The song that never ends

I've walked away too many times.

I try to make myself stay, but I get distracted,

and I walk out on You.

When I remember again that I need to go home,

I walk back in and find the music is still playing.

It never stopped.

The song of Your love is as constant

as the rising and setting of the sun.

You have been my rock

since I was small.

In these darkest days,

I've learned You are also my comfort.

I've learned the tender faithfulness

of Your everlasting love.

You shower me with notes of grace -

favors undeserved -

You cover me with mercy -

Your plans for me always turn out to be

better than I deserve.

Even though I walk through trouble and tribulation

You shield me,

You walk with me

Through the valley of the shadow.

I will sing this love song back to You

unabashed

because love unrequitted is the saddest thing of all.

Writing on "Song"

In the middle, a beginning...

It came to me in the sweaty heaps of down purging out fever in the long deep hours of a sick mama night. The introduction to my book. Or, at least, what was supposed to be my book. And ended up being my blog. Back before I knew about blogs. (of my, this is simply not coming off with the polish it had in my green...er, I mean *dream*)

Someone who had a lot of grit and knew the toll her words would take said it first, "Write a little bit. Every single day." She meant about cancer, for me. For her, it was a little bit of every one of the last days she had with her son here on earth. She wrote letters to the sky, the thousands who prayed, before the word "blog" really existed. I came later, and so, I wrote a blog.

It started with the very beginning. A very good place to start. Oh, wait, that's "Do, Re, Mi". I mean the blog. It started with the very first day. Before surgeries and radiation, before separations from my kids and before I ever thought about dying before my 30th birthday. It started, to be exact, on June 6, 2008, 10 days before the surgery that confirmed what a biopsy had hinted at: aggressive, invasive thyroid cancer, snaking it's tentacles out out through that thinnest of all body parts, my neck...even on those of us who are not so thin elsewhere.

I remember the thud. It felt physical, like something heavy had actually dropped beside me. Turns out, I was all by myself, in post-surgical recovery, hearing myself and the word "carcinoma" (medical fancy-pants for cancer) in the same sentence. It made everything I had written for every one of the last 10 days painfully, awfully true. I really had it. That funny premonition - it was really there, and for a reason. The prayers I'd begged for - yep, I needed them. I was going to be a mom with cancer.


And a blog.


A mom with cancer and a blog. Talk about someone your parent's generation isn't going to know how to categorize. On each and every day, I wrote. And it wasn't always pretty. Okay, it was seldom pretty. Or holy. Or much to read, for that matter. But it was a mom with cancer and a blog. The daily. The dirty. The hush-now-we-don't-talk-about-that-in-public.

Somewhere along the line, I quit writing a book. And really invested in writing a blog. The daily. The dirty. The hush-now...wait. In my generation, we do talk about it, in the most public of ways. Thousands of moms, who write for thousands of reasons, do it every day all over the globe, from every computer in every land. Every entry, for us, no longer a chapter, or a part of one. It was just a day. One shared. Somewhere along the line, something started to gather around my mom-with-cancer-and-a-blog life. It was friends. The realest I've ever had. And some of whom I've never met IRL. (yeah, I had to look it up, too, once upon a time with a teenage texting babysitter. In Real Life.)

And so, I guess I'm going to keep on going. Blogging, that is. I hit remission February 2, 2012, just a month ago. And I guess I've kind of been spinning my wheels, mentally, emotionally. Something along the lines of, "What exactly do I do with a cancer blog now that I finally don't have cancer?" If you get a chance, stop by my friend Joy's blog and get her thoughts on the transition from mommy blogger to faith blogger. I think I might need to take her advice and write my one sentence disclaimer now. It's just a day: one shared.

He sees me on the path

It's made for work, the heavy leather of a saddle. Embossed with roses, a humble piece of equipment made beautiful. As am I, worker for the glory of Jesus, yet the jewel in His crown.

