I admit it...I'm not supermom!

{what if people think my beautiful kids are nerds like me??}

Sometimes you run headlong into a barrier in your own mind, a belief so old and so fundamental to your value system that it seems impossible to move. I'm up against a wall like this right now. We are facing some decisions about the children, how they are cared for and educated, and I can't hardly stand to "go there" in my head.

I was homeschooled from kindergarten until college. I always regarded public school as a mysterious, sometimes alluring and sometimes frightening place. The small town that I grew up in was almost entirely made up of Norwegian Lutherans. I have Native American blood in me, and dark hair and brown eyes to prove it. I'm not a Lutheran. And I'm about a foot taller than quite a few of the women around here. All of that added up to a lot of teasing when I was growing up. I was also *blessed* (snort!) to hit puberty a full 2-3 years before the rest of the girls my age, along with the attendant growth spurt, body hair and all the other wonderful things you enjoy post-puberty (snort again!). I had one friend from public school from the time I was about 6 until I graduated high school. And even she wouldn't necessarily acknowledge me if she was with a group of her cheerleader friends.

Schools don't seem friendly to me. They don't seem parent friendly, child friendly, or family friendly. They seem system-friendly. As a parent, I cringed every time the school bus drove by in the dark winter morning, and I couldn't fathom the idea of passing my children off to a non-relative every day for 8-9 hours, especially when my children were younger.

Between depression and beginning a demanding job for the first time since having kids, homeschool has been rockier than ever before. Full-time mothering has always been extremely difficult for me, more so than some. I don't think I'm one of those "made for motherhood" women. All my years as a stay-at-home mom, I've struggled with intense inner turmoil because I love my children very much but I didn't feel particularly good at showing them because of the demands of the parenting role.

I know I was "born" to be a mom because I believe in a sovereign God who knew that I would need to pass through the fiery furnace of sanctification through childbearing. He also knew I would have a tender heart, struggling with discipline and decisiveness; and a sick heart, which makes the pace of at-home parenting almost too much to bear. Simple housework is more than I can handle on "bad heart" days.

I've believed my whole life that I shouldn't work if I had children. That's the belief - along with the equally entrenched fear of public school - that has kept my nose to the grindstone even when I can hardly stand to be there. To be perfectly honest, in my "previous" life as a fundamental Christian, I regarded working moms as less attached or attentive to their children's needs, somewhat selfish, and also more sure of themselves as women and moms than I was.

But then I became a working mom. And I realized that sometimes you leave someone so that when you're with them, you're 100% with them. That sometimes quality IS better than quantity. That my children were equally as happy, well-behaved, engaged, and learning with other caregivers than myself. I also spent a lot more time with my mother this past 9 months because she was the primary caregiver for the children when I was at work. And I noticed she is born for tending home and family - in ways I will never be! She's stronger, has more endurance, is efficient with housework and proficient as an elementary teacher. I began to wonder, is it really the right decision to keep your children at home at all costs?

Aaron and I looked at each other one night, opened our mouths, and the same thing came out of both of us. "I think we should consider putting the kids in school next year." It felt scandalous, ridiculous, even wrong to say those words. Am I not just about the biggest homeschooling advocate on the planet? Yet, as I think back to the difficulties I had socially up until I graduated from college - and even persisting somewhat to this day - I wonder if some of that ackwardness didn't come from the fact that I was homeschooled. I know, I know, "weird, unsocialized homeschoolers" is a cliché. But what if it's true in some cases, like mine? And maybe even my kids?

Ever since we left our church, they've struggled to make friends. They're good at making short-term, transient connections, like those they make during the ball season in spring. Long-term friendships still seem to be elusive for our whole family. I don't think one of us has made a new friend since the hardships of 2010.

My husband challenges my doubts about schools. He points out he went to one, and look at him now! He encourages me to evaluate my students. Would I want my kids to turn out like them in 10-15 years? I stare out at my nursing students and think that every one of them also went to public school, yet they are maintaining GPAs often upwards of 3.8 despite taking the toughest classes the college has to offer - math, sciences, Latin, honors courses. I admire my students. I rarely come across one who has difficulty with algebra or writing clarity, spelling, or grammar. They are compassionate, caring, bright, friendly, service-oriented men and women. They are kind people. Confident. Able. Prepared.

We made the leap. We prayed and prayed, toured schools, read parent handbooks, rules, regulations. We talked with the kids and talked with both sets of parents. We settled on the nearby Montessori school, where the children will be in multi-age classrooms and engaged in self-directed learning just like they are in homeschool. Child and family-focused. No homework in the evenings. Across the street from the hospital and only a mile or so from the University. The school, it's administrators and especially it's teachers, are excellent.

