Turquoise Gates

Feeling after Him

2012-01-26T07:12:00.000-06:00

It has been well said that the true measure of any man's spirituality is the degree to which he can detect God in the most simple events around him. It is no mere spiritual phraseology when Scripture declares, "They should seek the Lord, if they might feel after Him, and find Him, though He is not far from every one of us; for in Him we live, and move, and have our being. (Acts 17:27-28) ~from Phillip Keller's A Layman's Look at the Lord's Prayer

The sun gleaming through the gray glimmers off their shiny winter jackets as they bend to build a man from the snow. Later that evening, the moon is setting golden over the snowy hills, the frost catching the last reflected spark of sunlight. The moon looks for all the world like a black coin dipped in gold, the sunlight reflecting all along it's rim, the north star fixed just above it. I feel God in the whisper of the pines, the dancing crystals lifted into the air by the breathe of wind, the cats huddled on the porch rail as if to worship in this last light of evening. Feel after Him. What a turn of phrase that is, as if we are groping after a warm presence in the dark, feeling our way through the velvet night towards our reunion with Christ.

In his little manifesto on the Lord's prayer, Phillip Keller states that "In every situation of life, no matter how unusual or adverse, there comes that quiet assurance to my heart that I am His, and He is mine." I recall the somber words of our last pastors, warning us that because our situation was so out of the ordinary, God was not necessarily with us on the path of suffering. Yet I had that feeling, as I groped in the dark for answers, that He was there, ever-present and ever-loving, in the blackness with me.

Like a sparrow flitting, like a swallow flying, a curse that is causeless does not alight. (Proverbs 26:2)

We are on a grand adventure here on this earth. Our time is short, and it is filled chock-full with God's many small blessings: the wonder of His creation that dawns new every morning and is hidden in every blade of grass and every snowflake falling; the situations of life that affirm our faith and confirm His presence in our daily lives; in the love of His saints that surrounds us in our time of need; in the comfort we receive from His word, the assurance that knowledge and understanding bring through our minds and into our hearts. Our God is an awesome God, who reigns from heaven above, with mercy, power and love! Our God is an awesome God!

Penance

2012-01-24T05:26:00.000-06:00

The key that fits the lock is always discovered in the least expected moment. I sat on the therapist's couch, sitting on my hands, huddled in my jacket, unable to name what I had been feeling last week. I knew it was a feeling, in the visceral way you recognize the rhythms of your soul, but I couldn't understand where it came from. It was the fist closing around my throat, the lump in my chest, the sweat beading up on my forehead. I felt my eyes widen, but I couldn't say why.

It was fear. Admitting fear is so difficult for me. The recognition of that fear, especially when it is someone else who sees it in me, threatens to undo all the work I've done to hide my fear so that no one will know that something is wrong with me. And deep within, I am horribly afraid that there is something wrong with me. As my therapist has continued to hone in on certain sensitive moments of my childhood, has asked questions about my siblings, my parents, I have harbored a secret fear that she will find something in my family of origin that will point to my current problems - disassociating, blunting my emotions, turning to self-harm. I desperately did not want my family to be at blame. And so I have run from that fear, stuffed it down into that tight lump in my chest, and gingerly regarded it as something very dangerous to my way of life, my beliefs, my way of thinking.

Today, I found an answer. And it isn't how my parents raised me, or what kind of discipline I was brought up with, or my own reprehensible original sin. I've struggled for years to find an answer, because I couldn't imagine how I got to where I am now with what I started with at age seven. You know yourself, the deeps that lie hidden to all the world, and yes, it is blacker to you than to anyone. But you also know when that hidden river of sinful thought has not buoyed you along in your wrong ways of thinking.

Somewhere along the line, I picked up the idea that by suffering abuse in secret, I was protecting my family, not just physically, but socially - the family persona or image that might be destroyed if word got out. In a very human and childish way, I developed my own system of penance to purge out the ugliness that I attached to myself, blaming myself in small ways for big things. In this way, I could get rid of the big things by doing something in my own control - hurting my body and torturing my own mind. This developed into a knee-jerk reaction, and as an adult, I faced a similar catastrophic situation when I was blamed for the circumstances that led to my entire family vaunting from a church. Just like I did when I was seven, I meted out my penance in private: a slit to the skin, letting my personality disappear into the gray nothingness with each drop of blood shed.

Again, this winter and fall, as my therapist edged ever closer to the epicenter of my pain, and I saw it was not the actions of my abuser, but rather something to do with my family...I wielded weapon against self to get rid of the haunting fear that, if I let it get out, even in the privacy of the counselor's office, I would be hurting my family. What I didn't realize is that by trying to protect my family's image, I was entering a vicious cycle.

The light turns on as quick as you flip the switch, turning on your lamp. The light dawns into the dark corners of my mind, and the word penance comes up, and I feel shame. Penance to me means pride, thinking that something I can do, something I can control, can wash away my sin. It hurts the very Jesus who died on the cross, telling him I regard his sacrifice as incomplete, not worthy to pay for my sin. As if the darkness of that sin somehow negates the overwhelming, overflowing love and grace of the cross.

Katy helps lead Tally to surgery at the vet yesterday.

I know why my eight-year-old's pain sears my very soul. Because I am afraid for her. I am afraid she will think she has to protect her family. I am afraid she shoulders burdens too heavy for her frame...because of me, my inadequacy as a mother and a person. I have fought tooth and nail against the inherent fear of imperfection that fuels perfectionism. It is why it took years for me to come to my peace with my messy house, our messy lives.

I have to constantly remind myself that this heavy mother-guilt is much heavier than I was ever intended to bear. Mothers with depression, after all, have probably been happening since the beginning of time. Learning to cook a simple breakfast and helping put away laundry are normal tasks to ask of an eight-year-old.

One of the simplest verses of the New Testament has proven very difficult for me throughout my lifetime: Cast all your cares upon Him, for He careth for you. (I Peter 5:7) I humbly go to Christ, who did offer himself for me, for my whole family, generations upon generations of sinners, and ask Him to help me learn this simple thing. Help me shake loose from fear (for isn't that the whole story of the Bible? That love is greater than fear?) and break the shackles of guilt and live free as He intended.

Home again, home again...

2012-01-23T06:33:00.001-06:00

Last year's homecoming

Absence truly makes the heart grow fonder! Last evening, the joyful reunion after five days of separation, the kids all piled on me, the sweetness of their caresses and lilt of their excited voices. Aaron's bass booming underneath. Today, a busy day of appointments for me and my cancer-ridden black lab. Thank you for all your prayers - another two weeks before I get results from my scan and blood test.

Still counting...
1457: peace in the afternoon sunlight after taking my radioactive iodine
1460: riotous laughter
1469: water soothes my throat
1482: naps
1486: bathroom trips done
1497: night at my mama's
1501: my aunt and uncle's home sweet home
1506: children to cuddle again

Urgent prayer request for a friend

2012-01-21T12:59:00.001-06:00

Her twins look all grown up, and I remember their baby blond curls and their nursing, and how their hair in knots glowed white in my camera viewfinder long years ago. This dear friend, their mother, sent a desperate text yesterday - a thirteen year old suddenly diagnosed with stage 4 kidney cancer, spread to his lungs. He spent all yesterday in surgery to remove the tumor and the kidney...bled, and now rests, and the world waits for news. Please keep the Glovers and their friends Emily and Mark and son Thomas close in prayer.

The waiting morning

2012-01-20T05:14:00.003-06:00

It's five o'clock, and I am restlessly awake. My full body scan is scheduled for 9 a.m. Even though I won't know the results for a week, the scan looms large. An hour of images taken, the slow slide underneath the counter, just inches from my nose. The gray little woman who always brings me back to the hot room where the equipment whirs and I must lie still for that whole hour.

Just as He knows every hair on my aching head, knows the painful places sickened by the radiation and the shots that reverse my thyroid hormones, He knows the results already of this scan day. He knows whether I will get that magical pronouncement, "no visible metastasis". He knows. I can rest in the waiting, because He already knows.