As for you also, because of the blood of my covenant with you, I will set your prisoners free from the waterless pit. Return to your stronghold, O prisoners of hope; today I declare that I will restore to you double. Then the Lord will appear over them, and his arrow will go forth like lightning; the Lord God will sound the trumpet and will march forth in the whirlwinds of the south. The Lord of hosts will protect them, and they shall devour, and tread down the sling stones, and they shall drink and roar as if drunk with wine, and be full like a bowl, drenched like the corners of the altar. On that day the Lord their God will save them, as the flock of his people; for like the jewels of a crown they shall shine on his land. For how great is his goodness, and how great his beauty! (from Zechariah 9)

The scarlet of Christ's blood has washed me white as snow (Isaiah 1:18). Yet there are three stages to this salvation: redemption, sanctification, and glorification. Though He sees me through the image of Christ, and no longer will send me to the waterless pit as punishment for my sin - for I am the believer redeemed! - I walk now in the sometimes arid path of sanctification. I am the piece of metal, willful, sometimes wicked, hard and rough edged, in the refiner's fire. He is bending me like a bow to transform me into a weapon for His army. I feel the fibers of self as they break to bend, I feel every clang of the blacksmith's hammer on the metal of me fired red hot.

He sees me when my eyes are dead, when my sadness overcomes. When I am penitent and when I am simply overcome by my own blackness.

He sees me as I go about my work, and guides my hand as I bend to teach four young lives everything that is of Him, from the glorious infinity of math to the endless possibility of language and the beauty and variety of art.

He sees me when I bend in prayer, shape this body new on a rubber mat with my French hip hop blaring and my children dancing around my prone back bent like that bow He is forming me to be.

He sees me when I am dirtiest, inside or out. When I've labored hard only to discover a new crust of dirt that needs to be scrubbed with His fuller's soap. What once was filthy rags, He turns to silver and gold that will never perish in the testing fires of the judgment on those last days.

He sees me when I feel the rejection of the world, when I cling to cross and the crutches of my own making to forge ahead on the golden trail, lost in the woods of depression and shadow of memory.

He knows the peace and heartbreak that live together in the soul broken over beauty. He sees behind the closed eyes and knows the words stuck in the clenched lips, sees the heart that has been bruised and labeled and torn, sees the mind that races and craves and empties and fills.

He knows my crazy uniqueness. He sees beneath the hat brim covering face bent low. He pours out my tears when I squeeze eyelids tight, and bottles them forever like the precious perfume of obedience and repentance.

He loves me through hands and hearts of others, He clothes my nakedness with grace. He turns my sorrow into dancing, my suffering into glory, and leads me ever onward toward glorification, that glorious day when I will put off sin like a set of old bones, and walk into the double portion He promises for my sacrifice and pain.

Oh, how I long for that day when I am free as a six-year-old girl dancing in the clearing, jewelry snapping like castanets around the neck that scorned them for so long, a robe to replace the hoody I hid in for two decades.

He sees me and knows me, and has turned my wretchedness into unconquerable beauty and strength through the blood of the cross - redemption. He bends me and breaks me and gives me a sickly heart and cancer and a daughter who is damaged so that I might learn to put off self and put on Christ - sanctification. And someday, I'm going home to the land where there will be no more tears, where I'll carve my snowboard through clouds and sit on the singing stars and forever sing with them and the angels glory to His almighty name - glorification.

Oh, come Lord Jesus, come! (Revelation 22:20)

I need you to soften my heart 

To break me apart 

I need you to open my eyes 

To see that You're shaping my life

All I am, I surrender

Give me faith to trust what you say 

That you're good and your love is great 

I'm broken inside, I give you my life

I need you pierce through the dark 

And cleanse every part of me 

I may be weak 

Your spirit's strong in me 

My flesh may fail 

My God you never will 

~Give Me Faith, Elevation Worship~

Linking up to Bonnie and Ann today,
amazed I'll get to see them both next week!: