Simply human

The neighbors probably think I'm crazy. I tried to keep my voice down. It came out in tight, painful whispers that had all the pressure of a scream behind them. I shook my fists, I shadow-boxed in the dark like a real fighter. I kicked the dirt so hard my shoe flew off. I flung myself down on my back in the ditch and looked up at the stars and they seemed so cold and far-off and inconsequential. I've never thought that about the stars before.

I've shouted at God to answer me. I've begged him to make me see if he truly is there. I've shaken my fists and poured out my angry heart, and the sky stays silent. The wind blows steady against my face. There are no shapes in the clouds. There is nothing at all. No answer. No acknowledgment. Not even a sense of peace as I stare into the vastness of the universe.

If it is all just empty. If this is all we get, this life. If it's lies or miscontrued ancient teachings or inspired writing or an extension of a set of laws invented in ancient Jewish history. Because it doesn't read "God of mercy" or "God of perfect love". He says perfect love casts out fear, but I am afraid of him. I am afraid of his supposed standards and how my very being defies them. How does one live with those questions? How does one write a "Christian" blog when god and christian just got demoted to lowercase letters?

I don't know what I like to wear. I don't know who I like to make friends with. I don't know how I like to spend free time. I don't know how I ended up where I am, here in the lonely now with 4 kids. I don't know if I like my hair, or whether or not I want to keep wearing make-up, shaving, using perfume.

Giant questions spewing out everywhere with no easy answers. I try to be gentle with myself, trust that it will turn out, somehow. I have begged the sky and received only darkness in return.

I ponder scientific laws and Bible verses, the words of Rabindranath Tagore and the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. I wonder how much has changed from the Hebrew, the Greek - what has survived and what has been altered, adulturated to meet the standards of the time in which it was revised. How culturally embedded is our Bible at this stage of history?

Funny thing is, I'm sleeping great. And so far I haven't been struck by lightening. 

There is a happy ending

{please consider pressing play below prior to reading}

The tree trunks are black as coal from the night rain, threading through the chartreuse of leaf buds. The heaviness of magic is in the air this spring, flowers springing up from the cold earth so recently blanketed in snow. Everything about this May feels weirdly foreign, irredescent with a touch of the unreal.

Perhaps this is what comes of accepting a reality you don't feel at home in. Ever since leaving church 2 years ago, reality has slanted toward pain. Two years have seen a definite decrease in the number of those we can joyfully live life with. Two years have included the most painful period of self-doubt of my life. Two years have brought me to the Throne with questions and contrition and brokenness like never before.

Sometimes, when we struggle with depression, we shy away from the painful parts of life. I don't like to let sad thoughts or memories in. I don't want to acknowledge the suffering that has cropped up here and there in my life story.

But where we would be without psalms? Laments? Dirges?

The music of life falls flat without the melancholy moments. There can be no crescendo to joy, to ecstacy, without the contrast of the deep, dark pits of sorrow. It is one of the things most difficult to understand about heaven: although we long for the day when there are finally no more tears, it is hard to imagine not getting bored in an eternity without the challenges and chaos of life here on earth.

What if? What if we can remember it all? What if we will spend heaven contrasting God's glory with all that is wicked, evil, wrong in this life? It's a new perspective: if our sorrows here on earth are the great interlude of pensif before the last everlasting song of triumph...if this is true, I can suffer longer and harder here on earth knowing a reprieve is coming.

I can stand the separation from my sisters and brothers of churches past. I can live through depression. I can handle the various never-ending tasks of motherhood. I can make the next meal, clean the next dish, with gratitude that passes all understanding because this life is temporary.

It is not the end. It is not even the middle. It is barely the beginning. And it will not last forever.

I believe in second chances

I spend all day Monday taking photos of the youngest York girl, and as I edit them, I think she could have been a model. She, her sister, her mother, they are lined up on my hearth that night, three so alike and so different. How fast time goes. How quickly they went from babes in arms to women.

It is my own baby's 6th birthday and her older sister wrapped her present in vintage wrap from great-Grandma's estate, Roman's 6:23 emblazoned across it's crinkled yellow: "The gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ." As I race through three birthday parties and all the necessary preparation and clean-up, race toward the hours I can get to me "real" work, my soul is pierced. Jesus was not a flamboyant, racing God. He didn't even race to heal every person in the throngs that came to question, learn and seek healing when He came out of the wilderness. The children, their warmth, their constant figurative tugging at my heartstrings, their literal tugging at my clothing, my time, my brain - they bring me back to this center of Romans 6:23. Oh, how glad I am that this oft-bungled attempt at life is not my last. 

This new rhythm to life, work and home, schooling college students in the ways of the human body, soul and mind, schooling my children in all the things of the world. It gets hectic, I find it hard to prioritize. And always, there are other things pressing in, people to care for, beloved ones who are going through their own dark valleys, and we walk with them, though we have nothing to bring them but the comfort of a hug and kiss, a smile and an hour spent listening.

Three parties in one week. How we celebrate Amelia, the almost-lost one. It is a beautiful week of celebration. But we can't live in party-mode forever. I get the dreaded and mandatory flu shot on Thursday, knowing the weekend will be a blur of illness. Again I wonder if I should have known that my children would react to vaccines, since both my husband and I get so ill after them. Again I am glad I don't have to have an answer to every question. That Someone else shoulders life's biggest "what ifs" for me. 

When I get it wrong, there is always a second chance.

When I worry about the choice I made, I know there is eternity to spend with these children, to make up for whatever mistakes I make in time management here.

Ultimately, I lean on the fact that He shoulders the burdens that would crush me, and, even with that load on His shoulders, can hold me close and carry me through those moments when I am unable to move forward on my own two feet.

Belatedly writing on Lisa-Jo's prompt, Race

Time twirling

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

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

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

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

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

Thoughts from Lake Superior linked to

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Dark side of the moon

A whole forest coated in crystal,

A tree laden down with it, these transient jewels of atmosphere and providence.

When the sun hides behind a curtain of glitter in the cold afternoon light,

and the moon flees to the dark clouds, leaving only a trail of it's blue light behind...

I feel it.

The cold.

Deep down.

Surrounded by cold.

And I am tempted to look for warmth.

To look for yellow light and gaeity, to find Christmas morn

safe in her little box of expectation, her little panorama of bliss.

What I see in these scenes, as the fleeting moon flies away and reappears as it dances with the clouds is something amazing: the grass on the hillside, lit briefly by the beams, dark and invisible when the moon flies high behind the clouds - that beauty, that grass, is still there invisible or not.

I've known this so long about God. He is always there, even when I can't see Him.

Now I learn it about something else. We live in a culture that is disposable. Disposable products, disposable relationships. Paper plates go in the trash, and marriages hit the shredder at the courthouse when they are through. It almost seems as if we can dispose of relationships. But it isn't true. Something happens when you love somebody - whether it's the homeless guy you pass on the street and loop-back to bring him a warm, fastfood meal, or the time you spent 7 years getting to know someone and finally calling them best friend. Your life will never be the same because of that relationship. You have been branded by it in your soul. I believe we will see those bonds and beautiful connections someday when we get to heaven.

I've lost friends over the past weeks. Our friendship now is in the shadows of the darkened moon. I can't call them up, or enjoy anything else that passes as friendship in this world. But you know what? The sinews of the Body of Christ are still there, even in the darkness. And someday they will be visible again. When the moon comes out from behind these clouds, I can't wait to see those sinews glistening - the sinew that holds me to you, beloved.

Today, I mourn you. The moon is behind the clouds.

Someday, I'll rejoice with you, for what God has wrought between us no man can destroy.

This beautiful life

Her palm quivers across horseflesh and an age-old ache awakes deep in my heart.  This life is so beautiful.  It seems too beautiful to ever leave.

I watch a friend walk over the last threshold of childhood and into a bright and indefinable unknown, and a shiver of cold and loneliness sweeps over me as she is bathed in the beautiful light of evening.

She smiles a smile that you can only smile when you are young, and alive in your skin, and stretching your arms in flight for the first time.  The light catches my eye and sends a prism shooting, a millisecond of glorified sunbeam that sparkles like a jewel off this beautiful piece of sod, high on the hills, up in the late summer wind with the moist smells of horses and hay and apples floating on the evening breeze.

A whisper between girl and horse falls through the shaft of light around the corner of the aging barn.  It's gray bones a silent reminder in a harvest-time moment of fullness and promise and beauty, and the ache grows deeper.

I have been so tired the last few days.  It is one of those seasons of a long battle when you would almost rather give up the fight than keep fighting.  All the beauty that surrounds as autumn approaches is like the poisoned apple proffered Cinderella, the sadistic lie of Life, that promises an everlasting horizon of entertainment and beauty instead of the slow sink into eternity as bones grow old and crippled and sore and tired.

Remember your Creator in the days of your youth, before the days of trouble come and the years approach when you will say, "I find no pleasure in them"- before the sun and the light and the moon and the stars grow dark, and the clouds return after the rain; and those looking through the windows grow dim; when men rise up at the sound of birds, but all their songs grow faint; and the grasshopper drags himself along and desire no longer is stirred. Then man goes to his eternal home and mourners go about the streets.

Remember him—before the silver cord is severed, or the golden bowl is broken; before the pitcher is shattered at the spring, or the wheel broken at the well, and the dust returns to the ground it came from, and the spirit returns to God who gave it.  (from Ecclesiastes 12)

I remember my Creator, I quake sometimes, in awe of Him.  In awe of an awesome God who first gives us a beautiful creation we are loathe to leave, and then promises, if we believe, to perfect that beauty for all eternity.  As the yellow late summer sun strains through the kelly green of the grass, the barn crumbles, and the dogs shiver in the cool evening shade, I stand with my arms outstretched to a heaven I cannot imagine and do not want to go to now.  I see, in one moment of this achingly beautiful life, that I do not and cannot understand what it means to walk this mortal clod nor what it entails to leave it.

This week has been a week of contemplating, again, death.  Leave-takings.  My last grandparent gone.  A friend from the internet writes that she naps all day long, how her hours grow shorter as she approaches the final days of her 10 year battle with cancer.  A young man, my age, grows visibly weaker every Sunday in the back rows of church, spotted with cancer and hunched in a wheelchair.  My own body is weak now, either from infection or cancer meds that have gotten out of balance again.  I spend long hours on the couch and bed.  Mocked by the dishes in the sink, the dirt on the floor, the mounds of summer clothes that must again (endlessly, this twice a year task comes) be sorted into bins and organized before the air chills further.  I sit at my computer for a few hours today, and sigh as I peer through a pink bed sheet haphazardly strung up against the strong late summer sun of eventide, where a curtain should have been hung years ago.

What remains

Elisabeth Elliot's prayer today: Lord, deliver us from smallness and self-pity. "Make us masters of ourselves that we may be the servants of others"(Sir Alexander Patterson).

I have always been a very "in the moment" sort of person. The moment is the focus: if it's good, entertaining, sweet - then I am in a good mood; if it's bad, negative, draining, tiresome - then I am in a bad mood. Living with cancer, living with a child with new disabilities, requires that I step outside the moment.

I started that process by developing a constant scale system, completely internally and inside my own head. My "inner monologue" often had to do with weighing the pros and cons - adding a pro here or a con there depending on the moment, and then evaluating the sum. A good day had more pros in it than cons. After all, that's how many decisions are made, right? It was a logical system, right?

Unfortunately, this system devolved into a very complex matrix because I soon realized that I couldn't assign the same weight to different brands of "bad" and different moments of "good". A bad seizure has to have more weight than spilled milk. A moment of unexpected silence in the house in the busy afternoon is less than getting news your cancer hasn't grown in the past two months. So I scrapped the system.

I had an epiphany moment reading I Corinthians 3 aloud to my Rosy-girl one day when she was struggling with a bad attitude. (I remember the irony of the moment - occurring, according to Murphy's Law, on one of my very worst days, a day when I was certainly laying up more wood, hay and stubble than gold, silver and precious stones.) The words are hard ones: each one should be careful how he builds. For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ. If any man builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw, his work will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each man's work. If what he has built survives, he will receive his reward. If it is burned up, he will suffer loss; he himself will be saved, but only as one escaping through the flames.

Rosy looked at me and said, "Isn't God amazing, Mama? He saves our good works forever and burns the bad ones up. I am glad my bad works are gonna be burned up."

The thud deep in my soul was ground-shaking. That's right. The bad ones will be burned up and gone in a moment, forever, and the good ones will stay for eternity, a visual reminder of what was done right. Simply weighing the bad against the good doesn't capture the whole picture. It leaves Christ out of the equation. In Isaiah 43:25, it says I am he who blots out your transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins. He will not remember them. They are blotted out, gone, forgotten, burned up and destroyed forever. Is it possible that He burns up the failures so that they do not detract from the brilliance of those works done for His glory? Is it possible He does so out of mercy and tenderness to us?

This may be the key to rejoicing in everything, in everything giving thanks. If I burn up the bad immediately, if it is confessed and then blotted out and forgotten, isn't every day a "good day"?

What Christ did on the cross is inexorably shift the pendulum toward the true, honorable, lovely, commendable, just, pure, excellent and worthy of praise (Philippians 4:8). By destroying the sting of death, wiping out the penalty for the wrong words, the sullenness, the anger, the questioning and the fear, He has created a new paradigm for those who choose to believe in Him.

When He looked down on us yesterday, He did not see a bittersweet picture. He saw a redeemed picture. He did not see a 31-year-old woman with cancer, exhausted from the heat and afraid of fainting, riding on a horse because in that moment she still could: He saw a 31-year-old woman riding a horse, enjoying the friends He provided. Period. He has washed away cancer, exhaustion, fainting. What will remain for all eternity is only the good - because I have accepted His washing!

Yesterday, my daughter had a horrible, violent seizure that lasted over four minutes. I was afraid it would never stop, or that she would choke on her vomit. I felt completely and utterly alone. It felt like eternity. Yesterday, on the way to the clinic in Rochester where hope for these seizures is housed, our van broke down...again...at the most inopportune moment. My first reaction? "Wow, God, you're really piling it on!" We waited for a car, we drove through the heat without air conditioning - and it felt like eternity. At the clinic, we talked about the inevitable 9-1-1 calls, the rescue medications to prevent permanent brain damage or death, the spacing of medications that will require even greater responsibility as parents. Time stretched thin, the doctor's words echoing in our heads as we drove home through the crippling humidity and heat. Eternity.

The sweet moments seemed so fleeting yesterday, in the face of all the "bad" of the day. Yet this is what will last. The fleeting moments of "right". Sunset, on horseback, cool breezes, laughter lilting, sweet fecund smell of the ranch, cool wooden floor in the old farmhouse, cricket calls and frog songs, teenage hijinks full of life, and little ones tagging along after big kids. For eternity, those things - the pure, beautiful, excellent things - will live on in glorious, indelible gold.

Whatever you do for the least...

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.

~ Khalil Gabran, the Lebanese American author, On Children, 1923 ~

My bow bends so far in these early days of a semester. My thoughts fly quickly and frequently to the duties of school, newly resumed, and seemingly so pressing. One class this semester calls for a hearty dose of self-reflection, and today one student spoke about how her children's interruptions remind her what is really important in life. I find this humbling, and wish I could say so myself. As it is, I find school so infinitely more interesting, noble, and worthy of consumption of my time (keep in mind I often speak tongue-in-cheek) than the more mundane, laborious, continuous work of raising children. I feel, at times, that it is a bit ridiculous that God gave me a brain for research and science, and now I am teaching sums, reading, phonics, taking dictation from a 6 year old (and all that is ignoring the mono-syllabic communication with my youngest). I remember pondering this same conundrum when wiping some unrelated child's behind for the 100th time in a shift: seriously, why is it that my scientific mind is reduced to such a task? Yet, the wiping of the behind was infinitely more important to that one child than all the research in the world at that moment.

In the gifting of these children from my womb, God has spoken loud and clear. Behold, children are a gift of the LORD, The fruit of the womb is a reward. (Psalm 127:3) The trick is learning to drink the blessed cup that is offered. As in every stage of life, there is always a pasture that appears greener, more desirable. For me, in this time, it is often uninterrupted intellectual thought, or perhaps even an intellectual conversation with someone (!!), uninterrupted. Yet He has me walking this balance beam of school, work, children. Writing, grants, article to read; children, diapers, piles of unfolded laundry, dishes standing dirty in my sink. I have to take the dirt along with the intellectual polish.

"The King will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.' (Matthew 24:40) While I can make the stretch and say that my research is like the trunk of the tree, with branches spreading help to many of the "least of these" for perhaps decades or centuries to come. Yet, it is so much more obvious that the least of these are the children around my knees, pulling on my arms and begging my attention when I would rather be devoting it elsewhere.

John Piper tweeted, on October 20th, 2008 (rather ironically, I thought), that one of the great uses of Twitter and Facebook will be to prove at the Last Day that prayerlessness was not from lack of time. I pray that my research does not prove the same thing. I pray it is but a parallel line in the story of how a faithful servant brought glory to the King she serves.

Also culled from Piper's Twitter, yesterday:

First this. Then coronation. “The crown has fallen from our head; woe to us, for we have sinned!” (Lamentations 5:16).

Darkness

In that day the deaf will hear the words of the scroll,
and out of gloom and darkness the eyes of the blind will see.
Once more the humble will rejoice in the LORD;
the needy will rejoice in the Holy One of Israel.
Isaiah 29:18-19

We visited John Piper's church in Minneapolis on Saturday evening. It was a fun double date with a couple from small group...a chance to get out and to hear a great preacher teach. I sat next to two blind men who came into the service late and were searching - vainly - for a place to sit. The sermon was on John 3:31-36. It was an oddly transcendent experience. Hanging out on the edge of consciousness, like I sometimes do, heightens all your senses, as you are in that peculiar "fight or flight" mode in which you are constantly assessing your pot odds, constantly evaluating the situation to determine what will be least painful, humiliating, or distressing for those around you. I was on the verge of passing out during the sermon, when my heart rate plummeted for no good reason whatsoever. In some ways, it was a spiritual experience because I was hanging on by my fingernails to the edge of the conscious world. The other thing that lent this sermon special light was the fact that the power of the words of the Bible were paired with the emphatic muttering of the blind man next to me: "amen!", "that's right, brother."

This man was born without eyes to see with. He is anxiously looking forward to seeing the kingdom of heaven, I'm sure. I felt a sense of kinship with him. I was pretty sure we could sit in a room somewhere and talk about lots of things before we got to the subject of disabilities or disease. That was the last thing on his mind as he sat through that service. He wasn't thinking about what he can't do...he was focused completely - so much so that he leaned forward with anticipation and excitement - on the ancient words of the Bible.

It was a good example, in a week that has been a dark one. I needed to be reminded of correct perspective, as usual. (Everything quickly becomes relative inside of oneself.) I needed to be reminded of eternity, that destination I'm on my way to that overcomes all cares and trials of this short lifetime here on this turf.

Tomorrow I head to the electrophysiologist. The one who will determine my medical future, how far we will go to determine the cause of my fainting and what means we will use to treat it. I trust this man, as Aaron knows him well and trusts me to his skilled hands. However, I still feel a bit of dread. I am jumping back into a lake of suffering I climbed out of many years ago. I will never like cardiologists. Too many bad memories. I am hopeful this is a brief interruption. I am looking forward to so much about this summer. Little things, like Katy's t-ball season and first year at Vacation Bible School, Rosy learning to read, and Amy becoming so much more verbal. Caleb learning to walk, really walk. I hope not much is derailed by this fainting business.