...the exhortation was a vital part of a passage dealing with Christians who were suffering (I Peter 4:12-19). Peter referred to those who suffer according to the will of God (4:19). The sovereign God had allowed severe trials to come to those believers in accordance with His own wise and perfect will. Therefore, they were urged to commit the keeping of their souls to him. That means they could entrust the safety and security of their souls to God, their faithful Creator.When we come to verse 7 of chapter 5, it is apparent that their suffering was causing them some anxiety. They were beginning to worry. The word care in Greek is merimna, meaning anxiety, or a fearful and painful uneasiness of the mind. It is the crippling sin of worry that our Lord said chokes the Word so that it becomes unfruitful (Matthew 13:22). In my crisis hour, I certainly did not want to cut off the message and ministry of God's Word. That would have brought me a shameful defeat.Paul had used the same word in its verb form when he wrote, Be careful for nothing (Philippians 4:6). He tells us not to worry about anything, for anxiety comes from not trusting God. Like Martha, at times we are careful and troubled about many things (Luke 10:41) when we should be anxious for nothing. Nothing means not even one thing!Peter told us what we are to do with all of our anxieties. We are to cast them upon our Lord. Casting all your care upon Him. The Greek word for cast is ballo, which means to deposit with or to commit. While it is not the same word translated commit in 1 Peter 4:19, it does contain the same thought. We are to take our painful anxieties and hurl them--all of them--on the Lord. (Lehmann Strauss)

Dreadlocks for earbuds

2012-01-19T16:01:00.002-06:00

I recently joined Pinterest, and my favorite "pin" so far is this idea for a cord detangling solution for earbuds. There wasn't a tutorial online for the Chinese staircase, or spiral knot, technique - think friendships bracelets from junior high - so I'm posting one here. It does take an hour or so, and lots of embroidery floss, but it is well worth it to have snag-free cords every time you plug in to your device.

You will need floss about 3 times as long as the cord (including headphones).

Tie a simple knot with three strands of cord on the plug-in end of the cord.

To make the first knot in your ladder, time a half-hitch knot.

To begin, cross the thread under the cord and the other colored threads.

Next, cross the thread over the cord.

Next, cross the floss under the first loop.

Pull the thread tight. Every so often, push all the knots upward on the cord

to eliminate gaps.

For a more complete visual, check out this video on friendship bracelets.

And so it goes

2012-01-19T01:29:00.000-06:00

The little lead pot with the electric blue pill (this time a pretty cobalt instead of the usual neon) was delivered to me (finally) at noon today. They had forgotten to schedule my requisite pregnancy test prior to the dose, so I had to get that out of the way first. The photo above is the carrier on wheels that delivers the radioactive iodine to the dosing room. It is shielded with lead and has a geiger counter built in. Out of curiosity I googled geiger counters and lo and behold - you can own a portable model for just over $300 - less than an iPhone. Now if only Apple would come up with an "app for that"...

Some "radioactive headphones" I just had to have

After lunch with my mom, I settled in to a friend's peaceful home for an evening of movies and, apparently, some serious exorcism of the red-hot demon called radiation that had landed in my belly. It might be my imagination, but it seems like the side effects get worse every time I have to do this. Taste and smell vanished in the first 10 minutes as usual. Coupled with a wicked winter wind blowing snow devils up and down the street, and the whole world felt surreal and sterile by this afternoon. I have sores on my eyelids, lips, gums, tongue, throat, and stomach so far and I'm sure they will appear lower in my digestive tract tomorrow. My tears dried up and I have that familiar sandpaper feeling in my throat and my eyes now. Someone remind me to stick to bland foods after I take this pill next time! Without the sense of taste, I always go for something exotic and I end up regretting it after the 10th trip to the bathroom that evening.

Today is a down day. Friday will bring my scan. Yes, I get passed through a donut and get to watch a crosssection of my radioactive self on the screen (being careful not to twist my neck too far, of course - as soon as the tech catches on, she turns the screen away).

Thank you all for the prayers. I am so thankful I only have to do one cycle of this annually. I feel so much empathy for cancer patients who get weekly or biweekly radiation and/or chemotherapy. To feel like this for more than a few weeks would be so painful.

Anxious thoughts

2012-01-18T07:48:00.001-06:00

If I take the wings of the morning

and dwell in the farthest part of the sea

Even there thy hand will guide me,

and thy right hand will hold me.

Image credit Horia Varlan

Search me, oh God, and know my heart,

try me and know my anxious thoughts.

See if there be any hurtful way in me

and lead me in the everlasting way.

Psalm 139:9

Radioactive iodine to be swallowed at nine. I am worn out, but I feel ready. If nothing shows up on my Friday scan, this will be the last one for a while. After this, if there is no visible cancer, next year will bring Thyrogen injections (to reverse my thyroid hormone) and tumor marker labs every 6 months. I am praying this will happen - please join me!

Take this cup

2012-01-17T06:08:00.000-06:00

He withdrew about a stone’s throw beyond them, knelt down and prayed, “Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.” An angel from heaven appeared to him and strengthened him. And being in anguish, he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground. (Luke 22:41-44)

Just days before, Jesus was teaching the twelve, knowing this time was coming. He spoke of death, trials, great suffering. ...unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Whoever loves his life shall lose it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Now is my soul troubled. And what shall I say, 'Father, save me from this hour'? But for this purpose I have come to this hour: 'Father, glorify your name.' (John 12: 24, 25, 27, 28)

He willingly took the cup His Father had chosen for Him. He knew it was imperative that He obey. Yet His "spirit was troubled", and He pleaded that the death that loomed before Him would not come to pass. If ever a human being had eternal perspective, it was Christ. If ever a human being held their life loosely, willing to see the grave instead of old age, it was Jesus. But this did not stop Him from praying earnestly, from sweating blood. He knew the purpose of His death, yet He sincerely wished it did not have to be.

So I feel as cancer scans approach. I know they are necessary, but I am undone regardless. I know their purpose, and still pray that I might not have to receive the iodine again. I pray in the spirit of willingness, I do not demand my own will be done. But, oh, how I wish it!

Willfulness is a part of my character that I have not yet rooted out. With it's roots in my childhood, when I would take any double-dog dare, even eating worm sandwiches and drinking from a bucket with a dead mouse floating in it, willfulness has been part of my story for a long time. In college, it took on a different shape: I fought doctors for freedom, I battled through nursing curriculum that maxed out my energy. Lately, I have fought this urge again as I face self-harm temptation and depression that is immobilizing.

I pray God conquers this unwilling spirit that possesses me sometimes. I pray that I can really mean it when I say, "Not my will but thine be done." Willfulness sprouts where fear and hopelessness abound. I pray with the Psalmist, "Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me." (51:12)

Approach this any way you like. Write about how you're feeling today. Write about different theories of human emotion - some people use a list of 12 or 20 basic emotions. How many do you think there are? How many do you feel at once?

Blog about it, tweet your thoughts, or write a new status. Make sure to come back here, grab the button code and link up so we can read each other's stories!

This hour comes

2012-01-16T05:49:00.000-06:00

Truly, truly I say unto you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Whoever loves his life shall lose it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Now is my soul troubled. And what shall I say, 'Father, save me from this hour'? But for this purpose I have come to this hour: 'Father, glorify your name.' (John 12: 24, 25, 27, 28)

The weekend is full of events, heavy with expectations. We celebrate our brother's engagement, surrounded by his young friends, his beautiful fiancee. A chalkboard proclaims I Corinthians 13.

Sunday comes and goes, a sermon on 19th century spirituals and Martin Luther King's I Have a Dream speech. We sing "We Shall Overcome", joining our voices to those of the marchers that fateful day in 1968 as civil rights activists marched on Washington. Naps heavy and silent fill the house. Then a rowdy party, the football playoff game blaring and kids rambunctious.

This morning dawns early, in the dark late hours of the night, 4 a.m. devotions with my husband, eyelids still heavy and off to work. It is the day of my first injection, preparation for my radioactive iodine scan. I cannot comprehend that it is already upon me again, this next leavetaking from home. I pile up dirty laundry to wash, think about what warm blankets to pack.

While I join with Jesus as He wept at Gethsemane, I have to also own in His rhetorical question at the feasting table at Lazarus' home: shall I say, 'Father, save me from this hour'? But for this purpose I have come to this hour, 'Father, glorify thy name.'

1373: Engagement party for Nick and Kathy
1377: Aunts watching children
1390: Sunday sermon
1392: Thyrogen

Lament for the eldest

2012-01-13T06:41:00.001-06:00

Every one says you look like me. I am afraid you feel like me, too. You are the oldest, and you take responsibility for things that aren't your fault. When I feel sad and huddle in my bedroom, you think it is because of something you did, or didn't do right. You are a little Mama to your brother and your sisters. You make a killer breakfast already, do my laundry, clean the kitchen up several times a day. You who are just learning long division, you are already a multiplier of love. I see the fear in your eyes, fear that you're not smart enough, or self-disciplined enough, to deserve my love.

I made a lot of mistakes when it came to raising you, my firstborn. I taught you stoicism and now I am trying to undo that. I take you along to my counselor, and she asks you how you feel about my depression. You answer that you don't know. There is this disconnect between events and emotions that I wish I could repair. I have hope for you in ways that I don't have hope for myself...that we got out of it soon enough, before you were scarred beyond repair - that you will be able to change the way your brain works, and learn about feelings before it is too late.

I wish I could lift the burden of "peacemaker" off your small eight-year-old shoulders. I wish, simultaneously, that you could feel less and feel more. That emotions would wear their grooves into your heart, yet you wouldn't take everything to heart.

Did I catch you early enough? Did I recognize the road signs? Did the church already traumatize you beyond help? I am at the Throne early every morning, like it says in Lamentations 2, Arise, cry out in the night, as the watches of the night begin; pour out your heart like water in the presence of the Lord. Lift up your hands to him for the lives of your children. I pray for your healing when you bury your thick head of hair into my shoulder and I can feel the sobs welling up inside you but they never are birthed to breathe the air of this world. I wish I had a key to unlock your sorrows so they could be purged and mopped up. Instead you are like a glass jar with a tight lid. Nowhere for the pressure to go. I pray you don't bury it in your own bones.

Written on the prompt "Awake" for 5 Minute Friday

Unfolding the day

2012-01-12T13:21:00.000-06:00

The world is under blankets of new snow, hushed and howling at the same time this morning. I sleep in, deep sleep, wrapped in down with my warm little son. I wake up to kids already crying, sugar crashing off their Oreo breakfast, dressed in swimsuits (don't ask!) and shivering in the 60 degree house. My eldest is outside, walking our dog in the drifts, the peacemaker absent and chaos breaking loose through the house. We found out yesterday our 9 year old dog has cancer, and she is taking it hardest at 8 years old. She can't remember a time without this black dog who disappears in the dark and still snorts around the snowbanks like a puppy.

Noon comes and goes. The kids snack on chocolate grahams and bananas, and I share coffee with my sister from next door. The snow flakes are still falling, so infinitesimally tiny it is hard to imagine each is a unique crystal with six sides. The furnace burns hot to heat the house to 64 degrees, and the kids get back in their swimsuits to have a "diving" competition off the queen bed in the warmer air.

The days unpack themselves like a string of small gifts, the ribbons cut, the paper crinkled. The dog sits warm in her corner, stuffed with treats borne of the children's grief. My husband calls from the heart cath lab, on call today, the shovelers already crowding the ER. He'll be late getting home. My first day alone with my children, and it promises to be a long one.

I sit in the middle of my messy bedroom, look out the door at the messy dining room. There isn't a clean corner in the house. Three years into cancer, one full of depression, and I don't see messes anymore. I see piles of discarded delight - the art corner strewn with drawings and paintings, crayons and safety scissors. The living room full of Christmas still. Laundry clean and folded, piled in the baskets. Dishes dirtied attest to our wealth of food.

Awake my soul to live this moment
Awake my soul,
give thanks and hold it dear now
God is here now
Awake my soul

Hush away the hurry
Put to rest the worry
Come to quell and quiet me
In this moment given
Slow and fully live it
Drink up all the passing peace
~Shaun Groves, Awake My Soul~

Love > Fear

2012-01-11T07:31:00.000-06:00

I sat still, my legs drawn up under me, against the purple wall in my mother's living room. I remember heaviness coiled tense in my chest, up through my neck and aching behind my eyes. In my limbs, a happy buzzy sensation, like I feel when I'm deeply thankful. My niece and son came running over and clambered up, my husband busy taking photos, with the white of the flash bouncing off the glittery ceiling. My lips pulled back tight over my teeth, my eyes slowly trying to take in the chaotic scene of family and gift opening frenzy, a heavy compote of Christmas scents from the buffet filling the air.

Perhaps it is the many years of training and practice that makes me think of emotions as a linear thing. After all, the FACES scale for pain, the one we use in children, runs a spectrum from joy to extreme sadness, as if the two never coexist in our chests, in our hearts, behind our eyes.

What if half of your face can say something, and the other half another? I scan through a list of emotion words, trying to capture those feelings of the cool, coiled snake in my chest and the sweet joy of those children on my lap. Happiness and satisfaction. Words that describe love. Nervousness and apprehension. Words that describe fear.

Does that explain the lineless half smile, pulled tight over my lips, the widened eyes, the stilled forehead?

I have a sticker on my van that says "Love > Fear". The two emotions I felt most intensely throughout the holiday celebrations with family this year. Perhaps what kept me going through the holidays is this very principle, which stands out so clearly from The Message:

God is love. When we take up permanent residence in a life of love, we live in God and God lives in us. This way, love has the run of the house, becomes at home and mature in us, so that we're free of worry on Judgment Day—our standing in the world is identical with Christ's. There is no room in love for fear. Well-formed love banishes fear. Since fear is crippling, a fearful life—fear of death, fear of judgment—is one not yet fully formed in love. (I John 4:17-18 The Message)

Emotions on Tuesdays

2012-01-10T10:48:00.002-06:00

I was 32 years old and trapped on an inpatient mental health unit before I learned their names. The six basic human emotions. I was used to feeling a general sense of "ick" when I was emotional. I tried to run to rationalism and avoid the emotion at all costs, because it felt awful to feel it, live it. I remember sitting in an abuse recovery group, staring at a page full of emotion words, struggling to come up with any that fit my mood at that moment. I usually turned to words like "blank", "detached", "isolated". Non-feeling feeling words.

Tuesdays are a day it's always hard for me to write. There are no prompts, no one else in the blogging world who gives me a topic, an idea, to start the creative wheels turning. So, on Tuesdays, I'm going to write about emotions. I hope you'll join me. Last time I hosted a blog hop not a single soul linked up to me. I'm committing to this until the end of March, just to see what happens.

So, today, scanning Christmas pictures, I try to capture what I was feeling. I look up a list of those six basic human emotions:

Anger
Love
Fear
Joy
Sadness
Surprise

Nothing like "overwhelmed", "out of my element", "uncertain"? Aren't those emotions? I read through a list of Parrot's (2001) basic human emotions - a whole list of words to describe what I was feeling. I find my feelings there, under "Love" and "Fear". A twisted coexistence that sent me running for a quiet space whenever there was free time on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.

Approach this any way you like. Write about how you're feeling today. Write about different theories of human emotion - some people use a list of 12 or 20 basic emotions. How many do you think there are? How many do you feel at once?

Blog about it, tweet your thoughts, or write a new status. Make sure to come back here, grab the button code and link up so we can read each other's stories!

The best way to start a week

2012-01-09T07:55:00.000-06:00

It is my first good dream in months and months. I wake up to a sky just turning turquoise, and it is as vivid as the morning sky.

We are all at Maggie's house, a reunion of soul sisters from the internet, and it is a beautiful thing. Ashleigh is in labor, in a pool in the front room. A water birth. Elizabeth and I are on the couch, giggling uncontrollably as we fill our vintage tea cups from a bottle of wine we found on the counter. Abby and Maggie keep offering Ashleigh soothing herbal tea, and she is swearing at them, "Can't you see I'm busy??!! Get out of my face!" Sara Sophia is stressing out in the kitchen, trying to tend to the dishes, which are piled as high as the cupboards on the counter. Our kids are running pell mell, covered in glue and jelly, with no interest in the intricate craft Maggie prepared to keep them busy. Joy is trying to keep everyone off the vintage sofa, and sends a look at Elizabeth and I, wishing she were joining in the wine guzzling instead. Emily is in the bathroom, gargling and choking on her laughter over the thought of bodily fluids we #sss were just roaring over. It is beautiful chaos, and the warmth of friendship glows through the house like a bonfire that can't be contained. I wake up laughing in my sleep, tears rolling down my cheeks, happy and filled with peace.

He lights our way with diamonds scattered, dreams sent to cheer our souls in sleep, while He brushes the world with His glory and transforms the landscape with glittering silver.

Wherever you find His joy, with whomever you feel His presence, soak it up! Let the dried out sponge of your soul get all squooshy with His bliss, His blessing. I am filled this morning, and adding this good dream to my list of thousands of His gifts.

From left: Emily, Sara Sophia, Abby, Ashleigh, me, Maggie, Elizabeth & Joy

1316: Frost on Christmas morning, a world scatter with diamonds
1321: Christmas photos with my whole family
1325: The bliss of naps
1336: Skating on a lake, turquoise bubbles beneath our feet
1342: Home
1344: Peanut butter and jelly (jelly)
1355: Rest in the hospital
1359: A good dream to start my day

Breathing

2012-01-07T12:29:00.001-06:00

Beams of God's radiance glint off the plastic footboard of the hospital bed and send a rainbow of prismatic gold over the bleached white sheets I have pulled up to my chin. The window is cold and the draft sneaks under the blankets and cools my toes. Across the room, a roommate snores off her hangover and overdose. I stare up at the pock-marked Styrofoam ceiling tiles, lost in time.

