Grace in the discards

Writing here has been difficult; cancer looms large but I am called to proclaim the Cross more and more through this remarkable journey. I blog hop and scatter pebbles and crumbs and the readers come more and more slowly. Will you do me this favor, encourage me with a comment when you read this? You will grace me with your presence and response.

Keeping an online journal has hidden blessings: I hit "search", and, thanks to Google, realize that I have written about my messy house every October and November since I began writing in 2008. Really, this whole journal is full of Joy's life: unmasked project - the inner workings of the mind and the heart when faced with the large difficulties of life.

Even while I'm asleep, the chairs set out for devotions with my husband mock me with their piles of clean clothes and discarded summer quilts. I know it would take 15 minutes to clean up, but I spend that 15 minutes sleeping with my nightmares every day instead. He and I are like ships passing in the dawn in the dark anyway, too tired for anything beyond a quick and quiet romp in the sheets.

Hats litter my dresser, along with the remnants of my last shift working as a nurse, the watch ticking off time and the furry blue hat a reminder of hairlessness now a memory of three weeks past.

Just as Christ chooses to love me with all His heart instead of focusing on my flaws, I look past the mess to the yellow daisies in the antique milk bottle standing on the head of my bed.

Winter has come back again 

Feels like the season won't end 

My faith is dying tonight 

And I won't try to pretend 

I've got it all figured out 

I don't have any doubts 

I've got a busted heart 

I need You now Yeah, I need You now 

Hold on to me, hold on to me 

Don't let me lose my way 

Hold on to me 

I am the wandering son 

Your love is never enough 

I keep chasing the wind 

Instead of chasing Your love 

I'm screaming out Your name 

Don't let me fall on my face 

I've got a busted heart 

I'm in need of a change 

I'm desperate for grace 

Broke Your heart a thousand times 

But You've never left my side 

You have always been here for me 

You never let me go 

Until it comes to an end 

Soon this season will end 

I'll surrender tonight 

You meet me right where I am

~Busted Heart (Hold on To Me), For King & Country~

Trading in my cardboard crown

We listen to Grace Potter for a whole month straight, and I dream of cutting the foot pedals off one of my organs and building a revolving amp like the Leslie she had custom-made. (One of the major perks of being a famous musician has got to be the custom-made instruments. What a dream come true!)

We fire up the organ once a day and Caleb is always first in line. I'm not sure if it's the many buttons and slides he can manipulate to his little engineering brain's content, or the thunder of the bass pipes rattling the wall in front of him. Either way, I guarantee this kid is going to have a love of organs for the rest of his life.

I look down at the walnut furl of the organ leg descending out of the cabinet, and I think about how Amy told me once that photography is the gift of seeing beauty in the little things, the romance that exists in your own life. I think about the book she recommended slowly drawing my heart back into prayer and praise, Ann's book tuning my ear to the music of the universe that plays everywhere, Serena's book finally bringing the light of Grace to the forefront of everything, as sin and hell and death finally get pushed into the shadows of my heart instead of the doorway. I look around me, at the table with the beautiful poinsettia embroidered red tablecloth covered with oatmeal from breakfast, and the laundry, with it's brief breath of summery freshness wafting, piled in mountainous heaps in the laundry room. I see the glisten of the professional wax on the 1950's linoleum tile glistening glints of my husband's love, borne with hours of labor on hands and knees. I think of those scabbed knees, and look at the Clementine peels and pistachio shells littering the floor, and I wonder that what glints through is love and not the endless labor that awaits a woman every time she opens her eyes to her home.

So I cut a neat slice from the center of the pie of this home, and look at my camera's display as a smile creeps over my lips. That smile is the thud as joy takes off from my soul like the sky-bound firecracker still encased in it's pretty paper shell, and then a moment later the explosion. It trickles down all over the room in a shower of colorful sparks, and here I am, soul abandoned to joy, in the midst of my toils of the day and the frustrations of it all. It is slowly dawning on me that He is so different from the rest of us, this God who tells me that He knows the plans that He has for me...plans to prosper me and not harm me, plans to give me hope and a future (Jeremiah 29:11). I think that means an easy life, an entertaining life, a blissfully happy life, a life of wealth or fame, perhaps. He whispers through these joy-moments that He's giving it to me, right here, in this messy house with these raucous children.

