The in-between

I woke up from 40 minutes of unconsciousness to an alien sound. It took me a few seconds to understand that it was me making that sound, a vast empty sucking sound, the hollow of my chest pulling air in slowly a few times every minute in a chaotic, rhythmless gasp for life. In between, someone was pushing sickly sweet oxygen down into my belly through the purple ambu bag, and I remember trying to swallow it, or breathe it in. I was looking up into the eyes of a coworker from the University who still works in the ER, and she was calling my name through a long tunnel, her voice echoing off the walls as it bounced it's way down to where I lay in a cavern deep below the crowd who seemed to be working on my body. If there is an in-between, a place between alive and dead, I have been there. It is a platform suspended, invisible, where your soul perches like a frightened bird, too afraid to rejoin a quavering, hurting body, the glass ceiling that opens to heaven now shut above you, beat your wings against it as you would to get back to that dark warm firelight of something as light as air and as flowing as water, some element that doesn't exist here.

Brother, he’s suffered like a tree taken down

Wept as he witnessed his dreams carved out

And how can a man just keep walking around

With his heart full of holes

But oh, His bow is on the strings

And the tune resonates in the open space

To show us how emptiness sings:

Glory to God, Glory to God!

In fullness of wisdom,

He writes my story into his song,

My life for the glory of God.

~How Emptiness Sings, Christa Wells~

I remember well the first time this happened. I was 17 and had played my last heart beat out on the stage at a dear friend's wedding. The last notes of the piano fading into the postlude, I wavered through the crowd to the bathroom, my smile wooden as friends complimented my playing. I collapsed there and waited for someone to come bring me my mother. I felt my soul leaving my body, and the sound in my ears was the rhythmic "whumph-whumph" of helicopter blades, helicopter blades hovering just over the water, and I could feel the ocean spray kicked up by the windstorm, only then I noticed it wasn't ocean water, it was ice water my mother was splashing on me, and I was on the cold tile floor of the bathroom and pinned there, motionless. Her voice came through a tunnel, too. On that ambulance ride, I flew away, and felt the warmth of heaven touch me even though I kept my eyes closed on purpose. But something pulled me back and I opened my eyes to look down at my naked self in an ER room and hear my mother calling me, frantically, through that tunnel.

It happened again when I was 22, just before I feel in love. And I think that time I almost made it there. I was so ready to be done. I had no idea what joy lay before me. I was so tired by the work He had me doing. I was so ready to go home. That time my heart stopped.

Then it was 11 years, and I almost forgot about the in-between, until I saw it again in August. And now again, suddenly, so quickly, on Saturday.

Four times. Four times I've almost made it all the way to heaven. If there is an in-between. And four times, He's comforted me, and then sent me back, said there is more for me to do here on this turning Earth. Sent me back to the chaos and the cold and the separateness.

Before Christ died, there was a place called Paradise, or Abraham's side, a place where believers went to await further vindication and ascent to heaven. But that was after they died. Is that an in-between? There is a powerful story I love in Luke, the story of the rich man and the beggar named Lazarus. This story tells me that it doesn't matter if I've seen the in-between. It doesn't matter if I've met my angel. It doesn't matter if I shout it from the rafters. It won't change anyone's mind, if the prophets and Moses cannot.

Paul speaks of a man who was caught up to the 3rd heavens and saw things he cannot even put into words. Is this the in-between? Are there those of us who are brought to the in-between for comfort rather than just to prophesy, like the author of Revelation, who was brought to heaven to describe it to us? My daughter Amy knows the in-between, I, too have seen it. It is a place I can't describe but I know well, and when I get there I know nothing else but thankfulness and peace. I am surrounded by powerful emotions and beings and other souls, and I forget all about the former life, and I am wordless and wise and only a whisper in a whole breathing current I've suddenly joined.

Coming back here is so hard. This world is cold and harsh and lonely. I cry for days and I can't tell anyone why. It is because I am separate again. Completely by myself. This life is so hard. It is not just because it is hard to recover. Yes, I am covered head to toe in bruises and my physical reserves are tapped out and all I can do is rest and wait for strength to return to these veins. But it is the harsh slam of the door to that welcome tide where I am at once joined again to Love and no longer lonely, no longer striving, no longer working, no longer suffering - that is what I mourn in these days of tears as I come back to life slowly and painfully from the in-between.