I am grateful that there is a confirmation step to our process. Although we've registered the children at the school, there is a waiting list to get in this year. We are still praying for God to direct. We've knocked on the door, and we're waiting to see if it will open. If it doesn't, we will homeschool another year and try again next summer if we feel led to do so. I feel like I can relax into this choice because it isn't a sure thing. The responsibility doesn't feel like it's resting only on my shoulders. God is still able to say yes or no to this new idea.

What has been your experience with school? Did you enjoy the way you were educated? How has that affected your choices with your own children?

And so I tell you, keep on asking, and you will receive what you ask for. Keep on seeking, and you will find. Keep on knocking, and the door will be opened to you. (Luke 11:9)

Hand in hand

I sit with my newest cancer sister, overnight, catching winks when she does, our heads turned together and my hand over hers. I listen to her breath coming in and out, slowing finally as she drifts from pain to peace, and then I too can drift away to sleep. Why is it she can sleep simply because someone is holding her hand?

What is it about touch that is so magical? Can relax the child strung tight with wayward electrical activity tightening her muscles like electric shocks, straight from the core and out to the tips of her fingers and toes. Calm the fears you bury deep inside and bring the breath rushing deep into the bottoms of your lungs where air hasn't made a trespass in days, your ribs like the iron bands on your barrel, screwed tight with the anxious nagging thought.

Two passages stick out when I think about touch and how it affects us. God uses touch when His angel delivers His message to Daniel in chapter 10 of the book of Daniel:

I heard his voice. At the sound of it I fainted, fell flat on the ground, face in the dirt. A hand touched me and pulled me to my hands and knees. 'Daniel,' he said, 'man of quality, listen carefully to my message. And get up on your feet. Stand at attention. I've been sent to bring you news.' When he had said this, I stood up, but I was still shaking. Then this humanlike figure touched me again and gave me strength. He said, 'Don't be afraid, friend. Peace. Everything is going to be all right. Take courage. Be strong.' "Even as he spoke, courage surged up within me. I said, 'Go ahead, let my master speak. You've given me courage.' (verses 9-10 & 18 The Message)

And Jesus - why is it that, all through the Gospels, Jesus touches the people He heals? And the people who touch His robe are healed? Why use touch, I've always wondered, when you could just speak it and it would be so. Why not just speak it and the whole world for that decade is healed? Why not speak it and I'll be healed? How does this Savior, with all power and might, who is "deeply moved" by the plight of the people He heals, ignore the pain and suffering of the rest of the world?

Deeply moved, Jesus touched their eyes. They had their sight back that very instant, and joined the procession. (Matthew 20:34 The Message)

What about the gift of pain? How it makes the sweet so sweet, brings us to the core of our being, where we must confront our fears and grief, our shirking and our glad passing of our most difficult torches to the people we say we love. It makes us confront what is worst about us...and shrug off those weaknesses and search instead for the strength to triumph.

Illness is the doctor to whom we pay most heed; to kindness, to knowledge we make promises only: pain we obey. ~Marcel Proust

Pain, too, brings out the worst and best in human action. The compassion I felt as a nurse only rose to the surface when confronted with the worst of human suffering. That compassion crystallized into a calling that has still not left me. Like Jesus, pain is what deeply moved me, pushing out selfish concerns and demanding my full attention, grace, love - willingness to touch and tend the ugly, stinky, liquefying flesh of a helpless human.

A surgeon does not slip from his mother's womb with compassion smeared upon him like the drippings of his birth. It is much later that it comes. No easy shaft of grace this, but the cumulative murmuring of the numberless wounds he has dressed, the incisions he has made, all the sores and ulcers and cavities he has touched in order to heal. In the beginning it is barely audible, a whisper, as from many mouths. Slowly it gathers, rising from the steaming flesh until, at last, it is a pure calling. ~Richard Selzer, Mortal Lessons: Notes on the Art of Surgery

How about the pain in me? The cancer, and the physical pain it brings; the treatment and tests, and the emotional pain of separation. Well, it is the teacher that demands attention. In areas where I lacked self-control and motivation to change, this crisis of illness - and my response to it, turning to God to find the strength necessary - has transformed me. I can't sincerely demand that it be healed, because I understand that I don't understand it - why God is using cancer, why He has allowed cancer, in our lives.

Yet, if He walked by me today, I would be the woman crushed to the bottom of the crowd, reaching a shaking hand to touch the hem of His robe, the whisper on my lips, "Father, heal me."

Just then a woman who had hemorrhaged for twelve years slipped in from behind and lightly touched his robe. She was thinking to herself, "If I can just put a finger on his robe, I'll get well." Jesus turned—caught her at it. Then he reassured her: "Courage, daughter. You took a risk of faith, and now you're well." (Matthew 9:20 The Message)

Sometimes believing, sometimes pretending

The sky is a black void pebbled with stars, swept with the Milky Way's belt, like a chocolate cake gilded in gleaming white sugar sprinkles. Moonless and magical. It's been a day of feeling off, just a bit cranky, from the moment I woke up to my son's UFC style cuddling in our predawn bed to the hours spent editing powerpoints for the 39 hours of lecture I have to prep for in the coming month.

The stars hanging in still life bring the chaos to a halting stop, and the last breath I took is held in my lungs for a moment as I stand, hand in hand with my two youngest children, looking up, up as far as the naked eye can take us into the question marks of the universe.

They're tired for once, these late night children I've bred from my own insomniac bones, and the house goes still. Aaron and I pop in a movie, one to match my mood, The Gray. It's one for Aaron, all action, hunting, man against nature, survival. But deep in the plot are threads that pull at the frayed edges of my own: a man with a gun-barrel in his mouth; a poem about the exhaustion of putting up yet another fight to live; the poignant flashbacks to moments with a wife who died of cancer.

I break, just a crack this time, not into a million shards of shiny glass like I might have months or even two years ago. I stutter out the words, how I know the taste of rifle bluing. How I struggle with the exhaustion. How I fear abandoning this man I love to raise our children (can he do it? How can it be possible that I would watch from heaven without tears?).

I crawl into the familiar fetal position, knees to chest, my face still in the inner panic of the moment. And he, this Lover who abandons me not, folds himself into a warm parenthesis around my ache, diffusing the sorrow that I feel all the way down to the morrow of my bones.

My list of questions flows brittle, jumpy like a Jack Karouac poem up to God, silently, questions from Ecclesiastes, Psalms, Isaiah. A prayer from Revelation (come, Lord Jesus, come!) that ever more often finds it's way to my lips. And with the doubts, I've by habit paired the words of the desperate father in Mark 9:24: Lord, I believe! Help thou my unbelief!

How can I long for life so deeply that it threatens to break me in two, yet struggle not to give up in those moments of utter exhaustion when the very last thing I can do is fight longer and harder and for who knows how long?

How can He say that these are "light and momentary troubles" (2 Corinthians 4:17)? How could Paul, watching his comrades burn at the stake, run from lions, hide for their lives, starve in poverty, rot in prison? How is that light and momentary? Does He see our family? Does He see the struggle at dinnertime with Amelia (please just eat one bite of toast, I beg you child). Does He feel the heart flipping and leaping and pounding relentlessly in my chest throughout the day? Feel the blood drop from head to feet in one giant waterfall, and see the stars and hear the thunder in my ears and feel my knuckles whiten as I hold on for dear life so as not to lose a job, or knock something over with my head, or, God forbid, stop breathing during class or clinical or in front of my dearest, beloved children? How do we grasp eternity in the face of this compelling portrait of everyday gall?

How can He say there will be no tears in heaven? How can He make life so utterly beautiful, even in it's wretched brokenness, and say that we will not miss it even enough to cry? How can He paint such a shattered and desolate backdrop to the very aching resplendence of our lives here on earth?

Does He see my daughter quaking on the floor, froth on her lips, vomit on her t-shirt, excrement and urine rising putrid from her 6-year-old jeans? Does He hear my silent prayer for her life, hear my tears as I hold her until she stills in my arms and wakes? Does He know that I know that I cannot take care of a 40 year old daughter who soils herself and cannot drive or work? Has He prepared me for this, is He preparing me for this?

There are days all I see is the sovereign. The Judge on His seat, behind the bench, the finality of that gavel ringing in my ears. There are days I see only glimpses of mercy in between the God who says He will not tempt me beyond what I can bear (1 Corinthians 10:13). Why would a loving God tempt me at all? Is all this character building worth the blood, sweat, tears, vomit, poop, messiness, gut-wrenchingly hard work?

There is a moment in The Gray when the main character, desolate, alone, and hopeless, throws his head back to the heavens, an admitted atheist, and pours out his anger and his cry for help to the empty gray sky. There is no answer. He stands, and says, "I'll do it myself." He cannot wait five minutes for an answer from the God he does not believe in, trust, or wait on for rescue.

Sometimes it feels like I am calling out to an empty gray sky. But what are my alternatives? Whether He answers or not, whether I understand His will and His actions or not, I have only two choices: hopelessness and unbelief, or to walk by faith, not by sight (2 Corinthians 5:7).

