Boston has been in the news a lot lately, and rightly so.  But that’s not what’s on my mind.  Seeing the horror in that city, the heroism of its people, the dedication of its protectors, it’s made me think about dreams and how they change.

See, when I was nine, I fell smack dab in love with Boston.  I thought it had to be the most awesome place on the planet.  I became a lifelong Red Sox fan on that trip after I was introduced to the Green Monster and watched Yaz play one of his last major league games at Fenway Park.  A history buff from an early age, I could not take in enough of that city.  The Old North Church, Bunker and Breeds Hills, the Harbor, the Constitution, the Tea Party boat, Copp’s Hill Burying Ground…  I had a flickering love of history before that trip.  After, it was a full-fledged love affair that was second only to my love of reading and writing.  (It drove me to go back to school after I graduated college to tack on a degree in history.)

All I knew in fifth grade was that I wanted to get back to Boston.  So I hit upon a plan.  That was where I would go to college.  I set my sights on Boston University, and I never looked back.  In junior high, I was already writing to ask for information.  I had a huge poster of the Boston skyline hanging over my bed.  My Aunt Shirley bought me a BU sweatshirt.  A friend bought me a BU t-shirt.  I proudly wore the Red Sox jacket my dad bought me pretty much every day.  By eleventh grade, I had the application already filled out on my desk, ready to go.  I was in love with a city I’d seen one time.  I had it mapped out:  move to Boston, study psychology, become an experimental psychologist (that one makes no sense to me now)…

And then it happened…  My junior year, I stumbled into a creative writing class.  Mrs. Simons was the first person to look at me and say, “You’re good at this.”  I’d been writing my whole life, but I honestly thought everybody wrote stories.  That was the first time it occurred to me that this wasn’t “normal” for the rest of the world.  She sat me down one day and told me she wanted me to look at her alma mater, a private women’s college in Decatur, Georgia, Agnes Scott.  Okay.  Sure.  Whatever.  But Boston was my dream.

Until I went to Decatur at her invitation.  Something in me said this was it.  Because at the same time, God was stirring the writing thing in me.  When Mrs. Cook asked me to be in AP English (a whole other story), every dream I’d had since age 9 changed. Almost overnight.  God birthed a new thing.

If you know my testimony, you know God had other plans that are a story for another time.  Plans that were sweeter than any I’d ever dreamed, though if He’d have clued me in ahead of time, I’d have pitched a rip roaring hissy fit. He allowed me to come to the realization about Boston slowly, on my own, so that when I left that little girl dream behind, it wasn’t something I mourned but something I looked back on and smiled.

I’d still like to go back to Boston someday, just to visit.  And the little girl in my aches for the city I once loved enough to want to call home.  As I watched the news last week, I was reminded of how dreams change and how God has a better plan for us.  And I was a little bit glad that I never did get to live there, because then this would have been personal, and my prayers would have been selfish.

Some dreams are forever.  Some dreams change.  Sometimes gradually, like mine.  Sometimes in a flash, like the people standing at the finish line of the marathon.  What never fails to amaze me is, either way, God’s got something better.  It may not seem like it, but He’s God.  And if I never learn anything else, I’ve learned this:  He is always good.

In case you hadn’t read it, Neil Diamond is donating the sales of “Sweet Caroline” this week to One Fund Boston.

-JB

The good news is…  the website is getting a much-needed update!  The first week of May, my friend Mandy Roberson (check out her website!) is going to give the place a whole new look, and I’m excited!  Once that’s done, there will be a new blog schedule as well.  I’m looking forward to something different for sure!

With Crossfire turned in to Love Inspired Suspense and in the hands of the incredible Emily Rodmell, I’m knee-deep in the tentatively-titled Unforgotten for Abingdon Press.  It’s a little bit different than Freefall and Crossfire, so it’s keeping me on my toes… and I’m loving it.

You can read about Unforgotten here and about Crossfire here.

Thanks for hanging on with me!  I’m looking forward to what comes next!

