Worry sat in my throat like a potato I hadn’t chewed properly.

Swallow it down.

Swallow it down.

This weekend I watched my boy’s chest heave up and down to take breaths. His little lungs closing up with infections.

We’re exhausted from long hours in the emergency department, long hours listening to each ragged, tiny, breath. Exhausted from fighting back our own tears as we scare our baby by giving him his medicine. We’re exhausted and worried.

Today we’re seeing him recover with our own tired eyes. But oh how easy it is to pick up the fear again. It’s such a familiar emotion. Just begging to be picked up again and again. He’s quiet? Is he breathing? I’ll just go in and check if he’s breathing? Should we put his breathing monitor back in his bed? Should we take him back to hospital? Are we being paranoid? Are we being blasé?

All of it. Fear.

It’s so easy to pick up fear. It’s warm and familiar. But it’s like picking up fire, you just get burned.

Paul encourages us to instead pick up faith like it’s a shield. It stops the fiery arrows of the enemy. Faith calms the storm in my mind. Faith helps the lump in my throat go away. Faith can be my first response to protect me and my family.

So this weekend, each time the lump in my throat rose, I said in my heart (and sometimes in a shaky whisper) “I choose faith, not fear”. Simple words that reoriented my heart away from fear.

What is my faith in? It’s in..

A God who speaks quiet words to me as I held my day-old son: “Think how much you love him.. I love him even more”

A God who assigned an angel to watch over him while he sleeps and shows me when I pray.

A God who became someone like me, to save someone like me.

A God whose perfect love drives out all my fear.

These are my thoughts from Ephesians 6… A series inspired by a moment where I asked God to protect my heart, my family and my loved ones. In that moment, I strongly felt Him challenge me: “I’ve given you all the armour you need, but it’s useless in a pile on the ground. Pick it up. Put it on.”

I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what.

Harper Lee

Of all the pieces of armour described in this letter, this for me has been the most personal, and the most elusive. Since a 6-week-long anxiety attack last year, keeping the peace has been front and centre in my mind.

Retraining my brain. Seeking counsel. Speaking truth over my mind, heart, life, habits. Learning to stop the mental hamster wheel has been a good work for me to do.

When I read this passage, the idea of having peace wherever I go is so enticing. I really connect with the idea of putting peace on like shoes. I’ve walked in shoes of striving. Exhaustion. I’ve walked in shoes of fear. Shrinking. I’ve walked in shoes of shame. Crippling. I’ve walked on raw bare feet. Wounding.

Too often I’ve assumed that the important this is to keep walking, no matter what my shoes.. I’ll surely stumble into peace, right? But peace is not somewhere I put myself, it’s something I put on me. The shoes I walk in matter.

I love the concept of peace protecting my steps. Better decisions are made on peace. Better words are spoken in relationships. Fears faced standing on the support of peace. Peace from the feet up, wherever I go.

And this is the beauty of what Paul is saying… If I choose to recognise the holistic peace with God, given to me by Jesus… If I choose peace as my preferred shoes to walk in… if peace is my foundation… then I’m ready to face my day, the world and even myself.

These are my thoughts from Ephesians 6… A series inspired by a moment where I asked God to protect my heart, my family and my loved ones. In that moment, I strongly felt Him challenge me: “I’ve given you all the armour you need, but it’s useless in a pile on the ground. Pick it up. Put it on.”

“Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.”
– Proverbs 4:23

Such a familiar verse, a challenge to keep the source of our life and actions pure. As usual, I always err to take on the work. Thinking that it’s my responsibility to keep junk out of my heart, it’s all up to me.

But I love the challenge from Ephesians.. What is it that Paul says? It’s the breastplate of righteousness that protects our heart.

In the classic 90s movie Dangerous Minds, Michelle Pfeiffer’s character changed her classroom and her pupils by flipping their experience on its head, explaining that they already had the grades, they just needed to maintain it.

What changed? Nothing in their situation, except their perspective.. and that changed everything. They started acting like A-grade students and the changes in their study followed the change in their hearts.

What a lesson for us in protecting our hearts.

Right-standing with God is already ours.

Achieved on the cross by Jesus.

It is done. This work is finished.

Now, live in this new reality and watch my heart flow out and change the rest of my life.

These are my thoughts from Ephesians 6… A series inspired by a moment where I asked God to protect my heart, my family and my loved ones. In that moment, I strongly felt Him challenge me: “I’ve given you all the armour you need, but it’s useless in a pile on the ground. Pick it up. Put it on.”

So often for me, belts are an afterthought. In Ephesians, Paul starts his imagery of spiritual armour with the belt of truth.

Truth is the thing that holds everything else together, a good place to start. Without truth, your pants fall down, your defences fall off and you’re left exposed and vulnerable.

Wisely discerning what truth to clothe ourselves in is not easy. Layers of truth wrap themselves around us, promising to hold us up, support us, hold it altogether for us. Misplaced trust in half-truths are at best, embarrassing, at worst, destroying.

So what is the deepest truth there is? What is the strongest?

For me: God is real. He loves me. He chose to save me from my sin.

These truths hold everything together for me. Buckles of un-truth eventually slip and betray me. But these? These never fail me.

God is real. He loves me. He chose to save me from my sin.

So, I measure everything up to the yardstick of these truths… Does it align? Does it hold me up? Or cut me down?

It matters what you hold as truth, because that same truth is holding you.

These are my thoughts from Ephesians 6… A series inspired by a moment where I asked God to protect my heart, my family and my loved ones. In that moment, I strongly felt Him challenge me: “I’ve given you all the armour you need, but it’s useless in a pile on the ground. Pick it up. Put it on.”

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

Shakespeare

Golden afternoon light filled the hospital room, the sun was setting both on the Thursday and my husband’s grandpa’s life. He was to pass away two days later, but we had the incredible opportunity to hear his heart for us, as he was (relatively) pain free and able to communicate with us.

His words to us that afternoon were very precious, affirming and his legacy challenging.

As I held his hand for the last time and kissed his cheek, I assured him that we would finish his tiling and would change the cupboard doors in their flat. Two projects he had started that he would not be able to finish for his wife of 50 years.

All the grandchildren were working on their flat when we got the news he had passed away. The next day Zac and his brother got the tiling done. They missed having him there, they’d always done that sort of thing together under Grandpa’s watchful, caring eye.

But Grandpa had taught those young men well, and this small vignette in our grief was a good lesson for me, Grandpa’s last lesson to me, perhaps.

There will always be work we want to finish, but can’t. We shouldn’t live as though we will tick everything off our list. That’s not the way it’s meant to work, God intends for us to pass on our work to the next generation. So…

Have we taught them well?

Do they care like we care?

Is our heart in their heart?

Is our skill in their hands?

As I got on the plane to fly home, I saw this, from Amelia Earhart:

Some of us have great runways built already for us. If you have one, take off. But if you don’t have one, realize it is your responsibility to grab a shovel and build one for yourself and all who follow after you.

Thanks for building our runway, Grandpa. We’re flying so high because of you.