It's all ancient history: Understanding God's perspective on our redemption

Sometimes life is in the details, when you go digging with your spade for joy through the day's dross. Others, it's in the blur, in the painting of the day, the fogginess of retrospect. 

There are a million ways to raise your children, and each child and parent is different. I by no means state that my way is THE way. For this family, though, it is. It is right for these children to be home, even though I fail at homeschooling, and housecleaning, and even getting up at the right time of the morning. Precious has been the verse, "Although the Lord gives you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, your teachers will be hidden no more; Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, “This is the way; walk in it.” (Isaiah 30:19-20 exc.)

It doesn't come every day, every hour, every crisis, as I beg it would. Now and then, in the cracks of consciousness, in the humdrum and even through chaos, He whispers. Confirmation. Blessing. Direction.

My kids don't learn a lot from workbooks. Homeschool, for us, is about the golden hours of opportunity, snuggled up with a book and Youtube, exploring the universe and listening to the songs of stars. Reading Psalm 148 together. Can you learn about the stars and NOT read Psalm 148? Yes. But to do it all together, mama and kids, eyes wide, tears flowing...that is a gift.

Praise the LORD! Praise the LORD from the heavens; praise him in the heights! Praise him, all his angels; praise him, all his hosts! Praise him, sun and moon, praise him, all you shining stars! Praise him, you highest heavens, and you waters above the heavens! Let them praise the name of the LORD! For he commanded and they were created. And he established them forever and ever; he gave a decree, and it shall not pass away. Praise the LORD from the earth, you great sea creatures and all deeps, fire and hail, snow and mist, stormy wind fulfilling his word! Mountains and all hills, fruit trees and all cedars! Beasts and all livestock, creeping things and flying birds! Kings of the earth and all peoples, princes and all rulers of the earth! Young men and maidens together, old men and children! Let them praise the name of the LORD, for his name alone is exalted; his majesty is above earth and heaven. He has raised up a horn for his people, praise for all his saints, for the people of Israel who are near to him. Praise the LORD! (Psalm 148 ESV)

That morning, this morning of dancing and the evening of diving into our enormous universe, I woke up and fell asleep and woke up again and went to sleep again. I was buried under my insomnia and my guilt and my depression until 2 p.m. I went through the motions of making meals, I silently walked through rooms straightening up, but then I went back, and huddled in the burn-out sunlight on my bed. That morning seemed like an utter failure.

But the day wasn't over and who can grasp the enormity of the story of redemption? Who can look at the speck of life, the brief time given, in contrast to the ageless, faithful wonders of creation, and say, I must matter? Yet each hair on our heads is counted precious, each of our tears are caught in a bottle, each moment the universe is singing praise to heaven and we are failing...He is pursuing. He is dreaming of that second when you find purpose in the midst of your purposeless day, and think of Him. Remember HIM. Do you believe that? That He's waiting at the end of the day, and if you don't make it back to Him by the end of the day, He's there the next, and the next, and the next? Until you die. Waiting patiently for you to turn and recognize His hand in the painting, His gifting of the details, His fitting and molding of your life.

But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance. (2 Peter 3:8-9)

Beloved. You are more beloved to Him than your children are to you. There is nothing you could value higher than God values your life, your days: your face and your words - He's longing for them! Whether I'm drowning in details or lost in the "big picture", He's waiting for me at the end of the day to whisper that I walked in the path. He's there to smooth the ruffles and to dry the tears and fix the hurts of the day. If I'll only remember to turn to Him.

When I do, there's no disappointment, there's no shame, there's no preamble to love, conditional like we humans love each other and Him. There is no "You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours" God. He is WAY too big for that. There is only the God who sees the elemental YOU, the one He created for His glory, beautiful, clean and unscathed and totally redeemed. Your redemption is history and the rest of this mystery if your gift. Clean slate. Tabula rasa. A Father who no longer condemns us, but loves us and waits for us and makes our crooked paths straight. He doesn't demand our praise, need our praise, depend on our faithfulness for His grand plan to work. What does He do with our praise? He loves it, cherishes it, delights in it, waits for it.

Once you understand that everything is based on His love, and not His condemnation, you can come to the end of that failed day and simply rest. For you are His beloved, cherished, accepted child in whom He delights.

Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death. For what the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by our flesh, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering. If Christ is in you, then even though your body is subject to death because of sin, the Spirit gives life because of righteousness. And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of his Spirit who lives in you...those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God. The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.” The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory. (excerpted from Romans 8)

"Beloved"

"Cherished"

Crumbling in Vulnerability, Comfort in the Sun

I quit taking my sleeping pills because my heart doesn't like them much. I wake every night around 2 or 3, and go out to the porch to drink in the beauty so that I can fall back asleep with a full soul. This morning, the moon is just rising in the east, half-hidden behind the trees, like the last curl of an orange peel cupped in the hands of the night sky. As I watch, it catches the rays of the rising sun behind it, and glows lemon suddenly, brilliant. I am not alone in the night. The stars are out there singing. The sun preparing to rise.

The sun rises in the morning and sets at evening in our hemisphere, according to the appearance of things; and then it makes haste to go round the other hemisphere in the night: it "pants", as the word signifies;like a man out of breath with running; so this glorious body, which rejoiceth as a strong man to run his race, and whose circuit is from one end of the heavens to the other; is in haste to get to the place where he rose in the morning, and there he makes no stop, but pursues his course in the same track again. By this instance is exemplified the succession of the generations of men one after another, as the rising and setting of the sun continually follows each other; and also sets forth the restless state of things in the world, which, like the sun, are never at a stand, but always moving, and swiftly taking their course; and likewise the changeable state of man, who, like the rising sun, and when at noon day, is in flourishing circumstances, and in the height of prosperity, but as this declines and sets, so he has his declining times and days of adversity. Moreover, like the rising sun, he comes into this world and appears for a while, and then, like the setting sun, he dies; only with this difference, in which the sun has the preference to him, as the earth before had; the sun hastens and comes to its place from whence it arose, but man lies down and rises not again till the heavens be no more, and never returns to his place in this world, that knows him no more. (Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible)

Tuesday brings my son's 4th birthday, the marking of the years that I've lived with cancer. This year, my first of his birthdays in remission. The joy I feel significantly mitigated by the possibility of a tumor in my brain causing the sudden hearing loss I've battled for the past three weeks. Last night, I crumble into tears as we talk over schedules with my parents, and I think, next week I might be in surgery on Wednesday. I cannot stay in that place, that thinking-through-the-possibilities place, and I run, tears streaming, away from the thought. It is too raw there. I can't go back so soon. I will act like a normal patient, not a nurse, not a 4 year cancer patient; I will just go blind into that appointment and allow myself to be blindsided if it is bad news and there is a tumor that needs to come out.

I rest, albeit uneasily, in the fact that I had a premonition of cancer from the first time someone touched the tumor in my neck. Everyone reassured me it was probably nothing, but I had a foreboding sense of cancer the entire time between discovery in March and surgery in June. This time, I don't have that sense. I don't feel cancer lurking. It may be that I am pushing intuition off the field and onto the sidelines because I cannot tenet the fact that cancer has reappeared in less than a month from my remission celebration. For now, I will glory in the small moments of everyday and refuse to have any joy stolen from these intervening days simply because it is possible. I will cross that bridge when we come to it.

Like the sun, I will march on toward evening doing the tasks at hand. In the morning, I will think of this again, I am sure. Today, I am going to think of nothing else but dissertation, homeschool, cleaning my home, bringing the children swimming.

All I want for Christmas

Even in the deepest canyons of life, when we sit huddled in the rocky bottom, unsure of our way up, the sun hits the ledges above and lights the mountainside with glory, reminding us of warmth and promise and propelling us in our search of a path out. Sunrise this morning reminds me of this ancient truth once again, the hillsides lit golden and scarlet by the ascending sun, the valleys still dark and frost-bitten from the winter's dark night. 

It is always so, when I am hermetically sealed in the warmth of my home, and I gaze out the windows at the beauty He lays at our doorstep faithfully with each sunrise. Creation is my beacon home, the light that both guides me to the safe channel and warns me of the dangerous cliffs and rocks of the dark sea. Sitting on the other side of the window, in the shadows, I am daily in awe as the sun hits the ice crystals on the windowpane and sends me twirling in the chandelier light of the morning's prism. 

