Lana Vaughan

Miracles.
In one word that sums up what I truly want for Christmas.
I want to spend time with people I love and who love me.
I don’t want anyone to think they have to spend time with me for any other reason.
I want to know those I love are safe and healthy and happy.
I want to be forgiven for every mistake I’ve ever made or wrong word I’ve ever spoke.
I want people to take responsibility for their own lives and stuff.
I want one real family not a bunch of fragmented blended legally related people.
I want traditions that have deep roots and long reaching branches.
I want Christmas to mean something.
I want miracles.

What follows is the chain of events that God orchestrated to show just how much He loves me. It may not have the depth of significance to anyone else in the world because it was so incredibly customized for my heart.

The first Saturday in May I attended The Calling Conference at Mt Herman in the Santa Cruz mountains. Several years ago I broke my leg in a motorcycle accident in the Santa Cruz mountains. A year or so before that I started going to Captivating Retreats in Colorado. God has brought some of the most amazing women into my life through Captivating and Ransomed Hearts Ministry. It was one of those women who sent me an email inviting me to The Calling Conference. My husband did some web checking to find out more about the conference and learned it was being sponsored by Brian Golter. The week before I left for Mt Herman my husband found a business card while clearing up his home office. It was from Robert Golter who had been in my husband’s cabin at Advanced Camp in Colorado in March. The world got a little smaller. At the last minute some other friends of mine were able to drive up from Long Beach to join us at The Calling. It had been while driving home from visiting them in April that God had given me a vision for a women’s conference. ( More about that later)

So here goes the fun part. On that Saturday Gary Barkalow showed a clip from the movie Seabiscut. It’s the one where the jockey has a broken leg and is talking to the horse. After the clip Gary starts telling a story about going bird hunting with John Eldrege. Shortly after that there is a discussion about what lies people have believed that disqualify them from their calling in life. Across the room from me a man I’ve never met calls out “I’m too much of a long shot.”

During the next conference break I used the iphone I had gotten just that week to check something online. For several years I lived about a mile from Church Hill Downs in Louisville Kentucky. It’s where they hold the Kentucky Derby on the first Saturday in May. When I read the race results I cried. I honestly sat there as the tears streamed down my face.

After seeing a movie about a jockey with a broken leg in the mountains where I broke my leg, listening to a story about birds with a man who’s too much of a long shot on Derby day, the winner of the Kentucky Derby was “Mine That Bird” a 50 to 1 long shot! What are the odds?!?

There are so many things to write about tonight.

A look back in history remembers today as the bloodiest day in WW II. It marked a turning point in history. It marked the premature end of some lives sacrificed for the freedom of others. It was a day when America lost so many sons. D-day wasn’t a day to celebrate but the men were heros and we celebrate their lives. Never forget them.

My grandmother’s birthday was yesterday. She turned 90. I called her to wish her a happy birthday. She had been playing outside with her friends. They were tossing balls into baskets. At 90 my gramma is playing basketball! Go gramma!

My daughter just came in to ask me to strap an ice pack to her arm. We were up at the family cabin today so she could ride her quad for the first time. It’s pink and blue. Yes, it looks like it could belong to Barbie but it’s totally Rosie’s. It’s big enough for Matt or me to ride it. She had been riding very well for a couple of hours when she and her sister Susanna hit the gravel road going out past the cabin. Matt and I sat on the tailgate of the truck and listened to the sound of young girls laughter mixed with the tires crunching over the gravel and the engines rev. After a while the girls came back with Rosie riding behind Sue on the 125 dirt bike. There is a good size scrape on Rosie’s elbow. It’s bleeding pretty good, turning purple and swelling a bit. She flipped the quad trying to go up a hill. It rolled twice landing on her. I can’t begin to tell you how proud I am of my daughter today. Her attitude was incredible. She never for one minute blamed her sister for leading her up a hill she wasn’t experienced enough to take. She trusted her sister to take care of her. She got on the dirt bike right after falling off the quad. She cried but didn’t want to be medi-vaced to the nearest hospital (Rosie has a bit of a dramatic side.) She got back on the quad once Matt and Sue towed it back to the cabin with the dirt bike and got it started. She fell but did not blame anyone else. She was hurt but didn’t let it ruin the rest of the day. She did not give up.

For dinner tonight I’m roasting lamb with thyme and rosemary, carrots, onions, potatoes, and garlic. As I was getting it ready to put in the oven all of today’s significance came together for me in a special way. God’s been doing that a lot lately, taking seemingly unrelated things and showing me just how much He loves me and is in the details of my life.

My birthday is tomorrow and as I was cutting the garlic and adding the bitter herbs I remembered the Passover lamb prepared in faith to protect the first born sons of Israel before they left Egypt. I’m not a son but I am the first born. Tonight all the sacrifices of D-day and my grandmother’s generation seemed more personal. How many sons were lost? Celebrating my grandmother yesterday, remembering today, celebrating my life tomorrow, I stood in my kitchen and wondered if I have a life worth celebrating? Have I been faithful to the sacrifices made for me? Have I done all I can with all I have been given? The ultimate sacrifice was paid for me by Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God. I am ransomed. I am redeemed. But life has tossed me off my high horse many a time. It has rolled me down the hill, landed on top of me and held me there in the dirt road waiting for someone to help. I have been wounded.Have I let the wounds keep me from life? Have I trusted? Have I blamed others? Have I gotten the treatment I needed without all the drama? Have I followed the example of my 10 year old daughter? Get up. Trust. Get help. Get back on and ride!

I sit here drinking the wine I opened to pour on the lamb and I remember. On the night Jesus was betrayed He took the bread, gave thanks, broke the bread and said “take and eat, this is my body.” Then He took the cup, gave thanks and offered it to them, saying “drink from it, all of you. This is My blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.”

Tonight I have started a new tradition. On June 6th from this night forward I will prepare the lamb and remember. I will remember those who have sacrificed, celebrate those who have gone before me, consider lovingly those who will follow after me and most importantly be thankful to the One who has made my life truly worth celebrating. Tonight I remember….

Today after church Matt and I sat having brunch with our daughter. We were discussing the message we had heard this morning. It was good but not really memorable. The one thing that stood out was that the pastor was talking about kindness being an action not an emotion. At one point in the message he shared about our youth pastor and his wife’s new baby. She is about two weeks old and has already had open heart surgery. Our pastor shared that this young family was under financial as well as emotional strain and encouraged the congregation to drop them a note and maybe include some help. I reached for my purse expecting him to take an offering for them on the spot. After all the message was on the Good Samaritan and meeting needs when you come upon them. But he didn’t take an offering so I put my purse back down on the floor and picked up my coffee. The moment passed.

After church I told my husband I thought the pastor dropped the ball. When he made the need known about the youth pastor I thought of a story Matt told me about the men at Promise Keepers in San Jose a few days after 9/11. The pastor of the small church near the World Trade Center told what his congregation was doing and said they could use some help. When a need was made known the Spirit moved the men to come forward in mass to help. At one point there were so many men trying to get to the front to add their financial support that the men coming back couldn’t move and men just started throwing money on the stage.

Today, when I heard the need of our own youth pastor my heart responded at once but I let the moment pass. The pastor hadn’t dropped the ball. I had. Matt told me next time I felt the Spirit nudge me to hand him the money and he’d take it from there. (I love this man very much)

Then I told him I had something the Spirit had been pressing on my heart for the past few weeks that I needed to take care of. Last year we were in a small store in Santa Cruz. It was a quiet evening and we were just window shopping after dinner. I saw these beautiful hand crafted leather journals. Handmade paper, hand tooled leather cover, and hand bound. Not cheap. Matt said “why don’t you get one?” I told him “Nothing I write is worth putting in a book that expensive.” An agreement was made. For my birthday last year, Matt and our daughter rode his motorcycle over the hill to Santa Cruz to get one of those books. Matt spent hours printing photos and writing our love story in that book. He gave it to me on my birthday. I love it. But…
The agreement was still there. Until today.

A few weeks ago I got my blog site up and have posted a couple of times. But the whispers “no one will read this”, “you don’t have anything to say”, “your words have no power, no value” kept circling. Then the agreement about the journal came back to my mind. I knew it needed to be broken. Today we went back to Santa Cruz. I stood right where I had stood more than a year ago. Today I took back the power of my words. I broke the agreement and chose one of those journals. My life is handmade. Each design and line on my cover was put there by design. The pages are waiting to hold all that God has given me. He has entrusted me with His love, His wisdom and this is our story. And maybe no one will ever read it but I know He will.

For Him, today, my pen is mightier than the sword.

The past week a very strange battle has been taking place in my life. (Cut to the end of the story for those who don’t have time to sit through the whole movie.) Some serious and very old agreements have been brought to light and broken.

Last Friday I decided to use a color remover on my hair. I have been coloring my hair since I was 16 years old when I found a gray hair and decided that was not acceptable. The agreement was that I wasn’t ok the way I was, that God’s gentle plan to mature me didn’t fit the image I wanted, that I could cover up who God was molding me to be, that His plan could be changed by my will and a box of Miss Clarol. Shame crept in with the gray. Deception and maintaining that false image became routine. I became self conscience if I went too long without covering up the roots of truth that were so persistent.

Anyway, last week I just couldn’t let go of wondering just how much gray there was. After consulting with some of the wisest women I know, I took the plunge and un-colored. It wasn’t until I was upsidedown blow drying my hair and wondering what I would see when it was dry that I was hit with how deep an issue this was for me. I had never seen the agreements before. I had been concerned about the damage I might be doing to my hair by coloring it for more than 30 years but had never seen the damage I was doing to my heart. Maybe looking at life upside down has its way of changing perspective, I don’t know.

Any way now, I can tell you. I love the way my hair turned out. No, I wasn’t able to get all the color out. It will take time just like processing the truths that were set free. But I am excited to let the beauty of God shine through, no matter what color it takes.

“And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered” Matt 10:30
And He knows what color they really are….