A Filtered Life

A Filtered Life

We all have filters. Car filters, air filters, coffee filters just to name a few. If you don't believe filters are important, make a pot of coffee and don't use a filter- see how that works out for you!!  For all of life- we need filters. 

We experience events that become very important filters in our lives. We have all had bad things happen- death, divorce, illness, financial crisis, mean people.  Those events become filters. Filters help us to see life through a different lens.  Filters can help us keep out the yucky stuff.

Mike and I like to say that we have a DIRT FILTER.  When you stand at an open grave of your 23 year old son and you watch people throw dirt on his casket, it changes what you let in your life, how you see life and what you choose to do with it.

Here are some things my filters have taught me:

1). The importance of Spiritual Authority. 

2). The importance of becoming Eternally Minded. 

3)  The necessity of learning to Trust in The Lord. 

4). The gift of Overcoming Fear. 

Whether we know it or not- God is always getting us ready for the next thing.  Filters define those moments or seasons in our lives. Filters provide transitions for the next big thing that is planned for us.  Filters help us become who God intends us to be.  Filters become opportunities for us to show God's love to others and to feel God's mercy. I believe that within the filter of God's great Will for my life, He deals with me in the most merciful way he can. These opportunities help me get to know God in a completely different way. 

The Family Heritage Filter--

My filters began with knowing and understanding my family heritage.   I have heard my parents' stories. My parents have done what the scriptures have instructed them to do.  Deuteronomy 11:18-21 - Fix these words of mine in your hearts and minds; tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Teach them to your children, talking about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Write them on the door frames of your houses and on your gates, so that your days and the days of your children may be many in the land the Lord swore to give your ancestors, as many as the days that the heavens are above the earth. The family stories helped develop my filter system.   If my parents 'got' through something, then I knew I could too.  Each time something happens in my life it becomes a part of my filter system. One thing helps with the next, then the next .....always moving forward!  Family stories build faith, family struggles can build great filters.

The Skip Filter-

Skip Thompson, my brother, was 38 years old with a wife and three young children, ages 6, 4, and 18 months, when he suffered an aortic dissection, massive stroke, and was in Intensive Care for 59 days! Now if that's not a big enough mess- it was all the mess we wanted!!  Skip ended up walking out of the hospital after those 59 days. Aortic dissections are typically instant death! Skip works, has found new love and enjoys his family. The spiritual authority in this filter was Wayne Thompson, my father.  My dad has always been a Godly man!  He set the stage after hearing from The Lord. We were going to lay hands on Skip, pray every day for Skip to be resurrected. We didn't need to pray about what God's Will was to be for Skip. We had read the Word and Skip was to live and be healthy. That's all my daddy needed to know. One night three different doctor friends told us that Skip was a very healthy young man, so he would most likely live three days. He was sure to die. No uncertainty about that!  My daddy said, "we are going to remind The Lord of what HE told us about Skip". We began to pray and I witnessed my momma crying out to God. She reminded God of who Skip was, who he had been and who he was going to be. She pleaded with The Lord to save her son- and  HE DID!  Skip's body began to work instantly. He would live. He is now my hero for doing what most people would have given up on--LIFE!   He is my filter!  He is loving life again, has found new love and is enjoying the fact that his children are growing up with a father.  Life is good!

Romans 8-18. Look for the goodness of God ordained suffering

This resurrection life you received from God is not a timid, grave-tending life. It's adventurously expectant, greeting God with a childlike "What's next, Papa?" God's Spirit touches our spirits and confirms who we really are. We know who he is, and we know who we are: Father and children. And we know we are going to get what's coming to us—an unbelievable inheritance! We go through exactly what Christ goes through. If we go through the hard times with him, then we're certainly going to go through the good times with him! That's why I don't think there's any comparison between the present hard times and the coming good times. The created world itself can hardly wait for what's coming next. Everything in creation is being more or less held back. God reins it in until both creation and all the creatures are ready and can be released at the same moment into the glorious times ahead. Meanwhile, the joyful anticipation deepens. All around us we observe a pregnant creation. The difficult times of pain throughout the world are simply birth pangs. But it's not only around us; it's within us. The Spirit of God is arousing us within. We're also feeling the birth pangs. These sterile and barren bodies of ours are yearning for full deliverance. That is why waiting does not diminish us, any more than waiting diminishes a pregnant mother. We are enlarged in the waiting. We, of course, don't see what is enlarging us. But the longer we wait, the larger we become, and the more joyful our expectancy. Meanwhile, the moment we get tired in the waiting, God's Spirit is right alongside helping us along. If we don't know how or what to pray, it doesn't matter. He does our praying in and for us, making prayer out of our wordless sighs, our aching groans. He knows us far better than we know ourselves, knows our pregnant condition, and keeps us present before God. That's why we can be so sure that every detail in our lives of love for God is worked into something good. God knew what he was doing from the very beginning. He decided from the outset to shape the lives of those who love him along the same lines as the life of his Son. The Son stands first in the line of humanity he restored. We see the original and intended shape of our lives there in him. After God made that decision of what his children should be like, he followed it up by calling people by name. After he called them by name, he set them on a solid basis with himself. And then, after getting them established, he stayed with them to the end, gloriously completing what he had begun. So, what do you think? With God on our side like this, how can we lose? If God didn't hesitate to put everything on the line for us, embracing our condition and exposing himself to the worst by sending his own Son, is there anything else he wouldn't gladly and freely do for us? And who would dare tangle with God by messing with one of God's chosen? Who would dare even to point a finger? The One who died for us—who was raised to life for us!—is in the presence of God at this very moment sticking up for us. Do you think anyone is going to be able to drive a wedge between us and Christ's love for us? There is no way! Not trouble, not hard times, not hatred, not hunger, not homelessness, not bullying threats, not backstabbing, not even the worst sins listed in Scripture:  They kill us in cold blood because they hate you. We're sitting ducks; they pick us off one by one. None of this fazes us because Jesus loves us. I'm absolutely convinced that nothing—nothing living or dead, angelic or demonic, today or tomorrow, high or low, thinkable or unthinkable—absolutely nothing can get between us and God's love because of the way that Jesus our Master has embraced us. (Romans 8:15-39 MSG)

The Thompson's and McSpadden's were learning to embrace spiritual authority, be eternally minded, trust The Lord, and overcome fear!

I'm not a fan of people saying “well, God allows things to happen to us to build our character”. Let me give you a heads up.... That's garbage in my opinion. I don't need character to be built by my filters. I need to understand how much God loves me and because he has loved me before I was in my mothers womb- I can trust that the filters that come in my life certainly go across the desk of God for approval, but God doesn't zap us to make us better. We live in an awful, sin-ridden world. That's why bad things happen!

Mikell- The Dirt Filter-

Life was great for us. Mikell was a senior in college, Matthew had graduated high school and went to International House of Prayer to spend 6 months in intercessory prayer before starting college. Mason was a junior in high school. 

2 Corinthians 4:16-18

Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.  For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.  So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. (2 Corinthians 4:16-18 NIV)

On Jan 4, 2008, we got a visit from the Sheriff telling us our son had died in his campus apartment at Arkansas Tech that day. It became a mess quickly! So here's where we were.....

Psalms 73

When my heart was grieved and my spirit embittered,    I was senseless and ignorant; I was a brute beast before you.    Yet I am always with you; you hold me by my right hand.    You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will take me into glory.    Whom have I in heaven but you? And earth has nothing I desire besides you.    My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.    Those who are far from you will perish; you destroy all who are unfaithful to you.    But as for me, it is good to be near God. I have made the Sovereign  Lord  my refuge; I will tell of all your deeds. (Psalm 73:21-28 NIV)

Mason had a ballgame that night that he chose to play in because the team needed him. That is an example of a great blessing for a mom. Mason put his hurt aside and gave to others in the worst pain in his life. After the game we were standing outside our home while dozens of friends and family were inside to support us. Mason wanted to know details that we knew and Mike told him what we had been told. We knew he died in his apartment at approximately 7:00 that morning. We knew he hadn't taken his own life. We knew no one had harmed him. We knew they had transported him to the state crime lab to find out what had happened.  Once we cried and prayed together, Mason said, "now it's time for us to live what we have said we believe. We have to trust God'!  And so we followed Mason’s lead and that’s what we do!

Say these words with me...…”time does not heal- time well spent -helps”.  Every day is a bad day -unless I choose to make it a good day. Every day I choose to get out of bed, work, live life. What I'd like to do is isolate myself from all of the world and just go away. I don’t want to see people.  I don’t want to talk to people.  I don’t want to go on.  But you see..... I have other filters- my mom buried a child that was 7 months gestation. We all had lost family and friends to death.  What I saw was- everyone carried on after those deaths.  Though we all wanted it to - life goes on.  It doesn’t stop.  Some people we watched moved on well, some not so well. The McSpadden’s wanted to carry on well. We had two children that needed us to 'show them what right looks like'. We had employees, friends and family who would need to see us doing well.  

We held on to Romans 8:28. This was all going to work out for good!  I wasn't real sure how God was gonna convince me of that, but deep in my soul- I just knew it was true. 

We had to begin to see this life as an internship for what is to come. This part of our life here is just preparation for our eternal life with the LORD.  Pastor Glenn Thompson, a true spiritual leader, helped our family change the way to see this filter. He helped us understand that we would always have a relationship with Mikell.  Mikell wasn’t dead he just didn’t live here anymore.  Our relationship with Mikell was now changed.  Mikell had become a part of the ‘great cloud of witnesses’.  Mikell would now be interceeding on our behalf to the Father.  Bro. T helped us to heal, grieve and work through what we now call the 'worst thing and best thing' that has ever happened to us. 

Spiritual authority, eternally minded, trust in The Lord, overcoming fear--- we were experiencing it in a whole new way!

