Look what's peeking through

It is piling up again out there, the blanket of white stretching it's arms far into April, and we tough Midwesterners are beginning to truly say "Uncle". If there is one more gray day, we say. If it doesn't start to warm up soon...

I silently wonder if winter's expanse hasn't lingered just for me. The gray days match my mood (or do they cause it?) and snow keeps scars under wraps. Summer is not so kind.

I am cutting cords, this wintery spring. Trying to be willing to change. It's a big leap for me. After all, I've kept myself relatively safe with this way of coping and I'm scared that the new ways won't give me the armor I need.

Happiness creeps in with the study of a list of Scriptures with my mama. This list tallies all the ways healthy coping is straight from the good Book. And I breathe - let myself believe, again - that this might work. I feel happy and say so, and then touch my chest in shock that those words just slipped easily from my lips again.

It's a little like the blades of bright green grass sticking up through the snow, the crocus leaves catching flakes in the diffused light of the snowstorm. It has grown in silent and the secrets of my heart these last weeks, this tiny fragile piece of happiness, and it is birthed, even through snow. There it is. I think that it might be hope. He is saying

I have swept away your offenses like a cloud, your sins like the morning mist. Return to me, for I have redeemed you. (Isaiah 44:22)

"Jump"

The husks emerge

The snow melts slow this year, nights cold and days warm, and water drips quiet into the earth during the long dark night. Slowly the dead plants, the brown grass, the sunflower heads drooping low emerge from the snowdrifts and remind us of that endless cycle, life into death and death into life, round and round.

I tell you the truth, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned; he has crossed over from death to life. I tell you the truth, a time is coming and has now come when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and those who hear will live. Do not be amazed at this, for a time is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his voice and come out-those who have done good will rise to live, and those who have done evil will rise to be condemned. You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life. (exc. John 5)

My heart beat slows and my medications are tweaked and it is back to the cardiologist, the oncologist, and the laryngologist I go. I join Amy in speech therapy to solve my worsening swallowing issues. I talk to my family doctor about the connection between mind and body, how this whole fall and winter, 6 months of turmoil and old pains risen from their graves to dash my spirit on the sharp rocks of self-contempt and shame, how that affects my body and especially my heart. "The seat of the emotions" (Genesis 6:5; Exodus 10:1; Jeremiah 17:9).

Through it all - suffering, survival, persecution, the terrors of nightmare filled nights, and even worse angst of tear-filled days - the Grace of the Gospel prevails. The truth on which I stand is that I am forever forgiven, forever saved, forever loved and forever He sees the good and erases the bad. For I will be merciful toward Genevieve's iniquities, and I will remember her sins no more. (Hebrews 8:12)

And that, my friends, is available to all of us through the cross of Christ, His everlasting triumph over the judgment for our sin, God's acceptance of His sacrifice in place of ours, the perfect Lamb slaughtered to redeem all the lost sheep of the world. He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world. (I John 2:2)

Whatever darkness surrounds you, whatever cloud of witnesses shouts your doom, whoever curses the works you do for the Father, whatever suffering pervades your life, He is suffering with you and has forever paid the price for you. You are purchased at a price (Colossians 1:4), and precious in His sight (Psalm 116:15). Don't we feel just so about our own children, for whom we labor and weep and sacrifice daily? Are they not more precious to us because of the cost we pay to have them, raise them, and grieve for them all their lives?

Today an old Swedish hymn runs like an anthem through my thoughts, a hymn I learned from my grandmother and my mother, that captures just what I am feeling today.

I know not why God’s wondrous grace

To me He hath made known,

Nor why, unworthy, Christ in love

Redeemed me for His own.

I know not what of good or ill

May be reserved for me,

Of weary ways or golden days,

Before His face I see.

I know whom I have believed,

and am persuaded that He is able

to keep that which I committed

unto Him against that day.

I Know Whom I Have Believed, from II Timothy 1:12

by Daniel Whittle, 1883

These thoughts, straight from my heart today, are my humble entry for a scholarship to SheSpeaks, a conference helping women connect to the loving face of our Father.

