Release...to get to Rest

It is closing in on two months since the calendar turned a page on this new year.  "Rest", my word for 2019, and it's meaning for my life continues to be unveiled for me.  The fullness of Rest often seems elusive.  Oh yes, I can set aside hours in an afternoon for quiet reading or an evening filling in the border of a puzzle but there may still be an absence of Rest in my soul. 

There is an action component to Rest which has come to my attention again.  The action of "releasing".  I admit that I am slow to let go.  I carry a lot within and am not always aware of how this weighs me down.  So I began a practice this week of unloading some of this extra baggage.  It's been a release-to-Jesus last few days.

Releasing my need for an individual to like me
Releasing my need for vindication in a conflict
Releasing my curiosity-to-a-fault-need-to-know-information
Releasing anger and a bitter thorn in my side
Releasing my need to be right
Releasing my failures...oh so many failures
Releasing pride
Releasing the unknown of what others think of me
Releasing sin...the dark ugliness of my own heart
and knowing the covering of grace which Jesus brings
and ultimately His Rest.

Today I release more and sit in Remembrance of His grace-filled, overflowing heart of goodness
for me.

Reminders

Sometimes we need reminders.

A passionate godly woman and dear friend spent time cozied up with blankets in my living room this past week.  We each have a good deal of hard in our lives right now and emptied some of this into the heart of the other.  I have come away enriched and with  pieces of wisdom to add to some of my raw places.  I'm grateful.

I have realized that I have been narrowing the pathway for God to work.

I didn't and still don't want Mom's pilgrimage to be a pain-filled, uphill journey.  I have not wanted and still don't want for her to live life going from one appointment to the next, to the next treatment to chasing down side effects and on and on the list could go. To put it simply.. I don't want her to suffer.  Who would desire this for anyone?  I have long wondered if our utter distaste for suffering does not stem from our Eden heritage.  We were not created for suffering.  We were created for an unbroken, perfect relationship with the Creator of the world.  And so it seems logical to me that our efforts to escape it have a "purity" of panic to them.

But we don't exist in an Eden-like world.  This planet is overflowing with evil and pain and sorrow.  It's a suffering planet and we are a suffering people.  What is excruciating for we humans to grasp is that in the economy of God's kingdom, He has made provision for good to come out of suffering.  It's a place of learning...of maturing in our faith.  He doesn't ordain the suffering but He does allow it and in that allowance gives us a time and space to grow.

We don't like this.  We would much prefer we develop our faith at the ocean-side of life thank you very much!  We try to shield others and ourselves from the weight of growing through pain. There's nothing wrong with this and yet the reality is that we cannot avoid the darkness of such seasons.

James guides us to God's economy when he writes,

"Dear brothers and sisters,

when troubles of any kind come your way,

consider it an opportunity for great joy.

For you know that when your faith is tested,

your endurance has a chance to grow.

So let it grow,

for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be perfect and complete,

needing nothing."

--James 1:2-4

Sigh.  I have known (and disliked) these verses for as long as I can remember.  How can suffering be an "opportunity for great joy"????!!!  Because at the end of suffering's path we will be "perfect and complete, needing nothing."  I welcome the end result...just not the journey.

Scripture has much to say about suffering.  Isaiah reminds us of God's purpose in the Israelite's wilderness experience telling us that they were "refined in the furnace of suffering."  Paul says in Philippians 1:29 that it is a "privilege" to "suffer with him".   The 8th chapter of Romans twins our inheritance with suffering telling us that "if we are to share his glory, we must also share his suffering." Quite simply...you can't have one without the other.  Powerful, instructive, challenging words.

Still, I would never choose suffering.  But we weren't given a choice; we were given an opportunity.  God's sovereign plan has allowed cancer to come into our family.  I see the ways Mom is embracing Him and the beauty of their intimacy.   I have my own opportunity to invite the Trinity to transform me however He desires.  I marvel at how gracious they have been in drawing me near.  All of this in the midst of suffering!

I had forgotten this.  It has been a needful reminder.

Pilgrimage

I consider myself a fairly self-aware person.  I am "in touch" with my emotions (probably too much at times) and I have learned a great deal over the years of how best I function in the various seasons that life takes on.