Frugality at it's worst

Caleb is in a new stage of discovery. The object of his most recent inquiry: the toilet. Ahhh, dreaded moment of every mother's existence! He learned to flush it a few days ago, and is entranced. Various objects have already been put to the test. We lost a small wool sock yesterday, and one of the girl's headbands. Luckily, the hair products he tried to flush this morning wouldn't go down. Unluckily, each one would be replaced to the tune of $8 or more, so back in the drawer they went after their brief foray in the toilet and long foray being scrubbed and sanitized. Don't sniff my hair too closely next time you give me a hug! Aaron may argue this is yet another reason products shouldn't be put in hair. He is an "au naturale" sort when it comes to hair and make-up.

Today is Good Friday. The day He hung on the cross for me. An aura of awe and the pall of grateful - yet sickened - loss hangs about this day. He was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes we are healed. (Isaiah 53:5) The girls and I had a wonderful time talking about the meaning of Easter in the car today. Singing this beautiful new hymn. Learning afresh that He conquered the grave. Rosy piped up and said, "He conquered the grave for you, Mama. He sent you back to us from cancer." I wept. We wept together - thinking of Grandma Fern again. Rosy misses her often, little tender hearted one. She was weeping because Grandma's body is in the grave, and I was able to help her understand, for the first time, that what makes Grandma Grandma is up in heaven, not in the grave. That through His death on the cross, Christ conquered the grave for us all, purchasing us a ticket, with His blood, that our souls might ascend to heaven.

Oh Lord You've searched me
You know my way
Even when I fail You
I know You love me

At the cross I bow my knee
Where Your blood was shed for me
There's no greater love than this
You have overcome the grave
Your glory fills the highest place
What can separate me now

You go before me
You shield my way
Your hand upholds me
I know You love me

You tore the veil
You made a way
When You said that it is done
~At the Cross, Hillsong

"Be careful what you wish for"

God, my God, I cry out
Your beloved needs You now
God, be near, calm my fear
And take my doubt

Your kindness is what pulls me up
Your love is all that draws me in

I will lift my eyes to the Maker
Of the mountains I can’t climb
I will lift my eyes to the Calmer
Of the oceans raging wild
I will lift my eyes to the Healer
Of the hurt I hold inside
I will lift my eyes, lift my eyes to You
~ I Will Lift My Eyes, Bebo Norman

I received news today that my prayer has been answered. In a difficult way. Samples of my tumor were sent three weeks ago to Pennsylvania, and a report and interpretation of the findings from both the pathologist and the specialist at the University of Chicago were sent to my doctors. The pathologist asked for the entire tumor to be shipped to her for further testing. She has since sent a final report to my team of doctors in Eau Claire and Chicago. However, the endocrine specialist was out of the office today for the holiday, and my regular general practice doctor didn't feel capable of giving me the results himself. It is difficult to know what to make of the entire situation, other than to lean on the fact that I asked God to stay the news, and He has.

In the midst of my heart breaking and my insides turning wrong side out, my brain is trying to make sense of this. I am trying to strike a balance between responding to the news I've been given without overreacting and assuming the worst, which is my natural bent.

Mostly, I feel completely inadequate to express any of the rawness I feel right now. I am in one of those "beyond words" moments, of which I have had so many...positive and negative...in the last six months. I feel bruised and I will try my darnedest to love and savor this Christmas with my family.

Whatever God has for me in this life, I know that through the miraculous birth of my Savior over 2,000 years ago, my tears will be wiped away. I may be in the tragic, perilous, fragmented and uncertain middle ground of my fairy tale, but I will live "happily ever after" someday.