Sapience

It is my favorite time of day. The girls are shuttled upstairs to quietly watch Clifford, and this baby/child and I cuddle in under the down comforter to watch the lemon light filter through the forest. The colors have changed already from early morning, hues of gray giving way to the tawny rust and umber of the oak leaves and the chartreuse of the spring pines. The world looks frozen in time this morning - no rustle in the leaves - and the coldness of the air visible in the crispness and stillness of the woods. Intricate veins of sharp white drawn on every leaf-edge by Jack Frost with his ice pen last night. Inside, we are surrounded by the instant comfort of the blankets, the billowing of warm air as the little one wiggles in delight over his morning bottle. Communion of warm milk and warm toes. I stroke the velvet of his chubby cheek, feel the fine spun gold of his hair slipping under my swollen palm. Note - and love - the almost Hasidic curls just in front of his pink ears.

Physical memory is difficult to ignore. My body is different every morning, more changes visible of the physical onslaught of this preparation process. My hands and feet are swollen and club-like; my hair is dry and falling out, my nails a cloudy white, and my knuckles covered with callouses; so tired raising myself out of bed in the morning makes me nauseous. I remember this. I don't want to do it again. Such a series of losses, this cancer. This time around, it is the loss of one more piece of me - my parathyroid glands - that I mourn; and the loss of the innocence. No longer can I pretend that I will float through this this trial like a duck's webbed feet just skimming the mirror of the water, a faint ripple left in a V all that heralds her presence.

Looking in on myself, I realize that I am depressed this time around. I see the grayness of my spirit, and though I paint all day long with a million bright colors of joy and satisfaction, the gray seeps through like the newspaper canvas of my 2-year-old. You can't cover up ink with different ink. So I take the gray and lay it at my Father's feet. Ask Him to brighten my spirit's newsprint with a few color photos. And take it away for what it is. Just as I am, without one plea. I know more watercolor days are coming again in April.

One misty, moisty morning

My mother used to sing us a little esoteric nursery rhyme on days like today:

One misty, moisty morning, when cloudy was the weather;
I chanced to meet an old man, dressed all in leather;
He began to compliment, and I began to grin,
"How do you do? How do you do? How do you do?" again.

Today is that misty, moisty morning. The warm sun gave way to sheets of frozen rain drilling holes in the remaining snowbed, the sizzle heard from inside the warm kitchen nook. The cottonwood and the pine, my favorite trees, are married up in the hazy cold, arms entwined, stallwart survivors of a 100 winters past.

I think the whole family has been feeling a little misty, moisty and gray. The lingerings of our bad cold plague all of us, and the weather isn't helping much. While I feel bleary eyed and stiff this morning, my girls are blithe and limpid in the face of headaches and sore eyes. What a difference thirty years make!

Yellow farmhouse pleasures on a winter day

• Being "forced" to make a sledding track for the oldest in 8" of new-fallen snow

• A pine tree, pendulous, bows toward the house

• Bending a thousand times to shovel the driveway
• The sizzle of freshly diced potatoes sliding into hot, brown butter in the skillet

• The way a meal feels in your belly after hard physical labor
• Staying up late to fold all the laundry
• The abstract art of shadows on snow: a line drawing in the night

• Discovering a child amongst the nativity: love and awe and reverence in 5-year-old form
  

Simple joy

Glimpses of God's glitter circa Rosy's 4th birthday party a week ago in Chetek. Neglected as I tended to sweet Amelia. God is good!