Which is why after losing a dear friend to cancer in November and feeling weary from the 14 month battle she fought, I was quite sure I needed rest.  In fact, I believed that God had "called" me to "Compassionate Leave".  I had no idea what that actually looked like but I felt sure it involved saying "no" to new asks, lots of down time in the evenings and the ten day vacation my husband and I were planning for the end of January.   I needed a new landscape with sun and warmth and an ocean nearby.

And then December 5 dawned and by the end of the day I would know that my newly ordered life was going to be dismantled.  It's what happens when the word cancer is given to someone you love. 
And so here we are, 42 days since that day and Mom has had her first treatment of chemo, ordered a wig and added a laundry list of appointments to her calendar all the while enduring the symptoms of this disease and it's effects on her body.  This is so not what I would have ever wanted for her.  Not cancer and not a battle.  I've watched cancer and it's ensuing battle empty people.  But Mom has bravely chosen to try treatment, to lose her hair and parts of herself which are heart wrenching for me to watch.  Yet through it all, she, and my Dad have responded with their simple, humble, trusting faith.  Yes with tears and fears, but covered by God.  It's been inspiring for me.  Mom's on a pilgrimage...I can't use the word battle.  It's not what I am seeing.  There is most definitely a courage and fight in her spirit but there is a peaceful way about her.  A pilgrimage by definition states some of the following--"a journey made to a sacred place", "any long or arduous journey".  If treatment gives Mom extra years, that will be a sacred "place".  And if she goes to be with Jesus sooner than we would choose, this too is a sacred place. 

What I never could have expected in all of this would be the ways in which God would lead me on my own pilgrimage...a pilgrimage of healing.  There are so many pieces of my heart that He has shown me are in need of healing and one of them is the last cancer battle I witnessed.  Other places are long-held ways of pain.   And while I thought that rest and healing were going to take place at an ocean-side or by way of the empty places of a calendar, God has shown a different path. Ultimately, it's a path of surrender and willingness to allow God to bring "new wine" out of me. 

In the crushing
In the pressing
You are making
New wine
In the soil, I
Now surrender
You are breaking
New ground

So I yield to You and to Your careful hand
When I trust You I don't need to understand

Make me Your vessel
Make me an offering
Make me whatever You want me to be
I came here with nothing
But all You have given me
Jesus, bring new wine out of me

 

 

Slowly

To say that the past weeks have been challenging would be an understatement.

Overwhelmed.  Despair.  Exhaustion.  Okay I'll be honest...at times I have been barely coping... a mess.

This most recent life circumstance has knocked the wind out of me; left me reeling and wondering how I will ever move through it.  I haven't been angry with God nor questioned this unfolding.  I have walked through enough of life's pain to know this--life is painful.  I live with a deep understanding and belief that God owes me nothing.  Even my next breath is a gift of His grace.  This post Eden world is terribly broken and we are not just a part of it, we too are overwhelmingly broken.  I get this.  I own this as a part of my biblical world view.  So this latest storm has not found me questioning "why", but rather "how"? 

How do I move through another painful and intense journey, especially on the heels of the battle strewn path I just finished?  Where do I find the strength, the courage, the emotional stability to head right back into the trenches?  These have been my questions.  Truly, God is able to provide everything I need to take the next step.  I know and believe this also.  But life experience has in turn taught me that so often, for His sovereign reasons His provision looks very different than what I envision.  Limping is one thing, but I have been through years of barely crawling and yet I know God was intimately a part of those seasons.  So even now, I have not been doubting His ability so much as--"How...practically speaking God, how are we going to move through this?"

Slowly, I am seeing a new path emerge.

It began with His quiet, and purposeful guidance--

1.  Reframe this new journey as a pilgrimage and not a battle.
2.  Enlarge your perspective--move from your small, idealistic world to Mine.  I hold an eternal and far bigger picture and plan than you could ever fathom.
3.  Trust in Me
4.  Rest in Me

Slowly, God is faithfully enabling me, encouraging, and moving me in a way which is also strengthening and hope-filled.  There is a long and arduous road ahead which may  find me crawling and limping at times.  Still, I will keep seeking His higher ways; His rest as He continues His faithful care of me, His tired daughter.

Rest--Word for 2019

How does one turn the calendar page to a new year when the hard of life is already a glaring reality?
It's the question I have been asking myself over and over as the new year approaches.  My answers vary depending on the moment--

Run away------fast and as far as I can go.

Live one day at a time...one moment at a time.

Just try and survive what lies ahead.

Enlarge my trust in a God who's got this.

Reframe my small world to an eternal big picture perspective.

Rest.

I was so ready for rest as November drew to a close.  Emotionally I was spent.  Places in me were jaded in ways which continue to reveal themselves.  I truly believed I needed a "compassionate leave" and was just as convinced that God was calling me to this.  It didn't cross my mind that there could be an arsenal of hard just around the corner.  Who "anticipates" the arrival of more pain!!

But it's here and I can't run away...I choose not to drop the baton leaving my siblings to carry it.  And during those times when I have some strength I desire to do more than just survive.  Enlarging my trust, reframing my world, taking each day as it comes; all of these have become disciplines I am giving my time and energy towards.

And Rest , well, it's the umbrella under which everything else lies.

It's time for my word or phrase for the year 2019.  I have had a number of possibilities move through my mind--

Trust without limits  (My 2018 word was "trust" and I have still so far to grow in this)

Hold all things loosely

Live open-handed

Rest.

It was my girl who suggested Rest.  Part of it seems preposterous with what looms up ahead and yet God had so clearly called me to rest late November.  When life turned upside down on December 5 I felt this incredulous question rise in my spirit--"How am I supposed to rest NOW?"  His response--

" I call you to rest"

and

"I am your Rest"

And so here I am on the eve of a new year with more hard and struggle than I can imagine, but knowing that unless I learn how to deeply rest in Him, I will crumble under the weight.  I need to tangibly adopt ways to rest my body and am already seeking these out.  Further, if I learn to live in His Rest, I will trust without limits and hold things more loosely and live open-handed.  Psalm 91 which I am still slowly memorizing keeps leading me to His rest--

"This I declare about the LORD;

He alone is my refuge, my place of safety.

He is my God and I trust Him."

Psalm 91:2

This is so how I want to live. 

 It's the beat with which I want my heart to rhythm.   

It's where I want to run and hide and the place I want to learn how to do more than just survive. 

 He's the One I want to trust without limits.  

It's His sovereign wisdom I pledge to believe,

who is able to orchestrate my small world into a far greater, eternal symphony.

It's in His Rest I hope to live open-handed.

Amen...so be it my Lord Jesus Christ.

Worship is Warfare

These past weeks I am being drawn to worship. 

It's where I find the calm in the midst of this storm.

Speaker Heidi Fleming reminds me of this strong armor available to me--

"Arms raised in worship is my victory stance"

"Worship is warfare"

"Praise and Surrender acknowledges--

'I need Jesus;

I can't do this alone.'" 

His "Arrival" takes me to a place of awe and worship and warfare

"O come now hail His arrival

the God of creation

Royalty robed in the flesh He created

Jesus the Maker has made Himself known

All Hail the Infinite infant God."

Too Much

It was already "too much" before this week unfolded.

The past weeks of slowly watching my kindred friend leave this life...

Those final days of saying "goodbye"...

The day of celebrating her life yes, but also grieving her loss...

It all felt like too much.

And then, what I thought would give way to a sense of relief in knowing her suffering is over and she is free and joyous and basking in Jesus' presence, what entered instead was this overall sense of weariness...as though the last 14 months of her battle have caught up with me.  This all out war that she fought and I soldiered with her on, this war has worn me in deep ways.  And I am tired.

I've been "here" before as a result of other life circumstances and therefore with an arsenal of understanding and ways of self care to put into practice.  Which I have.  But then the "more" of life overwhelmed me this week and it now feels like more than "too much" because it was "too much" already.

Sigh...

But God is still on the throne.  It's one of the first thoughts which came to me on Dec. 5 and what I will continue to remind myself of.

But God is still with me...still walking near and ever nearer...

But God's Word is still my truth source, my comfort, my guide...

But God's got this...and He's got me...

And though my frailty, my default to worry and fear, and the weariness  which swirls around and within me threatens to unmoor me, I know I am His and He is mine and we will walk on together, hands clasped, in this season of "too much." 
Because ultimately, He is enough.

“If you are past thirty-five, you surely grieve something.

