My Trauma Is Not My Template - Levi Lusko

If you have a copy of the scriptures, we're going to spend some time today in Haggai chapter 2. I know, probably not in your bingo card. Haggai chapter 2, pro tip, it's the third to the last book of the Old Testament. So if you can find your way to Matthew and just go a few steps to the left, you're going to be at Haggai. It's the second shortest book of the Old Testament. The shortest being my guy, Obadiah. But Haggai is the second shortest. And he is one of what's known as three post-exilic prophets. Say that three times fast. He's one of three post-exilic prophets. And if you want to just kind of think about how to frame or what category to put the post-exilic prophets, if you take what happens in the book of Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther, and you mix that, it pairs perfectly with the three post-exilic prophets because you have the prophets who are writing during the same period covered by the historical books of Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther. I want to preach to you a message as we kick off a brand new collection of talks today called Alter Call, a message that I'm titling, my trauma is not my template. My trauma, listen to me, is not my template. You know what a template is. It's a pattern. You buy it and you use it to then produce something

that's based off of it. My trauma is not, will not, in Jesus' name, be my template for my future. Have you ever noticed how easy it is to discover, and spot, and see the dysfunction in other people's lives, right? I am so good at seeing how you're broken, right? I could almost do it professionally, you know? You ever just walk around just thinking, you're doing it wrong, you're doing it wrong, there's a better way, you could be doing it. Like if you watch someone book a flight and you're really good at it, you're just like, what are you doing, you Luddite? You know what I'm saying? Who are these people who haven't discovered TSA pre-yet? What's going on? You like taking your shoes off? You watch people and it's easy, listen, it's easy to see how other people are getting it wrong. It's harder to see it in your own life, right? We tend to go grasping for the sawdust, the speck out of other people's eyes while there's a two by four from Home Depot staking out of our own eyes, right? So it's helpful as an exercise every once in a while to look at your life through the eyes of other people. And sometimes it's embarrassing. Like the other day, I was in my car driving to my house with a friend of mine in the car.

We pulled into the driveway, it was just like normal. This is how it happened every single time. And when I got the car finally into the garage, he said, what's the matter with you? Here's what happened. Let me just appeal back the layers, right? I had pulled up to our street where the house was in sight and did what every normal person does. I pushed the garage door opener button, right? That was linked up to my car and the remote's not there, but it's like linked up to your car somehow. And it didn't work. So I pushed it again, I pushed it again. And then without saying a word, I just pulled into my driveway, got out of the car, pushed the button manually, opened the garage, got back in the car, pulled into the garage. At which point he looked to me, was baffled by this and said, what's the matter with you? And I hadn't even thought about it, but I had to explain, it doesn't work sometimes. He goes, have you ever thought about calling a garage door repairman? I said, well, it works sometimes. And that was my honest rationale. Like sometimes it works, it's not always broken. Sometimes, and it was almost like slot machine. Like I was like, is today gonna be the day? You know, like, is today, oh, it opens, presto, amazing. And I think if it just would have been

completely not working, I probably would have broken down and called someone right away. But because sometimes it did, sometimes it didn't, I wasn't quite sure if it was actually broken. And so I Googled it and someone said like, maybe if you have LED light bulbs, they can mess with the frequency. And so I replaced all the light bulbs. It's not like I didn't try, right? But when I saw this through my life, through his eyes, he said to me, he said, do you realize how much of your life, he knew how to talk to me. He said, do you realize if you add up how much of your life you're wasting doing this, just fix the stupid garage. Life's too short, Levi. Come on, fix the garage. I was like, you're right. So I called a garage door repairman. And you know what he said to me? He said, do you really want us to come out? It's gonna be expensive and it might not actually be broken. He tried to talk to me. I'm like, do you understand how sales works here? And I almost took it. Like, you're right, you're right, this is a mistake. I'll just get new light bulbs, you know, just live with this. And he said, all right. And turns out a blackout had happened. And when the blackout happened, there's like a little surge.