So tame my flesh

And fix my eyes

That tethered mind free from the lies

But I'll kneel down

Wait for now

I'll kneel down

Know my ground

Raise my hands

Paint my spirit gold

And bow my head

Keep my heart slow

Cause I will wait, I will wait for you

~I Will Wait, Mumford & Sons~

Almost dying

I quit breathing sometime on Saturday afternoon for 40 minutes or so. My brother did CPR on me. My children watched me through all of that. For three days, I didn't get any answers. I floated in and out of sleep, recovering. Nightmares.

There is a room somewhere in the belly of every hospital, a room I love working in. It's called the trauma bay, the trauma room, or something like that. It's a huge room where they bring people who stop living on ambulances. I had no idea what it would be like to wake up there, splayed out like a fish on a gutting table with 30 people working on you, disoriented, confused, unable to make any decisions for yourself. I've always had an instinct about working there, been next to the person's head, comforted them. Because somehow I knew it was terrible to wake up there. When I woke up there, there was a friend at my head. But still, it was one of the absolute worst moments of my life.

I'm glad Saturday wasn't my day to die. I keep leaning hard on the verse that says there is one day appointed for me to die, and only He knows the hour. However peacefully I felt myself floating off, and however chaotically I felt myself pulled back into life, it wasn't my day to die.

"Each time the mystery of suffering touches us personally and all the cosmic questions arise afresh in our minds we face the choice between faith (which accepts) and unbelief (which refuses to accept). There is only one faculty by which we may take hold of this mystery. It is the faculty of faith, and "faith is the fulcrum of moral and spiritual balance." I write as one who desperately needed a refuge. The bottom has dropped out of my world, as it were, more than once. What, exactly, is going on?  Where was I to turn? To God? Is He God or is He not? Does He love me or does He not? Am I adrift in chaos or is the word true that tells me that I am an individual created, called, loved, and purposefully placed in a cosmos, an ordered universe, a universe designed, created and completely under the control of a loving God and Father? It helps me, at such times of bewilderment and sorrow, to go to some of the simplest words, such as I am the good shepherd." (from A Path Through Suffering, Elisabeth Elliot, p. 98)

To taste July

We quaff the cup of life with eager haste without draining it, instead of which it only overflows the brim / objects press around us, filling the mind with the throng of desires that wait upon them, so that we have no room for the thoughts of death. ~Oscar Wilde

The cup overflows so fast and furious, my feet are sticky with the drips that cascade through my toes and over flip flops all the summer day long. Joy is everywhere we go, at gymnastics class where Rosy's soul expands until it fills the whole room with its radiance, and the little kids do headstands and tumble like weeds in the corner, copying the instructor's every move. In October, I caught fire from a little book and dreamed of a clutter free house, and now finally in the damp July air the seed of a dream flowers full, and our garbage can overflows with broken toys, unmatched socks, scratched cd's and chipped dishes. The wood floors gleam in expanses of emptiness we haven't seen in this house since cancer came to call in 2008. The kids and I stop by the local thrift store today with a truckload of donations, and we sit in the parking lot in fits of giggles over the antics of a blow-up balloon man they use to advertise sales, flipping over and punching himself in the face in the summer wind.

It's the time of year when the summer sun hangs forever in the evening sky, there's the constant sound of laughter on the breeze, the sprinkler sends glitter cascading through the air and the crickets sing a different, mid-summer song.

Love is all hot and sweaty and altogether real, like midnight cuddles with naked kids sticky under the thin sheets with the fan blowing full blast through air as thick as velvet.

We've long since learned to quit listening for the other shoe to drop, and to listen instead for the tinkling of laughter like a spoon clinking glass, the panting of the dog that comes with the smile on her face in the hot afternoon, the smack of a son's kiss through chocolate and vanilla ice cream after snacks on the porch.

The hay's been cut twice, and the corn is higher than any of the kids. The oats are burgeoning gold and the whole earth smells sweet. The cows' milk is like candy from summer grass, and the farmer calls us to tell us our beef will soon be at the butcher's. Summer is half gone before it's half started, but I've never been one to look back at the pages already torn from the calendar.

We are reveling in summer. Every t-ball trick taught. Every bug bite to scratch. Every lake swum. Every frog song and cricket call. Every late night sing-along and early morning walk through the dew-dripping lawn. Every bonfire and every charred hot-dog. Every firecracker, every sparkler. One marshmallow, burnt or brown, at a time.

Oh, how we give thanks, for small gifts and large ones.

Oh, if there’s only one song I can sing,

When in His beauty I see the great King,

This shall my song through eternity be,

“Oh, what a wonder that Jesus loves me!”

I am so glad that Jesus loves me,

Jesus loves me, Jesus loves me.

I am so glad that Jesus loves me,

Jesus loves even me.

In this assurance I find sweetest rest,

Trusting in Jesus, I know I am blessed;

Satan, dismayed, from my soul now doth flee,

When I just tell him that Jesus loves me.

~Jesus Loves Even Me, Philip Bliss, 1870~

Time twirling

My children spun in the sunlight, feet grazing the new maple floors just long enough to propel the next leap and twirl. My dad was down on his knees for days tearing up carpet, laying down subfloor, lovingly piecing the maple tongue-and-groove over the 1950's linoleum of his childhood home. He named it Skønnestad - "beautiful place" in his grandmother's Danish.

My grandparents have been gone two years now, quick years with fleet feet that dance out of my grasp as quickly as my children twirling away. I still hear grandpa's chuckle in the waves of the big lake lapping up pebbles of granite and agate at the shore. The twinkle in grandma's eyes as she said, "stop now! I can do that!" every time I washed dishes in the turquoise dishpan in the wide white farmhouse sink.

My parents talk about their aches more these days. Seeing them in Grandpa and Grandma's house, grandparenting my children...the lament over mortal time begins to sing deep in my soul. A generation goes and a generation comes... (Ecc. 1:4a)

In my youngest memories, my mother was a slow woman. Laden with the burden of chronic illness and the weight of four busy children, she rested often and used her energy in spurts. I watch her now, sledding down the hill with my children, and I wonder if I can make such a comeback. My body feels riddled with cancer and it's treatments, the heart that doesn't beat right and hurts under the stress of these busy days. Will I be sliding with my grandchildren?

Looking forward to a world without parents is never easy. As the cloud is consumed and vanisheth away: so he that goeth down to the grave shall come up no more. (Job 7:9) It is only in between breaths, in between heartaches, when I pause...there I feel it, steady and sure, the promise of eternity breathing new life into buried hopes.

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Feeling after Him

It has been well said that the true measure of any man's spirituality is the degree to which he can detect God in the most simple events around him. It is no mere spiritual phraseology when Scripture declares, "They should seek the Lord, if they might feel after Him, and find Him, though He is not far from every one of us; for in Him we live, and move, and have our being. (Acts 17:27-28) ~from Phillip Keller's A Layman's Look at the Lord's Prayer

The sun gleaming through the gray glimmers off their shiny winter jackets as they bend to build a man from the snow. Later that evening, the moon is setting golden over the snowy hills, the frost catching the last reflected spark of sunlight. The moon looks for all the world like a black coin dipped in gold, the sunlight reflecting all along it's rim, the north star fixed just above it. I feel God in the whisper of the pines, the dancing crystals lifted into the air by the breathe of wind, the cats huddled on the porch rail as if to worship in this last light of evening. Feel after Him. What a turn of phrase that is, as if we are groping after a warm presence in the dark, feeling our way through the velvet night towards our reunion with Christ.

In his little manifesto on the Lord's prayer, Phillip Keller states that "In every situation of life, no matter how unusual or adverse, there comes that quiet assurance to my heart that I am His, and He is mine." I recall the somber words of our last pastors, warning us that because our situation was so out of the ordinary, God was not necessarily with us on the path of suffering. Yet I had that feeling, as I groped in the dark for answers, that He was there, ever-present and ever-loving, in the blackness with me. 

Like a sparrow flitting, like a swallow flying, a curse that is causeless does not alight. (Proverbs 26:2)

We are on a grand adventure here on this earth. Our time is short, and it is filled chock-full with God's many small blessings: the wonder of His creation that dawns new every morning and is hidden in every blade of grass and every snowflake falling; the situations of life that affirm our faith and confirm His presence in our daily lives; in the love of His saints that surrounds us in our time of need; in the comfort we receive from His word, the assurance that knowledge and understanding bring through our minds and into our hearts. Our God is an awesome God, who reigns from heaven above, with mercy, power and love! Our God is an awesome God!