One man considers himself rich, yet has nothing [to keep permanently]; another man considers himself poor, yet has great [and indestructible] riches. Proverbs 13:7 (Amp)

Gleam of ice, and glint of steel,
Jolly, snappy weather;
Glide on ice and joy of zeal,
All, alone, together.
Fickle Spring! Who can imprint her?
Faithless while she's captivating;
Here's to trusty Madame Winter!
~ Skating, e.e. cummings

Held

The children and I scooted outside to "blow the stink off of us" (a Grandma Fern expression) after fresh snowfall lit up the world in winter brilliance once again. After days of muck, ice slicks, and gray skies, the sun gleaming off a foot of heavy, white snow was refreshing. The girls went sledding on the back hill while I danced around with Caleb, snapping photos, and giving instructions on constructing a sledding track in spring snow. An hour later, Rosy collapsed in a pile to watch the heavy cloud puffs float by swiftly on the wings of a robins-egg blue sky. Her repose reminded me how peaceful it is to trust: to believe the world is whole, and good, and beautiful. As an adult, naïveté burned off like mist before the morning sun, the entirety of that trust escapes me. A world of black and white is one of the freedoms of childhood. Adulthood is fraught with shades of gray.

Every time we reach a new breaking point, there are His hands - and His wisdom - underneath it all. Assuring us that we can suffer more, and experience a deeper well of peace and joy than we even knew existed. Experience as nurses taught both Aaron and I, through observation of others, that there is always a deeper well of both surrender and sustenance. That propels us through the difficult days and seasons, those memories of wiser, stronger, sorrowful folk we have loved in days past. A simple fever is not leukemia; low potassium isn't a death knell. How "light and momentary", indeed, our own troubles appear in the face of the martyrs of old, and those suffering every day in gray, cold, hopeless hospital units everywhere.

Amelia's fever continues. It spiked up to 104.9 - a scary number to see, even for seasoned nurses - last night, despite medication. We recruited wisdom from next door in the form of my mother, successful raiser of four children prone to fevers, and resorted to more old-fashioned measures: sponge baths, lots of icy cold liquids to drink, and setting a timer to give a syringe full of electrolyte replacement every 5 minutes. It worked, and Amelia and I cuddled up in the guestroom upstairs for a few hours of slumber after 3 a.m. last night. My eyes are heavy this morning. But more fresh snow and a warm February sun dawned on Caleb's first birthday, lifting my spirits. That eternal reminder. The rising and setting of the sun, put in motion thousands of years ago by His great hand, and faithful to this day. A reminder, visual, sensational. He is here, always, unwavering, all-knowing, a Keeper of promises. Fevers and birthdays and cancer are not to be faced alone, in the dark.

This hand is bitterness.
We want to taste it, let the hatred numb our sorrow.
The wise hands open slowly to lilies of the valley - and tomorrow.
If hope is born of suffering.
If this is only the beginning.
Can we not wait for one hour watching for our Savior?
~ Held, Natalie Grant

Rain

Remember, our message is not about ourselves; we're proclaiming Jesus Christ, the Master. All we are is messengers, errand runners from Jesus for you. It started when God said, "Light up the darkness!" and our lives filled up with light as we saw and understood God in the face of Christ, all bright and beautiful. If you only look at us, you might well miss the brightness. We carry this precious Message around in the unadorned clay pots of our ordinary lives. That's to prevent anyone from confusing God's incomparable power with us. As it is, there's not much chance of that. You know for yourselves that we're not much to look at. We've been surrounded and battered by troubles, but we're not demoralized; we're not sure what to do, but we know that God knows what to do; we've been spiritually terrorized, but God hasn't left our side; we've been thrown down, but we haven't broken. ~ II Corinthians 4:5-12 (Message)


We woke up to a slow, cold February rain. In Wisconsin, rain in February is invariably accompanied by sleet-driving winds and icy driveways. I woke up expecting sun, or snow, or at worst, a gray wind. Rain wasn't in my plans. Nor my childrens...magically, they awake to every day as if it were a surprise to be discovered. No plans to be lived up to, or destroyed.

Raindrops on the windows, freezing before they ran the length of the pane. A new experience for the youngest of the three girls. She was in a state of awe, tracing their tracks down the windowpanes and gleefully waking her sisters at first light to share the bliss of a rainstorm in February.