And apparently it sort of fried the circuit that supplied the antenna. And so moral of the story is, I have a brand new garage door opener that works 100% of the time. today in the future. But I'm not parked in the garage, because I lifted my truck, and now it doesn't fit anymore. And I didn't measure it before I lifted. So the garage door opens, but the dysfunction has remained. Haggai chapter 2, here's what we find. He says, who is left among you who saw this temple in its former glory? And how do you see it now? In comparison with it, is this not in your eyes as nothing? Yet now, be strong, Zerubbabel, says the Lord. And be strong, Joshua. Remember him? That's not the same Joshua. That was a trick. I tested you. All right, be strong, the son of Jehoshaphat, the high priest. And here we go, for all of us, be strong, all you people of the land, says the Lord. And work. Someone say work. For I am with you, says the Lord of hosts. According to the word that I covenanted with you, when you came out of Egypt, so my spirit remains among you. Do not, what?

Do not fear. For thus, says the Lord of hosts, once more, it is a little while, I will shake heaven and earth, the sea and dry land. And I will shake all nations. And they shall come to the desire of all nations. And I will fill this temple with what? With glory, says the Lord of hosts. The silver is mine. And the gold is mine, says the Lord of hosts. The glory of this latter temple shall be greater than the former, says the Lord of hosts. And in this place, I will give, say it if you know, peace. I will give peace, says the Lord of hosts. And we are thankful for the word of God. An altar was all they had. The year 520 BC, over 800 years since Joshua, the servant of Moses, had gone the way of all the earth. 800 years had passed. And what a full time it had been. I mean, with Jesus, it was a full time. I mean, with Joshua and the children of Israel coming into the land of milk and honey, all of the excitement, all of the battles, all that they needed to do to get the nation established, fulfilling ancient prophecies given to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. They were finally out of Egypt, crossed over the Jordan, into the promised land, battle after battle after battle. And yet we here, 800 years later,

are hearing the children of Israel addressed as needing to do work to build a temple, a temple that had been lost. A temple that had been built, but then had gotten lost. You see, after Joshua came the period of the judges, the wild, wild West, where the nation of Israel was just getting established. They eventually were formalized as a kingdom under the monarchy, first with Saul, then with David, eventually with Solomon. And it would be under Solomon that the temple would actually be built in Jerusalem. No longer just a tent, no longer a tabernacle, no longer set up, tear down every week. Trilith had moved to Trilith live. There was finally a temple, a place for God's glory to fall, a place to meet with God and to bring sacrifices, to bring offerings. But all that had ended in 586 BC, during a period of time known as the Babylon captivity, the Babylonian captivity. The books we're reading are post-exilic prophetic literature. That is to say, after the exile. What was the exile? The exile was when Nebuchadnezzar, the great king, the golden king, swooped in, laid waste to Israel, laid waste to Jerusalem, tore down walls, tore down the temple structure itself, plundered the most holy places, took the golden vessels,

the golden cups, all of the things that had been built and brought across the desert into the promised land and eventually were put into the temple itself. He took them as loot back to Babylon and brought the entire nation of Israel, the best and the brightest of them anyway, in chains to serve as servants inside the Babylonian capital. The most famous, of course, being Daniel, and then who we know of as Rakshak and Benny. Anybody grew up watching VeggieTales, Rakshak and Benny, right? Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were their slave names, not their Hebrew names. And so you have the whole nation living in exile. So what we're talking about here comes after, 800 years after Joshua's death, the children of Israel had been subjugated, had been taken captive, and were just now emerging 70 years later from captivity. How did it all happen? I wish we could go into it. It involved a king named Cyrus the Persian, because Israel went into Babylon as captives, but came out of Persia. And in between, there was a whole nother regime, the Medo-Persian Empire is what the second one is called. So you have drunken Belshazzar toasting to the gods of silver and stone, basically saying to the God of the Bible, my God is better than your God, and what happened?

The God of the Bible showed up, at least his hand anyhow, be careful what you wish for. Daniel 5, the hand of God showed up writing on the wall, a little graffiti, he put his tag on the wall, it scared the king. You know what he wrote? You know what God wrote? You have been weighed, you have been counted, you've been found wanting. And that very night, Belshazzar was slain and Darius the Mede took over. But eventually a king would come into power called Cyrus the Great, Cyrus the Persian. Do you know what's crazy about there being a global superpower that at its helm was a man named Cyrus? I don't know, Isaiah chapter 45, written 150 years before these events took place. Isaiah wrote under the power of God's Holy Spirit, my servant Cyrus, my shepherd will do my will. And basically Isaiah prophesied that Cyrus would show God's people the hidden riches of secret places, the treasures of darkness. And a prophecy was given that some man named Cyrus who would do God's will would give the order and the instruction for all captive people to be allowed under his reign to return to their homeland. So 150 years later, all of a sudden, a guy named Cyrus is king of the world. Do you know what Josephus says happens?

They, the Jewish people show him the scroll. They show him Isaiah 45 and they're like, dude, you might wanna check this out. He reads it and he's like, when was this written? And they're like, I don't know, 150 years ago. So you know what he does next? He goes, I have a rule. All conquered people can return to their homeland. He made an edict of it. Next time you're in London, go into the British Museum. Ask to see Cyrus's cylinder. Because in the year 1879, archeologists working in the excavated ruins of Babylon found a cylinder that said basically, I, Cyrus the king, rule and decree that anybody that wants to can go back to wherever they're from. And it came at a time when Darwinian thinking was really taking hold in the world and biblical trust and understanding was at an all time low. And basically no one knew or believed that Cyrus was real until the cylinder was found, which by the way, it's on display. You can see it for free next time you're in England. Come on, let's just thank God that his word always comes to pass in the way that he says it will. That was all just a beautiful distraction. But Cyrus says, you can go, you can rebuild.

So Zerubbabel is appointed governor. He comes up in the book of Zechariah. You'll hear about him in the book of Ezra. Zerubbabel basically says, okay, well, I'm gonna go back to Israel with Cyrus's permission and rebuild the temple. That's the one job we're gonna do first. Because right, first things first, we heard it during the offering. Seek ye first the kingdom of God. So we're not gonna go and do anything else before God's house gets built. And he gets 50,000 Jews who are willing to leave Babylon. Not all of them will, some stay there. And 50,000 people plus Zerubbabel, they're hi-ho, hi-ho, it's off to, they're so excited. They're gonna rebuild the temple. And you know what they built first? The altar, they got the altar done. Okay, so now on this hilltop, the same place where Abraham offered up, right? Isaac, the same area, they get this temple built and they start with the altar and then they get the surveyor's lines out and they mark out on the ground, basically a chalk outline of where the temple's gonna go. And that's when it happened. Cyrus died, their protector. The one that gave them confidence

that we have his backing, we can do this. And his successor didn't quite have the same favorable outlook like Cyrus did. He wasn't mentioned in Isaiah 45, he was a little salty. And at the same time, the Samaritans, the sworn enemy of the Jews, begin bickering amongst themselves and they come up with a plan to stop the Jews from successfully building their temple. And they send basically spam emails to the. new king smearing the Jewish people as being treasonous, as having all this ulterior motives. And so basically, his outlook becomes sort of less than positive about their work, and the work stops immediately. All the Jewish people who had been working on this temple, all they got to the altar, they all basically walk away slowly from the job site. And what we just read, Haggai chapter 1, 16 years has gone by with no progress to show for it. You ever drive past like a land, like raw land, that has a sign that says like, future home of, you know, like Third Baptist Church, because they split from the Second Baptist Church, you know what I'm saying? Like, future home of, you know. And you're like, dude, I've lived here my entire life. My entire life, this has been the future home of. They must mean eventually the future home, like the future, future home of, right?

That's basically what has happened in Jerusalem. There's just an altar sitting on a slab on a hillside, future home of the temple. Why haven't they done any work? Listen to me, their trauma had become their template. They're afraid to begin to try. They're afraid to even dream again. They're afraid to even lift up a pickaxe or a shovel or do anything, because if we do, it'll just go like it already went. If we try again, we'll probably fail. Their belief, scarred by the traumatic events that they had gone through and their people had gone through, we got into the land, we got evicted from the land, we're coming back to the land. Why would we even try? They've given up hope. Do you see what I'm saying here? They've stopped believing that change is possible. Living apart from their purpose in the land where they have one job in being there. And they're not doing the thing that they're there to do. My psychologist has this question he likes to ask me when we're in counseling sessions. And it's one of those annoying counselor questions. You know what I'm talking about? And they always, what is it with like the look on their face? These counselors. The look is like not smug, but not entirely unsmug.