-JB

A few weeks ago,  I had a talk with my 8th graders about being intentional.  They were just going along, saying the “right” things without even thinking about it. It’s good when they do right, don’t get me wrong… but they need to know why and if it’s what they actually believe.  If not, then they’ve not changed inside, and the world can sway them way too easily.

It got me thinking about myself.  I’ve been stressed lately.  Lately as in since January 2010.   Literally, we went from me taking a job, settled in Georgia at Christmas, to how-did-we-get-here-Tennessee in late January.  Four months later my husband deployed.  One year later he came back.  Two months later we were living in North Carolina.  Holy. Cow. What. Happened?

Ever since then, I’ve let life happen to me.  I’ve been like a person tied at the end of a rope, swinging around as life turns, banging into things, stressed out, wondering what’s coming next, never living in the moment.  Life happened so fast for two straight years that I forgot how to sit still.

No more.

It’s April 2013, and I’m choosing my word.

I’m digging in my heels and pulling on that rope.  God never intended for me to be jerked around by life.  He intended for me to live it.  To think about what I do.  To put meaning and purpose into it.  To stop saying yes when I should say no and no when I should say yes.

To stop acting like things happen around me and to start making things happen.

God made us to ACT, not to REACT.  To really think about what we’re doing for Him, not just to jump in and do it mindlessly.

So that’s me.  Starting now.  Intentional.

Anyone else need that one?

-JB

So a couple of weeks ago, I started asking for more.  More of His face.  More in my heart than in my head.  More understanding.  More love.  More passion.  More of just HIM.  And I got up, and I came to quiet time, and I got… the same.

Hm.

But I kept asking because, especially with Easter coming, I crave Jesus.  I crave His face.  I crave the time when He was my very best friend, closer than my next breath, everything to me in a way that, like David Crowder says, makes my heart turn “violently inside of my chest.”

On Wednesday, I got to watch “The Passion of the Christ” again.  I haven’t seen it since it came out in theaters, and I didn’t expect it to have the same impact watching in a classroom full of 8th graders with three other teachers.  But let me tell you… God told me in no uncertain terms when those lights went off in that room that He was dealing with the kids.  I was to let Him deal with me.  No preconceived notions.  No thinking I had to “feel” anything.  Just letting the Holy Spirit have His way.

And did He ever.  I didn’t cry this time over the way He looked at Peter like I did last time, which surprised me.  But during the beating, there came that moment when He pulled Himself up and took more.  And in that instant, He whispered in my ear, “I took every lash for you. Every one, you were on my mind.  And I was thinking you wouldn’t have to endure this because I’m enduring it.  I could have stopped this at any second, but I kept your face in my mind and I took it for you.”  Right there.  I was undone.  He didn’t have to.  Lord Jesus, you didn’t have to.  You could have said, “Hey, this is enough.  She’s not worth it.”  But you didn’t.

And believe me, when He says He was thinking of me, I believe it.  Jesus has this incredible capacity to be thinking of us individually all at the same time.  It’s easy to imagine Him thinking of us collectively as “the world,” but so much harder to realize it was a world full of individuals on his mind one by one the whole time.  That’s the capacity of His thoughts, all of us, individually, all at once.

And, once again, there came that moment pulled from Revelation 21:5, when Mary comes to Jesus on the road and He says to her, “See, Mother?  I make all things new.”  That’s it.  Right there.  Why He did it.  Oh, if you could only feel what I feel right now!  To make me something I’m not.  New.  Clean. Sanctified.  Holy.

His.

And if He would go through all of that, why in the world would He ever turn His back on me because I screw up?  Because I can’t seem to get “where I should be”?  He won’t.  He wouldn’t endure that just to throw His hands in the air later.  He wants a relationship with ME.  A real one.  One that changes from day to day because I change from day to day.  One that is authentic and not what I THINK it should look like.  One that is mine and His, and that looks like us together.  How awesome is that.