Cancer is my rain in February. Unexpected, it raises the stakes. I feel as though I am thoroughly entrenched in my adult mindset, looking out on a dreary day with fatigue and hopelessness and disappointment. Cancer is a ride down a path I didn't see coming, a fork in the road that I would rather not take. To my children, it is an endless myriad of discovery as we explore the depths of God's grace and plumb the well of His eternal kindness. I looked at the rain today with fresh eyes, and cancer with it. An allegory is so much easier to grasp than real life.

I can see clearly now (the rain is gone)

...I can see all obstacles in my way.
I think I can make it now, the pain is gone
All of the bad feelings have disappeared
Here is the rainbow I’ve been prayin' for
It’s gonna be a bright, bright
Sun-Shiny day.
~ Jimmy Cliff

The sun dawned mildly today, as the iciness of January's deep freeze gave way to the balm of warm winds and snow melting soft underfoot. A picture in seasonal clarity of the week I've had. As the news sunk in, and I allowed optimism to absorb deep into my soul, something inside rises dark and desolate and full of fear. The edge is taken off of cancer, death runs quickly into the shadows as my new doctor speaks healing and remission and freedom. With that new-found hope, the fears step out of the shadows, finally, to be processed and identified. To be named and no longer ignored. Those fears have been the white elephant in my room for months. Now they are safe to acknowledge.

So what is a 29-year-old Christian woman with cancer afraid of? Just like the rest of humanity, I am afraid of death. I am afraid I will be afraid. I am afraid of being in an unfamiliar place. I am afraid of falling through a black hole of the universe without a guide to tell me what to expect. I am afraid of the seconds that intervene between my last breath here and my first breath there. I am afraid that it can't be heaven without my husband and children, and parents, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, grandparents, friends. How can I love a place where there is hardly a face I recognize? How can I navigate a crossing that I know nothing about?

Really, it all boils down to faith. Here is that great question of the ages rearing it's ugly head again: do I trust God, the maker and ruler of all, or not? He didn't give me all the answers - not even whether this good news will hold or dissipate like the snow on my front lawn, melted before the strength of a weak January thaw. He doesn't tell me how it will feel to die, much less how it will feel to live eternally in heaven.

The fears persist. They have been there, in the corners of my mind, since I was a small child. And today, like so many days gone before, I put them aside on my shelf of faith, issues for God to take care of. I put aside my inability to understand the intricate details. I close my eyes. I wrestle my shoulders out of their hunch, shake loose the bands of tension. I sigh, I breathe in deep, and face the warm January sun, and leave the details to Christ.

"I shall not be afraid of evil tidings; my heart is firmly fixed, trusting (leaning on and being confident) in the Lord. My heart is established and steady, I will not be afraid while I wait to see my desire established upon my adversary." (Psalm 112:7-8 Amplified - paraphrased)

Snowflakes

These homemade versions of God's miraculous ice crystals have been giving our family joy for over a year now. They remind me of the rock candy we used to buy at national parks when I was a kid. Making them is a great way to speak "chemistry" with little kids.

Warmth

This is what the Lord Almighty says: "Give careful thought to your ways.
You have planted much, but have harvested little.
You eat, but never have enough.
You drink, but never have your fill.
You put on clothes, but are not warm.
You earn wages, only to put them in a purse with holes in it."
This is what the Lord Almighty says: "Give careful thought to your ways.
Haggai 1:5-7

I never thought much about heat before I was diagnosed with cancer. It was one of those necessities I took for granted. Pregnant or breastfeeding for over five years straight, my furnace was functioning quite well! Now I am a lover of wool socks, slippers of any kind, color or shape, turtleneck sweaters, no matter how scratchy. Warmth takes priority. After my treatment in November, I read the minor prophets, and suddenly identified with these verses from Haggai. In many ways, it is a reflection of so many small failures in my life to date: gardens planted and then overrun with weeds; meals made and barely enjoyed in the rush of everyday evenings; money loosely budgeted that slips through my fingers like sand. I resolved to give careful thought to my ways, our ways as a family. Months before the New Years flurry. I need to revisit those thoughts, implement them, wield the insights He provided during my days of solitude and spiritual neediness.

Winter jewels

I will bless the LORD at all times;
His praise shall continually be in my mouth.

My soul will make its boast in the LORD;
the humble will hear it and rejoice.

O magnify the LORD with me,
and let us exalt His name together.
Psalm 34

Did you ever stand in a Cavern's Mouth -
Widths out of the Sun --
Loneliness looks so.
Emily Dickinson

The snow surrounds the house like a million glittering stars. The weeds bejeweled. It is a little girl's wonderland...an entire earth of sparkles. Rosy walks outside and breaths in deep, filling her little soul with the beauty of it. I watched her walk through the side yard yesterday, one step...bend, scoop, stare, smile. Repeat. The panes of the kitchen window seemed suddenly stifling and thick, too great a separation between her world and mine. In these quiet moments, watching life unfold like a fairytale before me, I feel my heart expand, and then suddenly contract. Like squeezing back tears, or stamping out pain so you can ignore it a little longer. The very beauty of my life is what makes it bittersweet - brings out the longing to be here for so much longer. I wish I could set a giant glass dome over moments like these, freeze them like the plaster figures in snowglobes, forever atwirl in a flurry of snow.

Lost in the details

Christmas pageant practice: kids sang (mother breathed, "Hallelujah!" under her breath).

Walmart on a Saturday just prior to Christmas: kids walked single file (mom silently rejoiced, "We survived!").

Hanging Christmas lights using dinky plastic hooks: kids played in snow, husband frustrated (wife wondering, "Why did I suggest this?").

We came in covered with snow, bedraggled and tired from the fresh air and a day too full. The toddler began screaming because her socks were on crooked. I lost my temper, and spat out a warning to stop fussing through gritted teeth, the whites of my eyes showing. She banged her little body down on the couch, intimidated and angered. I retreated to my room, the howls of three children echoing behind me.

The black arms of the trees against the winter sky whisper reproach. I approach the Throne tentatively. I hear the toddler stop crying, and come wandering through the house, quietly saying, "I done fussin', Mama". My heart melts. I open the door.

After I beg forgiveness, we lay on the bed, cuddled up, looking at the trees. We talk about the nativity we just put up, about Jesus, dying on the cross to forgive us as Amelia just forgave me. She giggles, then says, "I have buggers, Mama". I try to continue the lesson, buggers notwithstanding...to no avail. Every little lesson I sally forth is met with, "I have buggers, Mama". And I think, this is me! This is what I approach my Father with. He offers forgiveness, and I am more concerned about my buggers! I am the toddler tentatively walking through the halls of heaven, saying, "I done fussin', Papa."

I better grow up soon!

Seeds already sown

And the LORD hardened the heart of Pharaoh king of Egypt, and he pursued the people of Israel while the people of Israel were going out defiantly. The Egyptians pursued them, all Pharaoh’s horses and chariots and his horsemen and his army, and overtook them encamped at the sea... ~ Exodus 14:8-9 ESV

Seeds were on my mind as I contemplated November during my cold, windy walks around the lake yesterday and again this morning. I looked around at the man-made objects, and the minimal preparations we humans now make for winter. We gather up some hoses, mulch our small gardens, and mow the grass one last time. There is no fuel laid by for winter, no pantry full of home-canned foods we raised up from the ground with our own two hands, no root cellar or ice house full of meat or produce stored carefully against the snowy days to come. Just a few cosmetic details done mostly to the exterior of our homes and grounds. And we continue to rush on at break-neck pace toward Thanksgiving...then Christmas...then Spring Break.