The odd paradox of melancholy and joy has lived in my breast for a year now. I learn to name the constant ebb and wash of emotions with words like "disgust" for the acid burning, "shame" for the head-bent-low grief, "joy" for the sparkling champagne of the soul.

The days are long and quiet here, punctuated with an all too brief hour of Eminem and painting in the middle, meals like clockwork arriving cold from the bowels of the hospital. The first day, my brain races double time through the silence of my hospital room. By the second day, everything has slowed with a deep hollow bass tone, and I start to uncurl from the fetal position I've been stuck in, glued to the plastic mattress with a cold sweat of anxiety and the cheeks flushing with shame. Third day, I laugh for the first time, again. Day four, the doctor says I can go home. Home I go, chauffeured by beautiful country blond, to the house mourning the last days of a holiday studded with pain, to the children buoyant with the homecoming of Mama.

I sleep under the moon and the down comforter, sandwiched between my two men, husband and child. I wake up breathing slower than I have in a long time, to the sunrise and the wind whispering through the rattling leaves of the woods, the spring-like air, the owls hooting their last night songs across the valley. I am thankful for this week of rest, vacation from mental hypervigilance against darkness, a blank slate of mind that has been so busy fighting through December's bog.

Tabula rasa. I start again with a clean slate. Benigno numine. By the favor of the heavens. Bendictus que venit. Blessed is she who comes in the Lord's name. Dabit Deus his quoque finem. God will bring an end to this. Deo adjuvante non timedum. With God's help, nothing should be feared.

Cruce, dum spiro, fido.

While I breathe, I will trust the Cross.

God is looking for people through whom He can do the impossible. What a pity when we plan only the things we can do by ourselves.” -A.W. Tozer

A set-back

2012-01-06T19:30:00.001-06:00

I just arrived home from a 4-day stay at the hospital for continued treatment of depression and other mental health issues. I am feeling better than I was Tuesday, when I was admitted. I would appreciate prayers for the coming week and a half with my family prior to my next separation from them for a cancer scan on January 18. Thank you, dear friends!

Adventures and non-adventures

2012-01-03T15:08:00.000-06:00

I woke up at 4:30 a.m. {I know. I really should be napping right now.} By 7:30, my kids were out snowboarding in the sub-zero frigid January. At 8:30 we left for urgent care with a very sore Rosalie in tow. A few x-rays later, we learned her arm doesn't seem to be broken (there is a small area in question, but it would be a green stick fracture and wouldn't need a cast, so we came home anyway). She is pretty thrilled, with swimming lessons starting in 3 weeks. While at the doctor, she kept praying aloud, "Pleeeease God, don't let my arm be broken! I promise I'll never snowboard again!" She has decided to do her annual 4-H safety poster on elbow pads and other safety gear for snowboarding.

Speaking of 4-H, the girls went with Aaron last night and Caleb and I had a little time alone at home together. And this is what we did. I still get the giggles as I scroll through these!

Behold, children are a gift of the LORD, The fruit of the womb is a reward. (Psalm 127:3)

Making a ladder out of counted gifts

2012-01-02T12:05:00.002-06:00

Another year opens with snowflakes falling silent, racuous children in the small space of the van, wild hilarity opening white elephant gifts, gold wine sparkling in glasses, a shared bottle of champagne - moment of romance after the children fall asleep after midnight - the long kiss for the new year. This 2012 will find me continuing to count blessings as they fall as silent, stealthy from the hand of the Father.

1478: $180 Patagonia coat on my daughter, $3 at Saver's
1490: cat's eyes catching sun's gold
1495: hair growing in black and white, salt and pepper spiky
1501: sounds and smells of hockey
1504: gliding through pain to joy
1513: mama reading devotions to me on a depressed day
1519: sunshine and sunshine (vitamin D3) in a bottle
1522: animal cracker and nutella

2011 in Pictures

2011-12-31T11:29:00.002-06:00

January. Cousin love.

February. Praying with Papa.

March. Meeting old friends in Fargo, North Dakota.

April. Maple syrup party.

April. Surviving my own version of "Bleak House".

May. Early summer joy, late nights and early mornings.

June. Flowers and sprinklers and kid joy.

July. Camping and South Carolina trip.

September. Hunting for fossils in Iowa with Auntie Rose & Uncle Dennis.

October. Hair loss and leaves falling.

November. Early snow and Christmas trees.

December. The wonder of Advent, seen through new eyes.

A word for 2012

2011-12-31T10:44:00.001-06:00

The Christmas season fades to a blur behind us, and the new year looms. It will be my year of 3's: 33 years alive, '12 = 1+ 2 = 3, my 3rd cancer scan, my 3rd year with cancer, my 3 article dissertation. Every year, I've picked a word, one word that epitomizes the lesson I want to learn over 12 months. The theme for my days. This year, I'm picking a word quite different from those of years past.

verb (used without object)

to happen or terminate according to desire; turn outsuccessfully; have the desired result: Our efforts succeeded.

to thrive, prosper, grow, or the like: Grass will not succeed inthis dry soil.

to accomplish what is attempted or intended: We succeededin our efforts to start the car.

The dictionary touts a fourth definition - to obtain wealth or standing. I am in favor of the first definition - to terminate according to desire. I have a list of things I hope to succeed at this year, God willing. Following a year of intense disappointment and depression, I wanted to choose a positive word for this coming year. A year whose story pages are still blank, spreading before me with such possibility and promise. May God be with us as we work toward our goals this year!

1. Succeed at finishing my dissertation and graduating

2. Succeed at finally seeing cancer in remission

3. Succeed in becoming more emotionally intelligent and healing wounds of the heart

4. Succeed at mothering and housekeeping

5. Succeed at becoming a better wife to my dear husband

6. Succeed at kicking depression

7. Succeed at focusing on raising emotionally integrated children thriving with creativity

Inspired by Alece's community at Grit & Glory

and linked to Bonnie

Top Ten for 2011 & an Author Favorite

2011-12-30T08:08:00.003-06:00

I hope you enjoy a grand tour of the blog to close out the year! The top ten pages for 2011 in terms of pageviews:

1. Cathedral
2. Real-life fairy tale endings
3. The wound that blinds
4. Story of this battle
5. What I learned at my old church: Lessons after leaving
6. Reflection in the mirror
7. Hurt
8. Battle wounds
9. In a perfect world
10. Awakening to love

And my very favorite post of 2011:
Trading in my cardboard crown

2011 was my year for endurance, patience, abiding in trial. Little did I know, in January, how apt this word would be for 2011. I have chosen a much different word for 2012. Join me again tomorrow to read about it!

ὑπομονή
Hupomoné
Strong's 5278

1. remaining under, endurance; steadfastness, especially as God enables the believer to "remain (endure) under" the challenges He allots in life.
2. to preserve: under misfortunes and trials to hold fast to one's faith in Christ
3. to endure, bear ill treatments bravely and calmly

That He may say of me, "and you have perseverance and have endured for My name's sake, and have not grown weary." (Revelation 2:3)

Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us..." (Hebrews 12:1)

Are you generic?

2011-12-29T13:43:00.004-06:00

Suppose your organization is hosting an art sale as a fundraiser. You usually sell art from the community - some good, some not so good. This year, however, someone donated their entire library of historic art to your sale. You have a Michelangelo, a Rembrandt, a Picasso, a Monet. They are worth millions each. However, the advertising committee doesn't want to scare away the usual clientele of low bidders looking for local pieces at a good price. They decide to leave out the famous paintings and go with their standard poster verbage highlighting local artists.

The day of the sale finally arrives. Quite a stir ensues, as people realize what you've been hiding: Picasso's painting is risque. Monet's is mistaken for a cheap hotel print. No one likes how "lumpy" the vibrant oils of Rembrandt's painting are in real life. The Michelangelo is of (gasp!) a naked man. Most of your usual buyers walk out, disgruntled when they discover the grand scope of this year's sale. Later, you hear from several serious art collectors who are deeply disappointed and slightly angry that they weren't notified of your acquisitions.

Nobody likes to be sucked in with wrong information.

We do this type of misrepresentation everyday. Reports indicate that this has become even more rampant with the advent of social media: we disclose only a small corner of our lives, the cleaned up, funny, and happy parts of our lives. I am guilty of this all the time. Just this morning, my Facebook status read: "After 2 months of hockey, I finally feel like I am back. Never thought this day would come!" I didn't really have space - or desire - to share that the first two periods of the scrimmage my muscles were cramped and screaming pain, and I had to breathe through it to survive, like childbirth. This status reads kind of like I am a fit jock, instead of the overtired, overweight, and out-of-shape 30-something I really am.

The most glaring way we represent ourselves incorrectly is in regards to our faith or belief system. Christians wear that label on their lapel but shy away from sharing their Gospel - which has always divided rather than unified - unless pressed to do so. We tout lifestyle evangelism - living our faith quietly instead of proselytizing. We tame our beliefs and only exercise them in small groups of like-minded people and perhaps the quiet seclusion of the voting booth. Many atheists and agnostics represent their beliefs as scientific, cool and collected - hiding the deep passion they feel for their religion and disdain they feel for mainstream Christian "sheep" who've been brainwashed or simply "go with the flow" rather than owning their faith. Wiccan and other religions in the margins face stigma by calling themselves "alternative faith practitioners".

Another analogy is found within my professional sphere: generics pretend to be the real thing, but they aren't even close. Sythroid is the Rembrandt of thyroid cancer meds, and levothyroxine, it's generic counterpart, is a cheap print of the real thing, faded and poor quality. Generic medicine is held to a different standard than name-brand. To maintain their trademarks and reputation, brand-name companies test every dose for accuracy and allow only a 1-3% fluctuation in the amount of medication delivered by each pill, capsule, or ounce of fluid. Generic manufacturers are held responsible by FDA regulations that state every dose must be within 20% of the advertised amount - allowing those generics in your medicine cabinet to fluctuate by as much as 40% per pill. Generics are tested at random by the FDA, and a single company could go decades without any testing being done on their products.

adjective

not protected by trademark registration: “Cola” and “shuttle”are generic terms.

Do you wear "Christian" with a capital C, representing the radical and revolutionary faith birthed by Christ, the great martyr and singular salvation, the God-man? Or with a generic small "c", joining the millions who profess this faith without ever sharing it with a soul or getting in touch with the God who invented it? Is your faith at full-strength, or do you fluctuate by 40%, dosing low for the public and high for your small group members? Are you holding a portrait of faith that is a hotel-quality print that won't offend anyone, or a stunning masterpiece that inspires both love and hate from it's audience?

I am issuing a challenge - to myself along with all who read here. Own it. Memorize a few things that really epitomize your beliefs: John 3:16, the Apostles' Creed, a paragraph from your favorite author. Be prepared to talk about your faith. Don't just live it...tell people about your passion as well. In my experience, honesty and transparency equal a life full of diversity AND true relationships. If you are toning down your faith to keep up acquaintances or appearances, you are doing nobody a favor. If you're hiding a Rembrandt in your closet, and your walls are covered with posters, how do you even know if people really like you at all? I prefer to share my zealous faith with people who love God 100% as much as I do, and refresh my faith spending time with people who 100% disagree with me.

This year, purpose to own the trademark of your faith, and hold yourself accountable to higher standards as you engage with people in your real life world.

Joining Joy for life:unmasked today.

Defying Death: Adventure & Mortality

2011-12-27T15:03:00.000-06:00

There is a grievous evil I have seen under the sun: riches kept by the owner to his hurt, and those riches perish by evil adventure... (Ecclesiastes 5)

I am an adrenaline junkie. This trait is the product of the many times I was urged on by my younger brothers, only to chicken out at the last second. So many trees I didn't jump out of...races I didn't engage in...hills I refused to slide down. By college, I pushed myself hard to learn to snowboard. I became a hockey goalie. I tried bungee jumping and sky diving. I kayaked down many dangerous rivers. I once tubed in the buff down a river in Minnesota.

All of these risk taking activities sound pretty mild - but there were other death-defying habits I developed that weren't so harmless. I was a habitual liar. I constantly amped up my own stakes in my own game, at the expense of those who naively believed me. I messed around with binge drinking for a while, at the expense of my body. I think self-harm and suicide fit in the same category of death-defying stunts that gratified that gaping hole in me that could only be filled when I was on the brink of something dangerous, breathtaking or bad. Satan knew just how to seduce me, and I often closed my eyes to his rather transparent attempts to draw me away from safety and truth.

I gave up most of those habits when I was given a family. They still lurk in corners and occasionally I toy with them a bit too much. But, for the most part, I've abandoned risk taking in favor of a more sedate...and healthy...life with my husband and kids.

This insatiable thirst for adventure has cost me many things. One of the most bothersome to me is the dream of heaven. It is difficult for me to imagine how life could be exciting and perfect without any risks to take. How in the world will I enjoy myself if I can never die? Is that why Eve ate of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil - sheer boredom? Curiosity about how life tasted when the stakes were raised?

One of my cancer-inspired dreams is a good one: I slice through clouds with a snowboard, falling from a thunderhead a thousand feet to the sea of white below. I wonder if you still get that going-off-the-top-of-a-rollercoaster tickle in your tummy if you know nothing can kill you? I have to table my confusion until I get there and can ask Jesus. I simply can't imagine living forever and not losing the thrill of it. But then again perhaps I see life too often in the negative space, the black, not the white. Perhaps I don't really understand what it is to be alive at all.

Don't let the excitement of youth cause you to forget your Creator. Remember him before you become fearful of falling and worry about danger in the streets... (Ecclesiastes 12:1a & 5a)

2011: The Year of My Best Friend

2011-12-23T13:08:00.000-06:00

Frost glitters in the headlights, a million diamonds in a ditch. A million of His gifts scattered just for a night, just for my hungry eyes. I think back on a year of slowly counting the small things. How the joy has glistened brilliant on the darkest days, and lit up my heart in ways I didn't think possible. I read Deuteronomy 30:20-21, the verses that pulled me out of suicidal hopelessness, to a friend facing her own season of hopelessness last night. I think about His command, to choose life instead of death, blessing instead of cursing, to serve Him with our whole mind, body and spirit. How does that look in real life, with skin on? It seems like an impossible command...especially that last part. Like He is setting us up to fail.

I remember slowly that this is a book of law, a book for a time before Christ's ultimate redemption of our whole human race. The law was instituted to highlight the failings of humanity, how far we are from the perfection of God, how often we disobey, intentionally or unintentionally. While He certainly wants us to strive for that whole mind, body, spirit servitude, He knew from the beginning of time that we would fail at this.

This year, grayed out by depression and plagued by nightmares, flashbacks, and moments of the most utter helplessness and sorrow, I have succeeded at one thing...putting skin on Deuteronomy 30:20-21. I have chosen life instead of death, blessing instead of cursing, and laid myself out to serve Him wholly. Of course, I've failed in the minutiae of life, but as I look back at the big picture of 2011, I have done better at this than ever before.

What has that looked like? Willingness to welcome Him into my darkest days. Obedience in telling Him how I feel, instead of kicking Him out when I am angry. Pleading to Him when the tears burn sulfuric and the chest heaves with uncontainable grief. Remembering Him when the road of life is easy, and my burden lighter. Not forgetting His sustenance and faithfulness when I am filled with joy.

Following this command has healed my soul. And while depression still lurks, and sorrow still devours, I am never alone in my abyss. When the sun is shining and the smiles beaming, I have someone to thank, someone to revel with. In the most friendless year of my life, I find loneliness peopled by the divine, and I am satisfied, for the first time. It is a taste of eternity, walking daily with Christ. 2001 was the year of the Lover of my soul, 2006 was the year of my rescue from my temper, 2011 is the year of finally knowing Him as my Best Friend.

For this commandment that I command you today is not too hard for you, neither is it far off. It is not in heaven, that you should say, ‘Who will ascend to heaven for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?’ Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, ‘Who will go over the sea for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?’ But the word is very near you. It is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can do it. See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil. If you obey the commandments of the LORD your God that I command you today, by loving the LORD your God, by walking in his ways, and by keeping his commandments, then you shall live and multiply...But if your heart turns away, and you will not hear, but are drawn away to worship other gods and serve them, I declare to you today, that you shall surely perish. I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live, loving the LORD your God, obeying his voice and holding fast to him, for he is your life and length of days. (Deuteronomy 30:11-21a exc.)

Where the star leads

2011-12-22T11:01:00.000-06:00

The lights can be seen for miles. Something like the Star of the East. This year, the Wise Men rise out of the Christmas story and speak to me. With all their studies, their charting, their search for knowledge, they sacrificed all to ride through the continent to find a King. Of course they started with the king himself - looking for his heir, no doubt. But all they found was a disgruntled and power-hungry king who tried to manipulate their little adventure for his benefit. They left the palace and ended up in a stable, worshiping before a mere babe, a humble, working-class newborn. I wonder how they felt as they laid their strange gifts down? Did the irony of those gifts strike them? Did the stars also foretell of His assassination?

