Prayers as Incense

Oh, the beauties of home-school! Lessons with half the kids in their pajamas, readings during which the teacher has an epiphany and the whole class goes running to gather supplies for an object lesson instead. Lessons with cousins along, just for fun. Lessons where your stuffed animals get to play the starring role. We read today about Abraham, in Genesis 22, destroying myths early. Ideas of a warm, fuzzy God come crashing down as we read: God tested Abraham, Abraham carried the knife, Isaac asked, "But where is the lamb for the sacrifice?"

We talk about Amy's encephalitis and the 5 days when we talked about the fact that she might die. I remember the moments so vividly - holding Katy on one side, and Rosy on the other, and talking about what the doctors were about to do in surgery, and the fact that Amy might always be different, or she might go to heaven that night. We had 50-50 odds that she would be with us the next day. The altar we were asked to tie her to was an operating table. The man holding the knife was the surgeon. But it was the same awesome, just, vigilantly pursuing God that tested us. The kids look into my eyes today, as we read Genesis, and they know that we have been tested, too. We talked it through - "Did Papa and Mama get angry with God, and curse His name, and refuse to believe because it was a hard time?" No. We said, with Abraham, "Here I am." We prayed, begged, certainly. And the angel said - in whispers - from heaven, Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your daughter, your precious daughter.

But the lesson was not about trusting God through tough times. It was about the Lamb of God. Why a lamb? We read John 1:29, when John the Baptist sees Jesus walking toward him, and says, Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world. We talked about how tiny and helpless lambs are, how graphic the picture is when the red blood pours down the white fleece as the lamb gives it's life, over and over again through the Old Testament, a picture of the helpless, weakened Jesus, His blood dripping down the wood stake that held Him aloft for all to see as He washed away the sins of the world.

Finally, we get to Revelation. John is weeping because no one is found worthy to open the scroll he so desperately wants to hear read. The elder leans over to comfort him, and says, "Behold, the Lion of Judah!" The kids and I roar together, and picture how the Lion of Judah must look. What do you think of when you hear "lion"? Meek, mild, desperate, hope extinguished from dying eyes? Of course not. But that is what John turns to see.

Then I saw a Lamb, looking as if it had been slain, standing in the center of the throne, encircled...He came and took the scroll from the right hand of him who sat on the throne...and all fell down before the Lamb. Each had a harp and they were holding golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints. And they sang a new song: You are worthy...because you were slain and with your blood you purchased men for God from every tribe and tongue and nation. You have made them a kingdom and priests to serve our God, and they will reign on the earth. (Revelation 5)

My prayers, incense in a golden bowl? My fleeting words that wisp into silence like smoke as soon as they leave my lips? Transformed forever into a sweet smell held in a precious bowl by the hands of the elders and creatures of heaven? It seems like an impossible fairytale. Today, it seemed so much more real, and so awe-inspiring, as we took the golden bowl down from the special place where our good dishes are kept. Lit a candle in it, it's fragrance wafting up like incense. Placed it before our little stuffed lamb. "Offered" the bowl to the Lamb, and knelt on our knees to praise God that He has purchased us, made us a kingdom, made us priests to serve our God, promised us that we will reign on the earth.

Is that real to you? Have you accepted the payment God made to purchase your soul, and bring it to heaven? If you believe, do you understand that you are part of a kingdom, you are a priest (for there is one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus***) to serve God, you will reign with Him on earth one day? Do you smell the sweet fragrance of prayers-as-incense, do you value them, knowing they are mysteriously physical in heaven, held in golden bowls and offered before the Lamb?

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***I Timothy 2:5; since Christ paid for our sins, all believers are priests serving under the High Priest (Hebrews 4:14-16): for more proof, see also I Peter 2:4-10; Revelation 1:6; Hebrews 10:15-23; Ephesians 2:17-20; and I John 2:26-27.

Looking up

I am very, very tired. I feel oddly alone. Last night I spent the night struggling for breath, exhausting my home remedies. Probably pneumonia, just guessing. I head for the doctor this afternoon once I have a sitter and a ride. Too tired to go myself with all the kids, or pack them up to get them elsewhere.

A friend of a friend recently went through a crisis that set me thinking again about all God has carried me through in the last 12 years. Got me thinking that, no matter how dirty life around me is today, no matter how frazzled, or worn, or frustrated, the view always improves when I look up.

O Lord, You have searched me and known me.

You know my sitting down and my rising up;

You understand my thought afar off.

You comprehend my path and my lying down,

and are acquainted with all my ways.

For there is not a word on my tongue,

but behold, O LORD, You know it altogether.

You have hedged me behind and before,

and laid Your hand upon me.

~ Psalm 139:1-4 ~

The photos are from one of my favorite places on earth. Taken from the ground, looking straight up into some perfectly ordinary and not even particularly antique grain silos at the York horse farm. My focus today is on keeping my body as still as possible so as not to disturb whatever has settled in my lungs; and looking up instead of down. The vista is bound to be infinitely more beautiful up there! There is a beautiful turquoise sky in Wisconsin today, and a Savior bent to listen. Wherever you are today, note the color of the sky and make sure you direct some words to the Christ who today knelt in Gethsemane and sweat blood in His fear and dislike for the task before Him. My tasks today are so much less gruesome. I am thankful His verdict was, "Lord, if thou be willing, take this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but thine be done." (Luke 22:42) May that be on my lips today as well.

Sustained

Evening, and morning, and at noon, will I pray, and cry aloud:

Yes, Lord, my soul cries out to you. My heart is screaming

Grant me courage to make words of faith audible.

He shall hear my voice.

Silent or not, He bends from the Throne to listen.

He hath delivered my soul in peace...

The tumult surrounds again, and again I feel

the peace that passeth understanding!

Cast thy burden upon the Lord -

throw, fling, heave all this heaviness onto His wide shoulders.

He shall sustain me.

Hunger, exhaustion, anxiety, desperation.

He fills me, rests my soul, soothes, and quiets.

He shall never suffer the righteous to be moved.

I feel the pull of tides and waves and currents all around.

But on the Solid Rock I stand.

Unshakable.

Unmovable.

I may be undone; I may be unkempt.

But He is unbelievable, and so I am not just a survivor,

I am sustained.

Psalm 55 rings true for me today.

And God's peace shall be Genevieve's, that tranquil state of her soul, assured of its salvation through Christ. Genevieve, fearing nothing from God and content with her earthly lot of whatever sort that is, finds that peace which transcends all understanding garrisons and mounts guard over her heart and mind in Christ Jesus.

~ Philippians 4:7 Amplified ~

Answers soon?

I am still waiting for news from my latest round of testing at Mayo. No letters, phone calls, or other communication from the doctors for 3 weeks. It is very frustrating...hard to be patient. Hard to be a patient, I guess. I feel forgotten and left to my own devices...and wish they would at least call to tell me the results. I guess I'll keep waiting!

All that comes under our Imagination
Is either God, or Nature, or Creation.
God is the Free Eternal Light, or Love,
Before, beyond all Nature, and above;
The One Unchangeable, Unceasing Will
To ev'ry Good, and to no Sort of Ill.

Nature without Him is th' abyssal Dark,
Void of the Light's beatifying Spark;
Th' Attraction of Desire, by Want repell'd,
Whence circling Rage proceeds, and Wrath unquell'd:
But by the Light's All-joyous Pow'r th' Abyss
Becomes the Groundwork of a Threefold Bliss.
~ Spirit of Love, John Byrom, 1692-1763~

Dancing in the rain

As I watched them walk out the door ahead of me, waiting for the perfect shaft of light to illuminate girlhood and infancy lilting through the sunset and out of the cavernous old barn, a million old emotions flooded back. That moment...watching someone I love dearly walk off with my son, facing forward toward the beauty and possibility that is life outside the cavern...I remember the moments I spent watching my kids dance in a lamp lit living room in November. Isolated, shivering, standing in the dark, surrounded by the eerie loneliness of the sounds of city nightlife. Feeling my life slip like so many grains of sand through an open palm. The glass shut me out, just like the length of that barn floor did. Being an outsider is never pleasant, especially when your heart is heavy with worry.