You know what I'm talking about? They've perfected that look. And he likes to ask it this way. Levi, I'll be like ranting about something. You know what I'm saying? Because like I'm paying him to listen to me complain. So I get my rant on, man. And he'll say to me this, he'll go, Levi, how old does this feel? I hate when he says it. Because I almost always am ranting about something new. But if I'm honest, the reason I'm so kicked up emotionally is because of something old. So if you were to touch a sore spot on my body, like it wouldn't be your touch that would hurt me. It's because the spot you're touching is sensitive and sore because of something historic. And so it is oftentimes when I'm complaining about this person who I feel like is gonna betray me or this person who did this to me or is not there for me and whatever I need or perceive in the moment. And he'll say, Levi, how old does this feel? And if I am honest enough to take inventory of what's happening, it's usually something very old that this has surfaced that's raw and unhealed in my life. A way in which my trauma of a past injury is now becoming my template in this future issue. And I'm projecting now on you that you're gonna leave me just because I happened to have gone through the parents,

my parents' divorce when I was very young and my parents were both not available for me in the way that I needed them to be in that season or the way that my youth pastor, when he committed suicide, it affected my faith so negatively and rattled and shattered a lot of things inside of me. And so now I'm walling up or I'm withdrawing or I'm quitting on you before you can quit on me as a self-protective mechanism because I was shaped by these traumatic things in a way that without even thinking about it, I'm making it a template for how the future is gonna go. And I believe that the children of Israel is essentially, they're essentially doing the same thing. They're abandoning their purpose because they were unaware of how much they were shaped by the difficulties they experienced. And if you're not careful, you can end up once stung and twice shy. I took my daughter Clover once to a amusement park and we had been there years past, but I forgot about it. And so I told her, let's ride the bumper cars, right? You know what she said? I'm not going on those bumper cars. Do you remember dad, last time we rode them, I got stung by a bee and I was like, did that happen? She goes, yeah, it was terrible. It's all I've ever thought about since when we talk about this place and now seeing it, she was like, I could see this visceral reaction of fear.

And I said, are you, okay, we don't have to, but do you think maybe it was a fluke? And we should try it again, or you're just going to not ride bumper cars your whole life. And she goes, all right, you're right, dad. Let's conquer this fear. But you have never seen a child on a bumper car so wary, vigilant even, you know, just. And we got done. And she's like, I'm glad we did that. I didn't even see a bee. I'm like, that's good, honey. And you laugh. But what are the bumper cars that you won't ride on? What are the ways in which, because of a bad experience, you're hesitant, or reticent, or completely unwilling to go into an area, or a space, or a relationship that God's calling you to. And soon, you can end up living in a two-pocket world, a one-pocket life. Yeah, I told you I'm dysfunctional. I was given a pair of shorts from my wife, Jenny. My son had a matching pair. She called them adventure shorts. You guys can wear them on your boy adventures you do, when once a month, you run away from our home screaming because it's full of women. And so we do. We just go do things, you know. Sometimes we just look at each other and wordlessly say,

we're leaving, son. We're going. Let them figure this out. We'll come back in a couple of days. And we wear our adventure shorts. And the lining in one of my pockets broke out. And I noticed it because I put my phone in it. It just hit the ground. And you know, I could have sewn them, could have replaced them, could have repaired them, could have duct-taped them, anything other than, well, I'll just use my right pocket. And so I would only, when I would wear them, put my phone in my right pocket. But it became so habitual for me, I would find myself, even wearing different shorts or jeans or whatever, going to put my phone in my left pocket and be like, oh, and only putting it in my right pocket, which is exactly what Haggai says that the Jewish people are doing. They live in the promised land, but they're separated from the blessing and the purpose of God that was meant to come from worshiping God and His blessing falling upon the land. And so he says, Haggai 1 verse 6, you have so much, but you bring in little. You eat, but you do not have enough. You drink, but you are not filled with drink. You clothe yourselves, but no one is warm. And he who earns wages earns wages to put into a bag with holes.

Haggai 2, 16, you hoped for a 20-bushel crop, but you harvested only 10. You expected to draw 50 gallons of wine from the wine press, but you're only finding 20. Listen to me, possessing your full possessions. Because now there's a profession of faith that's continuing to ring out, but it's empty because they're not living connected to the purpose God has for them. And the dangerous thing about abandoning a portion of your range of motion is that when you don't use it, you lose it. They're now saying that flexibility and longevity cannot be disconnected. Because the ability to use a joint to its full range of motion, your legs, and your hips, and your shoulders, if you continue to retain your range of motion, you add 12 years to your life. Because the moment you go, well, I just, it hurts if I lift my hand above my shoulder, so I'll just live my life with my hand below my. It hurts when I do. So I'm just not going to do that, as opposed to doing the difficult work that it takes to retain the motion of your joints so that you continue to be able to use them. So here they are now, living in the promised land, kind of, but not experiencing anything of what God intended for their lives to be like in that promised land. And we can do the same thing in Christ,

