Purity and Truth Menu

Heidi’s Thoughts

Permalink:

2019 Christmas Letter

by Heidi Jost

December 23, 2019

Meeting you here, at year’s end, I have one word for both of us to grab hold of as we look backward over 2019 and forward into 2020: gratitude.

It’s a weapon, friends. Wield it against the dark forces of discontent and anxiety that are always attacking our minds! Being thankful isn’t a nicety. It’s a necessity if we want to be present in the moment and grow closer to Christ. Lack of gratitude draws us away from the Good Giver and deeper into ourselves. I speak from the trenches: it’s a daily fight to be thankful and focus on all I have been given rather than on all that I wish I had or on all that I fear might be taken from me. Continue reading…

  • Thanks for leaving a comment, please keep it clean. HTML allowed is strong, code and a href.

Permalink:

Tips for People Offering and Receiving Health Advice

By Heidi Jost

Knowledge is at our fingertips. This has infused us with a sense of confidence and understanding about health and disease that we actually may not have. I know well the adrenaline rush of online research that causes me to think I’ve found a cause or a cure for someone’s suffering.

While we have advanced greatly from the time when Greek and Roman “doctors” treated all sickness by the four bodily “humours” (fluids) theory, scientific medical understanding still has a long way to go.

It is humbling to say “I don’t know” in the face of suffering. Look at Job of the Bible, and his friends. They sat in silence with him for a week, but after that they couldn’t shut up, offering theory after wrong theory about why Job had experienced such devastating loss. They offered partial truths and diagnoses with a lot of dangerous, false views about God mixed in, and at the end, God told Job to offer sacrifices on their behalf so that He “would not deal with them according to their folly.” Note also that God did not tell Job the cause of or cure for his suffering.

To those who are seeking to help their suffering friend, here are some thoughts to keep in mind: Continue reading…

  • Rebecca

    Heidi, wow. SO good. So good. Thank you for that, in the midst of your lack of spare time and energy!! You and Jesse have graciously dealt with us in our ignorance, and so kindly agreed to educate us. THANK YOU.

    You’re my heroine, sister.

    To the road ahead …
    Rebecca

  • Thanks for leaving a comment, please keep it clean. HTML allowed is strong, code and a href.

Permalink:

In Defense of Stuff

By Heidi Jost

I can’t believe I’m writing this: I, who have painted and stalked the war path against STUFF.

I love, love, love pictures of sparse, white expanses framing single chairs with well-draped blankets. I can feel my soul rise and float peacefully while I meditate on these pictures. My white walls are more a grunge shade with interesting “bumps and dents” texture. My blankets are literally throw blankets… all over the floor. Single chairs are non-options in this house of seven. When we watch a movie or read a story, we need two couches. Golly, my floating soul of peace hates being yanked down by these reality checks.

I salivate over blog posts by other moms about how much more streamlined their lives are after they swept a lot of material possessions out the door. I have armed myself with the argument “less is more,” wielding it like a righteous torch in the cluttered darkness.

Our North American experience of SO. MUCH. STUFF. is unprecedented in history. Which means basically nothing because every era of history has something in it that has, to some degree, never been known or done before. So like everybody else who’s ever lived, we are dealing with new challenges here. Let me ask a couple of questions to wade through the material pileup.

  1. Are things good or bad?

I can answer this the complicated way by pointing out various philosophies that have branded physical, material things as evil or dark, and spiritual things as good or light. I can casually toss some polysyllables your way to help you see that this idea of things being the enemy of the greater good is really not new. (And also, to preen my feathers of knowledge. All two of them.) Manichaeanism, Docetism, Gnosticism, Marcionism. A bunch of people have held these ideas over the years in order to make sense of our messy world. Continue reading…

  • Carl Gray

    Wow, that was just marvelous and so well though out. Thank you, Heidi, for sharing this with us. This discussion is one I have had with so many families and it usually comes down on the side of, “stuff is bad; we have too much; peace comes with having nothing, so we’re getting rid of stuff, even stuff certain children care deeply for, maybe then the attitudes or our children will change.”

    I have pleaded with parents to see past the “stuff” and focus on the attitudes about the stuff. The children may be fighting over toys, so is the solution to get rid of the toy? Perhaps temporarily, to help them think about it for awhile. But what you really need to deal with is the heart attitude. If they have no toys to fight over, that would be good, right? Well, except that then God would have no opportunity to teach them how to deal with their possessions wisely, learning to enjoy the good gifts and use them for good.