I will never forget

September 11th, 2001, dawned in the bone marrow transplant unit a quiet morning just like most. Somehow the children I cared for, deathly ill, rarely coded around shift change, perhaps sensing the need to hang on until one nurse could report off to another. I was staying over from my 12 hour night shift until 11 a.m., an extra four hours that took me from the energy of the darkness I lived on as a night nurse into the bluster and raging bright light of day shift, where I was barely keeping my head above water and my patient's, too, at that. My patient was a foe of mine long prior to transplant, her and I playing on battling teams on the top tier of our summer softball leagues. She remembered me immediately when I had walked into her room a few days before. We made up and had some laughs about how seriously we used to take softball, and she swung her one leg out of bed to get into the chair, pivoting effortlessly and leaving me, still athletic and whole, without words and only a stare which she met with the bravery and boldness I had admired on the softball diamond six years before.

 

At 10 a.m. that fateful morning of September 11th, I began to hear rumbles that something was amiss in the broader world. I had no time to waste with the broader world though, as my friend and patient coded, quit breathing suddenly, heart nearing complete failure, and I began compressions on her chest while the charge nurse and another from the desk stormed in with the red crash cart while the overhead speakers blared, "Code Blue, 4th Floor, Unit A, Room 406." I was ordered to leave after an hour of the code, which continued into the afternoon and left my patient barely hanging on while a ventilator breathed for her and she was placed in a medical coma.

I returned home feeling kind of at a loss. The streets were oddly quiet for 11:30 and all the world seemed like that code I'd just left had set the world on it's ear. I left the radio silent as I sobbed, not knowing whether she would pull through. I remembered the Grateful Dead blaring, per her mother's staunch request, and I hummed and sobbed and wondered when in the world God would quit letting people, lovely people, amazing people die like this, in horrible pain induced by horrible medical interventions and even more horrible options to save them, keep them going, to that magical 100 day mark where they became a "survivor" on the transplant lists regardless of whether or not they could breathe, move, speak, or open their eyes.

I entered the kitchen quietly as my roommate was still recovering from her double shift as well, sleeping as long as she could before she started again at 3 p.m. Normally, I went straight to bed, but I just couldn't. I grabbed a Leinie's from the fridge and sat down on our threadbare second hand couch. I clicked on the TV hoping to catch a morning game show. We only got 3 channels with the large antenna that the last resident of my house had left affixed to the chimney. A building was smoldering on the first, so I clicked to the 2nd, then the 3rd. Every channel showed the same thing. It took a few minutes for the tragedy of the century to break through my personal tragedy of that morning. Now I was sobbing out of control. I remember calling my brothers, all 3 of them threatening to enlist before the damage was even over. My mother begged them to wait. I watched people jump out of the buildings from stories hundreds of feet in the air and explode on the sidewalk when they hit. Exploding bodies. It didn't seem possible that I could be seeing this on TV just as I had lived it this morning with my friend, whose body was swelling faster than her skin could stretch, great lumps growing off limbs and fluid seeping out and running off the CPR board onto her sheets in yellow rivers.

"Freedom and fear, justice and cruelty, have always been at war, and we know that God is not neutral between them." ~ President H.W. Bush, 9/11, evening address to the nation

In life in a microcosm of one, as in a macrocosm of an entire nation, these words rang so true. I prayed - begged - along with my patient's family, all of whom I had known from a distance - for my friend's life, while I suctioned her, changed the yellow sheets, bathed her wounds in potions and lotions, ran a fan and kept spraying M9 air neutralizer to keep the smell of dying flesh at bay. We were in our own war, and the stakes were just as high. On September 13th, the family asked to have her medications stopped for a few hours so they could ask their daughter, who was technically an adult, what her wishes were. She had coded so suddenly on the 11th that they hadn't gotten that far in their plan. They were still living in justice, living in freedom, trying to hold on as long as possible to hope, when their world disintegrated beneath their feet just like the floors of the Twin Towers. She was able to squeeze her mother and then her father's hand while tears rolled down everyone's cheeks. Yes, she wanted to be let go. Medication drips that were keeping her alive were stopped, the ventilator set at minimum settings. More pain medications were ordered to keep her peaceful and adrift from the body that was bleeding out beneath her. Dave Matthews Band and Louis Armstrong, Allison Krauss and Rufus Wainwright competed for eclectic honors from a CD player. Candles lent a warm light to the scene. Her favorite quilt covered her now, a homey touch instead of the white institutional bath blankets that were underneath, soaking up fluid. Her family circled the bed. She softly and sweetly passed just 2 days after she coded. I know she walked straight into the arms of Jesus.