seated in heavenly places, blessed with every spiritual blessing in Christ Jesus, and yet living as spiritual paupers, hand to mouth, barely scraping by, when it's for freedom that Christ set us free. So how do we end up? How do we end up one stung and twice shot? Here we go. Every time we get wounded in life, we have to make a choice. What are we going to do with our wound? What are you going to do with your wound to continue to retain spiritual mobility, emotional mobility? Here's a little list. You can choose to be defined by it. All right, I'm wounded. Now that's who I am. Because that happened to me, that's who I am. I am a divorcee. I've not been divorced. I am divorced. I am whatever. I declared bankruptcies. That's who I am. Do you see what I'm saying? In the book of Ruth, a woman named Naomi loses her husband and loses two sons in quick succession. And she changes her name from Naomi to Mara. Do you know what Naomi means? Sweet, pleasant. Do you know what Mara means?

Bitter. I have experienced bitter things. Therefore, I must be bitter. You would be like me, too, if you have gone through what I have gone through. We're excusing the behavior on the basis of we've mistakenly built our identity around the activity we've gone through. We can choose, secondly, to run from our wounds, to build a life. that's safe by avoiding all triggers. And the world will help you out. They'll just put a trigger warning on everything and put everything in bubble wrap. And anything that would be unpleasant for you to experience I'm just gonna completely cut anybody out of my life. Not just have boundaries, but I'm actually just gonna, you're gone because it's hard for me. You're too difficult for me to even, this triggers me, I'm running from it. I'll never fly again because flying makes me anxious. I will never do this again. I can never go on a boat. I can never do a cross country. Whatever it was that is gonna bring me back to that bad place, I'm not doing it. Running from, avoiding, being defined by, here's number three, delay facing. We can choose to delay facing our wounds. This is not the machine gun. This is the moldy bread.

This is how it gets us, right? Because avoiding, delaying facing pushes it off into the future. In fact, Haggai 1 verse 2 puts it this way. Thus says the Lord of hosts, this people says, the time has not come, the time has not come. We haven't built God's house yet, but the right time's not here yet. Hear me, the right time to do the right thing is right now. But the enemy will say, just say you'll do it later. I will deal with that. I will get into counseling. I will go to rehab. I will, I know I should, but I will eventually. I will when I'm older. I will when I'm done having my fun, right? We would push it off into the future. That's another choice we can make with our wounds. Here's one, we can numb. Every time our wounds hurt, number four, we can choose to numb. That is to say we can do something to not feel the pain. And do you know what's scary about this one? It works, but you cannot heal while numb. Because to heal, you have to feel. You have to experience it. You have to go through the difficulty. So numbing with an intoxicating substance, numbing with spending, that's how they were numbing in Haggai's day.

They should have been building the house of God, but what did they do instead? Well, Haggai 1.4 tells us, God speaking, is it time for you yourselves to dwell in your paneled houses while my temple lies in ruins? It's easy to numb whenever you feel something unpleasant that you need to deal with. Instead, you just go to Amazon and now you've got something coming to your house. And as long as it's on the way, I don't have to feel the pain because I can have this next meal. I can plan this next trip. Are you feeling me? We can do things to numb the bad feelings, but it just pushes when we need to get heal off into the future because you can't heal while you don't feel. Number five, you can pass the blame. I am this way and it's your fault. I am this way and it's because of what you did. John chapter five, there's a man lying on the ground and Jesus says, do you want to get up? You know what the man says? No one helped me. No one's helped me. I mean, I'm this way because other people are faster than me. It's not my fault.

And you can be right about that by the way, but still be on the ground. And he's ignoring the fact that someone did come named Jesus, who's offering. He's like, be that as it may. I'm here. Do you want to get up? And as long as we pass the blame, we'll just remain the same. Number six, we can compare. We can choose when wounded to compare how we're doing and benchmark it based on other people we know who are worse off than we are. And we'll feel good about like, as long as I can think of somebody who takes one more drink than we do, we don't have a problem, right? As long as I know someone meaner than me, I don't have an anger problem. As long as I know someone a little bit more stingy than me, I'm a generous person because we benchmark ourselves by comparing. That's why, by the way, have you ever tried to change in some way and a friend has been like, what's wrong with you changing? Where you should go, yeah, that's the point, right? You think you're better than me, right? They're angry because, listen, they're just admitting you were their holdout. They felt good about themselves