Oh, how He loves…

-JB

I’d heard “I Will Wait” by Mumford and Sons several times, but I never paid it any attention.  It was one of those background songs that never really caught me, although my husband is wildly loving it right now.  But a couple of weeks ago, the two of us got curious about the band, because I told him I kept hearing “God echoes” in the lyrics.  (And I’m probably two years behind the rest of the world but, like I said, I wasn’t paying attention.)   So we started looking.  I was kind of surprised by what I read, maybe because I expect the worst all of the time, but Marcus Mumford comes from a background I didn’t expect.  I already knew they’re fond of singing “Amazing Grace,” but now I wonder how deeply that runs for him.  He’s never come right out and said much aside from his faith is important to him, so I can’t speak to what he believes.

But I do know this.  I was almost undone by “I Will Wait” today.  And I can say God grabbed me by the heart with it.  Because at the same time we were looking up all of that stuff online, I was fighting a battle I thought I’d already won… and I didn’t even know it.  But it caught me head on.  And God and I had to deal with it.  I thought I’d left some lies way, way behind, but I hadn’t.  And when I was confronted with them face to face, I crumbled.  I had to go back to God and confess that He had to be the one to free me, because my own power wasn’t enough.  And He did.  Of course He did.  Because He’s all about freedom.

And the irony of the whole thing is, that battle came to a head the very night we were reading lyrics and stories on the internet, but not because of Mumford and Sons.  However, the irony is, it was that song today that spoke to my heart.  It was that song that struck my spirit.  It was that song in which God solidified that I’m free from lies, and now I need to wait and see what He’s going to do.  I’m bad at waiting.  I really am.  He works that on me a lot.

The repetetive “I will wait for you” did a number on me.  I wish I could explain it better, but it’s like it’s said so much because it’s important.  It shows love and devotion and desire for God.  It’s a sacrifice to wait when it would be so much easier to charge off on our own.  But there’s love in the waiting, because it puts God first.  There’s discipline in the waiting.  And there’s something free about waiting on Him.  It may not feel like it sometimes, but there is.

The lyrics that grabbed me most are below.  I think you can see right where I’m coming from when you read them. I’m thinking it ought to be my battle cry from here on out. 

So I’ll be bold
As well as strong
And use my head alongside my heart
So tame my flesh
And fix my eyes
That tethered mind free from the lies

But I’ll kneel down
Wait for now
I’ll kneel down
Know my ground

Raise my hands
Paint my spirit gold
And bow my head
Keep my heart slow

Cause I will wait, I will wait for you

-JB

Joseph has gone from favored son to slavery at the hands of his brothers to prison to second highest in the land of Egypt.  If that’s not a ride that will turn your stomach upside down more than once…  One day, he looks up and there are his brothers.  I have to wonder what his heart did in that instant.  We could sit here and guess all day, but we’ll never know.  I’ve been jolted at the sight of some people I thought I’d never lay eyes on again, and whether it was good or bad, it’s certain he felt something.

Right here, Joseph has the opportunity to send them packing.  To get revenge.  To destroy them.  How hard was it for him not to stand up and say, “Guess who!”  then lop their heads off?  Or not to embrace them?  Or both?  That man, after all he’d been through, had to feel torn in two.  Notice, he doesn’t make it easy on them.  At all.  But he doesn’t destroy them.  Notice, too, that he almost immediately asks about his father and younger brother.  He makes Simeon stay behind until Benjamin is brought to him.  This is a man who misses his family.

And then he proceeds to mess with their heads. Can you imagine how freaked out they must have been when they found their grain back in their sacks?  Far from being grateful, they’re terrified.  In verse 28, they look at each other–surely feeling the guilt of what they did to Joseph so many years ago–and ask, “What has God done to us?”  Now, all these years later, they are confronting their sin face to face… and they don’t even realize how close that face is.

-JB

Listen the first time for the delivery.  Listen the second for the words.