And herein is the hard road of faith: the waiting through the long, dark night, for the next time you see your baby smile, and you glimpse God again. Those glimpses of sight that light our path like gifts doled out for the moments when we need them most, reassurance when we are about to give up and give in. For those who cannot wait for His rescue, who give up on the God who often seems distant and even not there at all, the smile of the baby is just another coincidence. But for those who have made the thousand choices to believe when all evidence is to the contrary, we see the handprint of the Great One in the smallest nuance of life. The smallest victory. The shortest moment of joy can redeem every long season of grief and disbelief. All that teetering on the shrouded path suddenly becomes two feet planted once again on solid ground.

I stare into her eyes, limpid. She doesn't know the hard path of faith. She is only six, and can barely understand seizures and brain injuries, and pooping her pants. She doesn't know she was the light today that brought me back to the path, relit the fire of faith somewhere deep inside. For her, her sisters, her brother, her Papa, I walk once more into the fray. However the road may twist or turn, however heavy the gray storm clouds are that shroud me from the face of God, I will keep putting one foot in front of the other, sometimes truly believing, sometimes desperately pretending that at the end there is a heaven where He will wipe away every tear and say, "Well done, my good and faithful servant." (Matthew 25:23)

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What questions plague you in your daily walk with God? Do you find the daily practice of faith difficult? Do you struggle with disbelief?

Linked to A Pause on the Path's On Your Heart Tuesdays

I quit talking when I lost hope of Utopia

I used to be a soapbox grassroots political passionate, from days spent longing for my 18th birthday as I watched a Presidential election pass me by in 1996 to fighting unionization in my 20's at my place of employment. I've always been an "issues" voter: worried more about the morality of government than anything else, I had a short list of issues that determined which candidate got my support. Through the years, those issues remained almost unchanged: women's rights; abortion; and issues of personal freedom and choice such as those defined by the Constitution and it's amendments. When I was 18, I was for the death penalty. Now I'm opposed to it. At 18, I would have voted against gay rights, raised in a Bible-banging fundamentalist cult and still a talking head for what I'd been taught in my formative years. Now I'm much less sure of myself: I'll vote for the rights of gay spouses in healthcare every time, and I don't know how I'd vote on gay marriage.

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But this political season has me silenced. I think mostly because I still desperately dream, somewhat delusionally, of a political arena that encourages balanced, although passionate, debate. Discord? Certainly. But with chivalry, respect, and a chance for everyone to get a word in edge-wise. I've never voted for a candidate I agreed with 100%, nor have I voted against a candidate I disagreed with 100%. Isn't it that way for every voter? Because there is no duplicate of the unique and wonderful YOU in the universe?

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It seems like politics are more polarized than ever this year. Maybe it's that I've never been through a Presidential election on Facebook. Maybe it's that I've finally made enough friends who disagree with me that I'm bombarded with more and more ideas very much other than my own. When we're not facing a major political decision, I love the back-and-forth that is now part of my daily conversations: many of these friends have gently and respectfully helped me expand my horizons and have even helped me work out whether or not my ideas are based on Scripture or just the pipe-dream pulpit-banging of a mouthy pastor.

I'm going to let the cat out of the bag: I won't be voting Democrat this election. But I won't be happy about voting Republican either. Because I am not a party-line voter. I no longer consider myself a "Republican", history in the Young Republicans notwithstanding. What I really believe in is freedom. Personal responsibility. Reaching down to help someone else rise up. Grassroots aid coming from the very communities needy people live in. I don't want to live in a socialist nation. I want to live in a free nation.

There's a big reason I feel this way: my faith. Not only am I commanded to love my neighbor as myself (Mark 12:31), I am told that "religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows" - and perhaps the uninsured? - "in their distress." (James 1:27) Call me a passivist hippie commune love-glazed freak, but what a country we would live in if we could somehow encapsulate Galatians 3:23-28 in a government!

Now before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed. So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian, for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

I can't make that kind of change happen no matter how I vote in 2012. Maybe that's why I sigh every time I think of the election. Unfortunately, the main issue I'll be voting on this Presidential election will be economics. Our country is in serious money trouble. Someone has to find a way out of it. Our current administration has proven that it doesn't have an answer to balancing the budget, plugging the holes that money is leaking out of, and still accomplishing what the Federal government needs to do. One major reason? It has kept adding to the ever-longer laundry list of what the Federal government "needs" to do. What needs to happen - hopefully before we become the next Spain, Portugal, or Greece - is a long, hard look at that list, and some serious prioritization and budgeting. We've got to quit borrowing to accomplish our goals. We have to make our goals fit into our budget, somehow.