Man is a mere phantom as he goes to and fro: He bustles about, but only in vain; he heaps up wealth, not knowing who will get it. But now, Lord, what do I look for? My hope is in you. Save me from all my transgressions; do not make me the scorn of fools. Hear my prayer, O Lord, listen to my cry for help; be not deaf to my weeping. For I dwell with you as an alien, a stranger, as all my fathers were. from Psalm 39

The cost of survival

One of the deep life lessons God is teaching me at a new level is that survival isn't free. And it isn't an end goal. Even those of us with strong faith so frequently lose sight of the end goal when living out our daily lives! I watched this as a nurse in the hospital, observing families in the pressure cooker of facing life and death with their children, walking up to the alter as Abraham did with Isaac. Many, many families walked the path to the alter praying incessantly and bitterly for healing, refusing to accept nothing less than completely restored health and happiness as proof of a loving God. Many, many families refused to embark on the path at all, holding desperately to life as they knew it in this mortal realm, refusing to believe the new facts they were presented with and persisting completely in denial. And a few remarkable families walked willingly to the alter, heads bowed, praying - as others did - for healing, but in submission, in full understanding that heaven is the goal of all life and death here on earth. Life itself is not worth fighting for. Heaven is worth fighting for.

So what, exactly, are we "surviving" for? An easier future? A healthy future? A future of happiness, surrounded by things and people you love? A future of material wealth? A future of renown or professional applaud? A future of contribution to the human race? A future of solitude, peace, spa moments, vacations, or enjoyment of nature? A future of substantial charitable contributions? Political success? Financial freedom? Debt-free living?

I want to fix my eyes on the goals of Scripture. I want to survive to pour myself out like a drink offering. I want to survive to fight. I want to survive to firmly hold my faith. I want to survive to yearn for and welcome His coming. I want to survive to endure more strict training. I want to survive to buffet and subdue my body and my mind. (I Corinthians 9 & II Timothy 4)

Well I've got God on my side
And I'm just trying to survive
What if what you do to survive
Kills the things you love
Fear's a dangerous thing
It can turn your heart black you can trust
It'll take your God filled soul
Fill it with devils and dust
~ Devils & Dust, Bruce Springsteen

Survival doesn't always even mean survival. If I fight only to survive, how will I feel in 10 years when I am diagnosed with a secondary cancer due to my radiation treatment? Like I've been cheated? I want to feel nothing but thankfulness and relief over the way I've run my race. Please pray for this little girl, who survived her first round and is now battling her way through a second.

Notes in the margins

"I will restore their fortunes, both the fortunes of Sodom and her daughters, and the fortunes of Samaria and her daughter, and I will restore your own fortunes in their midst, that you may bear your disgrace and be ashamed of all that you have done, becoming a consolation to them...Was not your sister Sodom a byword in your mouth in the day of your pride, before your wickedness was uncovered?...And the name of the city from that time on shall be, The LORD is there." ~ Ezekiel 16:53-54, 56; 48:35b

In the margin: How is it possible to have so much wrath and yet so much promise, the coexistence of hope and commitment with annihilating judgement? This is the inconceivable divine...

My hope lies not in governments, principalities, physical realities, proximity to those I love, temporal comforts, freedoms, Constitutions, even God-given relationships. It rests solely in Him and the promise that the next world is to be my focus and my aim, the source of my joy and my salvation. I fear what God is doing in this country; I fear - in that awe-struck sense, shrinking from the unknown, shrinking from the human realities of pain and tears - what He may be doing in my own life in these next months. I don't want to see our country laid to waste; I don't want to see my bones laid bare by illness. But neither would destroy the hope that I have in Him.

"For this vision of truth God has been working for ages and ages. For this simple condition, this apex of life, upon which a man wonders like a child that he cannot make other men see as he sees, the whole labour of God's science, history, poetry - truth upon truth in lovely vision, in torturing law, never lying, never repenting; and for this will the patience of God labour while there is yet a human soul whose eyes have not been opened, whose child-heart has not yet been born in him. For this one condition of humanity, this simple beholding, has all the outthinking of God flowed in forms innumerable and changeful from the foundation of the world; and for this, too, has the divine destruction been going forth; that his life might be our life, that in us, too, might dwell that same consuming fire which is essential love."
~ George MacDonald, The Consuming Fire