Training wheels

I walk a thin line between anxiety and laughter in large groups. I thought I could resign myself to this as part of this season. But then I went to church.

This isn't my church. It's just a pretty one.

It was one of those messages that you feel is written just for you. You slowly creep down in your seat to avoid the pastor's gaze, which you're sure is going to settle on you any minute now. And fill up your whole paper with notes.

I'm ruminating on this while I put training wheels on my daughter's bike. First of all, you've got to get the assembly right or they won't work well - or even worse, might be dangerous. I installed one training wheel upside down, for instance. That is NOT going to work! I bloodied a few knuckles during the process. And then the bike is done, and I watch Amy ride and think about how impossible it would be for her to ride that bike without the extra support. How necessary training wheels are for a time.

Amy, when she could ride a trike but couldn't crawl or walk (Nov. 2009)

We all know the story of David. His ebb and flow of trust and hope in the Lord is spelled out through at least 3 books of the Bible. In Psalm 56, when he tries to hide out with the Philistine enemies to avoid being killed by jealous king Saul, he says "When I am afraid, I put my trust in you."

How do we grab hold of that type of faith? It's been given me incrementally as the years passed. I cried hard when my baby Rosy was diagnosed with a spinal abnormality. I cried for the losses I knew would come with cancer, but by God's grace, I have been able to face tests, treatments, and long separations from my family with a calm spirit of trust. When Amelia was given 50/50 odds and we held her in a coma-like state, I was not afraid.

Yet anxiety has marked the days of 3 months. Where the peace and calm He's given me in times past? In I Samuel 21:13 we get a very different picture of the man who says in Psalm 56, "When I am afraid, I put my trust in you." We see a man feigning insanity to save his head from sitting on a silver platter. So he changed his behavior before them and pretended to be insane in their hands and made marks on the doors of the gate and let his spittle run down his beard. This infuses me with hope because I have recently been on the psych wards, with the truly insane, and God rescued me from that. I am hopeful because David experienced such a transformation, even in his various sins and low popularity eras, from appearing like a madman to being a man after God's own heart.

We rebel because we have been hurt. We are afraid God will leave us high and dry. Yet, when the threat comes from above us, He covers us with the wings of a hen protecting her chicks. When the threat comes straight at us, we are covered with His blood. When the threat comes from underneath us, He sets us up upon a rock. ~Doug Lebsack, 6/12, Valleybrook Church

So how am I going to change? You know that fear - that you've tried a million times already to root a particular sin out of your life, and it just stays there, blooming and breaking your heart as you allow it to bloom right out into the public eye sometimes. You've tried to cover it up. You've tried to pretend it isn't there. You've read books, listened to sermons, and asked other people. And the sin persists.

1. Just stop. Stop being rebellious. Don't do it.
2. Stop standing still in the way of sinners. Get moving. Replace the old with something new.
3. Get up our of the seat of the scornful, where you sit judging other "worse" sinners than yourself. Start walking. Start doing.

When you do these things with a heart prepared to go somewhere with God, we are transformed. You are not there to sit around lounging in the glory of God. You are there to be remodeled. God uses His house to remodel our hearts. Get out of fear, and let trust flow in to replace it. If you choose to make your peace with your fear, live with it because change is too hard, guess what? The very thing you fear may well be attracted to you with magnetic force. What the wicked dreads will come upon him, but the desire of the righteous will be granted. (Proverbs 10:24)

So I've got a plan. First, I made a mental list of the sins that I'm holding on to. I came up with ideas to stop all those things. I'm looking for counsel from my Bible and scholars and lovers of the Word. I'm not going to stand still any longer. I feel propelled to service, as I once felt when I started mission work.

I'm getting up out of chair and taking a ride on a bike with training wheels. Hopefully soon, I'll be on my two-wheeler, as my kids would say. I am not going to let anxiety snuff out my spirit or control my life. God is big, much bigger than my anxiety. I've GOT to trust in Him.

Because fear is never very far away.

Amy, hospitalization #4, boarding the ambulance

The tiny scar that is monument to my cancer-marked life.

Burying Theodore, who lived for 14 weeks in my fallopian tube.

And you have to look hard sometimes or you miss the joy.

Rosy worships at the sunlight through historic windows.

Amy, almost healed by Christmas.

Katy at Christmas time, 2009

Katy with Grandma Nel at Christmas time, 2010.

My smile over X-country skis for Christmas, 2009.

My joyous wedding day.

My gratitude list, short but poignant this week:
#685: A pastor who tells it from his own experience
#686: a "verdant bower of beauty" (as Anne would say) to look out upon during my morning peace on the porch swing
#687: Help flowing in from all directions.
#688: Cat has her kittens!!
#689: Friends with whom you have a life history of love
#690: The bittersweet of the babies you held walking out as graduates and adults

Pluck, pluck, BLECH!

“Mother ducks pick feathers from their chests to line their nests.”

I wake up almost every morning before I would like to.

I cook when I would rather be working on a school project.

I sing and read stories in the precious moments I want to spend talking to my husband.

I wash floors crusted with milk that I didn't spill.

I clean toilets that I don't sit on. (feel free to fill in the missing consonant for a giggle!)

I wipe noses instead of wrapping the piling-up presents.

I clip 50 toenails and 50 fingernails every single week.

I put away toys I don't ever play with.

I stood under a tree looking up, through my camera, at the frozen crab apples that no one picked (they were delicious still). Caught in the branches was a piece of goose down. The kind mother ducks pluck from their breasts to line their nests. Having plucked ducks and geese, I know that with every pluck there is a little dot of blood, a piece of flesh torn out, too. I had just listened to a speech that used this analogy to capture motherhood - yes, it is difficult; yes, it hurts; but where, exactly, do we expect the nest building materials to come from, if not from our own bodies? From the trash? The discards? Do we really want to live in a nest built out of leftovers and unwanted pieces? 

What struck me, looking up in this tree, as I counted the ways that I sacrifice every day, is that I did all that for pay, once upon a time. For children who weren't my own. For children I didn't truly love.

Ridiculous- embarrassing - humiliating is the fact that I would ever begrudge my children the same.

In the past few days, I have started praying about and thinking over all the news we received during Amelia's hospital stay at Mayo. In a nutshell, the fact that this might not be something she will outgrow. Yesterday, I finally met with my cardiologist and learned that I did, indeed, suffer some heart damage during the episode a few weeks ago that may have been a mild heart attack. Unfortunately, the damage lies right beneath the wire that connects my pacemaker to my heart, making it less effective and explaining why I have been so under the weather the past three weeks. In addition, my thyroid cancer suppression is too high again, raising my resting heart rate to 120 beats per minute (mine is normally less than 60, so this is double my normal). While most people think being hyperthyroid means losing weight and having lots of energy, the exact opposite is true for most thyroid cancer patients...being too high on your meds means horrible, bone-aching fatigue and a diversion of all your body's resources to the core, keeping your heart racing day in and day out.

I have to accept the fact that God asks me to keep giving under these circumstances. Rectify my expectations with the reality of my life. 

Even when (fill in the blank)...I will still give to them. And through them, You, Lord.

I am willing to receive what You send,

lack what You withhold,

relinquish what You take,

suffer what You inflict,

do what You command,

be what You require.

~ Prayer by unknown author ~

Parents trapped in the hospital

We are on our way home today, so I am re-posting something from the archives! Of course, I've added a few touches from the added experience of the past week. As well as photos. This yellow wheelchair has been in the hallway our entire stay, and as I hurriedly rush out to get water or milk for Amy, I have seriously wondered if an angel can impersonate a wheelchair. Even in my darkest moments here, this wheelchair has brought a smile to my face. If I ever become an invalid, I am ordering myself one of these!

Ever have a friend whose child is hospitalized? I found an excellent resource online shortly after my son Caleb was unexpectedly hospitalized for a week last April. This list of things to put in a gift basket for a parent whose child is in the hospital is just about perfect. My friend Heather rescued me several times with items on this list when a day in the hospital turned into a week. It would greatly bless any friend of yours facing similar difficulty, and may be a good idea for hospitals or even church small groups to provide as a service to those thrust suddenly into need. I've put the items I most requested in bold.