I have lived close to farmers for most of my life. Their life is predictable: turn the ground over as soon as it thaws in the spring, pick the rocks, fertilize the soil, sow the seeds. Watch the plants grow all summer: a brief rest, with the daily rhythms of turning out livestock, bringing livestock home to tend. Then the harvest: a brilliant flash of activity that continues dawn until well after dark in these days of headlights and engines. Preserving and selling the harvest; then tending the land and the seeds for the next season, the cold, life-destructive forces of the winter months. It is the visionary who is out planting when others are harvesting: winter wheat, late beans. Even the visionaries invest little into crops that defy winter. They are unpredictable.

Yet that is what we're called to be as Christians, isn't it? Visionaries? Planters who sow when all others are conserving. Farmers who trust in a high-risk crop because we are led by a Force more powerful than those of nature...the Ruler of all the other forces of nature? Certainly I am sowing seeds when the world around me screams for me to retreat, conserve, preserve, consolidate. I am throwing around seed with abandon. I am potentially wasting my resources. I don't see much sense in sleeping, whether I am tired or not; I don't care to sit on a couch watching TV, numbing my brain when I feel most called to sharpen it. My physical body is under attack, yet I refuse to build up walls to protect it. I trust God to protect it. I trust His power in my weakness. I will not bend to these aching knees; I will not succumb to the joylessness of conservation.

I also see that seeds long sown are lying dormant within me during this time of unexpected November. My health isn't great right now; but my spirit is. I watched this conundrum over and over on the transplant unit: those families who had a full field of seeds already sewn when the storm came watched peacefully as the water rushed over the landscape of their hearts; they were confident of the harvest to come, however lashed about by storms they were. There were families with nothing planted when the storm hit, and they mourned immediately for the loss of harvest they also knew was inevitable. And then there was a third class, the families God called out during the storm. They were out planting when everyone else was huddled inside: lashed about by rain and thunder and lightening, they were throwing seed into the fields anyway. Winter wheat, late beans. There are harvests to be gleaned when you are willing to risk everything for God!

I have felt an incredible sense of the Devil these past four days. In a time that I expected to feel the comfort of the angels, instead I became more aware than ever of the presence of the Enemy. At first, I struggled with fear. Listening to a visionary today, I was reminded that, however inevitable fear is, it is my choice how to respond. Do I close my eyes and step forward with faith, bridging the gap? Or do I take counsel from my fear?

I want to be a visionary, sowing winter wheat today in the November of cancer. I also look with confidence at the seeds I know God has already sown in me, those seeds waiting to burst in the warmth of the springtime that I know is just around the corner. I feel a sense that now is a time to quietly sow, head down, anticipating a harvest. I don't want to raise my arms defiantly, expecting God to heal me and help me, while Satan is arming himself to attack. I just want to step out on faith, regardless of the impending attack, the attack at which I am perhaps now at the center of.

Though the enemy comes in,
I will not be shaken
Though I may have fallen,
I will not stay down

You are my Sanctuary
I love Your sweet embrace
You are my Sanctuary
Hide me in the secret place

When I long for more of You
You're my revelation
Lord the softest whisper
brings the strength I need

~ unknown, Sanctuary

Into November

You shall keep my Sabbaths and reverence my sanctuary: I am the LORD. "If you walk in my statutes and observe my commandments and do them, then I will give you your rains in their season, and the land shall yield its increase, and the trees of the field shall yield their fruit. Your threshing shall last to the time of the grape harvest, and the grape harvest shall last to the time for sowing. And you shall eat your bread to the full and dwell in your land securely. I will give peace in the land, and you shall lie down, and none shall make you afraid. ~ Leviticus 26:2-6 ESV

November is here in the northland. I woke up this morning feeling November deep in my body: I have been taken to the very edge of autumn. My cells are grinding to a halt. My joints are stiff and thick with fluid that refuses to soften and move. My hands are thick and heavy and my feet feel wooden. Every part of me is a little swollen, a sign of the waste products building up in each cell with no where to go. Nothing is working as it should. The side effects of the radiation linger because my body is losing it's capacity to heal in it's semi-functional state.