The "hall of fame of faith" in Hebrews 11 starts out by telling us that we need to have faith in two things to seek the face of God: that He exists, and that He is the rewarder of those who diligently seek Him. But what follows, in that "hall of fame", are not the stories of prosperity, but the stories of great suffering. Noah, who watched his whole world disappear in the flood waters and rebirth different and desolate; Abraham, a sojourner in a land of enemies, who twice sent his wife to sleep with other powerful men, was asked to sacrifice his only son, and never saw the promise God made him brought to fruition. Moses lost his family as a babe, was raised by the enemy of his people, led the most worrisome group ever through an exile in a desert. Rahab endured a life of prostitution before going to live as an alien with an enemy people. The end of this passage is a litany of what we might have in store for us: beatings, floggings, sawed in half by the sword; we might live as destitute, persecuted, mistreated people wearing skins for clothing and welcomed nowhere. It says again, at the end of the chapter, that all those listed where commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised.

Abraham lived in tents, abandoning earthly comfort for the hope of a city with foundations, whose architect and builder was God.  Trading prosperity here for prosperity there. A crown of jewels in heaven for faith through suffering here. Am I willing to join these ranks? These people who did not receive the things promised...only saw them and welcomed them from a distance... and admitted that they were aliens and strangers on earth. This is what I have faith in? Not worldly blessings and rewards, but heavenly ones? Is that what starts the thunderous firecracker of joy exploding in my soul? This giving up of everything that ties me down so my soul is free to see? See the blessings?

I am on the notorious middle ground that has bred discontent for the middle class in societies everywhere since the beginning of time. Who wants to be average? Surrounded by people just like yourself? There is that seed, deep in the soul, that begs us excel. Yes, our culture cries it, too, a cardboard-crown copy that says "be all you can be" and commands us to find our individuality and live it out limited only by how high we can dream. But that seed is common to humanity, and comes with the unique stamp of our soul that sets us apart from every other person on this planet. Did God put it there? Can He light that unstoppable seed of desire up like a homing beacon for all the world to see as He teaches me that this, the blessed wonder of relationship with Him that is known only to Him and I, is what makes me unique and precious? Not accomplishments, not the individual wonder of my talents, but, like the parable says, what I invest those talents in. Here, or eternity? This question calls from every blessing-dressed-in-ugliness that surrounds me today:

26: the laundry piles (that I have a machine to wash fresh and sweet)

25: the dishes piled (waiting for the automatic dishwasher to spray clean water from 100 feet underground)

26: the Clementine peels and pistachio shells (that fill my children's bellies with such nutrition my forebears never dreamed of in this barren, snow-covered wilderness)

And from earlier in my first week of counting the blessings up with a number for each one:
16: sweet resolution after an argument

15: my baby girl learned to button

11: wind whirling snow crystals into the dawn off the roof of our bedroom wing

6: waking to Rosy singing

3: PG Tips tea, caramel-colored by fresh cream

Crying out/celebrating Christ

Break forth, intone the lamentable psalm,

"Out of the deeps, Lord, have I cried to thee!"
~ Robert Browning, The Ring and the Book, Book I

I just can't seem to break out of this funk. This blog is helpful to me so often - of late, I checked back to remember my own radiation timeline from last time, and also how I felt post-dose. It is amazing how much you block out of the bad stuff that happens. I am thankful for the forgetfulness - except that it also makes it feel as though it is the first time I've felt this low. Reading back through entries from December, 2008 and April, 2009 have helped me put this experience in perspective - turns out, it is exactly the same each time. And yes, my housework and homeschooling escape me for about a month afterward. So I guess that just helps me relax into it - this is something to be survived, and I can forget about how awfully I am failing at all of my roles, and know that someday soon it will start to get better again.

I folded my laundry tonight. It now sits in piles about 3 feet high off my dining table. But it is folded. I no longer have to hunt every morning for socks, underwear and clothing for every member of the family. It feels like a giant load has been lifted. Silly things make me happy.

Tomorrow, we start our weekend long celebration of Jesus' birth. You and I were so important to God, that omniscient, omnipresent, all-powerful invisible, that He sent His Son to die, on the cross, tortured, broken, crying tears of blood. Whatever depression I suffer in these dark days post-radiation, they are not my choice. Jesus took on that depression, so much deeper than mine, by choice. Because of love. How could I possibly capture in words, typed words, how I feel about that sacrifice?? What a Savior. Hallelujah, Christ is born!

Go in peace and joy to love and serve the Lord. We go in the name of the Christ Child. And the blessing of God, Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer, goes with you and remain amongst you now and always. Amen! Alleluia.

Please join us in praying for Aaron's college friends, the Nathes, as they expect the birth of their 4th child, a son, who will die within hours of his birth. His name is Jake. His brother, who died 4 years ago, was named Josh. Visit the Nathe's blog here. Read their ongoing story by clicking "journal".

Soliloquy on ceding the self

An hour of faith and fractured prayer as the grooves in the floor ground into my knees through the velveteen of my pajamas. I knelt before the familiar curve of the cranberry couch, the tattered green cover of my 5-year-Bible for Katrina rough against my outstretched hand. My ear glowing like a hot coal against the arm in which my face was buried, wet with tears.