Survival items

• phone card for long distance
• tooth brush/tooth paste
• shampoo and hand cream
• small box tissues
• Tylenol & Ibuprofen (adult)
• sanitary pads
• razor (there are never ANY in the hospital, for whatever reason)
• mints, gum, instant breakfast, calming herbal tea, chocolate
• Starbucks VIA is an instant rescue for coffee-drinking parents walking the floors
• digital thermometer (paranoid parents always double check)
• a journal for parents to record experiences or medical information

Special touches

• pillow from home
• crayons/coloring book/drawing pad/stickers/book/small kids games
• blanket/tee shirt/hat/underwear
• slippers/soft socks
• coffee mug
• wonderful body refreshing spray - purse size (lemon/citrus is the most universal scent)
• cash, cafeteria gift card and/or parking tickets, gift certificate from hospital gift shop
• a list of nearby restaurants that deliver to the hospital

Services

• Pick up, launder and drop off laundry
• Babysitting of other children
• Offer to organize or pay bills, bring bills to the hospital, or contact service providers such as phone, power, cable, garbage, post office to alert them to the family emergency
• Mow lawn/shovel snow/weed gardens/feed pets
• Make meals for those stuck at home
• Offer to sit with the sick child in the hospital so the parent can run an errand, go outdoors for a few minutes, make phone calls, or get food out of sight of their child, who may be unable or not allowed to eat

Thanks to Ped-Onc Resource Center for the great list! My number one favorite pick from this list is:

• Bring homecooked food to your friend who is stuck in the hospital (Eric & Renee's Buffalo Chicken pizza and the meals my aunts have brought me will seriously NEVER be forgotten. They are in the permanent mental record of incredible blessings I've been privy to in my lifetime. Seriously. Of course, scroll down to see Rosalie's corn casserole and Shera's dessert - my meal last night after 4 days of cafeteria food - and you may understand why!)

Oh, how things change!

Eight years ago today, a lonely beachhead on the outer banks of Puget Sound, a meager honeymoon dinner of fresh bread, Gouda, and sausage, honey mead, and taking photos together for dessert.

His smile is less bashful now, when he sees the camera pupil pointed in his direction.  Today, a busy day with family, surrounded by our progeny, barely a moment to say "happy anniversary" in the morning light before wee ones crowded in the bedroom, hungry for breakfast.

Happy anniversary to the man who heals me, helps me and holds me.

The perfect father and husband for my brood and I.

I am reminded of the old adage...

"the more things change the more they stay the same."

(Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose)
~ Alphonse Karr, 1849, Les Guepes ~

In the hands tending to little ones,
I see the same hands I first fell in love with.
In the day spent serving others,
I see the spirit I first fell in love with.


At the end of the day, my love, you are still the same.

Weekends are for heritage

The ribbon lips drawn up in excitement, the little mini roller pin grasped and floured, the timbre of joy in the voice as she waits for her ball of dough to roll out...

The finesse of chubby little fingers and concentration in her eyes...

Finally, sneaking a nibble and getting caught.  The sweet grain of flour and butter and lard and salt and sugar all blended up according to Julia Child's French pastry recipe melting on the tongue.

She gives the pin to her big sister, and that sister hands it on to the biggest, and a very rustic pie crust is the result.  Fumbled edges and over-floured, it still crumbles like butter cookie dough as I teach the eldest how to shape it to the plate.

(I love how these hands are still dimpled 7 years later.  I dread the

day I look down, and the dimples are gone.)

(I look down at my own rough housewife hands, and wonder at past decades.

Who manicured these nails after the pie crust embedded there deep?)

We sprinkle the little bits with cinnamon and sugar and put them in with the first crust to bake.  The warm aroma of the baking butter and spice floats on the heavy, humid late summer afternoon air as I listen to the kids playing some hilarious game out on the porch, a mix of going-to-the-eye-doctor and Almanzo-courting-Laura Ingalls.  Only in a house of girls would you ever hear that mix!

The crusts come out all golden and flaky and I...as usual...bemoan the little errors and my own "rustic" edging style that never is as perfect as my mother's, or my aunts...