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The Constitution states that we shouldn't overthrow Government lightly, lest we all suffer even greater than we currently do. Yet when a "long train of abuses" and "Despotism" are evident in our Federal system, it is our "right...duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for [our] future security."

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. (from the Declaration of Independence, signed by 56 supporters of Freedom on July 4, 1776)

If we are to continue to exist as a free nation, we cannot print money like it is mere paper. We cannot borrow what we cannot repay. We cannot vote individual mandates into law, as we did with the Healthcare Reform Act, penalizing people for inactivity, which is unconstitutional. We cannot be ruled by fear and propaganda, such as the misinformation regarding the uninsured population statistics - which did not take into account illegal aliens and other non-citizens nor those who choose to live without insurance due to youthful ignorance, stupidity, or lifestyle - used to push the Healthcare Reform Act through the House and Congress in 2012.

We have been, historically, a creative breed. We've worn our "melting pot" brand proudly. We've been known to work together enormously successfully on occasion - think World Wars and the Great Depression. We've survived horrible rifts such as the Civil War, Prohibition, and the Civil Rights Movement. Great changes have been effected by large groups of people - women and children, minorities, religious groups, and even political organizations. We've transformed our nation over and over again. Today we look nothing like we did in 1776. If we survive another 200+ years, I imagine it will be a totally different patchwork quilt of people and ideas. Will there be more harmony? The pessimist in me doubts it. But I want to believe it is possible. 

I am more than willing to reach a hand across the aisle and grasp yours in brotherhood. I promise not to be a bad sport if my side loses. I won't quit speaking up for what I think is right - because that is what makes our nation great. But I love you just the same. I love atheists, lesbians, Muslims, liberals, humanists, drug addicts, commune-living hippies, researchers who wear hideous business suits. All kinds of people who don't look anything like me.

Democrats & Republicans hug in Hawaii's House after invocation, April 2012 (image credit) 

Whatever your political stripes, I encourage you to remember that the world will not end on November 6, 2012. We must maintain our relationships as we struggle through these great debates that are coming in the next few months. Because when the dust settles, and a new or returning President claims victory late that night, WE will be what's left of this nation. WE will determine which senators and congressmen get elected in the wake of the Presidential election. We will vote our opinions over and over again. We will spend our money on what we value. We will speak freely as long as we are able. We will build the bridges and come up with the solutions and make amazing suggestions that politicians will grab from Twitter and Facebook and your blog and mine and call their own.

Don't stop talking. But for heaven's sake, don't stop loving either! Perhaps our founding fathers said it best, as they concluded the Declaration of Independence: And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

Part of the Faith and Politics synchroblog hosted by Andi Cumbo

The baby is not so "baby" anymore

His birth was fast and crazy and downright shocking.

I remember my friend crying on the phone because we had a boy at last.

They came to get me for my tubal just 2 hours after he was born.

I just couldn't leave him, and there was a niggling doubt somewhere,

deep in my subconscious: was he meant to be our last?

Six weeks later, I had the surgery anyway.

A month after that, I was diagnosed with cancer.

And we praised God for His direction 

as I couldn't get pregnant while in treatment.

After my first clean cancer scan in March, 2009, Aaron came to me with an adoption dream. From what I read, it's unusual for the husband to be the one dreaming of adoption instead of the wife. We started paperwork and announced our plans to our friends and family.

But cancer came back, and paperwork stalled, and adoption 

is a far distant dream instead of one that will be realized quickly.

And in the autumn of 2009, I prayed for that next baby, 

Caleb's little brother or sister,and God answered in crazy ways, 

and I got pregnant, even after the sterilization.

I gave in, heart and soul, to the dream of another baby. 

It didn't feel like a dream at all, because it was so God-sent.

But it withered, and died, and I had 3 surgeries, and no baby to hold.

My abdomen filled with blood and my heart filled with grief.

We buried our baby, all 14 weeks of him, on the hillside in a silver urn.

The kids still count Theodore when people ask them how many siblings they have. I feel embarrassed. Who grieves a baby one never met? Yet another thing in my life I should "just get over".

Two more years pass, and I still have cancer.

No adoption.

And I don't have any more babies.

He is still my "baby".

Our family is growing up, and new vistas open before us.

An overnight date this weekend with my husband

(can't do that with a nursling).

Trips are easier to take.

Little hands learn chores and daily life gets easier.

We revel in new stages, having little readers,

children who play outside for hours.

Happy birthday, my sweet baby boy.

(February 21st, I'm a little late with this)

I don't know what the future holds,

whether or not you will ever have a baby brother,

but for this moment, I love whispering in your ear,

"You are my favorite boy in the whole world."

The afflicted shall eat and be satisfied;

those who seek him shall praise the Lord.

Psalm 22:26

It's the right time

There's a time for every season under heaven.

Ecclesiastes 3:1

The snow falls in grainy powdery magnificence, and we make ice cream.

Amy gets a genetic diagnosis.

I face some ghosts from my past.

A dream withers and dies.

I panic around new people.

And so I am told I have grief and I have to feel it.

I'm improvising, and the ice cream falters for a few minutes,

and the kids are crowded around throwing out ideas.

I balk at this whole grief idea.

I run from grief.

It's how I survived as a nurse.

It's how I've survived as a parent.

It's how I've survived as a cancer patient.

But this seems to be the season. And just like the ice cream, that comes together in sprinkled splediforousness, this season seems to be for grief in a lot of ways. I give grief a little window, a little wiggle room in that deep down dark place I think is my soul. And open my Bible the next day, and it's confirmed. This is the season for it, honey.

In that day the Lord God of hosts

called for weeping and mourning,

for baldness and wearing sackcloth;

and behold, joy and gladness,

killing oxen and slaughtering sheep,

eating flesh and drinking wine.

"Let us eat and drink

for tomorrow we die."

The Lord of hosts has revealed himself in my ears:

"Surely this iniquity will not be atoned for

until you die," says the Lord of hosts.

(Isaiah 22:12-13)

If it's time to grieve, 

and you blow your wad because you're on your way out anyway,

that's not okay.

If He tells you it's time to weep, and you numb your pain at the feast,

that's the wrong decision.

If you try to make snow ice cream in summer, good luck.

If you try to ignore your pain, good luck with that, too.

Does he who plows for sowing plow continually?

does he continually open and harrow his ground?

When he has leveled its surface,

does he not scatter dill, sow cumin...

For he is rightly instructed.

His God teaches him.

(Isaiah 28:23-26 exc.)

And though the Lord give you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, yet your Teacher will not hide himself anymore, but your eyes shall see your Teacher. And your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, "This is the way, walk in it," when you turn to the right or when you turn to the left. (Isaiah 30:20-21)

Do you remember the book "Owl at Home" by Arnold Lobel? When Owl makes tear-water tea? I think I am going to try it.

Image credit: http://ollerina.com

Goodbye, my friend, I hate to see you go

A long-time cancer "acquaintance" through the internet, who offered me much support and resources throughout my own journey, passed away today. Please stop in to her blog and offer her husband your comments if you have could at Daria's Living with Cancer blog.

My Bible-in-90-Days reading took me through Numbers a few days ago (yes, and now I am all the way through Judges...it's amazing!). The story of the manna hit me hard, and then I read it again in One Thousand Gifts, my current book of "wow!"

Manna literally means "what is it?" A mystery. Can't put your finger on the texture, flavor, color even...if you read the description, it's very amorphous. God feeds us with mystery. We can't quite label it or put it into a box. That's why it's called faith. I played around with the above photo of the feed spout at the York's horse farm, mulling over these things. Thinking about friends dying of cancer. If you enjoy it, click on the photo and you can save the large size to your computer and put it up as a computer background like I did. You can also download it even larger from Flickr.

The wound that blinds

It's one of those mornings when you just keep putting the kettle on. The hot water burbles out of the cracked teapot spout, and the bag steeps it's stems and pods, and you lift it until the brown liquid slows to a drip and drop the spent bag onto the saucer, a brown wet spot on a pile of orange dried ones, a whole pile of teabags to propel you through this morning. The cream swirls caramel through the comfort and you sigh as you lift it to your lips and try to focus deep on this one small pleasure amid a sea of pain and ugliness. Raw.

Nothing seems to come into focus these days. You blink and rub your eyes and you still see shadows and colored blur and there is no clear path and no sharpness to the images that race like sand through those windows of your soul, time in fast forward and you failing to catch any of it long enough to focus.

It's a hard thing to come to the bottom of another pit and find your brokenness and own it. Own that you can't mother these kids the way you wish you would. Own that your house falls into entropy every single day. Own that your husband cries sometimes, because of you. Own that you'd rather stay up late into the night just to get a breath of aloneness. Own your loneliness. Own the old scars and the wounds you thought healed that open their festering again, despite the washing of the Blood and the debridement of the years of scalding repentance. 

Did you really think if you reframed it again, you'd understand it? You've tried looking straight at it before, and it's just a bloody old wound that doesn't breathe purpose. Those wounds from your childhood, the times you beat your head against the road because the pain of the body was preferable to the pain of the soul?