The wailing began, and I sat on a stool, my arms around her mother, wishing I could hug the whole world.

September 11th has passed ten times since. I'm sure it is still the saddest day of the year for her parents, her brothers, her sister. Ten years now without her sunshine. But for me, the day finally brought joy last year, when I prayed all day and night for my sister-in-law, who had grown identical twin girls with life-threatening twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome for 32 whole weeks in her short frame. They were born September 11th, tiny, but kicking and breathing and beautiful. They spent weeks in the NICU but never needed help breathing. It was our small family miracle that makes September 11th a day of joy in the midst of a country mourning.

I will never forget my friend. I will never forget what our country lost that fateful day in 2001. And I hope to always say "Happy birthday!" to two of the sweetest nieces I could possibly have.

Things I never noticed

Our "burning bush" - she is first to open her leaves to the sun,
and the sun echoes back in astounding beauty.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

~Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken, 1910~

Bends in the road. Ah, yes. How frequent they have been these past three years. Cancer.Child on the brink of death. Immersing myself in special needs culture. Food poisoning nearly makes me a widow. We no longer look at the bend in the road, avoiding it as long as possible before going around the corner to discover what trial God has planned for us next.

I've passed it thousands of times, I'm sure. And somehow never spied the yellow barn with the pale yellow tin roof. My soul breaths in the yellow barn, and I am sated, for a few minutes, bathed in unexpected beauty.

Counting, counting, hoping the counting builds me a raft.
Gratitude Journal #661-673:

661. Hummingbirds

662. New porch swing

663. Linda Heil

664. Auntie Rose

665. Anti-inflammatory meds

667. All 4 kids on one t-ball team

668. Ipad = instant happiness for any fussy child

670. Being able to do a kindness for some dear friends.

673. Sorting through thoughts.

Forced bulbs

We settle into a rhythm at the church of our dear friends, and Katy asks me every week if we are staying. So she can make friends there. With each question, my heart splits afresh for the wounds in the souls of my children. The friends gone, the parents stressed beyond stress, the whole family brought to the brink of breaking, the only saving grace the daily rhythm of home, the safety here.

Wounds not inflicted by those we would call evil, but those we call good. Good people. Faithful people. People reading their Bibles and praying and seeking relationship with God. People building a church. 

Oh, so carefully, I speak of these wounds. But my daughter, my eldest, serious, sweet, caring, compassionate, patient daughter. She like the crocuses who poked their leaves through the melting snow and were covered again by the paralyzing cold of a March snowstorm. To have your heart dashed twice in a season at seven is life-changing.

How I wish it were easy to decide. Easy to find a church "home". Settle into a new routine. But you protect the wounded places. You don't offer the bruised arm to shake the pastor's hand until you're sure he's not holding a bat behind his back. You don't let someone hug that pierced soul until you're sure it's just a hug. Just love. The children's lullaby tape plays during their nap, and I bow head to lament at these simple lyrics, "Love will make my spirit grow. Grow in peace, grow in light. Love will do the thing that's right."

We bring crocuses inside. Protected and warm, they bloom like mad, and we celebrate a glimpse of spring. Purple and gold, and the grape hyacinths little green ellipses ready to pop into bloom tomorrow. And so we feel - like forced bulbs in the greenhouse, being asked to bloom again before our time. Every time Katy asks that question - Is this our home, Mama? - I can't answer, despite the shards of heart shattering for this little child who has lost so much and cannot comprehend why.

Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you'll recover your life. I'll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won't lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you'll learn to live freely and lightly. ~Jesus, Matthew 11:28-30 (The Message)

Taped to my computer monitor is Matthew 18:21-22. Ironically, the verses directly following those on church discipline that have closed off a whole community to us. 

Lord, how often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times? Jesus said unto him, "I do not say to you seven times, but seventy times seven."

I wonder if I have this in me, in this wounded heart, in this battered home, in this shipwreck of friendships with the shrapnel of trust floating on the angry waves. Forgive four hundred and ninety times? Only possible when leaning on the Everlasting Arms that offer grace to all, even I, worst among sinners (I Timothy 1:15).