Genesis 41:16 (NIV)–”I cannot do it,” Joseph replied to Pharaoh, “but God will give Pharaoh the answer he desires.”

When we last saw Joseph, my wondering was how long it took him to sink into despair.  He had to believe, after being forgotten by the cupbearer on top of everything else that had happened, that God had forgotten him too.

Yet here we see him, finally summoned to come before Pharaoh.  Not because he’s done something, but because God has.  Pharaoh’s dreams are disturbing him, and no one can give him an answer.  Ah.  NOW the cupbearer remembers the guy who correctly interpreted the dream foretelling his restoration.  Enter Joseph, probably wondering, after all this time, if he’s going to get executed or something.  He’s bound to be wondering what’s coming next.

But then Pharaoh asks for help.  See, Joseph’s reputation precedes him.  And where we once saw an immature boy who was quick to tell his brothers how all of the moon and stars and grain sheaves bowed down to him, we now see a mature man who is quick to note that HE is not the man for the Job; God is.

I really, really wish we had some insight into Joseph’s mind as he waited in prison, but one thing we know.  He came out a closer man to God.  A man who understood Who the Almighty is and what He can do.  Because God uses our lives to shape us for His glory, and oh what glory Joseph would bring Him.

-JB

I write a lot about desert places, because it feels like I walk through a lot of them.  More often than not, it’s because I take a wrong turn.  Maybe I don’t get lost, but I do get distracted.  But then, God gives me the joy of watching the desert places bloom.

Take this past month.  I’ve been privileged to see God moved in ways nobody saw coming.

Privileged… to hear a student confess her anger at God and renew her relationship with Him.

Privileged… to watch heaven come down and fill a classroom as middle schoolers abandoned all pretense to truly worship Him.

Privileged… to be brought to tears by an outpouring of repentance and forgiveness and acceptance among a group of girls who’d borne heart for far too long.

Privileged… to see young men fall to their knees in prayer and embrace each other, unashamed to cry.

And all of that was just this past Friday.

Privileged… to witness what I think has to be one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen.   A young man who felt the tug of the world so strongly… Who knew what God wanted of him but was too afraid of losing to obey… Who fought and struggled with the flesh and the spirit until finally, finally…  His precious self broke in a way that led him to bare his soul, to wear it on his face, to say through tears, “I need Jesus.  I want Jesus.”  For the rest of my life, that moment will be imprinted on my soul.  I’ve never seen a more authentic cry of the heart.  Never seen a life so changed, a joy so unspoiled, a kid so filled with wonder that he can’t seem to get enough of Jesus.  A love so contagious that his friends see it… And they’re starting to want it to.

One choice.  One life.  One person willing to risk it all.  And others are following because the change is real.  Jesus is real.  And revival is breaking out.

Lord Jesus… You absolutely amaze me.

-JB

Although I have to say that the Super Bowl would have been eons more boring without Twitter.  If you weren’t following Twitter during the Super Bowl, you were missing the best part.

We are going to wrap up our walk through Genesis starting next week, but this week I wanted to do a personal verse.  Last year, right at this time, my family took a couple of hard hits, ones we honestly never saw coming.  But God is good.  All. The. Time.  And He is bigger.  He sent prayer warriors, shoulders to cry on, help from unlikely places…  He is the healer and warrior and deliverer.

During that time, He led me to Psalm 18.  Literally.  I was praying and–I kid you not–the words “Psalm 18″ popped into my head.  If you’ve never read that one, I urge you to go get a Bible right now.  It left me in a puddle on the floor and had me feeling more loved than ever.  I tell my students all of the time, “Psalm 18.  Nobody messes with God’s baby.”

But one verse stood out.  It’s my class verse this year, and now one of my life verses, because I’ve seen God deliver mightily on more than one occasion.  And I can’t read this verse without feeling my heart swell.  He loves me.  Oh, how He loves me.

Psalm 18:2 (NIV)–The Lord is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer; my God is my rock, in whom I take refuge, my shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.

In short… He is everything.

-JB