    We tend to focus on anything but the person as the source of the problem, when the real problem is right there in those little hearts and the stuff is the perfect object lesson for dealing with that. Then there is the attitude of the parents. Mom feels “crowded” because the living room is filled with stuff, the Lego space ship which keeps losing pieces to step on, books scattered about, play dress-up clothes, homemade swords, etc. Then things finally go over the top when the children all work together to build a fort out of dining room chairs and blankets, which is well outfitted with all the things they can think of to go inside. Dad comes home and can’t even get to his favorite easy chair to read or watch TV and so he gets grumpy. So the parents grumble at the kids to clean up the mess. Now who has the attitude problem?

    I have seen this scenario play out so many times and it hurts me to see the bad attitudes on both sides, simply because the adults have forgotten the joys of being a child, the spontaneous, creative play that is helping to prepare them for when “playing house” will no longer be play, but the real thing. It hurts my heart to see parents who covet minimalism so much that they let it get in the way of a happy home.

    My home was never what you would call tidy. In fact, to this day my childhood home is so filled with enough “stuff” to drive a Shaker into an OCD fit. It looks nothing like the modern homes with tidy white walls with nothing on them but a few choice framed family photos, tastefully decorated with a few items on shelves or end tables so as to not look too sparse. Our home has rows and rows of bookshelves in every room, none too tidy because books are always circulating. It has an eclectic variety of items on the walls from photos to paintings, wood burned scripture plaques made in VBS 40+ years ago, such that barely a square foot of wall space can be seen. We have a wasp’s nest hanging from a corner (ref. Wives and Daughters). We have containers of interesting and pretty rocks collected over 50 years, enough antique glassware covering every horizontal surface to resemble a second-hand shop.

    Although the quantity of “stuff” has increased over the years, this is largely the way it was when we were children and we came to love and cherish our home of stuff because everything in it, though perhaps having no intrinsic practical purpose, had some connection to people, relationships, memorable events (I can remember finding the at pretty quartz crystal or fool’s gold on vacation in British Columbia or rescuing the wasp’s nest from the woods). The books were filled with things to learn or just to enjoy. The antique glassware adorned the room like jewelry and made us feel “rich” compared to our friends whose homes contained only things that served some practical purpose. I am grateful for a very wise mother who, although she too felt “crowded” in our small rooms, recognized that developing relationships, not only with her children but with friends and neighbors who felt free to drop in any time because that’s what our home was about, and through those relationships teaching Christlike character and attitudes.

    As you can tell, this is something very near and dear to my heart. So I very much appreciate your willingness to be honest and recognize this trend toward heartless minimalism that is hurting relationships and covering up for the real problems that we all have when we cling to strongly to our “things.” Sorry to take over your blog with a blog of my own, but this is a topic that I feel very strongly about and couldn’t stop writing about my thoughts once I got going. Hopefully it will provide further food for thought.

  • Thanks for leaving a comment, please keep it clean. HTML allowed is strong, code and a href.

Permalink:

2017 Christmas Letter

(family photos by Hannah-Grace Jost)

By Heidi Jost

Dear people,

It is said that life is full of storms: If you aren’t in the midst of one, you have either just come through one or are headed into one. Mercifully – and frighteningly – we don’t know what clouds lie on our horizons. There are sea charts noting shorelines, shoals, ocean currents, and doldrums. But God offers us something infinitely better than a comprehensive print-out of our life’s hardships. He gives us Himself.

This angers some people, who would rather have explanations for their suffering or a tangible hand of God than be offered the invisible presence of Jesus to accompany them. The thing is: What do we really need more when breakers of pain and fear are washing over us? Clinical answers? Or Someone who has been to the depths of human suffering and promises to deliver better comfort than anyone else can give us?

The reality of our past year held the most terrifying storm we have ever been through, and our five year old Elijah’s life was at the centre of it.

Through the month of July, our middle child – big-eyed, slender Elijah – was increasingly whiny, thirsty, hungry, and unable to keep from wetting his bed at night. Something was off, but we couldn’t put our finger on what. He seemed to be thinner than ever – was he going through a growth spurt? Then after a full week of vacation Bible school at church, Elijah puked and showed flu-like symptoms. We were so frightened by how he had become skin and bones so rapidly, and on August 15, he woke listless, mumbling, and complaining of chest pain. Jesse hurried him to local ER. After multiple tests, consultation with Lethbridge doctors, and being intubated to pump excruciatingly painful built-up air from his stomach, Elijah was rushed by ambulance to Lethbridge. He was severely dehydrated; very constipated; blood sugar, ketones, and heart rate very high; liver stressed: the signs of diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA). His tiny body was fighting to survive the shutting down of insulin-producing cells in his pancreas, cells we’d never heard of before, but were suddenly the reason our son was teetering between life and death. Elijah was now a Type 1 diabetic, the doctor told us. Unless a cure was found, he would have this autoimmune disease for the rest of his life. A nurse from the Lethbridge diabetic team came the next day to explain insulin injections, glucose readings, etc., and I couldn’t stop crying the whole time. It was so much to process. Continue reading…