That is cancer. I know it, as well as I know the sounds of blood pressure echoing through the earpieces on my stethoscope, or the thud and whoosh of blood flowing through the chambers of a heart, or the tidal roar of air sucking into empty lungs to swell and then overflow the iron cage of ribs surrounding this wave of life that is drawn in without thought. I know cancer is a creeping, murky shadow of reality that seeps into joys and pleasures, and devours hope and faith almost without sign. I knew someday a radiology tech would put his instrument on my neck and pause for just a few minutes too long. It happened once before, I knew it would happen again.

But I still wasn't ready. I wasn't ready when I sensed the tension in the room. I knew before I looked up at the screen that I would see a round black hole where hope and resolution should have been found. Instead, in the crackle and pop of electronic noise, I heard the slow sobbing of a requiem for a dream. As I wordlessly walked out to the waiting room, fears swelled up where tears should have. Cancer: of the thyroid this time, or the parotid gland? What did it mean when a radiologist came in, suit coat flapping as he hurried to the equipment, and scanned my neck himself? What does "wait and see" really mean to a cancer patient? I suspended disbelief. I suspended belief. I hung, suspended, for two days. Suspended in reality, suspended in nightmare, suspended in prayer, suspended in the solace that was sleep.

The next appointment. A cardiologist. He informs me my heart failure is worsening, that my pulse is continuing to slow. That a pacemaker is indicated. Sends me to see a "heart failure" doctor. More fear, more tears locked in dry eyes, more words closed in a stinging throat. More suspension. I waited for Wednesday...five days. Eternity? Waited for suspension to drop me with a thud back into the dirt floor of cancer's reality.

The tide began to turn on Saturday. I found an organ. I've been praying for an organ for a year and a half. A blues organ. Preferably a Hammond B-3. To play at church with the band. Just something fun - it's not like I was praying to be cured of cancer. I have a hard time whispering those words in tense, desolate quiet with God: but an organ is something I can beseech of Him. So I did. And I found it. Free, on the curbside. Passed it the first time...our car was too small, I was sure it didn't work anyway. Excuses, of course. Excuses that might have undermined a Savior's gift for me. But instead, another nudge: my aunt asked if we wanted to go take a look at "that free organ down the street". I agreed, hesitantly. Out of boredom, to tell the truth. The organ worked: it's a Hammond A-100, a rare and beautiful stepbrother to the mighty B-3, with the same sound, the same technology. A gift worth thousands of dollars, just sitting by the curb on a Saturday afternoon in rural Minnesota. Okay God, I thought, that was pretty cool!

I went home. Checked my e-mail on Sunday. In my daily digest from Freecycle: "free organ". Okay God, I thought, that would be pretty amazing! I sent a message to the giver. The organ doesn't work, he said. Aaron said, Let's give it a chance anyway. See what God can do. Drove an hour to pick it up. Plugged it in the back of the truck. Figured we may as well see if it works before we lug this baby inside! It's a Hammond M102, the "Baby B". The same technology, only slightly smaller cabinet and half as many bass pedals. I heard the swell and cry of the pipes from inside: all Aaron had to do was read the manual. The second organ works perfectly, too. Pray for a year and a half, and sometime a miracle comes out of nowhere: a piano for home, a piano for church. No sweat for a big Jesus, apparently!