And so our lives moved on.....

The Matthew filter-

August 14, 2010. Matthew, our middle son, got married! It was a very wonderful and very sad day for the McSpadden's, especially Matthew.   His oldest brother would only be there on a bracelet inscribed MPMJ - Mikell's initials. It was different.... And beautiful!  I had finally gotten my daughter I had always longed for--Life is good!

Roll forward exactly 60 days-October 13, 2010. Kasha called about 9:30 one night to tell us that Matthew had been hurt in an intramural flag football game. We drove to Fayetteville and throughout the night discovered that when Matthew had gotten hit in the neck, his right carotid artery had collapsed and a blood clot had caused a stroke on the left and frontal lobes of his brain. A STROKE at 21 years old! This was another bad day. Matthew was airlifted from Washington Regional to St.  Vincent's hospital in Little Rock so he could be the patient of a “rock star” doctor. This man had created this procedure that seemed to be what Matthew needed.   Matthew was there for a few days and then released back to Health South in Fayetteville for treatment.  I simply, forcefully and loudly said--”God what's up with this”?  Matthew had to learn to talk, walk, eat, live again!  It has been a hard struggle. One you just can't know unless you've been there and done that!  Excruciating heartbreak!  What a way to start a marriage, right?  Matthew is doing well, thanks to God, Kasha and his team of physicians and therapists. We believe God is going to fully restore him to the prophecies that have been spoken over his life. We know that!  He and Kasha live in Austin Texas. She is a nurse supervisor and he is teaching for KIPP: Camino charter school in San Antonio. Matthew is ministering to children who have less and want more! I love that!!  Matthew's filter had me pondering Job. Job had lost everything! Job 42:5 My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you. (Job 42:5 NIV). At the onset of Matthew's event, I asked God to not make me bury another child. God spoke to Mike, as he cried out pleading on our family's behalf-"yes we could do that"!  So we definitely knew God was listening to us- because HE responded!  I had grown up in a Christian home with parents who had always relied on God. I knew, like Job, because I had heard of HIM. But now- I could see God. I could clearly see that my life was about something bigger than me.  I had to keep my eyes on the Lord's blessings in my life.   I've always had Gods blessings. I had them before Skips event, during and after.   As my filter became a Dirt Filter, there were blessings before,  during and after Mikell went to heaven. Blessings come- God makes sure of that. Sometimes they are difficult to see, but it doesn't mean they are not there- it means I haven't recognized it yet. I've learned through my filters that life is a choice -so is happiness. Matthew helped me to learn these great things in life. 

The Mason Filter-

'Am I next?'  That question from Mason was hard to hear!! I couldn't say anything but 'I don't know'!  God does!  After counseling and many hours of soul searching,  Mason decided to transfer to Hollywood, California to finish his degree in music! What in the world! One in Heaven, one recovering from a stroke In a brand new marriage and now one moving as far away as he could find a place to move!!  Wow! What was this filter about?  This filter was about FREEDOM!  Mason taught me to never fear the unknown ever again! What's to fear when God speaks?  What's to fear when you know God is right smack in the middle of your life? This Mason filter is liberating!

The Financial Filter

In 1995, I left a wonderful school counseling job to expand my mom’s child care company.  Skip and I developed a plan to partner with a large corporation in Fort Smith to provide child care for it’s company employees. It was a two year, painstaking, lots of contracts and paperwork kind of project.  Finally the day came.  The day we opened -4 of 97 previously enrolled children showed up.  Something was bad wrong.  These 13 employees we had hired needed children in their classrooms.  I called the corporate office to say something was going on. They were panicked to say the least. The management team had learned that day that someone within the company had circulated an anonymous letter saying that my brother and I should be considered child sexual abusers because they had read some data that proved that most child care abusers were family providers. They were asking the company employees to NOT enroll their children in this company child care system.  (Now that's some pure research proven data right there isn't it??) NO- that's data straight from the pits of Hell. It was intended to destroy what God had orchestrated!  That led us down a path of 1 million + dollars of debt. The company worked with us and finally released us of a ten year lease only 3.5 years into the lease. The Christian leadership in this company was a huge part of this financial filter.  They showed love and mercy when they didn’t have to show us anything at all except contracts we had signed.

Most sane people would never venture out and do something like that ever again and take that risk. Today, I'm involved in 5 different companies that I own, manage or am a consultant. No I'm not insane- I'm radically in love with living life God's way!  I’m constantly focused on becoming eternally minded, trusting in The Lord, living under spiritual authority of many God-chasing people (mostly my husband) and not allowing fear to enter into my pathway!  I choose to trust God even when it doesn’t make sense or when it’s so painful I want to quit.  I choose life.

So back to that coffee filter- you can drink that cup of coffee you made without that filter or you can trust yourself to make another cup with the filter- making that coffee something to enjoy!

In the future- embrace your filters, love God; love others and just sit back and enjoy the LIFE!

Be blessed in 2014!