The girls' crust is ready to go in, weighted with parchment and beans and the crust rolled over in silly little girl fashion.  We mix blueberries and sugar and make a fruit pie while we wait for it to bake.  A storm rolls over the horizon, and Aaron takes the kids out on the porch in the monsoon rain and the yellow light and takes pictures.  He bends over me as I bake, and we look at photos.  There's flour on the camera.  Kids disobey, and there is a ruckus, and the headache pounds, and I bend exhausted over the last of the baking and the dinner preparation and wonder that this is what we are called to.  The constant bend and repeat, make, eat, repeat of womanhood.  That worship and sacrifice are bound up in the litany of everyday chores that are never completed by day's end and must be repeated tomorrow, anyway.

The kids watch me make the lattice for the top with mathematical precision, and I remember the words of my sister-in-law, that "this part is the hardest".  Her sentence sounds ironic, because it's the easiest for me, the precision part, the part I can control and plan out and do according to formula.  I am good at lattice tops.  I am not good at edging or rolling out...too many ways for things to go wrong.  No plan can possibly make that go right.

And so it is with life.  The precision parts - school, study, jobs, even routines and plans for the day - those I handle with aplomb.  But the messy bits of life, the pie edging parts, where the plan goes awry and things get askew, that's the difficult part.  I lose it when the kids are unkempt when it is time to leave for town, or I don't get the alloted amount of housework done in a day and I am faced with a mountain of laundry or three loads of dishes or stinky food remnants in the bottom of the sink at the very end of the day, when things should be winding down and sleep should be coming.

In my life at least, this is the saved by childbearing truth.  Because this life surrounded by kids, it is a noisy, flour on the countertop and berries smeared on the floor sort of life.  It isn't precise, mathematical, predictable, or controllable.  And so, in losing those parts of self that demand precision, predictability, controllability, there is a little less of me left to fight for the space in my soul.  And the part emptied out by the daily grind is the space left for Savior to fill.  As His half grows slowly bigger, I feel the shift there, deep inside.  I feel softened and quieted.

At the end of the day, as we eat the pie dripping with berry goodness and melting ice cream, the mussed up edge is so much less important than I thought.  Somehow we have a happy evening, with mountains of clothes...folded now...consuming the couch and dishes still crowding the sink.

As we slowly savor the pie in the last moments of the day before the kids are tucked into bed, my husband says it and I blink and think about all this in a few seconds time and wonder at the way life really is: "This crust is the best part."

Circle

She was my mother's friend; she received Christ through my parent's college ministry; she was my babysitter. Even at 4, I envied her blond curls and carefree ways with people.  She is one of my childhood heroes.

I remember exactly how I felt inside when she handed me her bouquet for this photo taken at her wedding.  Like someone had just really loved me in a way I never expected.  I remember watching my mother hand-stitch the last details of the wedding dress sewed in the wee hours the night before the big day.  Mama sewed my dress, too.  And the little suits my brothers wore.

Her kids were born, the first a friend-twin for my youngest baby brother.  I lived for 12 years in baby heaven, from Jared's arrival when I was 6, until I quit babysitting the 6 York kids when I was 18 and struggling in college, with heart failure, fainting, and one near-death event.

The years came and went, and my heart got better, then worse again.  Twice I wondered if I would ever see the light of day again.  But I woke up the next morning, and the next after that.  God finally sent me the love of my life and I watched the York girls roll down the hill in my parents' backyard on my wedding day.  I thought that day meant we had come full circle.

And then Melanie called me one day, when I was struggling with postpartum depression after Rosy was born, and asked me if I wanted Ali to come stay.  I remember that moment as clearly as the moment she handed me her bouquet on her wedding day.  The verse that came to mind was Deuteronomy 7:9...Know therefore that the Lord thy God, he is God, the faithful God, which keepeth covenant and mercy with them that love him and keep his commandments to a thousand generations.

I said yes, please send her.  She stayed for a week.