So we go, Sundays. And hold our hearts hostage for a time, hostage to the peace and grace of a Savior who knows all and loves all and in whom we so fiercely believe. We pray for the melting of snow, and the new running of sap through the trees standing silent and cold in the stand of maples, we pray for hearts melting and closing up wounds. We pray for peace that passes understanding and emergence from this dark winter. We pray hardest for these four little souls shipwrecked with us. Call friends and ask for playdates. Draw close as a family, speaking healing into those wounds from the awesome Living Word.

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerers through him that loved us. For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. ~Romans 8:35-39 (KJV)

As for me, I am poor and needy, but the Lord takes thought for me. You are my help and my deliverer; do not delay, O my God! ~Psalm 40:17 (ESV)

Walking through the woods at twilight

*Photos here of my gorgeous twin nieces, Kaitlynn & Jessica*

I love babies. If I could, I would have about twelve of my own. (I would also probably be clinically insane when the 12th child hit age 3, if not before) But every pregnancy leeched a little more life out of me, and, during my pregnancy with Caleb, the heart condition that I'd been free from for seven years came back with a vengeance. I was on my knees nightly praying to somehow survive the delivery. And I did.

We researched long-term methods of pregnancy prevention, and scheduled a tubal ligation to take place the day after Caleb was born. There was trepidation sitting like a stone in my belly that morning, and despite reassurance from my mom and my husband, I canceled the surgery. Yet we didn't have peace with not doing something. So two months later I submitted to the surgeon's scalpel and had my tubes "tied".

At the physical for the surgery, the tumor on my thyroid was found. A month after the surgery, I was facing radiation for cancer and told that the hormones of pregnancy had rocketed my cancer into high gear. It seemed like a perfect dovetail of providence that my tubes were already tied and pregnancy was not possible in the future.

Except it is God who writes our story, and sometimes no matter what we do, He writes in a little twist, a little surprise ending, a little mystery.

Just to remind me that I am not in control of my own destiny. Nor that of my children. I do not know the day I will die. I do not know how many children I will have. I do not know their life stories any more than I can figure out my past, present, and future.

In November, 2009, just as Amelia was released from the hospital and needed full-time care - help walking, eating, dressing, sleeping, speaking - the miracle baby I carried inside grew so large in the tiny tube meant only to carry it to it's growing place in my uterus that I was rushed into emergency surgery, bleeding and crushed. I remember that morning, desperately calling every pro-life obstetrician I could find in the U.S. to try to find out if my baby was still alive. Fear gripped my throat like an invisible vise: what if I killed my baby to save my own life?

I finally got the answer. My baby was already in heaven with Jesus. It seemed odd that something so small - measuring 2 inches in total length, could rock our world so. The kids were grief-stricken. We were juggling Amy's hospitalizations and needs with my own recovery from surgery and the inevitable post-surgery complications. It seemed like our world had quit spinning, and we were deep in survival mode. When the doctors opened me up to take Theodore out of my body, they took parts of each of my tubes as well, so that I would never, ever have to face this possibility again - this risk. This loss.

Except God is still in control. I don't know the details of our latest mystery. But in January I began to suspect I might be pregnant. I spent hours in secret researching the effects of recent radioactive iodine on a new pregnancy. I retraced my steps of 2009, reading about odds of survival of an ectopic pregnancy, and renewing my knowledge of expectant management (versus early abortion). Yet that positive pregnancy test quickly turned to negative. I waited for the abdominal pain that would signal another emergency, but it never came. Lab tests showed my pregnancy hormones had gone down to zero. Not only would there be no baby - there would be no answer, no window into the mysteries wrought inside by a God who knows all.

Do we live this way always? Half in shadow? I watch other people walk through days with purpose. Like they know where they're going, how they're getting there, and what to do once they arrive. I feel less certain, these days. It's kind of like walking through the woods at twilight. The trees are still there. The birds are singing their night songs. Light filters through, but you pick up your feet slowly, linger through the trees, feel for the path. He says that I will hear Him whispering from behind, "This is the way. Walk in it." (Isaiah 30:20)

What's missing is why.

What's missing is the end of the story.

Life is not a book you can flip to the back page and see how it turns out.

It's a journey, a voyage, a wandering through the woods in twilight.

But life is never traversed alone.

I've seen the lightning flashing,

I've heard the thunder roll.

