Are you willing to be hated?

...we labor, working with our own hands. When reviled, we bless; when persecuted, we endure. (I Corinthians 4:12)

I think this is an interesting idea: willing to be reviled. I haven't thought about this for a while.  Most of my suffering is physical...like this woman's. Yet, she sees in her suffering a spiritual connection, beauty, and opportunity that I have not noticed in mine. Am I willing to be hated?  I remember reading as a child that for the sins of many, Christ was reviled. He was willing to be hated, willing to humble Himself to the lowest depths this fallen world could offer - to die an unjust but ever so necessary death. In I Peter 2:23-25, it says that when he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly. He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed. For you were straying like sheep, but have now returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls.

How can I be willing to do anything less than what was done for me?

I encourage you - men and women - to listen through to the end of this video.  At the end, this survivor issues a call to arms for both men and women that you will rarely hear in today's world.

You cannot make your own heart beat. Don't you realize that - all the power you think you possess - you really possess none of it? It is the mercy of God that sustains you! Even when you hate Him.

I was a little girl

Alone in my little world

Who dreamed of a little home for me

I played pretend between the trees

And fed my houseguests bark and leaves

And laughed in my pretty bed of green

I had a dream

That I could fly

From the highest swing

I had a dream

Long walks in the dark

Through woods grown behind the park

I asked God who I'm supposed to be

The stars smiled down at me

God answered in silent reverie

I said a prayer and fell asleep

I had a dream

That I could fly

From the highest tree

I had a dream.

Now I'm old and feeling gray

I don't know what's left to say

About this life I'm willing to leave

I lived it full, I lived it well

As many tales I live to tell

I'm ready now, I'm ready now

I'm ready now

To fly from the highest wing

I had a dream

~ Priscilla Ahn, Dream ~

Desperation & drudgery

Hello darkness, my old friend
I've come to talk with you again
Because a vision softly creeping
Left its seeds while I was sleeping
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence

In restless dreams I walked alone
Narrow streets of cobblestone
'Neath the halo of a street lamp
I turn my collar to the cold and damp

~Sound of Silence, Paul Simon, 1965

Tired of telling you, you have me
When I know you really don't
Tired of telling you I'll follow
When I know I really won't
Cause I'd rather stand here speechless
With no great words to say
If my silence is more truthful
And my ears can hear how to walk in your way

In the silence
You are speaking
In the quiet I can feel the fire
And it's burning, burning deeply
Burning all that it is that you desire to be silent, in me
~ In the Silence, Jason Upton

Here it is again, this old familiar place, where the rubber meets the road. We survived the separation, we survived cancer again for a 3rd time. Now we wait for results. And survive the consequences of cancer. They are never easy: taking yourself to the brink of hypothyroid death, taking your children to the edge of sanity, taking your husband into a new realm of miserable coping. Mouth sores are healing, and now my hair is falling out in chunks and my skin is dry and numb. My fingers and toes are completely dead, like chunks of wood I haul around with no purpose. My eyesight is blurry, my body aches, especially the joints in my arms, legs, hands and feet. I feel as though I'm on the brink of another double kidney infection - but it's just my body in its inability to handle the slough and crud that builds up over time in every cell and joint and space. Pain reaches a peak around 11 a.m. and then improves with a nap (meaning the laundry and cleaning still isn't getting done), peaks again just after dinner, and improves when I take my daily Synthroid dose at 8 p.m. Add to that the symptoms of hyperthyroidism because of the high dose of Synthroid! My body is getting deliberate double messages. Never a good thing. My heart rate is 140 between 10 p.m. and 9 a.m. Weird! Especially for me - I usually run very low on the heartrate spectrum, around 55 during the day and around 40 at night.

The kids are so, so sick with this latest cold. I am stressed as I watch Amy deteriorate because of asthma and lung gunk. She is requiring nebulizer albuterol for her asthma every 3-4 hours today. She still has good energy. I find I am so much more paranoid since her encephalitis in October/November. I don't want to miss something and end up in the hospital with her over Christmas. Of course, how could I know. I just have to trust, and be watchful, and try to hand it over to God.

I feel as though I've descended further into darkness since coming home, rather than emerging as I expected. God feels very, very far away today, as I struggle through the inconsequential and exhausting work of motherhood. Just being alive in my own skin feels like work. I feel depressed, knowing this is my lot for so many more years, even if it is only once a year in the future. How can I survive this? How am I going to ever bring glory to God through this? I feel miserable, I feel like everyone around me is miserable as well.