All I wish for Christmas is this: that I remember that, no matter how long, deep, wide and dark the canyon of my winter's discontent, my way is lit by the Light of a holy and unfathomable God who speaks loudest through suffering and draws us closest through days such as these. Holy, holy, holy, merciful and mighty!

I’ve been climbing my whole life 

and I’m only at the bottom of the mountain, 

Rising up from my feet in the daylight 

rising up into the clouds and out of my sight 

is the height of that mountain 

Well my hands cannot reach it 

and my mind can’t comprehend it 

but my soul is gonna get there one day 

Lord, these shoes are gonna need some help 

so we can make it to the top of the mountain 

Many feet have gone before us 

with a habit of faith and courage 

they’ll meet us at the road’s end

~Christa Wells, On the Mountain~

A discovered symphony

My heart pounds all night, 160 beats a minute, and the instinct to run, hide, is high up in my throat. I can't slow my heart, and I begin to panic. A prayer, a pill, a liter of electrolytes. Another movie to watch, a distraction. I don't understand why these nights of the racing heart. Psychological? Physical? Who knows anymore, with PTSD knocking on my door although it knows it's been shut out. My cancer rearing it's ugly head (literally) as I lose my hair and my body changes shape, and I fight off pneumonia and then Lyme's disease. I lose track of where the trials are coming from, and so I just rest, instead of running, and pray that God lifts the racing heart so I can sleep. At four a.m., it finally slows to a tolerable 120 beats per minute and I sleep deep and restless.

I wake, though, listening to the song of the world with different ears because of this video (if you can't watch the whole thing, watch from 42:00-50:00. It will blow your mind). The trees are aflame in the valley and the crickets still sing their high percussion. A bluebird lands and lends his whistle to the symphony. The buck grunting in rut, the moose's high trumpeting call, the caw of the hawks and the wind through the trees...all part of the way that rocks cry out His name.

I sit and listen, and add my voice,

"Holy is the Lord, God Almighty,

the earth is filled with His glory.

Holy is the Lord, God Almighty,

the earth is filled with His glory.

It's rising up, all around,

the anthem of the Lord's renown.

It's rising up, all around,

the anthem of the Lord's renown."

I am struck with the vastness of God's creation and the constant praise it sings - the pulsing stars with their chords of melancholy, the percussion of handdrums from the larger stars, the animals in the deep singing to each other, and the whole firmament constantly aflutter with noise and beauty. He whispers a verse I memorized as a child, For every beast of the forest is mine, the cattle on a thousand hills. (Psalm 50:10)

I listen again to the music of the pulsing stars, the whale song. I think of the rushing sound of the wind blowing snow, and the thud of hail on the wet grass in summer. The fireplace in the living room crackles alive with sound, and the waves rush in from the ocean, caught in my miraculous conch shell.

Praise the LORD! Praise the LORD from the heavens; praise him in the heights! Praise him, all his angels; praise him, all his hosts! Praise him, sun and moon, praise him, all you shining stars! Praise him, you highest heavens, and you waters above the heavens! Let them praise the name of the LORD! For he commanded and they were created. And he established them forever and ever; he gave a decree, and it shall not pass away. Praise the LORD from the earth, you great sea creatures and all deeps, fire and hail, snow and mist, stormy wind fulfilling his word! Mountains and all hills, fruit trees and all cedars! Beasts and all livestock, creeping things and flying birds! Kings of the earth and all peoples, princes and all rulers of the earth! Young men and maidens together, old men and children! (Psalm 148)

What more is there to say? I breathe the words of the Psalm to my God, whose praise is rising all around like mist from the cold earth. Tonight I get to join the symphony as I play in worship for a whole group of His wounded warriors. Praise God, indeed! For voice to sing, fingers to play, harmonica breathing it's vibratto over a chorus of wonder. For a spirit of peace instead of a spirit of fear. I am buoyed up on the earth's song and in wonder that I can join in again, my spirit set free from the chains that bound just a year ago. 

God is good, and He is with us, in every cricket song and sunrise, in every note played and every word written. God is with us.