I am on a knowledge quest of my own. The Wise Men remind me not to make the quest itself an end - to focus on what is borne of that knowledge instead of the gaining of it. I have looked for the King in country and in organized religion. But He is often not there. He is still in the stable, still in the humblest places, in the least expected corners of life. The Wise Men remind me to go looking for a newborn in a manger instead of a king in pomp and glory. I have felt deep embarrassment and uncertainty as I lay my gifts before that King. The Wise Men remind me that He is the one who judges the thoughts and intents of the heart. He does not scrutinize and criticize my gifts, but allows me to bring Him glory through the most ironic of offerings - my brokenness, my shame, my defeats.

I think, too, about my children. Am I preparing them for a life of this kind of adventure? Epiphany moments followed by humble and risky obedience? Will I show them what it means to follow Christ wherever He leads, however dangerous the journey, however unlikely the arriving place?

This year, I'm following the star and hoping for true wisdom. I come only to worship and lay my gifts down. I am walking in the footsteps of the fallen, on the path that leads back to the lowly manger and the holy family, surrounding their newborn son along with the angels, the shepherds, and the beasts.

Do you see what I see

A star, a star

Dancing in the night

With a tail as big as a kite

Said the shepard boy to the mighty king

Do you know what I know

In your palace wall mighty king

Do you know what I know

A child, a child

Shivers in the cold

Let us bring him silver and gold

The child, the child

Sleeping in the night

He will bring us goodness and light

~Do You Hear What I Hear?~

True humility

2011-12-20T16:01:00.003-06:00

This past week, someone challenged me to be more humble. At various points in my career, I've faced similar criticism that labels me as "too confident". I've been thinking and praying about this. I long to show the face of humility to those around me, and it concerns me that others don't see this when they see me. Yet I know that, internally, I struggle greatly with self-esteem. How can this be so and yet so invisible?

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

to cleanse every part of me...

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 may be weak

Your spirit's strong in me

My flesh may fail

My God you never will

~Give Me Faith, Elevation Worship~

How can my heart be broken, how can I be shipwrecked on the grace of the cross, and not show it? I know that pride is at the heart of all sin. I do not want to be guilty of it. I don't want pride or arrogance to be what people see in my eyes. I memorized Proverbs 16:18 in the King James Bible as a child: pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.

I also memorized Paul's powerful testimony. He said unto me, "My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in your weakness". Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. (II Corinthians 12:9) How can I possibly hang my head in humility when I am glorying not in my own strength but that of the Christ who saved me from my darkest sins and my most cavernous deficits?

I stand, only in light of His mercy. I fail constantly - to communicate well, to do the right thing, to be busy instead of lazy, to persevere, to count my blessings and also count my suffering as great joy.

He gave me undeniable talents, and has cultivated them into skill and beauty. I have progressed through graduate school on the tightest possible schedule. Music flows from my fingertips, and I can sing a great harmony line. I sew, craft, build. I raise and school children. I started a company. I am hard at work on a series of three scholarly articles for my dissertation. I write here almost daily, pouring my soul out for the community of online readers. I take luminous photographs. I paint, draw, engrave. I care for pets with love. I survive - cancer, abuse, heart problems, hair loss, fatigue, depression, PTSD, suicidal impulses.

All this I praise God for. Looking back over the entirety of my life, I know none would be possible without His great mercy. I would be a bitter, hollow shell of a person by now. Therefore I will boast all the more gladly in my weaknesses! He has used every hard knock and every soft landing to mold and shape me, to bring me to my knees, and lift my hands in awestruck praise of Him.

When you see me, you see the confidence of a soul set free to create, perform, and to pursue Christ in every walk of life. You don't see the me, naked without Christ...the me without grace. Because that "me" no longer exists. I have been pardoned, bought, and elevated on the eagle wings of the Savior! I will never stop soaring on the wind of His love!

True humility is this: never seeing yourself without the covering of the Cross. True confidence is this: I do not depend any longer on the dead human self or body. I depend wholly and gratefully on the absolute propitiation, the key that loosed all my chains, the provider who daily sanctifies me and tests my faith, chases after the last dark corners of my heart and loves my whole being.

I am desperate for Your touch

a glimpse of heaven for the glory of Your Son.

In a moment You canturn a life around

forever to be found in You.

I am reaching out to find

theres nothing greater thanYour love that holds my life.

Your grace and mercy that have saved me by Your blood,

and swept away my shame, o Lord.

Your love is like fire that burns for all to see.

My only desire to worship at Your feet.

So let this fireconsume my life.

Let Your love take me deeper

pull me closer to where You are,

'cause all I want is more of You.

I'm surrendered to Your love

forever humbled by themessage of the cross.

I stand abandoned in Your presence and Your embrace,

and I'll never be the same Oh God.

When You call I will follow.

At the cross I surrender all,

Jesus, I belong to You.

~Love Like Fire, Hillsong United~

Undone

2011-12-17T21:27:00.000-06:00

Venus on the horizon at sunset

Let your boat of life be light, packed only with what you need - a homely home and simple pleasures, one or two friends worth the name, someone to love and someone to love you, a cat, a dog, a pipe or two, enough to eat and enough to wear, and a little more than enough to drink, for thirst is a dangerous thing. (Jerome Klapka Jerome)

I have a nightmare, excruciating. I am with my husband and two of my children, the eldest and the youngest. We take a sightseeing ride over St. Anthony Main, where the Mississippi burgeons for the first time into her full glory as a major river of the United States. The river is 300 feet below us, huge boulders slicing her flow into streams. Suddenly the car we are in tips haphazardly to the side, nearly spilling us to our death over the rocks. My husband grabs my son's ankle and my daughter grips the rope. Then we huddle together in the bottom of the car, shifting all our weight to the other side, trying to keep it upright. I beg my sleepy husband to hold tight to my son's ankle or I will go mad.

I wake up sweaty, and it is time to get up and get ready for work. I put on my scrubs, my PhD(c) lab coat, my stethoscope. I head back to the ICU to pick up a patient. I face the scorn in the eyes of the coworkers. I try to find the cath lab to drop this patient off for his procedure. I am squeezing the bag that connects to oxygen and the tube through which he breathes while comatose. I can't find the lab through the maze of construction in the hospital, and I am begging, "Lord, if this is a nightmare, please let me wake up." The stress mounts, and I am undone.

I come up another level, this time really to consciousness. At least, I think so. I am drenched, weary, fearful. What if this is just the third nightmare-within-a-nightmare? I have visions of the movie Inception. It is not until 30 minutes later, pulling on my yellow jacket and heading out the door to church, that I am sure I am really awake this time.

This is PTSD. The nightmares and flashbacks bring me continually to my knees, so that I pray even in my sleep. How can I deny that God is moving through the most painful season of my life, when all the traumas of past days come crashing down and I can finally hear the sound of the walls in my heart moaning under the pressure of new stress, collapsing and clouding my mind with their dust and grit.

In Deuteronomy 31, God sings through Moses' mouth these words to Israel:

I would have said, "I will cut them to pieces. I will wipe them from human memory," had I not feared provocation by the enemy, lest their adversaries misunderstand, lest they should say, "Our hand is triumphant, it was not the Lord who did all this." See now that I, even I, am He, and there is no god beside me: I kill and I make alive; I wound and I heal; and there is none that can deliver you out of My hand. For I lift up my hand to heaven and swear, "As I live forever, if I sharpen my flashing sword, and my hand takes hold on judgment, I will take vengeance on my adversaries and will repay those who hate me." Rejoice with me, O heavens, bow down to Him, all gods, for He avenges the blood of His children...and cleanses His people's land. (Deuteronomy 31: 26-27; 38-41; 43)

He wants me undone. He wants me struck open like an overripe melon, spilling my guts and hollowing out a place for Him. He wounds me so that He may bind me, so that I might see the awesome power of His hand in my life. While I am hurting, I sit in the palm of His hand, in His grip. When I am whole, it is He who makes me so. He empties out my life, so that I might simply live. He sweeps away distractions and leaves only that which matters most, so that I might notice the simple joy and the all-consuming love that surrounds, instead of all the cobwebs I've stored up in my spiritual house. It is as if the furniture has been removed, and standing in the echoing room are my husband and children, my family and friends, just people - nothing else. The sun streams in the windows and hits the whitewashed walls, and I am undone again, this time by the incredible beauty of His creation instead of the cardboard crowns I have constructed life long. I can say, this day, that I care nothing for appearances, abandoning them for the absolute, pure glory of God.

Glory to God, the beginning and the end, Who was, and is, and is to come. (Revelation 1:8)

It's the simple things

2011-12-17T12:51:00.003-06:00

The days are dark and dreary, and I am penned up at home, feeling a bit cabin-feverish. Like a jewel in the dust, sparkling in the sunlight, are the moments with the kids that remind me how blessed I am. Amy's music is a constant source of deep joy. Today I recorded her singing "Joy to the World" while playing her guitar. Hope you enjoy as much as I did!

Tonight in a tavern

2011-12-15T21:27:00.000-06:00

The week is spent mostly apart. He peoples my dreams with allure and comfort, and I wake lonely, bare. Tonight, finally, on the third try, we get out for a date. We head over to the village near us - yes, a village still, in this 21st century - where the wind is screaming down the lone main street, rattling the gravel on the road. There are none but farm trucks outside the tavern. It is a wood shack with metal roof, the size of a double wide trailer. Inside, warmth. On the single powerline in town hang Christmas lights and plastic Santa faces from the 1950's. There is a blue wreath with a sign that says, "Keep Christ in Christmas". The evening train blows it's familiar long whistle as it approaches this whistle stop town.

We sit down to pork steaks seared by one of the 4-H club boys, mounds of sauerkraut and boiled dumplings. The waitress brings us a "relish tray" with radishes, cheeses, and small onion bulbs. I am overdressed in my charcoal wool sweater and orange Keens. My husband is the only hippie in the joint with his long hair. We talk first of the difficult things - how I'm doing, what it's been like for him to return to the workplace from which I was fired, what I learned from my therapist today. Then on to giggles over Wheel of Fortune and four dollars worth of trivia playing that lands us the top spot on the scoreboard. I drink sweet glassfuls and he beer, and talk drifts to a 16 year old girl in the adoption newsletter we just received. Can we risk it? We both feel a familiar tug, and agree to call social services tomorrow to find out more. Move forward with a home study with our tax return.

Our friends are hovering around divorce. We feel a humility and thanks for the grace of a happy marriage, a place we both call home and happiness, joy and journey. Companions. Here in the yellow light of the tavern five miles from home, we slow to match each other's mood. Two tables over, the Mexican farmhands who lend the only diversity to the place grow louder as eight o'clock approaches. We head home in the winter wind, feeling slightly out of place in our sedan, holding hands. Simple, and the best of date nights.

Scheduling the next scan

2011-12-14T15:41:00.000-06:00

I sit in the familiar off-white office, with the cups stacked neatly on the shelf, and a few panoramas of autumn leaves. The doctor squeezes my throat hard as I swallow water from the cup, feeling for tumors in my neck. There are none. The rest of the appointment breezes by - yes, my calcium is still low, so I have to keep chomping down the Tums. My drug levels are perfect for suppressing cancer growth, which means I'm tired for some other reason. He hands me the white sheet with the schedule for my cancer scan in January, and I am suddenly floating, untethered from reality, off into the whitewash of the fluorescent light.

And so a day comes and goes, and I measure the week in doctor's appointments, therapy, naps. My mother comes to stay since I chose to stay at home through my latest bout of suicidal thought and nightmares, flashbacks. I convalesce in my bedroom under the comforter.

One more scan, one more long vacation from home, one more chance to find the tumor lurking. Then the doctor says we can just follow my tumor markers since the scans aren't finding the tumor anyway. I don't know what's worse: having the scans to find the supposed tumor, or giving up and living with the tumor. In any case, I'll try not to think about it until January 16.

The calm

2011-12-13T17:00:00.000-06:00

Well, all the cool kids [aka my blogging friends] are doing it, so here goes: my very first vlog!

The world is still, and I'm alone

I close my eyes, and You are here

In crowded streets, in busy halls

I pause to breathe, and You are near.

In every place, in every time,

In every way, You are my guide.

I've always feared my loneliness

but now I find, in my abyss...

A quiet assurance

Your simple endurance

This peace everlasting

This calm in the eye of the storm.

On dreary nights, on sunny days,

You find me there, and take my hand.

When I collapse, You lift me up,

This love, too great to understand

~The Calm~

written by Genevieve M. Holmen, 2001

in memory of forever 4 year old Sissy, my almost daughter

Stringing pearls

2011-12-12T10:44:00.000-06:00

Today I simply count, hoping that stringing pearls will be enough to build a rope for my rescue from a dark season of depression following the loss of my job.

1216: making it all the way through hockey practice
1218: nap with my sick little boy
1226: kid size ice rink in the backyard
1238: Deuteronomy 30
1253: peaceful nap with no nightmares
1259: beautiful gloves from Saver's
1274: the long exhale at sunset

Walking away with dignity

2011-12-10T15:15:00.001-06:00

In the dark bedroom lit by the moon, husband slumbering deep, I am awake. There is a scissors on the dresser and I am thinking of thick scarlet blood running. I worked at a job for 11 weeks, and I am still acclimated to working through the night. The noose tightens again, my throat constricted, thoughts impulsive and sin filled. One of the hardest lesson you have to learn as a caregiver is that people live and die without you. There was a time when I was a new nurse when I didn't understand this. Realizing you are not God is difficult, especially when you're young. God granted me special talents with my hands - the ability to find arteries hiding, to slide plastic IVs into tender, ropy veins, a sixth sense when danger was near. I had to learn that other nurses had the same talents. That I was just one in a vast army of people with the same gifts. That I was not the only person who could do what I did.

Facing the fact that you are not as unique as you think is difficult when you also know that God created you an individual totally distinct from every other human since or before. Yet all these people I've cared for, I've left at the end of the shift, however long. And their stories progressed on without me. I have to believe that God wanted me there on that unit for just 11 weeks, and that He doesn't need me there any longer. I was blessed to participate in saving two lives while I was there. Maybe that's just what He needed from this time. Maybe He just wanted to confirm for me that I haven't lost my touch. That I can still look deep into the eyes surrounded by the white of panic and see the person deep inside, connect with them, comfort them in those last moments of consciousness.

Adjusting to this - that I am no longer necessary there - while maintaining a sense of purpose for my existence is a difficult tightrope to walk. Those synapses that harness me to my own worth are tenuous and faulty, a suspension bridge with planks missing, planks that fell into the river of doubt deep below while I convalesced from the deepest and darkest season of depression and pain I've known.

I held his pink cheeks while his body was wracked with coughing fits today during naptime. I fall in love all over again with the blond spike, the dark chocolate eyes, the pearly row of baby teeth, the flush of sick little cheeks. It is my moment of worship, this day, holding this beautiful soul in my arms, the ache in my chest dissipating and the dreams of death diminishing. It is Christmastime, and I can't help but think of the Savior babe, the one Mary clung to, the miraculous birth that she trusted though she must have had premonitions that her Son was born not just for her pleasure but for the rescue of a fallen world. What must she have felt when she knelt beneath the cross, finally realizing that even Christ had to leave His place in our world? Never was a person so necessary. But sometimes it is through the sacrifice of all we hold dear, the bending to sovereign will much more important than our own, that is the greatest act of care a person could ever make. Walking quietly the path that is laid before us with the dignity of a soul that grasps Grace and forgives the calloused and sightless persecutor is, indeed, the most Christlike beauty.

Opposite action

2011-12-09T09:58:00.001-06:00

My camera sits gathering dust on the dresser, a talent set aside in a busy season of new work. Meanwhile, the world gathers snowflakes and dresses herself in snowy down for the long winter. This beauty called to me, but I turned a deaf ear in favor of more sleep.

The manual of skills I took home with me from the psych unit gathers dust, too. A treasure trove of ideas for fighting depression set aside as depression mounts in the dark cold night. I skipped the entire section on emotions, because I don't have emotions. When something hits close to the wounded heart, I simply feel a pervading ickiness that defies description with words like "anger", "sadness" or "hopelessness". I scrounge for a mindless distraction until that burning in my chest recedes and I can put my happy face back on again.

All of this detracts from holiday spirit, and for the first time, I don't want a Christmas tree. I loathe shopping for Christmas presents, a task that seems insurmountable, out of reach of our budget. I am overwhelmed with the mere thought of baking.

I drag my cold and dormant body out to the tree farm with reluctance. The beauty there washes over my cold soul like waves of wonder, and there is a spark of Christmas cheer lit somewhere deep inside. We shake off the perfect tree and bring it home to decorate.

The kids are sick with the requisite early winter head cold, crabby and uncouth, snotty and snide. Aaron home on an unexpected vacation and I newly emancipated from my job, we try to parent pleasant, but the words are often angry and the temper fuses short.

All this is undone by the wonder in one tiny snowflake, caught on the drift and showing it's fingerling crystals in the snappish December air.

Undone by the beauty of a loved ones smile, the cuddles on the hay wagon, the peacefulness of the warm shed and hot cider on a quiet Monday at the tree farm.

And as the snowflakes fall in a beautiful cascade, covering caps and eyelashes of these beautiful souls we are blessed to parent, we are reminded though our sins be as scarlet, He will wash them white as snow.

