Turquoise Gates: peace

Showing posts with label peace. Show all posts

Life lessons from the least of these

On the hard nights, when she stumbles and tumbles and stutters and her world blurs and bends, she asks me to take her head in my hands, wash it in clean water, wash away this world and float her off to freedom. In the water, she is whole. She floats free from the chains of a body still ravaged by an illness done 3 years ago. Her spirit and her mind rest in the quiet pillow of warmth, the world buffeted away by the sprinkling and the stroking.

Is it touch, the magic of water, the floating free? Is it Mama and she alone that dredges the cares of a long day away from a tired 6-year-old frame and brings that sweet smile back to her gaunt cheeks?

She lays back, and trusts completely. Mama has her head in her hands. She won't go under. She won't drown in this tub. She is safe.

At that time the disciples came to Jesus, saying, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” And calling to him a child, he put him in the midst of them and said, “Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven." (Matthew 18:1-4)

The pain in my arthritic hands floats away in the warmth, my pain leeching away with hers. The giver herself blessed by the giving (Proverbs 22:9).

He says that we who are thirsty should drink freely from the well. That He is springs of Living Water that will restore our very souls. I am learning these lessons in 20 minute sessions, at the feet of my child who leads me to the calm of the Father through this diorama of faith lived out in the everyday of our evenings. That when I am lost and troubled, there is peace in the arms of the Parent. When I am weak and weary, there is Life in the water.

Perhaps this is what it means to "turn and become like a child" - to humble oneself to learn life's deepest lessons in a shallow tub from the smallest and least of these, our own children, who somehow know Truth in ways we cannot grasp with all our adult intelligence, debate and study. To simply be still, to simply believe, to simply receive the gift of the moment - is this what He means when He welcomes me to drink at the well and be filled?

I stroke her hair, and I long for the complete and utter peace I see wash over her tiny face. Oh, to trust so deeply that I can rest like that! Help me, Father, to become like these little children, and rest in You. To let your whispers of touch and washing of my feet be the comfort my weary mind aches for.

The Spirit and the bride say, “Come!” And let him who hears say, “Come!” Whoever is thirsty, let him come; and whoever wishes, let him take the free gift of the water of life. (Revelation 22:17)

Gifts unrecognized

I've said it now, to several people. Written it in e-mails to new cancer patients reached out to.

Remission. "I'm in remission."

It took months to feel at home with remission. After four years of cancer, owning cancer, being cancer, it felt strange and scary to be in remission.

Four years ago, on a hot June day in the cold air-conditioned hospital, I whispered a verse in my dying grandmother's ear as she struggled to breathe, her eyes wide and wild like those of a caged animal.

"God did not give us a spirit of fear, but of peace." (II Timothy 2:7)

When cancer first choked my throat, and my voice was raspy and tremulous, fear ebbed in. He quietly made his bed in my heart, and slowly built up walls and made a home there.

Cancer isn't like remission. When you hear you have cancer, it is an immediate change. You go from normal to cancer patient without stopping to breath in between. Remission was a slower process for me, like the first time you take a deep breath when the doctor tells you to, and use all your muscles to take in that air, and your lips quiver as you let it out slowly, trying to make the breath out last and not rush out all together. As you settle into the deep, measured breaths that calm your body and your soul, you quite thinking about it so hard. The muscles between your ribs relax. Your lips quite trembling.

That's remission. The first time I let out a remission sigh, it was hard work. Now I'm riding serene on the waves of breath in and out, no longer hurried or compressed by cancer's grip.

I realize that, although I haven't lived with a spirit of fear for these four years, fear is what motivated me. Getting to the 5 year mark would mean success, the 10 year mark a small miracle. Now I am almost to 5, and I'm in remission. I need to let go of fear as my motivator.

Fear is what drove me to gather up small joys. Fear is what propelled me to enjoy motherhood and love my children deeper. Fear is what rocketed me to a new peace with the everyday distractions and disappointments that inevitably come. Fear is what aroused the hunger to find the gift in every day alive, even if it was just the gift of being alive.