You bite your lip again, and the blood runs, and you wash the new wounds with tea. Close your eyes and breathe one word. Thanks. And the beauty rushes back like the heavens opening up right on top of your head, and the weight lifts when you tilt back your head. You're not ready to talk to God today. But He still washes over you. No words. Just sensation, like the weight of a whole winter's growth of warmth against the winds Satan blows cold into your soul. The wind still blows. Sharp as a knife, and sometimes it gets through the armor that's grown over baby soul skin, shaggy ugly but safe. Somehow He wants the baby soul skin still soft and vulnerable. At least he puts the shaggy ugly over it. He doesn't leave you naked in the wind.

You tilt your ears back, too, to listen for the Word from the one you can't speak to today. Where were you when I was hurting? Why do you cloak purpose in sorrow like a seed in the snow, down deep where I can't see it, and ask me just believe it's there? 

The swayed back that's carried a thousand burdens still stands strong in this storm, too. Somehow.

And the face bruised and broken, bristled with cold, it's still velvet beauty, too. Somehow.

No matter how much you want to lie down and rest, you just keep pouring down the tea. The wheels keep turning in your brain and you are the silent thinker standing motionless while your body moves through the day. The kids whirl like painted tops and skitter through the mess of the hardwood floors, and the tea bags dry in the morning's pale winter sun, and the clocks tick, and it all registers slow. Bleeds through the winter weight of shaggy armor you've grown out from your soul in desperate anguish. Somewhere deep in the still brain dawns the realization that when you protect you don't just shut out Satan's cold wind. You shut out Truth and Beauty. Numbness is no way to live.

You pick up the book you threw across the bedroom floor last night and run your fingers over the rumpled tear tracks. In this present winter of the soul, alone in the warm yellow house with the phone silent on the hanger and the cell phone minutes piling up with unuse, for some reason the wounds open, and you know He wants you to scrub them out again. Alone with Him. Aching. Few friends to wrap like blankets around your cold shoulders. Just you, and that strange warmth, and that sharp evil wind. Alone down here at the bottom of this old pit you've left lay there so long you don't recognize the walls of it. 

The numbness recedes and the pain is hot and white again. As you throw off that fur coat and close your eyes to your nakedness, you realize it's not cold in here. You're in a warmth you never could have made with your shells and your coats, your wool and your shrugged tight shoulders and the hugging yourself against that old cold wind. It stirs like an ancient memory, that once long ago people walked around like this, naked. Didn't care. Were beautiful, image bearers walking close to the Image. 

You drop the bruised old sore into the hot Living Water and the pain at first is blinding. But as you stay there, under that Water, soak in that Water, let the Words wash over the old wounds, it recedes. And you reach down to touch the fresh white flesh washed white as snow and the fear recedes, too. The numbness leaches out. And you tilt your head back again and breath that one word, the only one you can squeeze out of your tired soul today. Thanks.

You're gonna cry yourself to sleep.

You're gonna soak the pillow for many weeks.

You're gonna cry...Why? Why me?

But in spite of the ache that doesn't go away

You'll be sharing your story one rainy day

and at the next table somebody catches your words.

He hears a truth he's never heard.

He takes it back to the marriage he'd given up on.

Hands it down to his daughter, who writes it in a song.

You didn't know.

A thousand things are happening in this one thing

Like a thousand fields nourished by a single drop of rain

So honey, wrap yourself in promise while you wait for the morning light

A thousand things are happening tonight.

You're gonna cry yourself to sleep.

'Cause for the moment all that you can see is what is lost, lost

Why me?

But in the midst of the most exquisite pain

You're drawn into a peace that you cannot explain.

And the praises you sing of a sovereign God

reach the girl whose last hope is gone

She never thought there was purpose in anything here.

Now the seed has been planted and it's taking root

You didn't know.

You're gonna cry yourself to sleep.

A thousand miracles you'll have to wait to see.

~A Thousand Things, Christa Wells~

Tongues

My Bible fell open to Acts 2 yesterday morning, the scene in which the Holy Spirit descends on the early church  on the Day of Pentecost.  So many times of late, I feel like I am speaking the wrong language...or at least a different one.  I remember a mission trip to Honduras, when I, by some magical interjection of the Holy Spirit into my stubborn brain, demonstrated fluency enough in Spanish to see patients without an interpreter for several whole days at a time.  I remember coming home to the States the next week and trying to speak to a Hispanic patient, and fumbling over a basic word I'd learned many years prior.  That experience taught me that the Holy Spirit intercedes for us, at times, with that gift of tongues...that New Testament kind of "tongues" where you actually speak a foreign language and are understood by the person you're speaking to.  If He can do that with my tongue, why now this season of misunderstanding when I'm speaking my very own native language?  He certainly could bridge this gap.  Yet He chooses not to.