And then, just for perspective, at least I am not going through this today:

http://cecemeetsworld.wordpress.com/losing-eli/

Finding comfort in numbers

It's pretty unexpected when the abortion debate lands solidly in your own lap after giving birth to four healthy children and having a tubal to prevent more. Just to clarify, Aaron and I chose the tubal sterilization surgery because I had such complications with Caleb's pregnancy. We felt further pregnancies may risk my life, and didn't feel that was a route God intended us to take at the time. However, any "mistakes" that might happen in the future would be gladly welcomed with much rejoicing! I know countless Christians who have made similar decisions about limiting family size...and wait, regardless, for another "mistake" to come their way.

So here is the "mistake". I still can't wrap my head around why God would allow a pregnancy, a miraculous one that defies medical logic, only to allow it also to be ectopic, and involve all these heartbreaking decisions for us. Especially in the midst of Amelia's medical crisis. I expect I won't really understand all of this until I sit at His feet in heaven. I finally found a few websites that compile some statistical evidence for a more conservative, non-abortive approach (see the Life in a Shoe blog); as well as cases of babies who survived tubal rupture and/or abdominal pregnancy (see RealChoice here and here).

As I ponder all things pre-birth, I feel thankful for the fortuitous winning of this book from a friend of a friend's blog; I also recently re-read Mark Driscoll's exposition on birth control at the behest of a friend's questions, and am comforted by the clarity of Scripture on the topic of unborn life:

Some will argue that there is a difference between a child in a mother’s womb and one outside, yet the early church saw both as equally living people and the taking of life in either state as equally murderous. Their convictions were based on Scripture, which uses the same word (brephos) for Elizabeth’s unborn child John the Baptizer in Luke 1:41, 44, as is used for the unborn baby Jesus in Mary’s womb in Luke 2:12, and also for the children brought to Jesus in Luke 18:15. Simply, in the divinely inspired pages of Scripture, God reveals to us that a child in the womb and a child singing and dancing around Jesus in worship are equally human beings who bear the image of God and thankfully Mary did not abort the “tissue” in her womb because He was God (see Charles H. H. Scobie, Ways of Our God: An Approach to Biblical Theology (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 834).

Baby is not where it should be

Yesterday afternoon, I was diagnosed with an ectopic pregnancy (the baby implanted in my Fallopian tube, or possibly elsewhere in my abdomen). I was offered two different treatments: methotrexate, a chemotherapy drug that targets rapidly dividing cells; or surgical removal of the tube and the baby. I chose instead "expectant management", meaning I am hoping my body miscarries the pregnancy without intervention. I chose this because I am completely and totally anti-abortion. It's not necessarily an "easy" decision, because it involves risks for me: bleeding, hemorrhage, and even death. There is some free fluid behind my uterus on the ultrasound that indicates abdominal bleeding, and I am also having pain that indicates that. I continue to have some mild external bleeding. My pregnancy hormone levels have remained the same now for 2 days, which may be a sign that I am miscarrying, or could be a sign of continued growth of the baby outside of my uterus.

While it is possible for the baby to survive, it is very unlikely. I am hoping to make an impact on my care providers as I have chosen a very counter-cultural method of treatment. Regardless of the outcome, this will hopefully communicate my understanding of fetus as "baby" in some very loud and clear terms. Read here, here and here for stories of healthy babies delivered after an ectopic pregnancy. The third story is one I heard on Discovery Health shortly before my own tubal sterilization surgery. This story introduced the idea that perhaps abortion was not the only option when facing an ectopic pregnancy.

When He sustained me

In the midst of another season of hurts, I am reminded continually that there are many hurts greater than those I bear today. I thank God for offering perspective on my life (vibrant, full, joyful, entertaining, beautiful) and my suffering (bruising, buffeting, confusing, exhausting).


Aaron and I continued a pregnancy nearly 3 1/2 years ago after receiving a poor prenatal prognosis after ultrasound. Our unborn daughter was diagnosed with spina bifida, myelomeningocele, and Arnold-Chiari malformation at an 18 week ultrasound. My alpha fetoprotein levels were also abnormally high. We were urged to go through with an abortion that very day, as we were just 1 1/2 weeks from the cutoff date for an "easy" abortion. We adamantly refused. At 24 weeks, our daughter was found to be perfectly healthy via a level 2 ultrasound at Mayo Clinic. This couple walked a different, harder, road. But made the same courageous choice. And oh, what we both would have missed if we had chosen otherwise! They would have missed 5 days of glory with their beautiful son, I would have missed 3 years with the precocious, flamboyant, sticks-like-glue love of Amelia Irene.

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