  • Carolyn Anderson

    ❤️

  • Anne-Marie

    So loved your family newsletter Heidi!! You shared beautifully how God has shown Himself strong on your behalf with all the storms you have been through this past year. Praise God for the healing that has come, and for what He is doing through it all! Love you! Btw, the pictures are precious of your adorable family! Love cousin Anne-Marie

  • Thanks for leaving a comment, please keep it clean. HTML allowed is strong, code and a href.

Permalink:

Beggared: Part 2

by Heidi Jost

In Part 1, (which you can read here) I left us stuck in a black gloopy rut of failure, wailing “what a mess!” And you raising both eyebrows, ready to commit me to a ward of some kind.

dreamstime_xs_64789976I confessed earlier that I say “Jesus” a lot more now, because it really is all about Him. I am in the rut because, since birth, I have made life all about me. Looking around for some superior ground to stand on and see out, I compare myself with others or with myself-in-my-more-shining-moments. But therein lies the quicksand: This ground is always unstable, a giant maw about to swallow.

Now, we can both keep trying and slipping and sinking using these old habits of making ourselves feel better. “Our plight,” says Michael Reeves in one of the best books ever, “is not merely that we each fail to be good enough and need a little forgiveness… Instead, our very identity is a problem.” (Rejoicing in Christ)

I can think of two unchanging aspects of our identity: we never stop loving ourselves, and we never stop sinning.

But Jesus. His love is always outward and giving, and He has never sinned. He points out, “When you were powerless to save yourself, I did it.” (Rom. 5:6, my paraphrase) He beckons, “If My power could drag your sin down and bury it, how much more can that power raise you up into a new life of freedom!” (Rom. 5:10, my paraphrase)

Okay, so back to those days I failed, snapped at the kids, and left work undone. How does Jesus fit there? How do I get to the point of stopping my wail of failure and instead saying, “So what?” Rather than first trying harder in the next breath to be nicer to the kids, or scrambling to think of some other mom who screwed up worse than I did (a sin in itself), I can face my wrongs. They are bad. I hurt the people I loved most because they didn’t meet my expectations. I idolized the goal of a clean house, and then I got mad because it was still dirty. Double whammy.

Then I can look at Jesus. How does He see my sin? As sin. How does He see me? As a woman He wants to forgive and restore. To whoever is willing, He will give “a spirit of adoption by which we cry out, ‘Abba! Father!’” (Gal. 4:6, Rom. 8:15) Daddy, Daddy! John Piper says, “This is the testimony of the Spirit that we are the children of God.”

We can inherit God. He can, and wants to live within us. His spirit of adoption, the Holy Spirit, yearns to guide us into truth when we are slopping about in the rut of failure. And the truth is: Jesus, who has power over everything, offers us freedom. What we could not do, He did, and then some. He broke chains and shed light into darkness. At every point where we have failed, He has not.

Continue reading…

  • Thanks for leaving a comment, please keep it clean. HTML allowed is strong, code and a href.

Permalink:

Beggared, Part 1

dreamstime_xs_64789976by Heidi Jost

Yes, read it again. I picked the second definition:

beggared: to exceed the limits, resources, or capabilities of.

Now do you want to hear how good being beggared is?

Climbing out of ruts is painful. Those neglected mental muscles are taxed. But the climb yields delight, because above the mud of the rut is a beautiful view.

And I’m seeing another piece of it. Slowly, slowly.

I’m seeing that comparing really is stupid. (Can somebody get this genius girl a gold medal?) Horizontal gazing only brings deeper ruts, deeper dissatisfaction. Yuck. More mud.

Vertical gazing is really amazing. No eyes on the Joneses anymore, just on Jesus. (Yes, I will stop being so tacky with my wit now. I don’t want you to drop reading this in disgust, because maybe some of my journey will overlap yours and help you a bit, like mine has been helped by so many others.)

I say “Jesus” a lot more now. And I know, as I say this incredible name, I am still far from comprehending the massive awesomeness of Who my mouth refers to. But I say “Jesus” and I think “Jesus” because I see more how everything really is all about Him.

I don’t want to shock you, but I need to tell you that I failed today. Better yet, I said afterward, “So what?”

