Remembering

The following was penned on April 13, 1997

In Time

Days, weeks, months, and years have passed since

that day you were so quickly snatched from my little life

For so many, you are only a memory, the pain has subsided and life has gone on.

But for me, I feel the agony of your loss

for the first time

and my life has come to a screeching halt.

You, my mother, just died

and what I could not do as a child

I do as a grown woman…I mourn your death.

Oh, to have you hold me as a child in your arms

to feel the security a mother’s touch brings

How I long to hear you call my name

to enjoy the sound of your laughter filling a room

What I wouldn’t give to have you hold the children

I have birthed and to soak in the delight they give.

And my husband…do you know Mom, that I have a man who loves me

with a love so close to the Perfect One’s love,

it takes my breath away.

Friends…precious friends I would love you to meet,

my list could go on…

of people and places and happenings I wish I could

share with you

but it wouldn’t add or take away

from the ache of not having you here

You are gone from this life

And I like all the others must move on

But not today

Today I will once again gaze intently on pictures of you

hoping to catch a glimpse of life

I will weep and think of you throughout my day

hoping that just maybe, today

will be the day you walk through my door

And I will work through this thing called “grief work”

not because I want to, but because I have to

And then one day

In time

I too will be content

with memories of you

forever impressioned on my heart.

Juanita

April 13, 1997

It's hard to believe I wrote those words 22 years ago.  I could not imagine the healing that would come...in time.  Today marks 49 years since my mother was taken from my life.  While still a shadow of sadness--there will always be this shadow-- there is no longer the anguished empty longing of yesteryear.  Jesus has been so very present and faithful and abundantly good to me.  The expansive view of eternity is not for me to see.  I only trust that this mystery is in His wise safekeeping.

"Remembering you today Mom, with love"

My own Betrayal

"Jesus,

I have betrayed you.

Every time I say, 

'You are not enough.'

When I complain and weep in my spirit 

over my weakness and limitations

When I despise my frailty

and compare the me You created

against another...

When I fail to be at rest because

I keep frantically trying to be more of something...

The fullness of You completes me--

only because of the cross...

only

the

cross.

Jesus,

forgive me.

Let me be empty in Your fullness

Let me be weak in Your strength

Let me be humble in Your provision

Let me live in Your sustaining grace

Let me be at rest in Your sufficiency

Let me live this life you've ordained in me

 through Your "once for all" sacrifice

Let me be quiet in Your love

that was broken and spilled out

for me 

Good Friday

"To partake of sin is to participate in this rupture of reality, this torture procedure, this murder, this death. Never has the consequence of sin been clearer. When we forget, the broken and bleeding Man on the cross reminds us.

It’s so easy to forget in our atonement theories and theological reflections on Good Friday that a real man, a living and breathing human being was beaten to just this side of death, that he was put on display for people to mock and spit on, and that finally he was crucified by the power of the State. And why? Because we sin. Because each of us stands in the Garden of Eden and choose to become like God. Because each one of us eats the forbidden fruit.

And still we remember his words, “Three days…”

Joshua Bocanegra
Excerpt from Lent Project
Biola University, California

The Path of Lent

This always happens.

I start off with such purposeful plans for Lent and all that I desire it to mean for me.  And then well before I have reached Holy Week I am sorely aware that it's not just my plans that have come undone but I myself. 

That which I have "given up" for Lent seems minuscule and empty.  Because it is.

My pledge to focus on Christ and His sacrifice gets seemingly swallowed up with "life" and I am fighting to overcome my failure to Him.  Because somehow I think I can.

My awareness of my sinful self comes at me in the subtle ways and I recognize all of my vain attempts to do more and be more so that I will earn His favor.  Because I don't know what to do with His free gift.

I see the ugliness of my sin and despise it because I hate being imperfect.  Not because it was paid for with the blood of Jesus.

This always happens.

I start off Lent somehow thinking I can be holy for 40 days and always,
always I come crashing into the wall of my sin...
and the rest
and provision
and purity
and redemption
and beauty
and mercy
and sufficiency
and promise
and wonder
and forgiveness
of His love.

And I collapse
in relief
and gratitude.

O Praise The Name (Anástasis)

Reflections

Reflections of the past reveal the patient and enduring love of God.

     Forgiveness,

          transformation,

               healing...

miracles... 

worked in me...in spite of me.

I am drawn with an awed gratefulness to this

faithful one."

--August 1999

Juanita

We Are Nothing Without God

Excerpt from The Lent Project --Center for Christianity, Culture & the Arts,
Biola University, California

Psalm 8:4 "...what are mere mortals that you should think about them, human beings that you should care for them?"

"...in this season of Lent, I think we ought to start there--by meditating on the absurdity of God's care.  I so often think myself big.  To comprehend God's love for me I must remind myself daily that I am small.  Ludicrously so.  My life is unbelievably brief.  My concerns and troubles are not worth mentioning even compared to other creatures who are as tiny as I am.  And yet the God who spoke a billion stars into being loves me.  Listens to me.  Was willing to die for me...

It doesn't make sense.  It is utterly undeserved.  And remembering that this is so strips us of our sense that we are owed God's attention, that his constant reception is only to be expected.  No, Christ's regard for me is pure, astonishing gift, for I am dust."
--Dr. Janelle Aijian
Assistant Professor
Torry Honors Institute
Biola University

Ash Wednesday

"Sometimes, O God,

my thirst for you is pushed aside,

ignored,

or simply quenched by something other--

something reasonable,

something more popular--

than you.

But you never go away,

never stop,

never leave the depths of me.

Like an underground spring,

you are fresh and free,

breaking through.

Help me prepare a place for you

in the caverns of my soul.

Amen."

--Pamela Hawkins

"The Awkward Season:  Prayers for Lent"

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