because they were benchmarking themselves. Now that you're changing, they're fearing they're going to be exposed as being the worst person that they know in that area. So they're trying to keep you down because misery loves company. We compare and then we perpetuate. This one is inevitable. If we do any of the above, why? Because whatever doesn't get treated gets transmitted. Whatever we don't deal with gets pushed onto the next generation one way or another. And it's all, I'm not judging you for that list. Those all came from my journal pages. I'm guilty of all of them. And they're tempting. You want to know why? Grief is hard. It's hard and unpleasant. Grief is time travel because you want to be anywhere but where you are. Grief pushes you to the past for an idealized version of your life that you wish you could get back to. pushes you to the future as you long for what you were looked forward to that was taken from you without you ever even getting to experience it. And you'll be willing to live in your future and your past only so you don't have to be stuck in the hell that is your new normal, because it hurts so much.

And so yeah, all these on the list here are tempting, but let me tell you there's a better way. And it's this, when you're wounded, let God heal you so he can use that wound to help other people. This is what Jesus offers to us today. This is what's on the table today, when we are wounded, when our wounds are buried. I fear that we forget so much of what's offered at the cross we think of the cross as just about forgiveness. And yes, for sure that's there, but the cross is not just about spiritual cleansing, it's also about emotional healing. And that's why Isaiah 53, verse five says, when he was wounded, it was for our transgressions. He was bruised, it was for our iniquities. The chastisement for our peace was upon him. And by his stripes, we are what? Healed. He wants to heal you. How do you participate in that healing? You have to first of all, own your part. Whatever part of this you do own, you need to own it. You need to say, was I complicit in my own suffering in any way? And you need to own whatever of it you can. It may be very little, it may be very much, but you've got to own your part. That's the first step to walking in emotional healing. Then secondly, you have to acknowledge the harm done by others and its impact.

Those are two different things. The trauma is the event, but the living hell is the results, the way that that event has a continued impact on your life, acknowledge that. Then you have to come to terms with the brokenness of this world and the existence of evil so that you can say, even had I not been complicit in my own suffering, and even had they not been guilty of what they did that harmed me and that continues to haunt me, there still would be pain that I would be facing because of the brokenness of this planet. Then you have to get the help you need. This is help from your doctor. It could be medication, help from a counselor where there could be a little or a lot of work that is done on the inside that's needed to continue to get you back to where you're on track doing what God's called you to be doing. It definitely is going to need to involve spiritual community where we are forgiven by praying to God, but healed by confessing to each other, the book of James says. And then again, it may need to involve even more intense steps, but this is how we begin to walk in cleansing, walk in healing. And then lastly, and most importantly, you have to remember the Lord who always has a plan and who always gets the last word. As you factor in what it's gonna take

for you to become whole, you have to remember God who has a plan and helps you. And listen, he will use your suffering for good and the cross is proof. He wants to use your wound for good to help. Once you're cleansed, you'll offer those wounds up like the risen Lord to help other people know how to treat their wounds and to use the cross for their own healing. This can lead to what I call running toward the roar. Running toward the roar is where you're afraid and you wanna bolt, but instead you face it head on. 2013, we took a photo in front of our Christmas tree. May not mean too much to you to look at this image, but to me, it's one of the biggest victories of my whole life. There's Olivia who's now 20, the biggest Clover who's now 14 and Daisy who's now 15 and in the gathering. And off camera, what you can't see is Jenny and I with tear streak faces. Because just one year before we set this tree up, we had set a tree up in 2012, not knowing that our then five-year-old daughter who was feeding me popcorn and putting bulbs on the tree, there she is in the middle with the white dress, would go home to be with Jesus. And one of the last videos, the last video I can find that I filmed of her was in front of our Christmas tree that year.

Here's a little clip of Lenya. I can sing my memory verses and today I'm only gonna do one right now. And I'll tell you one of my verses. Never stop praying for Thessalonians 5.17. Great job. One. And the next year, the question, of course, was what to do about Christmas. What to do about Christmas? Because we buried her the day after Christmas. She had asthma attack five days before and all of the trauma of her homecoming was tangled up in the decorations. for Christmas. And Jenny and I both were like shaking and sweating as we thought about pulling these boxes out to put a tree up that year. But what stiffened in us as we thought about it was this kind of thought, the devil doesn't get to take Christmas away because it's not his. Do you understand what I'm saying? And that was many years ago, but we defiantly chose hope and put the Christmas tree up anyway. And we defiantly chose beauty when we felt agony, when we thought about her death. This next little video is us painting the snow colorful on the first anniversary of her being with Christ. We found snow paint and we painted the snow.