What brought me to such prostration? Nothing out of the ordinary. Living with cancer at a young age carries with it the consequent awareness that time may be of the essence. Whatever areas of my life are closed off to God, wherever I am retaining that old, desperate grip on self...they show painfully, like a tattered square of aged fabric on a new scrap quilt. Whatever notes I keep in the margins of a Bible, whatever struggles are transparent in my writing here, there is always another level God is trying to nudge me towards.

My life is a long string of chapters with one central theme: resistance. Various personality tests and peer reviews through the years have marked me with words like "rebel", "visionary", "leader", "counter-cultural". They herald strength of character inexorably mixed with the deep veins of ore that God is currently mining and carting out of my mountain - stubborn, immobile, conviction, opinion, anger. What begins as a trait of character is substantiated in a thousand tiny sins with which I, the clay pot whirling on the wheel, laugh up at my Potter, "Trust me, I've got it under control. It's not a problem for me. I'm o.k. with this. You don't need to supervise."

That evening bowed in front of my couch in prayer was weeks ago. For the first time, from the pit of my soul, I cried out for help in a few key areas I've been holding back from God for years. What I couldn't do by willpower alone I prayed fell under that almost unbelievable umbrella of God's power...with Him all things are possible. (Matthew 19:26) I asked God to "root it out of me", an expression I heard first from my mother, who learned it from her mother, Fern. If Fern could give up a 2 pack cigarette habit in the 1970s, before the patches and pills, and psychotherapy and support groups, what are my little sin areas to God now?

I've been walking around in a haze ever since. You know how it feels when you wake up from a deep, vivid dream, and it takes full minutes to absorb the reality of the mysterious mounds and shapes that surround you in your dark bedroom? I feel that way...for days. Afraid I might wake up and God will have abandoned me to my own devices, and I will fail. Of course I expect to fail...perhaps almost too much so! It has been difficult to believe that I could just be done with these areas I've tried so hard to ignore, forget, or destroy in myself. Almost like it is a figment of my imagination. Almost like maybe I could have done it myself if I would have just tried harder.

(Ah, there's the old familiar rub...)

And then I ran smack into the face of Satan this morning, jolting me out of my daze. I felt like a warrior in an unknown land, the familiar heft of the Sword of the Spirit in my right hand (Heb. 4:12); white fog surrounds me, and I am awash in oblivion, walking forward in faith. For just a moment, the fog lifts as I walk up a particularly steep and challenging hill, and I see the face of the Enemy suddenly before me. When I walk back into that peaceful, silent fog, it is with new awareness, yet requires the same confident steps of faith.

So on I fight in my fog. Praying for special protection today as I face renewed temptations. Let me not be lulled to sleep by the age-old tune, "It Doesn't Really Matter". Because it does, deeply, awesomely matter. To God, to me, to my legacy. Let me be faithful today in small things.

Limiting God

It's never a good idea to put God in a box. I enjoyed this scripture from Haggai this morning. I am reading the English Standard Version for the next 5 years. I just started Rosy's journal Bible. I have writer's block every time I think about writing my letter to her in the coverlet. Interesting, because I found it so easy to write Katrina's 5 years ago when I set out on this project. It feels as though the stakes have been raised, and I need to be so much more mindful of what I say to my little Rosebud in her Bible.

"Is it a time for you yourselves to dwell in your paneled houses, while this house lies in ruins? Now therefore, thus says the Lord of hosts: Consider your ways. You have sown much, and harvested little. You eat, but you never have enough; you drink, but you never have your fill. You clothe yourselves, but no one is warm. And he who earns wages does so to put them in a bag with holes. Thus says the Lord of hosts: Consider your ways. Go up to the hills and bring wood and build the house, that I may take pleasure in it and that I may be glorified, says the Lord. You looked for much, and behold, it came to little. And when you brought it home, I blew it away. Why? declares the Lord of hosts. Because of my house that lies in ruins, while each of you busies himself with his own house. Therefore the heavens above you have withheld the dew, and the earth has withheld its produce. And I have called for a drought on the land and the hills, on the grain, the new wine, the oil, on what the ground brings forth, on man and beast, and on all their labors." ~ Haggai 1:4-11

Today I am meditating on these verses. Obviously, I go to a physical building for Sunday worship of the Lord of hosts. It is not in shambles. But what can I do to build it up? How can I shift out of a consumer mentality in this time of economic and political crisis and change? How can I become a contributor, in a deep sense, to my faith community? Even more, how can I reach beyond those borders to the vast Church, and specifically to God's people? Instead of letting these trials focus me inward, to my own family, how can they propel me outward, to focus on others with my children and husband at my side?