Preparing for my appointment yesterday, that deep soul work that nothing can hasten, I sat at the keys and got used to playing with my feet. Pure joy. I felt God shouting this time (usually He whispers - or am I just deaf??): See, child, I know every detail of your heart. I know why it beats slow sometimes and fast others. I know why you faint. I know every hair on your head. I know your going out and coming in, your lying down and standing up. I know the hour and day of your death, and I am waiting here to welcome you home. Cancer, schmancer. This is God speaking, the God who throws two free organs at you in two days! This is the God that created sun, stars, heavens and earth. Babies, blessings, husbands, farmhouses, gourmet food, summer songs of crickets and frogs, winter refrain of birds and snowflakes. How could you doubt me? Trust me, because I am always here. Listening. Loving. Lavishing.

So in I walked to two appointments today. The first was very hard: no answers are clear, and when that happens...well, doctors start to think maybe the reason for your problems isn't physical. It isn't, I want to shout! It is spiritual. God allowed me to feel this, to be created this way. He hedges me in, and He goes before me. Who are you to say it is impossible for me to faint as much as I do? Who are you to question what is so abundantly clear in your data? Question he does anyway, this doctor. Infuses the whole care team with questions without answers. Next appointment: the lump in my neck is okay, for now. Stable, hasn't grown since last September. The question remains, why is it there? Why didn't the iodine kill it? It is a nodule, and it looks like cancer, but it doesn't suck up iodine and it doesn't show on whole body scans. So there are lots of questions about how best to monitor it, or if it should be biopsied or removed. I'll learn more on Friday when I visit my oncologist here in Eau Claire.

The neurologist is close to concluding, to handing me a diagnosis. In her opinion, I may have orthostatic intolerance, a condition on the dysautonomic spectrum of illness. Hard to treat. But at least a diagnosis. I might be best off cloistered in my farmhouse, taking some herbs now and then, continuing with my country doctors here in Eau Claire. Tonight I go to sleep, monitors humming away for the next 24 hours. Still beseeching God, this time for an answer instead of a Hammond organ (or two!).

And remembering that sweet, sweet sound of bluesy perfection joining the crickets and frogs in an Indian summer lament/praise for a God who is holy, tender, and extravagant and a world that is harsh and si bon mais si lassant.

Oh, say can you see?

I will walk about in freedom,
for I have sought out your precepts.
I will speak of your statutes before kings
and will not be put to shame...
Psalm 119:45-46

I really considered posting something political. It's not that I lack the guts - although there is a time and place for political rants, and that's outside the purpose of my writing here - it's that I don't really know how to frame my thoughts in coherent, readable words. I have a rather amorphous desire to pass on a fierce patriotism, an elemental belief in certain inalienable rights, the drive to pursue a culture and a government that embraces independence, personal fortitude and excellence, and joy in living...the hallmarks of this nation from it's inception in a time when nations were looking for something to hope in. Being nannied by my government does not fit well with those ideologies.

Instead of a laundry list of my concerns for my nation, I am compelled to think about the substance of the legacy I want to leave for my children in this area, as in others. Love. Yes, love. I think that encapsulates my current cognitive meanderings on the state of affairs we find ourselves in today. Do unto others as you would have others do unto you: say, for instance, it was your team that won the election - would you want to hear a bunch of sour grapes from the other side? Love one another: in hard times especially, it is our love for others, our service of others, that will show our true inner colors. In every thing give thanks, for this is the will of God: when the political climate favors Christians, and when it persecutes them, give thanks. Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God: freedom is relatively illusory here on earth. While we pray for our leaders and pray for the situations that concern our daily lives, we must remember always that worry accomplishes nothing. It won't change the eventual outcome, nor will the outcome change eternity. Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself: political pundits decrying incrementalism and relativism would do well to heed this basic truth. For, as Christ said, who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?

I pray for this country every day, my children with me. I wonder where the next fifty years will find us. I still think it's incredible that we've come this far past the 200 year mark that has heralded the downfall of many great civilizations of history. Most of all, I believe that the truth this nation was founded upon is never changing. And that is what has me looking up and singing while so many others hang their heads and cry.

Oh! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved home and the war's desolation!
Blest with victory and peace, may the heav'n rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation.
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: "In God is our trust."
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!
~ 4th stanza, our national anthem, penned hopefully by Francis Scott Key in 1814

Fighting the harness

I have celebrated a lot of my victories as I write here. Today a defeat is heavy on my mind.

I prayed for years to be put behind a plow for God. I prayed as I wept by the bedsides of children I did not bear that He would give me children of my own so that I could walk this incredible journey I watched parents walking. It is something I literally begged God for. And He said, "Yes, my child", and gave me four children in four years! God's blessing is bountiful when He pours it out on us. In the midst of walking the path of young motherhood...truthfully, just past the threshold...I began to wonder if I had been "called" to this after all. What if it was all a mistake?? What if, instead of allowing a blessing, God had allowed one massive test to enter my life? I pictured the scene in heaven, God telling Satan, "No, don't give that woman children. She is a perfectly good nurse and that is what I have called her to do."

[Enter the pitiful wails and flailing about of my faulty human spirit and hormonal young womanhood.]

God tips His ear my way, and says, "Hmmm. Well, if she really desires it, and yes, it WOULD be a good test for her. Alright, Satan, have at it! I promised to be with her, and I will. She will cry out to me, and I will draw nigh to her. Let's give her the test she asks for."

Do you have a "blessing" in your life that feels more like a trial most of the time? Do you wonder if you misread your "call"? Do you resist the harness of the plowhorse, feeling as though perhaps you were bred for sprinting, not 12-hour days cutting the ground into furrows? Do you wonder if the grass is sweeter at the race track, or the pasture where a loving family keeps you for occasional riding use? Would you rather work in the mountains, perhaps, or see what it is like to work down in sunny Mexico? This has certainly been my battle of late. Here I am, plowing the furrows that are my children. At least eighteen years of work lies before me. And it is not just the mantle of motherhood that I have bucked and worn askew, and occasionally tossed on the ground and stomped upon! It is the particular type of mantle God has called me to now wear! Stay at home?? Keep my children in home school?? Sew and can and weed a garden and make a home and do laundry?? Is this really what I was "called" to do, God?? What about my shriveling intellect, the very brain and wit and desire for knowledge you planted as a seed in me in my mother's womb? What about my nursing knowledge and ability to help families navigate some of the most difficult health care decisions of their lives? Doesn't that have merit? What am I to do with it? Cast it aside for an archaic, Biblical archetype that is almost impossible to envision in the current bounds of our society and culture?

[Enter somber doctor with lab report, medical record and pathology. In short, enter cancer.]

Young woman, if it is you reading this, lay down your struggles. I beg you to lay them down sooner than I did. Don't push God's limits with your questions and your struggles and desires for self. Lay your self down willingly at His feet! Pray about it every day, as I did not. Ask your husband to help you, as I did not. Ask an older woman for counsel, as I did not. Pray some more. Why struggle to the bitter end, digging your nails into the last shreds of your dignity and selfhood as they are gently and inexorably pulled away from you? Don't you see it is YOU who are shredding it? God asks you to hand Him the garment of your old self - and promises to hand back, in return, a glorious new garment. "...put off the old self with its practices, and put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator. Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another, forgiving each other; And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony." (Colossians 3:5-14 exc. ESV)

Do not sell your soul for the paltry pittance your culture will offer you! My self, that intellectual bauble I too easily praise, is not worthy of a second glance when my Savior and His tasks lie before me! Instead of narrowing my depth of focus to self, wondering if I'd misinterpreted God's call and made a mistake to ask for these children, why not look up at the landscape before me and trust that this view, this vista...this is what God has planned for me. If it is before me, it is my call. My self - yes, created by Him, yes, valuable in His merciful, Fatherly eyes. But worthy of worship? Worthy of sacrifice? Do not let feminism turn your body and your mind and your contribution to society into something that it is not! You were created to praise God, not self. You were created to serve God, not self. Do not be a fool, as I have so often been in these past five years! A wise woman builds her home, but a foolish woman tears it down with her own hands. (Proverbs 14:1)

Today I am praying for lasting change. I don't want cancer to be the proverbial blip on my screen. I want it to be changing me forever. I want to trade my slow connection with God, the one that I have accessed only in times of greatest need, for high-speed, the type that is constantly exchanging information. In the world, cancer turns people inward as they focus on improving their healthy lifestyle to maximize their days on this earth. That is not my goal. I want to maximize my soul's harvest in heaven. That is my focus. I repent that I only heard this lesson through God's megaphone of cancer. I repent that I neglected the soft whispers of His loving, Father-voice in my soul while I held my delicious babies close. I repent that I was deaf to the voice of my compassionate husband, who desires the best for his family and wishes to make me a queen in my own home. I repent that I struggled so against the harness of my plow. Now that it is lifted off my shoulders, I see the deep furrows and scars in my soul where I have struggled. Where God desired serene beauty there is now a battle-worn heart. When He put peace and understanding in my reach, in plain sight, I turned away and cried bitter tears I never had to cry. I chose suffering instead of peace; flailing instead of resting; this life instead of the next. Please don't do it! Learn from my mistake.

The God who is ever uttering himself in the changeful profusion of nature; who takes infinite years to form a soul that shall understand him and be blessed; who never needs to be, and never is, in haste; who welcomes the simplest thought of truth or beauty as the return for seed he has sown upon the old fallows of eternity, who rejoices in the response of a faltering moment to the age-old cry of his wisdom in the streets; the God of music, of painting, of building, the Lord of Hosts, the God of mountains and oceans; whose laws go forth from one unseen point of wisdom, and thither return without an atom of loss; the God of history working in time unto christianity; this God is the God of little children, and he alone can be perfectly, abandonedly simple and devoted. The deepest, purest love of a woman has its well-spring in him. Our longing desires can no more exhaust the fullness of the treasures of the Godhead than our imagination can touch their measure. Of him not a thought, not a joy, not a hope of one of his creatures can pass unseen.

Life is no series of chances with a few providences sprinkled between to keep up a justly failing belief, but one providence of God; and the man shall not live long before life itself shall remind him, it may be in agony of soul, of that which he has forgotten. When he prays for comfort, the answer may come in dismay and terror and the turning aside of the Father's countenance; for love itself will, for love's sake, turn the countenance away from that which is not lovely; and he will have to read, written upon the dark wall of his imprisoned countenance, the words, awful and glorious, Our God is a consuming fire.

~ George MacDonald, The Child in the Midst

Focusing outward in prayer

Having cancer cells lurking around in your body can make a person quite introspective, I've come to find. For weeks, almost every prayer was a cry - "Please heal me!" At our annual church camp in late September, I realized that my prayers had become quite "selfish" in that I was forgetting the rest of my usual prayer list in favor of prayer for my own life. I immediately set about changing that. Each child has a person they are praying for (Amy prays for me, sweet girl), and we have integrated prayer times into our day at meals, naps, bedtime, and snacktimes. It is really awesome to watch the girls developing in this area. Amy's little prayers are so sweet - she changes her voice to this little endearing pout, kind of, and prays an entire paragraph with few prompts. Rosy is long-winded in prayer, adding all kinds of creative thoughts and word pictures to her prayers. And Katy is very matter-of-fact and to the point (shocker!).

It has been really enjoyable to experience some success in this little area with the kids. I have also tried to become more diligent about praying for my children, and I found this chart through a friend. I think it will get much use, especially during my two weeks away!
http://navigatorsdetroit.com/2005-11 20 Praying for our Children.pdf

I am praying for them. I am not praying for the world but for those whom you have given me, for they are yours. ~ John 17:9