If nothing else, you simply grieve for the passing of time…for the helplessness of knowing that tragedy can occur instantly and without warning,” writes southern novelist Vicki Covington.

Pastor and teacher Dr. Gary Klingsporn wrote, “Only a Christ who comes into and shares our tears….only that Christ can really speak meaningfully to us today.

Christ is born into whatever it is that we feel.  He comes not as a predictable hero, but as a vulnerable child.  From the Messiah in a manger to the King on a Cross, this is the mystery of the Incarnation—that into such a world of need, into such a world as ours, God whispered His profound love.  And He whispers it yet today.”

O God who entered time and eternity as a crying infant, break into my laughter and be present in my tears.  I lay before You today all that burdens my heart even as I listen for the singing of angels.

Thomas Kinkade

Christ the Light of the World

Come Lord Jesus

Oh Hallelujah!

The time has come to prepare for Your arrival

How I anticipate your coming!

How I need You to break into my world.

Come Lord Jesus

have Your way with me--

in me.

A Sacred Hour

This morning was a taste of"jumping in puddles".

I think it was last winter when Jen and I began talking about some day...jumping in puddles together.  She was in the midst of grueling radiation treatments and horrible burn pain but the end was in sight and like we did each time "the end was in sight" of these nightmarish stages of her cancer, we would talk about what we would do "when"...

There is so much we wanted to do, or perhaps it was more of what we wanted to "be".  I think we truly just wanted to "be" together and share our lives.  The growing of our friendship happened mid-cancer which meant that there was a lifetime of each other that we were so hoping to enjoy. We did not have years and years of a strong friendship to fall back on and yet we shared this undeniable bond...this "kindred-spirit" way about "us".  Neither of us could explain it--it was just there.  We joked once how we sounded like lovers because we just had to catch each other's eye and we were somehow "together".

We still have not jumped in puddles.  Every so often she would send me a text that would read, "we still have to jump in puddles together."   Sometimes I would respond because I tried to believe we really would.  Sometimes I would even speak this dream...I so wanted to believe it would happen for her...for us. 

This morning she walked into church supported by her walker, pale and weak.  I wept with my arms around her.  I find my grieving comes in waves.  I think my grieving started over a year ago...months before we even knew this monster disease was back.  But "something" beastly was eating away at my friend and I began losing her to pain and exhaustion and appointments, procedures and eventually treatment.  Grief holds much.  And slowly, incrementally, it opens, and you realize that "this too" has been taken away and so you acknowledge it and name it and grieve it, not always even knowing that this place of grief is filling again with something new for the next wave...

This morning my grief wave undid me.  I wept at different times throughout the morning as I sat beside my friend holding her hand.  At times, audible sobs escaped from my being and I thought, "to hell with trying to keep this inside...I love my friend and I will grieve this slipping away of her beautiful life!!! 

That sacred hour this morning was so rich...so drink-in-my-soul-rich.  I did not want to move an inch...even when my hand was going numb at one point. haha  I DIDN'T CARE!!  To watch her worship, to see her raise her weak hand in praise of our God...the time she gently clapped her hands together in celebration of Jesus...rich.  I held a -side-by-side seat of a woman whose faith is spilling forth from her dying body.  Is this not the deepest-living- for- Jesus!!!

We also "jumped in puddles" this morning.  At least I felt, in a manner of speaking, we did this.  She's on heavy pain meds which cause hallucinations and she was experiencing this throughout the service.  Honestly, it made us quietly giggle. One time she held out her hands and looked at her husband and then whispered to him asking if she was supposed to be feeding a baby.  He smiled at her and whispered "No".   We pressed our foreheads together and laughed quietly.  (It was church after all!!)  I think it was our version of puddle jumping...being little girls giggling in church. 

We're not going to be able to splash in puddles, enjoying side-splitting laughter with all of our cares thrown aside.  I know this...I grieve this.  But this morning was for me, this beautiful gift tied up with a bright red-like-rain-boots-bow. 

Who knows, maybe Jesus will give us each a pair of red rain boots when we arrive in heaven and take us to a gigantic puddle...just for us.

