FREEZE FRAME

Psalm 139:15-16

15) My FRAME was not hidden from you, when I was being made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.
16) Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.

I am a product of the big hair(and occasional girl mullet), guess jeans, Benetton, Esprit, birth of MTV decade. Yes, that would be the 80’s. I wore sea lily purple lip gloss and turquoise eye liner with “Sun-In” bleach blonde hair and a tanning bed tan! Don’t judge me:) but you are allowed to laugh at me, or rather with me. I managed to “personalize” that perfectly good FRAME the Lord hand crafted in the secret place. Somehow, I thought tanner and blonder made the “original design” much better. Needless to say, once we humans take matters into our own hands we tend to mess up the masterpiece!

The lovely collage capturing my “high-school” essence was a brave (or stupid) attempt to take you back to the FREEZE FRAME of my life that parallels the stage my first born is currently in! I use the term FREEZE FRAME for a couple of reasons, one being the ROCK classic by the J. Geils Band (I say that with much sarcasm:) and another being the definition: a vivid, motionless scene or image. One verse of the melodic FREEZE FRAME reads, “this freeze frame moment can’t be wrong”. I object! A freeze frame moment most certainly can be wrong. Based on our own human memory and personal filters, we often have “rosy retrospection”, remembering the past as having been better than it really was, or “pessimistic retrospection”, remembering the past as having been worse than it really was. Both are wrong but in a world where “what we perceive is our reality”, those FREEZE FRAME moments tend to become our truth! This is where it becomes imperative to know GOD’S TRUTH and HOW GOD SEES US! And as for the definition of FREEZE FRAME, in reality there is no such thing as a “motionless scene or image”. We can look at a frozen picture but based on “our past experience, our present circumstances and our future hopes and dreams”(in the words of Andy Stanley), we have put that FREEZE FRAME into a “personalized centrifuge”. That image is moving through our brains at the speed of light and it is leaving a mark! I almost titled this blog “BETWEEN THE FRAMES”, because it is the life lived between the FREEZE FRAMES that filters what we remember. The life lived BETWEEN THE FRAMES is like “mini-dashes” on “THE DASH” between our birth and death dates!

Psalm 139:15-16 makes note of the fact that God knows my life intimately! Not only did HE create my FRAME but HE is fully aware of and fully present in every detail BETWEEN THE FRAMES! Wrapping my brain around GOD’S OMNIPRESENCE used to make me cringe, when I thought of HIM witnessing all the yuck I had FREEZE FRAMED in my mind; however, when sweet JESUS ushered my saved, yet self-imprisoned, shame-shackled self out into glorious restoration light, I went from cringing to DANCING! We have a God that never leaves us or forsakes us and loves us in the middle of our messes but HE also loves us too much to leave us there! (I love that quote by someone:)

Upon deliverance, I began to let God renew my mind and I am embracing the reality that, by golly, (who says that?), I HAVE THE MIND OF CHRIST; THEREFORE I am gonna live like it! I was 37 years old before the enemies blinders came off and I saw the open door to freedom that had been there since I was saved by grace in 1978! I loaded dirt in that open cell for almost 30 years BUT for the past 7 I have been walking out the adventure of a life time! My FREEZE FRAMES from the past are filtered through a Kaleidoscope of Grace and my BETWEEN THE FRAME moments are glimpses of the sovereign hand of God all along the way!

My filter and my focus is JESUS CHRIST and the FREEZE FRAMES that result are more than INSTAGRAM worthy!

This crazy hindsight personal reflection is the aftermath of seeing my first born drive off to college this week! After I filled his belly and his gas tank, I watched, as the leading actor in my first “ultrasound” drove away! A little side story here-I actually taped over(that would be VCR tapes-remember I am an 80’s girl) my ultrasound with DAYS OF OUR LIVES! I really thought that would be the death of me, but it is funny how a “video or a picture” loses its significance in light of the “real thing”! In this era of social media, we often miss the people right in front of us, because we are posting, tweeting or publishing.

(and I am noting right here that I am pausing this blog entry, in order to make my second born some pigs in a blanket! How ironic that I ALMOST told her to make it herself because I was blogging, just after my parental platform on social media stealing our “social moments”) BACK IN 10:)

So where was I? Seeing the growth in an 18 year investment is awesome on a financial statement, but seeing the growth in an 18 year old “loan from God” renders one speechless! To think that God entrusts HIS children to HIS crazy older children is mind boggling! But then I remember that we are all HIS image-bearers and I’m empowered to know that, if HE calls me to it, HE also equips me to do it! The picture at the bottom of this blog captures the FREEZE FRAME bookends from Kindergarten to Senior year and the overflow you are about to experience is an attempt to document Jake’s BETWEEN THE FRAMES-#thesearethemoments!

**backpacks, juice boxes, tucking in, rise and shine, field trips, selling gift wrap, teachers gifts and homeroom parties, cookie cakes, lunch boxes and lunchables, bicycles, AR reading, halloween carnivals and costumes, Easter bunnies and egg hunts, Tooth fairies, Santa Clause, church and night time prayers, Pokemon, Power Rangers, little league, soccer, basketball (really anything with a ball), GIRLS, broken arms, a baseball to the face, neck surgery to remove where “the angels kissed you” because the Doctor said so, stitches and more stitches, oceans, mountains, swimming pools, lakes, boats and jet skies, grandparents, cousins, camps, voice changes and cars, tears, laughter, MORE GIRLS, MORE SPORTS, hormones, steak and shrimp and food food food, new shoes, growth spurts, new shoes etc… loss of loved ones, poor choices, good choices, learning and growth, really getting “grace” and letting “grace” get you, pursuing Jesus for yourself, an honor roll senior year and a BAMA BOUND decision!

Our Jesus saw all this and then some! Remember, these moments were written in HIS BOOK before they ever came to be! At Jake’s Bama orientation the Lord gave me a promise I am claiming over Jake’s life! HE showed me this in HIS BOOK, while I was journaling in Jake’s new apartment:

2 Kings 19:30b
“…you will put roots down in your own soil and you will grow up and flourish!”

These are words of life! How sweet Jesus was to a momma to give her this promise, as she prepares to “let her 1st baby go”. Jake’s “own soil” is Tuscaloosa now and God has promised he WILL BE ROOTED, he WILL GROW and he will FLOURISH! Jake will not just “survive” college but he will “THRIVE”(prosper, bloom, succeed, FLOURISH)!

So as I wrap this blog up (which by the way Jake loves to make fun of me as a blogger:), I would like to return to the FRAME theme. This is my prayer for Jake as he enters this “new soil”, “new stage”, “new life”. I am living proof that:

“when darkness seems to hide HIS FACE
I rest on HIS unchanging grace
In every high and stormy gale
My anchor holds within the veil
My anchor holds with in the veil”

As a messed up momma who was saved, delivered, restored and now walking in fulfillment, I can confidently say that the GOD who made my FRAME and who made Jake’s FRAME does not make mistakes! HE MAKES MASTERPIECES!

Dear Lord,
“My hope is built on nothing Less
Than Jesus blood and righteousness
I dare not trust the sweetest FRAME
But wholly trust in Jesus Name!

Christ alone; cornerstone
Weak made strong; in the Savior’s love
through the storm, He is Lord
Lord of all!”

Thank you HILLSONG for these lyrics, for this anthem, for this prayer!
As the Lord fills BETWEEN THE FRAMES, may we wholly trust in JESUS NAME!

GoGod