them just for us.

I am so thankful for the way I was introduced to God. Since then, there have been other people in my life who have presented God’s holiness in a way that communicated Him as stern and distant. They focused on our sinfulness and unworthiness without mentioning the abundance of His lavish love or the bridge of His amazing, life-giving grace. I realize now that this slant probably had more to do with their view of God and their life-story, but it made an impact on me as a new believer.

God gives us the great privilege of introducing others to Him. The best introduction points them to His Word, because that is the place where who God is can be clearly seen. He is holy, and we are sinful. That is true. He is also relentless in His love for us and in His mercy toward us. His Word is more than a book. It is God’s words of this is who I am, this is how much I love you, and this is what I’ve made you for.

We find life in the pages of His Word because we find Him.

Knowing We Are Loved Makes Our Hearts Sing

This song makes me think of my grandmother and her battle with cancer. Mammie was a strong woman, but she suffered as the cancer spread through her body. We pleaded with God to spare her, to stop the pain. But He didn’t until the very end, when she finally stood before Him in heaven.

Mammie was a child of God. She was His. And He allowed her to suffer. I wrestled with this truth. And, for me, it finally came down to the truth that I know God loved my Mammie even more than I did. He was getting her heart and soul ready to spend eternity with Him and He would not let her suffer one second longer than necessary to accomplish that.

I don’t know what is involved in getting someone ready to go from this world into heaven. I can imagine that our grasp on this world is tighter than it needs to be.

I know that Mammie is singing with the angels and the saints around the throne, cancer-free and full of joy. And she’s not thinking of those last months on earth. At all. She was loved by the King then and she is loved by Him now.

His Face is Toward Us

When Anderson was in first grade he lied to his teacher. When he got home, we had a little talk.

“Each time you lie, you are putting a brick between you and Mrs. Henderson.” I told my little boy. “The more you lie, the more bricks pile up. At some point you won’t be able to see her any longer because the bricks will separate you.”

His lower lip trembled. “But I don’t want to be separate from her. How do I take the bricks away?”

“When you ask for forgiveness, the bricks will crumble.”

Anderson loved Mrs. Henderson. The next morning he asked for her forgiveness and stopped that brick wall from ever beginning.

There are also bricks that block us from a relationship with God. The bricks may be the thought that God will make us change, or that there will be no fun in life, or the idea that a relationship with God has too many rules to follow.

These bricks distract us from the real problem. Because even when God works in our heart to draw us toward Himself, we find that there is a stronger brick wall behind the bricks we’ve put up. God is on one side of the brick wall and we are on the other.

If this was the end of the story, this would be tragic. But stay with me, there is a larger story going on here.

This wall was put into place way back in Genesis, in the Garden of Eden. It was put there by the enemy to place a permanent wedge between God and His creation, to nullify His plans to love and to bless His creation.

The enemy laid the foundation for this wall by layering bricks of doubt, “Did God really say…”, and mistrust, “God knows that when you eat of it then you will be like Him”. If sin begins by our refusal to believe what is true about God, then this was the birthplace of every sin known to man.

But the enemy did not count on the mercy of God. The enemy had no way of knowing what God was willing to do to break through that wall of darkness, mistrust, and doubt. God tore down that wall through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Why would He do that?

Because of His great love for us. The love of God is shown in this, that while we were still sinners Christ died for us. While that wall was still there, before we ever searched for Him, He searched for us.

He did not create us to be alienated from Him. He made us for life with Him.

His kindness leads us to repentance. His kindness causes us to want change in our life.

His Face is toward us and all His Paths are steadfast love and faithfulness.

He answers our heart’s cry with gentleness and grace.

And he will disintegrate any layer of bricks to win your heart and mine. His love is just that great.

You are loved. You are loved!

Say it. Believe it. Live it.