The Miles Between Us

Written Monday July 16 2018

I thought it would be routine this time around.  It's just shy of three years since she moved cross country and I felt SURE we were mastering this "together", then "apart" seesaw.  But this time has felt new for me again.  The week before she arrived I fought this overwhelming fear of our goodbye.  Yes I know it's absurd!  The cart-before-the-horse-scenario-but like I said--I was fighting it. 

We both share the same love of the anticipation.  We know the time will seem fleeting and so we rather enjoy the count down of sleeps and excitement which precedes the homecoming.  In the past there has often been this inner frenzy to then suck the marrow of life out of every moment.  I was more at peace this time, allowing the moments to unfold as they did.  I think it helped that I had spent five gloriously selfish days alone with my girl in May and so I was more free to share her with her besties. 

There are some given, shared factors to this" together" and "apart" dance which we live.

1.  It will never be long enough.  Whether it's three weeks or ten days, we will always want "just one more day."

2.  The everyday stresses of life are always blown out of proportion.  Because our time is limited it feels so out of place to have something go wrong.  Even hormones, computer glitches and line-ups.

3.  The length of homecoming hugs and farewell hugs are the same.  Even the depth of emotion is equal.  Yet they are polar opposites without words to describe.

4.  We always overthink everything.  Always.  Everything.  We over analyze, overthink, over-feel, and talk about it all in one gloriously long 10 day run-on sentence.  It's exhausting and freeing and crazy and us.

**Her plane landed safely in her other home city six hours ago.  She was sad to leave and excited to return.  I've laundered the sheets and tidied her room and though I will have other guests before Christmas, it really is awaiting her next homecoming.

Thursday October 4, 2018

Tomorrow marks the start of Thanksgiving Weekend.  I'm eager to spend time with Cam and Sonya and Brian's family.  We haven't seen Cam and Sonya for a few weeks and so I am missing our face to face conversations and hugs.  I love just having them in the room, listening to them interact with others.  Though this is the third Thanksgiving Ashley won't be home it almost feels like the first.  Why is it that this year is upping the ante on missing my girl???  One half of my heart says "she should be home".  And the other half is still fully convinced that "she shouldn't be"! 

A part of me wonders if the landing of her first "big girl job" this past spring is settling into my psyche.  Because SHE is settling in more and more to a home across the country.  Another factor may be that about a year ago she starting talking more and more about returning "home".  And though I wasn't getting my hopes up, it was something I listened to her talk about often.  Until about four months ago when everything changed.  Quite honestly, I'm celebrating the "everything changed" nature of her life.  There is so much good which has unfolded for her.   Except that now I think I've returned to a stronger reality of this ongoing "together" and "apart" dance. 

So Thanksgiving is almost here and we will be in the part of the dance that is "apart."  And yes, I'm sad.  Sad that we can't be together as a family...sad that she and I can't be together and just lounge on the sofa and talk...face to face. 

But this is our reality.  This is our "now."  It might not be our "always" but is is our "now."

I will miss her this weekend.  I will miss a full-on-hug that squishes us both.  I will miss her perfectly prepared bedroom being messy in less than 30 minutes.  I will miss her using the counter as the drop zone for her keys and purse and phone. I will miss her offering to get her own breakfast but being not -so-secretly-delighted that her Mama wants to.  I will miss her lounging in bed with her hair up in a pony asking for just "five more minutes" til she crawls out from the covers and I get another hug. I will just plain miss her.

She will miss me too...she will miss family and everyone being together.  She really misses family, especially at "family" times.  We will text and talk on the phone and hopefully Skype because we are blessed by this part of technology.  I will move through the weekend one day at a time, enjoying moments, and missing ones that aren't being shared.  And then before I know it, Thanksgiving will be a memory and I will have come through still intact, soon to begin the Christmas homecoming countdown.

Because this is how I walk the miles between us.

Dear Fall

Welcome dear fall

You glow with the harvest of spring’s planting

You let me linger a little longer in summer’s heat

yet link me to winter’s edge

with a sweater on my shoulders

I feast on earth’s bounty

experience the fresh breath of beginnings

indulge in the blazing colors of autumn’s landscape

You are a cherished season

until I slip into the next

For all of you,

spring, summer, fall and winter

capture a beauty all your own

Today it’s you

dear autumn

I welcome you.

Saturate me with your goodness

as I dance with gratitude

in your splendor.

August 31/14