I went for a walk around a nearby lake to wake my deadened senses. All around me, autumn is coming to a close. What starts so flamboyantly with the scattering of seeds and conserving of sap in the core of the hardwoods, resulting in those flaming maples and umbre of the oaks, is now grinding to a mushy, windswept conclusion of barrenness. The once-golden carpet of leaves beneath my feet no longer swish pleasantly; the beauty of the leaves is turning to sludge in the cold. The wind has swept all the trees bare; the grasses have scattered the beauty of their heavy heads and rustle brusquely as dry coarse stalks before the gusts. The songbirds have long since left, and with them most of the ducks and geese; we are left with a few brave gamebirds and the crows and vultures for the winter.

Because the majority of us experience life in a very predictable progression of seasons, that is what I had come to expect. Childhood was like coming out of winter, just wakening after hibernation; my teens were the muddy wildness of early spring. My early 20's, late spring: crocuses, daffodils, planting the fields, the warmth of the soil rolling over under the cultivator for the sun. Then the warmth of early summer, as I bore my children and began harvest. There were hot, humid days when my work seemed stagnant and cumbersome and all I wanted was a long, summer nap. How surprising, to descend into November when so much summer was left! I am surprised to be here. I am praying this is a brief interruption, a little foretaste of seasons to come later in life. My intuition tells me that winter is a long way off, that summer will return, uncharacteristically bright and refreshing.

For now, here I am. In November. Taking long hikes by myself. Wondering how I will ever get warm again.

In November, the earth is growing quiet. It is making its bed, a winter bed for flowers and small creatures. The bed is white and silent, and much life can hide beneath its blankets. The bare November trees are all sticks and bones spreading their arms like dancers.
~ In November, Cynthia Rylant

nearly November

Happy moments, PRAISE GOD.
Difficult moments, SEEK GOD.
Quiet moments, WORSHIP GOD.
Painful moments, TRUST GOD.
Every moment, THANK GOD.
~ author unknown

I remember when I was a child - and an avid reader beyond my years - I thought for many months that "Anon" was the greatest poet I had ever read! This little quote is profound but there is no one to credit.

Today has been a bleak day, one of those near-November days when the winds of change are cold and distinct, hinting at driving snow and skeletal trees and gray furrows in the field across the street. The sun came in long streaks of pale yellow through clouds racing across the horizon. My heart felt exactly like that - my children popping like little bursts of joy in a day that included much pain and processing of what is to come in the next few weeks. I had delightful times with my friend who is here to help. Even her sometimes-silent companionship felt like sliding into a warm bath of comfort. I also had aching breasts, literally a physical longing to comfort and love my little son, who spent the day beating at my chest, pulling my shirt, and crying to nurse. He is asleep now and I am left with no solution to my immediate problem.

I feel like I am stepping forward into an abyss of unknown - how will Caleb be fed? Will the children bear emotional scars from this long time spent apart? What will I do and think while I am away? What will my scans bring to light - an end in sight, or more suffering to come? The sense of the Everlasting Arms beneath me was faint today...sometimes I can literally feel the pulse in those wings, feel them bearing me up and their strength and power so close I can almost touch it. At other times, I wonder if I imagine them after all, struggling with disbelief and the cascade of temporal sorrows that abound wherever I turn. Today I felt just a flicker of the Comforter in the very peripheral vision of my day. I pray for renewed closeness and joy tomorrow.

"Rejoice in the Lord always [delight, gladden yourselves in Him]; again I say, Rejoice! Let all men know and perceive and recognize your unselfishness (your considerateness, your forbearing spirit). The Lord is near [He is coming soon]. Do not fret or have any anxiety about anything, but in every circumstance and in everything, by prayer and petition (definite requests), with thanksgiving, continue to make your wants known to God. And God's peace shall be yours, that tranquil state of a soul assured of its salvation through Christ, and so fearing nothing from God and being content with its earthly lot of whatever sort that is, that peace which transcends all understanding shall garrison and mount guard over your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. ~ Philippians 4:4-7 (Amp)