Mom, don't you walk with it. Mom, don't you walk with it. Daisy, where's your gloves? Your hands are going to be cold. Daisy did not want mom to use all of it. That is for clear, for sure. We chose to see beauty in a place of agony. Do you see what I'm saying here? That Christmas tree that we put up while shaking, it was the hardest that first time. And what Jenny and I said to the Lord, we said, God, if you, if it kills us, it might kill us. But at least we won't have to live afraid. At least we won't have to live. When my dad went home to be with Jesus two years ago, I was standing in front of our foosball table pulling notes out of the printer for my sermon for Good Friday. He died the day after Easter. And the next year as Easter was coming, seeing Easter eggs started to make me sweat, started to make me feel shaky. When I did CPR on Lenya, to walk by a public pool and see the CPR sign, every time it took me back. I couldn't go in a pool. I couldn't go. But you know what we chose to do every time something made us afraid? And we wanted to say we can't because we chose to say with God's help, we can. And with God's help, we will.

We can run toward the road. Why, why, why? Because the trauma is not the template. God's truth is the template. And while we fixate on what was that we wish we could get back and what the dream of the future was that we wish we could walk in, we're comparing to a version of life that's not where we're standing right here. Haggai say, when you see the foundation, doesn't it seem pathetic to you? He called them out. He said, doesn't it seem pathetic to you? Because you're comparing it to the first temple, which was built by Solomon, the richest king Israel ever had. It's estimated he used 50% of the gold in circulation on the planet to build the first temple. So how can 50,000 ragtag foreign exilers coming together to scratch out a foundation ever do anything compared to that? And he goes, it seems crappy, doesn't it? But I got news for you. Peace is coming to this temple. And guess what? It would not be Solomon's temple Jesus would come to. It would be the second temple that he would come to as a baby to be dedicated. He would come as a baby to be circumcised. He would come as a child to give his first sermon. It would be this second temple that Jesus would

cleanse of money changers. And guess what? It would be this second temple that God the Father would tear the veil into from top to bottom so that you and I could come into the holy place based on his blood, based on what he had done. So what Haggai was wanting the Jewish people to see while they stared at the past and they longed for a different version of the future than what they were in is right now I'm willing to bless you here. And this temple that you're building, it might not be bigger, but it will be glorious. I told God one day, I said, Lord, I know you can get us through this. I know you can. But I will walk with a limp for the rest of my life. That's what I told the Lord. You know what he said to me? It was an impression. He said, Levi, if I heal your limp, will you fake one anyway? Do you hear me? I said, I remember saying, I'll never dance again after my daughter died. I'll never dance again. I'm going to get through this, but I'm not going to ever dance again. And God said, how can I ever heal you if you won't? How can I ever heal you if you won't? Four times, God said, don't be afraid.

Four times, he said, don't be scared. And then do you know what he anchored all that in? It was in verse 4. It was in the promise of his presence. He said, don't fear, Joshua. Don't fear Zerubbabel. Don't fear people. He said, I am with you. You don't have to be afraid because you're not alone. I close with Jurassic Park. Where else can you close a sermon? Not the new one, not Chris Pratt, not Scarlett Johansson. I'm talking about. OG Spared no expense I'm talking about the lawyer runs from the car goes sits in the toilet gets eaten by a t-rex and he deserved it He did he deserved it. He left those children unsupervised and then the car that the kids are in gets knocked off the cliff and is in a tree and they're traumatized because the one who was supposed to take care of them abandoned them and And Alan Grant comes climbing down the tree. There is no wall. He won't knock down. There is no tree He won't climb down coming after those kids and in the car He says come to me come to me children come to me The trees gonna fall the car is gonna fall from the tree come come come and with the little girls having a panic attack And she just keeps saying he left us. He left us. He left us. He left us. You know what he does He says he gets her in the eyes where it grabs her face and says but that's not what I'm gonna do These Jewish people can't build they can't move forward They can't move into the future because they just keep saying Cyrus left us. He left us. He left us He left us and and Haggai is saying but that's not what he's gonna do And today he's with you

An altar was all they had but it turns out an altar was all they needed You