Real Life on Rocky Top

The One Thing My Mom Did

May 07 2016

This time of the year always brings mixed emotions in my heart. I see many pictures and tributes on social media of women with their moms. It just makes me sad. However, it is not because my mom isn’t here on this earth. She is alive but she isn’t. Mom has Alzheimer’s. This horrible disease has robbed her of her memory and is beginning to shut down her basic bodily functions. As I sit on the back porch of Rocky Top today, I want to be totally transparent. Even if my mom did not have this awful sickness, she was just not a good mom. Ouch, kind of cruel to say on Mother’s Day weekend. Please know my Mom is receiving flowers today, beautiful red roses in a gorgeous vase, along with a card that expresses my love to her. I will also travel this week hundreds of miles to sit with her as I listen to her tell me the same thing over and over. My hope is that as I walk in the door she will smile as she recognizes my face.

But I’m not one to play games and pretend. I have no memories of her brushing my hair, showing me how to apply makeup or giving me wise counsel concerning boys. There are no bedtime stories, songs of Jesus, or times we just acted silly in the back of my mind. She wasn’t even present at any of my children’s graduations or weddings by her own choice.

I do not share this to cause you to feel sorry for me or to dishonor my mom in anyway. I share it because there is ONE THING my mom did that changed the course of my life!

This ONE THING changed my life forever. It is a gift any mom can give her child. As I have grown older I realize how blessed I am that my mom did this ONE THING.

My mom took me to church. Notice I didn’t say she brought me to church. That would imply that she always came with me, which she didn’t. Mom took me nearly every Sunday to a church where God’s word was taught passionately, preached with authority and Jesus was worshipped as if He really was alive.

So, MOM, thank you for taking me to a place where I heard about Jesus. Every good gift I have is because of one decision you made. You might have failed at many things as a mom but at least you were wise enough to know that there was a place you could take me every week that would introduce me to the ONE who is perfect and has blessed me with a life that is above and beyond anything I could have daydreamed about as a child.

So on this Mother’s Day weekend as I reflect on being a mom, I also celebrate the three children He has blessed me with. They are all adults now, married to three wonderful spouses and I now have two grandkids and one on the way! Please know I failed my children many, many times. I was not the perfect mom. I yelled way too much and placed too much emphasis on things that really didn’t matter like perfectly cleaned rooms and perfect grades. However, I did repeat the ONE THING and hopefully improved on it a little: I BROUGHT them to church and wanted them to meet Jesus. He was and is a REAL person in our home. I see them now BRINGING their children to church and Jesus is a very REAL person in their homes.

Mom, you were not a perfect mom. I am not a perfect mom. But I did learn from you there is ONE who is perfect and HE will enable me to live the life He has called me to live. Thank you MOM for taking me to church!

“Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for HE who promised is faithful. And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds. Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another and all the more as you see the Day approaching.” Hebrews 10:23-25

Why Are You Crying?

Apr 24 2016

I stood on a beautiful white sand beach just a few days ago with tears streaming down my face. It started as a few tears welling up in my eyes but turned into an uncontrollable sob. You know the kind of cry that when you try to talk, you sound like a blubbering idiot.

No one was around. It was just me, the crashing waves against the shore, my Jesus, and my tears.

I could almost hear Him say, “Why are you crying?”

Well, Lord……….my dishwasher at home is broken, the microwave still isn’t fixed, and the air conditioner just went out.

Really?? You are standing on one of the most beautiful beaches in the world and you are crying because your appliances aren’t working?

So, Donna, why are you crying? I heard Him whisper my name and my soul began to calm.

I’m overwhelmed with life, Lord. My eyes are off YOU! I thought coming to the beach, hearing the waves, smelling the salt air would somehow magically make it all better. Running to the beach doesn’t make it all better. It just makes you at the beach.

What does make it better? What will enable me to stay the course, deal with the stuff of life…….the appliances, the circumstances and people that are causing me to sob uncontrollably?

I remembered someone else who had been asked the question, Why are you crying?

Mary Magdalene stood in front of an empty tomb crying. Jesus was gone. Jesus had been her everything. He had rescued her and had given her new life. Her world was falling apart because of His death. Jesus came to her outside the empty tomb and said, “Woman, why are you crying? Who is it that you are looking for?” Mary thought the answer was to just find His dead body. Then, Jesus called her by name, “Mary”. She immediately recognized His voice when He spoke her name. She replied, “Rabboni!” It is the Aramaic word for “Teacher”. She immediately put herself under His authority and responded with “teach me, Lord”. (John 20:10-16) She didn’t respond with “fix it, Lord” or “make it all better”!

A hurting heart, an anxious spirit, uncontrollable tears, an overwhelmed life will not be fixed by a trip to the beach or to any place. It is the Person of Jesus who calms our fears, holds us when we do cry, teaches us how to handle life and is our peace and joy.

So as the old hymn says, “Turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full in His wonderful face and the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of His glory and grace.”