I know now how her mother must have felt when I came to stay for a week or two at a time.  Even though I burnt the dinner, and screwed up some cleaning tasks that will go down in our "family" history, I did watch movies with the kids, and take them to ride their bikes on the sidewalk, and run through the sprinkler, and outside to eat popsicles.  I remember rocking Ali for hours on end because she was a sweet nursing baby who wanted her mother and most certainly did not want to be set down.  I still remember the little ways she comforted herself, and treasure the memories.  Now I watch her with my kids, and I wonder, 

how long will God keep this circle of blessing going?

When He says a thousand generations, does He mean that literally?

I have no doubt my kids will watch her kids.

I can't wait to see what comes after that.

Praise be to the King of Kings for the trickle down blessing as our families grow together, swapping the generations and layering love on love.

Take this cup

The gift that God gave to His only begotten Son was to crush Him. The gift that God may be offering to you in His loving hands may be a thorn--something about which you cannot imagine why God is doing this. Yet He is saying, "Will you love Me? Will you trust Me? Will you praise Me?" The Bible tells us in Romans 8:17 that we are heirs with Him if we suffer with Him. We become co-heirs. He wants us to be with Him in our sufferings. He wants us to understand the sufferings that He went through for us. Of course, we can never understand it. Of course, it is beyond any of our wildest imaginings. But we know that because of that shameful cross you and I receive redemption. I don't know what the gift may be that God is handing to you today, but there may be bitterness in the cup. There may be a thorn. Now when you and I begin to feel sorrow for ourselves and we think, "Poor little me. Why does God do this to me? I don't understand why God is allowing this to happen to me," go back to Isaiah 53:10. It was the Lord's will to crush Jesus Christ, His Son, and to cause Him to suffer. Why? "Though the Lord makes His life a guilt offering, He will see His offspring and prolong His days; and the will of the Lord will prosper in His hand because He poured out His life unto death and was numbered with the transgressors. He bore the sin of many and made intercession for the transgressors." ~Elisabeth Elliot

I found some of the most succinct and truth-filled words on suffering today at the blog of a fellow Christian who just died of cancer yesterday. He states that Christians going through great suffering must first "focus on being still and developing our relationship with God. Second, we can focus on ministering to others through the pain." (from Zac Smith's blog of his last days - well worth the read) Finally, he focuses on how to survive suffering well - concluding that we can

1. Focus on our eternal destiny in heaven & the relief it will bring
2. Focus on the surprises God has planned out along the way, and let your frustration go
3. Be obedient and live in the moment God has you in: do not lose sight of today because you are focusing exclusively on the future

I would say that these three ideas are great ideas, but they are also extremely difficult to live out in real life! Focusing on eternity and the relief it brings almost always make the bittersweet grow ever more bitter, at least for me. I get distracted thinking about all that I will lose touch with once I die. I start thinking about the ensuing pain that will have to occur before I die (cancer isn't an easy way to go, especially if you are young and your body has a lot of "fight" left in it). Zac's second point, to focus on the surprises, can be a great distraction from frustration and pain. But sometimes the surprises are not what you'd hoped, and you wallow on in ever worsening disappointment as there is sometimes little or nothing to rejoice in the situation, and your rejoicing must simply be because of God. Because He is and was and ever will be, and you can rejoice because you know Him. Which brings me to Zac's third and final point. This, I think, is the heart of how to suffer for Christ rather than just because of Christ. By bowing to His plan, and finding out how to serve Him in the moment, we can be the hosts of His glory, as His sovereignty, grace and extravagance shines out from our pain.

Aaron and I were recently counseled that God must be trying to get our attention through all of the suffering and health issues we've had as a family in the past two years. We believe, wholeheartedly, that this is true: the initial cancer diagnosis definitely served as a wake-up call to both of us. Zac Smith talks about the same process for him and his wife: get cancer, be woken up, realign yourself with God, get cured, get busy planning for the future. BUT sometimes you do all that, and cancer comes back. Other trials crop up. Then you are faced with a situation like Acts 28: Paul, the thorn still in his side even after fervent prayer for healing, is busy healing others. Rather than focusing inward as a family, trying to determine what God is trying to do in our lives, Aaron and I both feel this is the time to focus outward - to minister to others through our suffering.