Cancer narrowed my vision for life, while at the same time expanding it. Like a zoom lens, it focused all my energies on the minutiae, pulled me toward the details of the moment, and my 10 year, 20 year, 30 year plans gathered dust because it had been so long since I picked them up and pondered them. My vision expanded to see joy in the hidden corners of life, to find beauty under cobwebs, to see His glory in a million small ways, sparkling like a fresh rain had just fallen over the entirety of my life.

I haven't decided yet if I want to zoom out. I haven't picked up my 10 year plan yet. I think I might live this way forever.

Yesterday is past, tomorrow is uncertain, but today is a gift. That's why it's called the present.

I think about the ways God used cancer to free me: free me to love, to live, to relish, to understand, to see meaning. Wisdom? Is that what cancer gave me? Perhaps it is that I finally, truly, believe and can walk in the truths of Matthew 6:25-34.

If you decide for God, living a life of God-worship, it follows that you don't fuss about what's on the table at mealtimes or whether the clothes in your closet are in fashion. There is far more to your life than the food you put in your stomach, more to your outer appearance than the clothes you hang on your body. Look at the birds, free and unfettered, not tied down to a job description, careless in the care of God. And you count far more to him than birds. Has anyone by fussing in front of the mirror ever gotten taller by so much as an inch? ...walk out into the fields and look at the wildflowers. They never primp or shop, but have you ever seen color and design quite like it? The ten best-dressed men and women in the country look shabby alongside them. If God gives such attention to the appearance of wildflowers—most of which are never even seen—don't you think he'll attend to you, take pride in you, do his best for you? What I'm trying to do here is to get you to relax, to not be so preoccupied with getting, so you can respond to God's giving. People who don't know God and the way he works fuss over these things, but you know both God and how he works. Steep your life in God-reality, God-initiative, God-provisions. Don't worry about missing out. You'll find all your everyday human concerns will be met. Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now, and don't get worked up about what may or may not happen tomorrow. God will help you deal with whatever hard things come up when the time comes. (The Message)

Linked up to Lisa-Jo's prompt, "Gift"

Under the saddle

I came alive because of cancer. I remember the year before I was diagnosed, when my third daughter was just starting to toddle. I was completely, unabashedly overwhelmed as a mother of three girls three and under. I was pregnant already and I felt like someone hooked up an IV to my arm during the night and drained every last bit of energy right out of me. I told my husband I wanted to go back to work. This was too hard, cuddling children all day, trying to keep up my housework, the clinging, and the crying, and the poopy pants. It was just too much. I was stuck in a job I hated.

And when did mothering become work? Sometime after the second was born, and I could no longer give undivided attention to anyone. Worse than the actual hatred of my job as a stay at home mom was my guilt over my hatred for my job. What mom doesn't love working with her children? I felt like a complete failure, and I simply wanted out.

Then something miraculous happened. A blessing in disguise. The winter of my soul, the cancer that robbed me of my normal, dreary life, ended the season of my discontent. Years spent fighting the bit of motherhood were swept away in a torrent of lonely reflection when I left my family behind for three long weeks for radiation seeding treatment in 2008. The saddle suddenly removed, I saw the scars left by my twisting and turning, resenting the crown of motherhood as though it were a tight bridle instead.

The dippers cup stars in summer and spill them across the black in the winter. Close to the horizons, the sky is void of those specks of silver. I am a woman stretched across the heavens, arms reaching toward the trees, feet toward the moon rise. In this middle, high above the earth's orb, is perspective and peace. As a young mother, I was blinded by the lack of choice. When I am old, I will look back and long for these days. Though I am in life's winter, this season of suffering growing heavier each passing year, I can dance here, in the space of the middle, because I've known the much harder struggle of bucking motherhood.

I used to cup stars like the summer's dippers, holding my time close like a treasure to my chest. Now I am the dipper in winter, spilling stars, spilling laughter and giving time and worrying less and loving more. I revel in the giggles with my oldest daughter, sit in my messy front room cuddling my second, almost 7 and grown long and lean, just because it is her birthday party day and she wants me to. I wake up in the morning and lay still for an hour, my son digging in my armpits (don't ask! It's his comfort thing, ever since he was a baby) and my youngest daughter in that sleep stupor still, staring at the ceiling and holding my hand, a statue carved in the marble of morning. We spin together, through trials, tribulations, triumphs.

I will never fight motherhood again like I once did. And for that, I am thankful for cancer. This year of remission, I set a goal to learn to rest like Jesus did and to learn how to enter into the joy of childhood with my children. For isn't this one of the characteristics that draws us to His character? The ability to rest even when more work was left to be done, the foresight to care for His own physical and emotional needs even when the needs of others (such as those waiting for physical healing) hung in the sands of time? I don't want these years to slip by without notice. I want to burn them into my memory, fill them up with the quiet, simple moments that really matter.

I am deaf, I've been mute (I'm blind but now I see)

What time I am afraid, I will trust in thee. (Psalm 56:3)

Ah, the downward slope of the roller coaster! I was awakened at 5 a.m. to a silent world. An ear infection has destroyed my sense of hearing in one ear, and my good ear was no longer functioning. I can hear deep voices and shouts, but otherwise the world is completely still.

I know only a few signs. One of them is "I love you". A comfort when the children flash it at me, chattering in their high pitched voices that I cannot hear. I lost my voice from surgery when I first was diagnosed with cancer. This seems eerily familiar: the inability to communicate with my children as I normally do. I fear for their safety - crossing a street, for instance, I won't be able to hear the oncoming car. I am afraid I will no longer be able to help them as I should. My primary emotion right now is terror. I am not sure if I will ever hear again. But I know who holds the future, and the path that is my portion may be through flame or flood, but His presence goes before me, and I'm covered in His blood.

Please pray for me. I always fight odd and seemingly random and severe infections after I take the radioactive iodine. This time, the effects are so drastic. Yet I have hope that it is just infection and will clear up before my auditory nerves are destroyed. Pray that my hearing will be restored and my ears healed. Pray for the peace that passeth understanding to bathe my fear in His love and provision. Pray that He helps me mother these children in my new world of silence. Oh, how I need Him in this hour of the shadow of the valley!

Calculated risk

They clamber up the apple tree, my four and six year olds, all the way to the top where the ripe apples drip like ruby gems from the bowed branches. I catch glimpses of faces through foliage and try to avoid sounding too nervous as I ask them to come down a bit lower in the tree. Rosy is the monkey, clinging and swinging, branch to branch and apples rain down in her wake.

Finally the feed bucket is full - half green and half ripe apples for a corral full of horses eager for a bite. The kids get braver, holding hands flat to offer apples to the hungry mouths, only to be grossed out by horse spit on their fingers. And she, the quiet beauty I held moments after birth, 16 now and silent. She knows the sorrow in my soul but instead of talking about it, we dance through the dreamy moments of peace in the horse corral, as she tends my kids and lets me take pictures. How could I disappoint her so, to end my life??

It is pure love, children and horses. While healthy fear keeps them guarded, there are moments like these, when horse and child melt together in embrace and solace that can only be found in the pulsing warm bodies of people and pets. The amazing synergy to touch between beast and man.

The gentle spirit in the glistening eyes, the gleam of the sun off curried backs, the thrill of the bareback ride around the yard. It is a love affair, just blossoming.

Their love affair with me predates horses, all the way back to birth, strengthening with every moment at the breast when they were babes, every smile from mother to baby, and even now from the broken and bruised mama to the broken and bruised child. The youngest, my favorite boy in the whole world, clambers down the hay mow stairs, and I watch from above while Katy watches from below. No railings. Another scary moment for a mom of klutzy kids.

I saw it there, on the hay mow floor. The only thing rougher than aged barn wood is the rasp of a sturdy rope. It hangs in a loop and you could swing out the door on it. I feel it for a second, the thorny grip of the rope on neck, the leap out, the swing, the fall, the last crack of life shut out like the sliver of light as a door closes.

But I have finally, desperately, clung to life. When I think of suicide, I read about myths of suicide and the urge passes. I "turn my mind", a coping skill used in modern cognitive behavioral therapy, words so similar to the definition of "repentance", the Hebrew word שׁוּבָה transliterated "shubah", meaning a return or a turning away from.

I return to my children, and I turn away from the ropes and the knives and all the other everyday things that could be my end. My end is already written in His book. As depression wavers in the onslaught of medication, I begin to dream of more horse-child love, the future. To daydream, not about how I'll hurt myself next, but how I'll build for the future.

God is doing great things.

Hanging by a thread

The winds are 60 mph, and the rain like a monsoon. Safe in our house Sunday night, we all sleep right through. Without a worry. In the morning, I wake to view the damage, and see this spiderweb, intact, on the window next to my chair in my bedroom.

There are four things which are little upon the earth, but they are exceeding wise: the ants are a people not strong, yet they prepare their meat in the summer; the conies are but a feeble folk, yet they make their houses in the rocks; the locusts have no king, yet they go forth, all of them in ranks; the spider taketh hold with her hands, and is in kings' palaces. Proverbs 30:24-28

Saturday night, we were in our tent when the storm hit. Not one of us slept through it and there was anxiety electric in the air like lightening. What a difference a solid house and firm foundation make!

Tell those rich in this world's wealth to quit being so full of themselves and so obsessed with money, which is here today and gone tomorrow. Tell them to go after God, who piles on all the riches we could ever manage—to do good, to be rich in helping others, to be extravagantly generous. If they do that, they'll build a treasury that will last, gaining life that is truly life. And oh, my dear Timothy, guard the treasure you were given! Guard it with your life. Avoid the talk-show religion and the practiced confusion of the so-called experts. People caught up in a lot of talk can miss the whole point of faith. I Timothy 6 (The Message)

Like the morning-after storm clouds that touch the hills, God breathes sweet over me as I sleep, and I wake refreshed. I feel His truth clamoring over me like a rippling brook over stones. I plead, and He answers. Maybe not with the life I want to be living, or the tasks I want to be doing. Nevertheless, He is with me always, in abundance.

...our lives are unscripted. God knows what we will choose, but he lets us choose. God allows pain into our lives because He is more concerned with our character than with our comfort or convenience. He can take man's poor choices and rewrite the script of our lives. It is God's mystery. In his heart, a man plans his course, but the Lord determines his steps (Prov. 16:9) ~ from Kristen Welch's "Don't Make Me Come Up There! Quiet Moments for Busy Moms"

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.

In His grip, yet free

My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. (John 10:27-28)

10 years ago, I met this amazing woman who was descended from missionaries and had been one herself. It was kind of an "Amy Carmichael" moment for me as a floundering but desperately seeking young Christian. Her son was in the hospital for a bone marrow transplant that would either cure him and give him extra years of life, or kill him slowly and painfully. Her father had just been released from captivity in Eastern Europe, minus a few fingers. As she readied herself for the long season to come, the marrow transplant process that is at least 100 days and often spans years, God gave her a song and words. Be still and know that I am God. And she was - one of the stillest, ever-praising women I'd ever met. Her faith was inspiring and I felt like when I worked with her son, there was a giant electrical cord connecting our two souls and her love and beauty and identity in Christ flowed my way like an electrified burst of power, consuming my soul and even threatening to surge and cut the power cord.

Amy blogged before there were blogs. She maintained a website chronicling her son's progress. And she signed every single letter to her friends, "In His grip". I asked her about it, and she quoted John 10:28 (my favorite eternal security verse). No one can pluck us from His hand. That's quite a grip. Jesus isn't even going to allow me to break that grip when I beg Him go test someone else, put your heavy hand on someone else. I can't learn anymore, and I am grief-stricken and wrung out.

In His grip, yet free. An eternal conundrum. A concept that has God following me around, gripping me despite my foray into sin, when my depression peaks and I just want to bleed dry, when I am weeping into my pillow and feel all alone. He is gripping me. Yet He moves those hands under me, too, when I am on the path He has appointed for me. Lets me walk, always in the palm of His hand, watches with joy and fulfillment as I satisfy His will.

I am "In His grip". You'll see that in my e-mails, letters. I am also free, like Maya Angelou's bird: A free bird leaps on the back of the wind and floats downstream till the current ends and dips her wing in the orange suns rays and dares to claim the sky.