I did choose that day to “turn my eyes upon Jesus”. As I turned my eyes to Him and put myself under His authority, the aggravating people just didn’t seem to aggravate me as much. The appliances aren’t fixed yet, but they are just appliances. The other circumstances and people are still there but so is my JESUS and He is just so much bigger. He is my Teacher! He will teach me how to navigate life, choose joy and be victorious. I just have to turn to Him and choose Him and His ways.

Twenty Years

Mar 31 2016

It is a pleasure to welcome Kristi Nolan to Rocky Top’s back porch once again. She is a young woman who continues to bless me by allowing herself to be open, honest and just flat out real! Her story shouts of the grace and forgiveness we just celebrated on Easter.

It took more than 10 years for me to walk through a March 30^th without struggling with the date – and then, all of a sudden, I would find myself on April 1^st and it would hit me – I made it through! So as we celebrate Passion week, I am celebrating His love, grace and forgiveness.

It’s been 20 years since I saw a line on a stick in a Wendy’s restroom – since I sat in disbelief and wondered what it meant.

20 years since I hesitated to make a phone call to a clinic and set an appointment for a consultation.

20 years since they told me I was making the right decision.

20 years since they told me it was safer to terminate the pregnancy than to try to carry to term and deliver a baby – safer for me anyway.

20 years since they performed an ultrasound and told me I was lucky I came in when I did because it was going to cost me $250 less than it would have in another week.

20 years since they handed me a valium and sat me in a dark room with other women, wait, other girls, who sat in silence and tried not to think about what was to come.

20 years since they positioned me on a table and told me it was my last chance to change my mind.

20 years since I didn’t.

20 years since I laid upon a table and read the serenity prayer taped to the ceiling above me and pondered the irony.

20 years since the sound of life being sucked from my body brought me to the reality of what exactly it was I was doing in that moment.

20 years since I couldn’t get out fast enough to throw up in the parking lot.

20 years since the enemy began an assault on my mind that would convince me I didn’t deserve a loving husband or children.

20 years since I felt my sin was too deep for the Blood of Christ to cover it.

20 years since I took the innocent life of what was formed by the Lord in my womb.

But in those 20 years, though the enemy tried to win – he has lost.

Christ’s Blood has won.

In those 20 years I met a man who would love and cherish and serve me – who calls me his “bride” every single day.

In those 20 years God showed that the enemy had no power over my womb, but He did – He has given me three beautiful children.

In those 20 years God has replaced my guilt and shame with FORGIVENESS and JOY.

In those 20 years God has used my darkest sin for His greatest glory.

In those 20 years every time the enemy tried to whisper “you’re not worthy”, God would shout “MY GRACE IS ENOUGH”

“Not that I have already obtain all this or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead. I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.” Philippians 3:12-14

I’m In the Lord’s Army!!!

Feb 19 2016

Up on Rocky Top my grandchildren and I love to sing and act out a song. It’s the old children’s bible song “I’m in the Lord’s Army!” When William and Addy come over and we sing, they will ask me “Nonna, let’s sing the “march song”. So we will sing at the top of our lungs while acting out all the motions of marching in the infantry, riding in the cavalry and zooming over the enemy. It is such fun but it became reality for me these last few weeks.

I left Rocky Top a few weeks ago to visit South Asia for the first time. This area of our world was new to me. It is a land where there are many, many gods. It is a land where cows, water buffalo, pigs and monkeys freely roam the streets due to their “holy” status. And yet it is a land where many children are malnourished, sick and barefoot. I was able to walk dirt roads where they had never seen a “white woman” nor had ever heard the name of Jesus. I sat and drank chai in dirt paved courtyards as laundry hung out on lines nearby and flies swarmed all around my face.

Darkness seemed to prevail everywhere around me even though the sun shone brightly in the sky.

Our leader asked if a team member would be willing to separate from the rest of the group to accompany one of the workers to some new areas. I volunteered not because I was brave but because I really wanted some special time with this worker. I wanted to encourage her. She has lived in this country for over 10 years and birthed all her children here. She is the brave one!

To be honest the experience of those two days away from the group and the night away were some of the most difficult of my life. Yet, I saw the Lord at work. I saw a woman who passionately poured herself out to a people who are living in such darkness that truly there are not words adequate enough to describe it. And yet the light of Christ is moving in this country. Men, women and children are coming to know the Light and are being trained by this worker how to share this Light among their own people.

When I returned to the group, I shared my “night time away experience” with our group. The next morning I once again had no hot water to wash my hair. My precious roommate, Joy, who truly lives up to her name, said a familiar truth that became reality for me at that moment.

Joy said, “Mrs. Donna, we are soldiers! Soldiers do not complain that they do not have hot water. Soldiers do not care about the bed they sleep in or the food they eat. They are soldiers. We are soldiers, Mrs. Donna. We are at war!”

My mind quickly went to my favorite song I sing with my grandchildren. “I’m in the Lord’s army.”

And it was no coincidence on our first night in this very dark country that we visited an orphanage and the song was sung in their language and acted out just as I do with grandkids…”I’m in the Lord’s army.”!

So I am back from that far away land, readjusting to our American luxuries of clean water, hot water in an instant, electricity 24 hours a day and fresh fruits and veggies in abundance. I sat around a table last night with eleven women who are soldiers in the Lord’s army and we all shared battle stories, war stories. They are different than the ones in Asia but nonetheless there is a battle here too.

I reminded them of the truth that children’s song is based on. “You then, my daughter, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus…Endure hardship with us like a good soldier of Christ Jesus.” II Timothy 2:1-3

You do not have to visit South Asia to experience war. Our enemy’s job is to steal, kill and destroy according to John 10:10. Our job is to endure and to choose His life, His peace and His joy in the face of hardship. Whatever battle you are experiencing today, I encourage you to remember that the same power that conquered death and hell now lives inside you according to God’s word. Choose to live in that power……….You are in the Lord’s army! And as I shout at the end of that song with my grandchildren saluting to the Lord…….YES, SIR!

An American Woman

Jan 18 2016

This week I welcome, Christi Avant Watson to sit with us on the back porch on Rocky Top. It may be cold outside but this blog will warm and challenge your heart! Christi is my oldest daughter. She has performed on stage as an actress/singer to audiences of thousands but recently she experienced something that brought her more joy than the applause of an audience. My momma’s heart is full knowing she is learning to live on a daily basis to an audience of ONE!

Today my American passport feels heavier, and it’s not because I have an extra stamp.

Last week I sat in a foreign coffee shop getting to know a new friend. Lovely hazel eyes locked on mine from the shadow of a veil covering her hair and forehead. Her eyes were consumed with a hunger to vicariously experience my life. Why? I am an American woman.

“Is United States like the movies?” she asked in broken English.

“In what way?” I responded.

“Can you go where you want? Can you do what you want?”

Linguistically, I understood, but I also understood like a woman in the dark understands a flashlight, and suddenly the passport I kept hidden snug around my waist felt like lead. Even though my new friend is well educated and in her late twenties, she must have a male relative escort her home after dark, not because the streets aren’t safe but because otherwise she is suspected of “impurity.” Without her family’s permission, my new friend cannot travel, because as a woman, she is considered incapable of such an independent pursuit. Even if her family approved travel plans, my friend is limited on where she can go without being raped or killed. For my new friend, selecting her own husband is a daydream.

On my friend’s passport, her religion is stamped in permanent ink. A mark on her heart that differed from the one on her passport could be paid for with her blood. Within the confines of her religion, God is inaccessible to my new friend when she is menstruating, after she sleeps with her husband, and for at least six weeks after she gives birth. The very things that were created unique to women make her dirty before her god.

Her questions led to some of my own. Why am I dished out such freedom while she heads out the door, in a headpiece chosen for her, to a world that expects nothing from her? I don’t know. I do know that this busted-up, unjust world looks an awful lot like the only one that makes sense when the daughters of Eve chose what we did not have over the Giver of life, and the sons of Adam stood by and let it happen. I do know that anything good found in the rubble of the Fall, like the freedom I have because of my American passport, is a gift to be invested and not wasted.

Because I am a woman in America, I am free on this Earth. Because I am a citizen of Heaven, I am free in Christ. Neither set of liberties make sense and neither set of liberties came cheap.

Before I walked a mile in my new friend’s homeland, I never realized the weight of responsibility I carry as a daughter of the King with an American passport.

Yes, sweet new friend, I can do what I want, so I won’t waste hours of my truly FREE time comparing or complaining on social media. I will use my unique gifts to invest my time in people, places, and experiences that are eternal. I will use my freedom of speech to bring life to my home and my workplace. I will use my freedom of religion to practice the “religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world” (James 1:27) so that one day my sweet new friend may be truly free.

American women, we are guaranteed freedom on Earth because of the blood of those who have gone before us and because of the blood of God’s Son, but we are NOT guaranteed how much time we have. For all our American freedoms, I see fear keeping us in bondage while the clock is ticking on God’s patience. When we stay behind our computer screens rather than getting involved, we might as well pick up a scarf and hide our face. “Jesus said to his disciples, ‘if anyone would come after me, he must deny himself, take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it. What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world yet forfeits his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul?’” (Matthew 16: 24-26).

A cross in your heart and an American passport in your hands is a call to die to apathy and rise in action. Our American freedoms are a blessing from God, but the very best of God’s blessings become curses when we hoard them, and this explains the joy I felt worshipping with believers who have NO American freedoms, and the lack of joy I so often feel in American churches. Our God is THE gift giver. We are created in HIS image. When he gives us a gift, it is always meant to be given away. Rather than being defined by the gift-Giver and His sacrificial mission, we allow our gifts to define who we are until we don’t know who we are. When I began surrendering the gifts that defined my identity, at first, it felt like death, but as I waited for the emptiness to come, I found a life wealthier than I ever could have imagined coming at me like a tsunami. Do you want to experience a flood of joy? Don’t wait another minute. Take your American privileges and the unique gifts that you’ve been given, and die to yourself. Go broke spending them all on someone else in the name of Jesus. Then, open up your hands and get ready to experience a freedom no passport can grant you, and no oppressor can strip away.