The phrase from Isaiah 30 I quoted the other day comes to mind: though the Lord give you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction...not allow, not step out of Satan's way for a moment, but GIVE you.  Is it possible that this, too, is my spanking from the Divine?  Don't I GIVE my children the water of affliction (i.e. punishment) when they are drifting away, or demonstrating foolishness, or thoughtlessness, or stubbornness?  I must humbly accept that this situation may be God's way of drawing me gently back, showing me my error.  It may not be a "simple" misunderstanding.

Yet the Holy Spirit that remains silent in this moment, the Holy Spirit who does not loose my tongue to speak the wisdom I so long for...that same Holy Spirit bathes my soul in comfort through the words I am sent from the pages of my Bible.  That, from Isaiah 30, too: your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, “This is the way, walk in it,” when you turn to the right or when you turn to the left.

For God alone my soul waits in silence; from him comes my salvation.  He only is my rock and my salvation, my fortress; I shall not be greatly shaken. Once God has spoken; twice have I heard this: that power belongs to God, and that to you, O Lord, belongs steadfast love.  For you will render to a man according to his work. (from Psalm 62, emphasis mine)

Closing in

The walls feel compressive today.  Yesterday, I brought video footage of Amelia's seizures (all kinds - the partials and the full-blown twitching, the recovery, and the onset) to her wonderful doctor at Mayo.  He has diagnosed her with four kinds based on the videos: simple partial, complex partial, secondarily generalized and absence seizures.  He skipped all the intermediate drug options and went straight to Depakote, an old, strong anti-seizure medication that is highly effective.  I am on my way out the door now to pick it up and give her a loading dose.  He hopes to see results within 24 hours to the tune of fewer seizures.  She is at the brink of status epilepticus - the only ray of hope currently being that the seizures have been short, though many.

I failed my comprehensive exam for my doctoral program yesterday.  I am doing okay with the news.  I get one more attempt.  I deserved to fail.  I hope to get enough feedback to pass when I try again within the next two months.

I am feeling awed, bruised and silent before Jehovah ("I will be who I will be"); Abir ("mighty One"); Shaphat ("Judge"); Kanna ("Jealous"); Eben ("Stone"); Hupsistos ("Highest"); Pantokrator ("Almighty") God. (from The Names of God) In the last year, I have seen less of love and mercy and more of stone-like, uncompromising, jealous persistence to use me and my circumstances for my own development and that of those around me.  It is easy to feel crushed between the well-beaten ground of the world's ways and the Stone that is the God who created me.

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.

God is great & God is good

If God heals me, God is God and God is good.

If God chooses not to heal me, and to let me die,

God is still God and God is still good.

~ Zac Smith, church worker, missionary, father of 3 ~

But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no,

not the angels of heaven, but my Father only.

Matthew 24:36

My mistake

I re-read my Haiti post and went running for C.S. Lewis' Problem of Pain, a permanent fixture in my bedside book pile since cancer struck in mid 2008. I found the quote I was looking for, and feel humbly corrected. I love it when God whispers truth in your soul, and you are able to track down something that describes what was just an internal sense.

"Those who would like the God of scripture to be more purely ethical do not know what they ask."

Reconciling a complicated God

I was in too much pain to sleep, so I read Jeremiah.

Behold, I will lay before this people stumbling blocks, blocks against which they shall stumble; fathers and sons together, neighbor and friend shall perish. Rejected silver they are called, for the Lord has rejected them...the Lord has rejected and forsaken the generation of His wrath. (6:21, 30; 7:29)

In times of sorrow, suffering, anger, questioning, how do I reconcile verses like these with verses on which I lean on for strength:

• Behold, I will never leave you nor forsake you (Hebrews 13:5b);
  
• Blessed is he whose sins are forgiven, who trespasses are not counted against him (Psalm 32:12);
• though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me (Psalm 23:4);
• the LORD your God goes with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you. (Deuteronomy 31:6)
• For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:38-39)

How is that the same God we worship for His mercy, love, grace, self-sacrifice, joy, kindness, beauty also be the God who rejects, destroys, causes us to stumble, is angry, just, and perfect?

Am I so arrogant as to think that my sin is forgotten because of any merit of my own? Rather, it is because the Father's gaze is fixed on Christ's sacrifice rather than my piddly, proud, pinching, puny and palinological sin!

Confusing, so confusing. Comments would be much appreciated!