I've felt sin's breakers dashing,

which almost conquered my soul.

I've heard the voice of my Savior,

bidding me still to fight on.

He promised never to leave me,

never to leave me alone.

The world's fierce winds are blowing,

temptation sharp and keen.

I have a peace in knowing

my Savior stands between.

He stands to shield me from danger

when my friends are all gone.

He promised never to leave me,

never to leave me alone.

~ from Never Alone, Ludie Pickett, 1897 ~

Weekends are for trips to Grandma's

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.

For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known. So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

Scripture from I Corinthians 13:1-13 (excerpted, emphasis mine).

Photos: baking whole wheat cookies at Grandma Debra's
on a blustery October afternoon.

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 ~

Always good...or never good

We know from all his writings that Paul trusted not only that God is sovereign, but also that his character is faithful and good (1 Thessalonians 5:24). It's critical for Christians to believe this, too. Why? Because without these additional attributes, we could view an absolutely sovereign God as a potential big bully. If I can't trust that God is always good and faithful, then God goes on trial with each particular circumstance of my life. I become the doubter who's like the waves of the sea, always being tossed about (James 1:6).

Of course, it's easy to say I'm confident that God's faithful when I've escaped a negative situation, but is he still faithful when the friend I've lifted up in prayer for more than 30 years has never returned to faith in Jesus? Or when I was diagnosed with breast cancer two years ago and had to face chemotherapy? The truth is, either God is faithful and good in all these situations, or he's faithful and good in none. How we decide between these opposite choices determines whether we live with confidence (and peace) or anxiety. ~Ruth van Reken at Confident Living

This is the deep lesson of the past year - the year of surrendering Amelia: her life, her quality of life, her safety, her delightfulness. Either God is still good in this, or He is not good in anything. As she walks away from me on the dusty orchard road hand-in-hand with her papa, I reflect. In retrospect, it is easy to see His blessings of this past year. Her smile is crooked now but it is still her smile. Her eyes are crossed sometimes, but they are still the limpid pools of a wise old soul they have been since she was born. When she finds it impossible to walk, she skips instead.  How am I at skipping when walking is impossible??

And these other three...the three who watch Mama wheeled into surgery after surgery and wave goodbye from the porch when she leaves for cancer scans and treatments...the three who help Amy up after a seizure, who wipe up her vomit while I watch her breathing, who come running in the dark night to wake us when she is flopping at the edge of the bunk...oh how my heart aches for these. Who suffers more, I wonder? Those who are in the middle of the pain, or those who must watch and tend and worry and pray?

She turns four. It is a whole year later now. A whole year that we cannot ever get back. A year in which, by God's grace, homeschooling went forward, and children learned what they needed to learn (in books and in life). The choices are so full of heaviness, you can feel the weight of them as you turn them over in your mind in those last moments of the day as you pray in the dark, wrapped in your husband's embrace, monitor purring in the background with the sound of children's slumber.  In those moments when your mind is completely alone on a precipice of Faith, is God always good or never good?

Are you clinging, or pounding your fists on that Rock?

She has a partial complex seizure from the stimulation of running up and down the straw bales at the orchard. You lay her down, straw hair on straw bed, and she smiles up, the crooked, seizure smile, the eyes that don't quite track together, the stiff little limbs. Somehow, through all of this, you've taught her to smile when she is seizing.

The verses echo through the weeping-wrung emptiness of the hallways of your soul...

He has pity on the weak and the needy, and saves the lives of the needy. (Ps. 72:13)

No one who is living and has faith in me will ever see death. Is this your faith? (John 11:26)

The last enemy that will be abolished is death. (I Corinthians 15:26)

The end of the day...this momentous birthday, the one we were given a 50/50 chance of ever seeing her celebrate.  I click through the images in my camera, and realize afresh how many moments have been stolen already by the small deaths this illness has brought.  Yet, in the balances of the Truth and Universe, how many more moments have been gained...moments that would have most certainly been ignored, taken for granted, or spoiled by pettiness and smallness of mind, had God not allowed us to suffer the near-loss of this precious daughter.

I close my mind, and I see the birthday present, with a big bow on it: TODAY.  Every day for the past year.  365 gifts.  Counted, noticed, beloved...because they are broken, bruised, crooked, tenuous.  Praise be to the God who is always good...always faithful...always near...always listening, loving, lavishing.

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