Because I am learning to see that my identity wasn’t dropped and scrambled when I failed. There are no pieces for me to pick up and reassemble in shining order. In and of myself, I am a mess. Always. Deep down, you probably know that’s true of you, too. Continue reading…

  • Thanks for leaving a comment, please keep it clean. HTML allowed is strong, code and a href.

Permalink:

The Half-Life of the Shackled and Blind

dreamstime_xs_54419891By Heidi Jost

“And Saul approved of their killing [Stephen.]” Acts 8:1

We’ve been talking about Joseph around here. Distilling his tale for my children has a trickle-down effect in my own heart:

Forgiveness unshackles our spirits from the past. Bitterness chains us so we are helpless to be all God wants us to be right now.

Joseph’s brothers wanted him dead, and their wish nearly came true. But Joseph lived. Can you imagine, on the desert journey to Egypt, dragged and dehydrated, how Joseph might have been tormented by the memory reel replaying his brothers’ murderous, hateful words and actions?

Yet he forgave them all. “Am I in the place of God?” he said. Of course not. How could he hold their sins against them, then?

Seeing through God’s eyes, Joseph knew that while his brothers “intended to harm me…God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.”

We had dinner recently with our friend from Afghanistan, who came of age under Taliban rule. Sitting long at table, we listened to her stories of God on the move in the Middle East.

“Muslims know evil spirits,” she said. What they need to see, and what they are seeing now, is God’s spirit of power and healing. Miracles happen there, and eyes are opened. Like hers were years ago, mostly through the relentless love of missionaries.

“It was always very scary – all the time – over there,” said our friend. Her eyes lit then, “But also, so – “ she gestured, arms out, looking for a word big enough.

“Thrilling?” I said. Continue reading…

  • Thanks for leaving a comment, please keep it clean. HTML allowed is strong, code and a href.

Permalink:

Breathing Life in the Culture of Death

http://www.dreamstime.com/royalty-free-stock-photo-cute-little-girl-bright-face-mask-image47189975By Heidi Jost

            When the first drops of blood fell, I began a journey to life, though I didn’t know it at the time. In the months after my unborn baby slipped out of my body, God showed me something priceless that I had paid lip service to, but my heart was far from believing: life is precious, children are a blessing, and God can be trusted.

Always.

Jesse and I already had the million-dollar family: a boy and a girl. A lot of people commented that we must be done. We joked, “Nah, we’re going for a multi-million dollar family.”

I have wanted every baby that has been conceived in my womb. I just haven’t wanted them to come closer together than two years, afraid I might go crazy or that I might look to others like a run down, exhausted, and overwhelmed rabbit factory who doesn’t “know what causes that.” Fear of having kids close in age infected my thoughts and choices.

Anyway, here I was, pregnant with baby three, who was going to be just over two years younger than its big sister. I felt like I could handle this, and we were excited! In between waves of nausea, that is. When the waves settled early, I was pretty happy. Until the blood dripped and I found out the baby had already died in my womb over a month ago.

We buried baby Davey by my sister’s grave. And I walked out of that cemetery shaken to my core, because I finally realized the truth: All human life is God-given and sacred.

Until Davey died, I think I subconsciously believed that life was only a blessing if it came on my timetable. If my children were born close in age, that was my “mistake,” and they really should not have showed up when they did.

I said the right things on the outside, but inside me there grew a culture of death.

It is in the air we all breathe. This culture of death has great and potent arguments against the Creator of Life: We need to pace ourselves, we need to know our limitations and be wise in how many children we choose to have. We shouldn’t keep on having kids if our motivation is just because we feel pressured to, or because we feel less-than as women unless we are breeding like rabbits.

These arguments take our eyes off the issue at stake: Is all life God-ordained and sacred? No matter when it comes, no matter whether we felt ready for it at the moment or not, no matter how much it will demand from us when it arrives.   Continue reading…

  • Jyl

    Thanks for writing this article Heidi. It covers many things I’ve been thinking through and is an encouragement. When I first got married I was excited to have kids and wanted to surrender my life to God in the area of children. However, His ways are not our ways and his plan was for us not to have kids right away . This was challenging for me to accept at first and I realized I wasn’t fully trusting Him. It took me on a journey of faith and I’ve learned so much. It also gave me a new appreciation of life, realizing every child is a gift and miracle from God. God can be trusted, even though there are many times we don’t understand what He is doing, we can trust He knows best.

  • David

    WOW!

    I love the perspective you have shared here.

  • •••
  • Thanks for leaving a comment, please keep it clean. HTML allowed is strong, code and a href.