It is a slow repentance, turning of the mind under the blinking lights of the Christmas tree heavy with ornaments. He brings me back to Deuteronomy 30 in my therapist's words on a bleak Thursday evening. Opposite action: identifying my emotion, naming that consuming ick that is slippery and hard to label, and choosing something I don't want to do - something I fear will make it all worse - throwing myself into it body, mind and soul until I realize that I am stronger than I think, better mother than I imagine, perhaps even a wife worthy of husband's pursuit.

For this commandment that I command you today is not too hard for you, neither is it far off. It is not in heaven, that you should say, "Who will ascend to heaven for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?" Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, "Who will go over the sea for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?" But the Word is very near you. It is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can do it. I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live, loving the Lord your God, obeying His voice and holding fast to Him, for He is your life and length of days... (Deuteronomy 30:11-14, 19-20a)

Today, I want to hibernate under my down comforter, under the streaming sin, watching the nightmares and pleasant dreams play across the projector behind my eyelids. Instead, a Christmas craft - with paint! - throwing myself wholeheartedly into this mothering I so often neglect and children I often disappoint. Today I choose to be the mother I wish I was all the time. Today I choose the opposite action, so that fear and shame may dwindle and Christmas be merry and bright once again.

Joining Bonnie over at {in}courage today for "Can Christmas Really Change Your Story?"

Solving the long-term housing crisis: Ambassadors to the Nations

2011-12-08T11:56:00.001-06:00

My husband remembers a toddler boy running in and out of a tin make-shift shelter in Belize in 1996. He thought it was a tool shed, and asked another missionary if they should keep the boy out of the shed for fear of him getting hurt. The missionary replied that the shed was the boy's family home, pieces of corrugated metal tacked together with a tarp roof. The "house" was the size of a bathroom, about 6'x5', and 10 people slept there every night, on the bare ground.

I remember seeing these shacks - often with a chicken run attached to the side and a cow tied on a stake in the grassless front yard. Animal filth littered the yard in which children were playing happily on the hard packed dirt. The houses built by Samaritan's Purse were definitely an upgrade, with their solid foundation, rain-proof roof, and oven and stove in the kitchen. However, they were still approximately the same size. It was hard to imagine an entire family sleeping in this small space.

I recently learned of an organization that picks up where Samaritan's Purse leaves off, building sturdy, earthquake resistant homes measuring a relatively spacious 20'x20'. The houses have windows, doors, floors, electricity, running water, kitchen appliances, and furnishings, including beds that allow people to sleep in comfort and cleanliness. The houses cost just $4500 to build and $300 to furnish, with all donations going directly to the cost of building. Ambassadors to the Nations covers administrative costs through a separate donation process. They also run medical clinics, host short-term missionaries, and build and run schools and child sponsorship programs in Nicaragua, Mexico, Cuba, and Jamaica.

A fellow CCU nurse has taken on the work of raising money for a home in Nicaragua for a family of 12. To donate specifically to her house project, click on the link above, make your donation through Paypal, and type "Stabenow House" in the comments section.

Mission work orchestrated to solve both short-term and long-term needs is what the third world needs. By solving physical needs, missionaries are in a unique position to share the story of the greatest Giver our world has ever known.

When we dream, it's of the wind
Blowing cold and hard
When we wake up, we still live
in our house of cards
~House of Cards, Mary Chapin Carpenter~

Reflections on Samaritan's Purse: 12 Causes for Christmas

2011-12-07T13:49:00.001-06:00

I've never seen Billy Graham speak, and I haven't met his son, Franklin. Yet I had the opportunity to work in concert with Samaritan's Purse to build homes, churches, and shelters while providing medical care to thousands of people in Central America in 2000-2002. Short-term missions teams were recruited by Samaritan's Purse to serve people affected by earthquakes, landslides and flooding in Honduras and El Salvador, countries facing thousands of deaths from natural disasters and the following political upheaval much like the current crisis in Haiti.

Church and shelter of building supplies in La Ceiba, Honduras

My job was to provide medical care, prescriptions, and medical devices to the suffering. We traveled by van to many remote locations, where construction team members erected cement block 10'x10' homes with tarp roofs. A location that broke my heart was Jerusalem, El Salvador, where we conducted our medical exams under a large tree unaffected by the recent earthquake, standing in the town square. I casted an open fracture on a 60 year old grandmother while other team members built a shelter for her, her cousin, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

While I was wholeheartedly sold on the work being done by Samaritan's Purse, it never occurred to me that working with them might mean I could not work with other aid organizations based in the United States. Our ability to serve these people long-term ended with the construction of a sturdy medical clinic and church building on a location that very well might disintegrate during the next mudslide.

Our team consisted of about 20 construction workers, and 10 or so medical personnel. As the need for triage grew in the first few days of the trip, I was forced to train two college students to take blood pressures, temperatures, and pulse. Our translators were teenage local girls.

Several patient's faces still haunt me to this day. A six-year-old boy was brought to the clinic across long suspension rope and plank bridges from the Guatemalan border. He was in gv, a type of seizure lasting more than 20 minutes. He had been seizing for ten hours when he hit the clinic doors, and continued to seize for 2 hours more while we frantically worked to save him. We placed a bite block - a sturdy stick brought in from the jungle. I ground up prescription anti-anxiety medication from one of the construction workers (she was afraid of flying on planes) and massaged the medication into his gums. He didn't stop seizing until I injected him with an anti-seizure medication. He stayed overnight on the clinic exam table and we found him stable and alert the next morning. His mother, grandmother and sister all accepted Christ that morning, and we sent them home with Keppra to prevent future seizures.

The number of children who visited our clinic gravely ill was staggering. One baby was too dehydrated to save, and died during the night while her mother tried to spoon Pedialyte into her cheeks.

On my second trip to Honduras, a mother and son visited the clinic. The baby's name was Jesús, and he was born in Jerusalem 4 weeks after we left in our bus. His mother traveled to La Ceiba when she heard that the Wisconsin mission team had returned. A year earlier, I had diagnosed her pregnancy - she was about 6 or 7 months along - and gave her prenatal vitamins. She was so grateful for giving birth to a healthy baby, she named him after the servant-King Jesus. This story touched my heart and validated the evangelical approach of Samaritan's Purse, which is to provide for the immediate medical and shelter needs of the people while sharing the Gospel with them.

One man visited our clinic in La Libertad, El Salvador. He was having an acute heart attack, with blood pressure 200/120, and heart rates in the 190s. He admitted he had been smoking some cocaine several times daily to keep him alert at his job - standing sentinel in a field of coca. Another field nearby grew marijauna for export to the United States. He humbly asked if he could smoke marijuana when he quit using cocaine, and we agreed that would be a better compromise given the state of his health. He showed us the fields, and I was in some form of North American shock at the volume of drug being grown. The men in the coca field were chewing the leaves. Many had symptoms of heart problems.

An excerpt from my missions journal tells a painful story:

God puts before us another poignant reminder of how temporary this all is. I have been called to serve his creations, watch over these physical bodies. Yet all I can do is labor with my hands, educate my mind, and pray. HE holds the keys to life and death. My guardianship over his people is so short-lived, so temporary. As we drove up into the mountains out to La Libertad, we came upon an accident. A small boy, twisted and broken, in a pool of dark blood, his bicycle nearby. It is hard to save people only for them to die. So hard to continue this ministry, which is so easily cut short. I have always wanted to save everyone - from pain, suffering, sorrow, anger, strife. I didn't come here expecting this much beauty, nor this much sorrow, nor as many lessons. Beauty has been the flash of white teeth from a dirty face, a lily tree growing from a pile of trash, the warmth of a hug from someone so ill they can hardly stand. Sorrow has been lacking the right ointment, a surgeon's skilled hands, a dead boy in the road shot clean through after we have just taken care of him and 200 others. Lessons have been sleeping on the floor amidst roaches, eating in a filthy town square, feeling the hand of God in every treatment decision, learning to change the things I can and accepting when I cannot. (July 13th, 2001)

Click to learn more about Samaritan's Purse, including their current medical mission work in Haiti and other impoverished nations. They also sponsor Operation Christmas Child and publish a unique catalog of gifts that can be bought for those living in poverty world-wide.

A new low

2011-12-07T09:13:00.001-06:00

Yesterday a new low: I was fired from my job as a CCU RN. It is the first time I've ever been fired. I plunged deep into an angry stupor and slept away the worst in an 18 hour nap. I wake up blessed to find two casual positions at the competing hospital in Eau Claire, and hit "submit" on yet another application. I am unsure how God is directing through this pain. To another job that is a better fit? Is He clearing my schedule so I can focus on the PhD dissertation that has been sitting dormant in draft? Does He want me to fight for exoneration against the claims made in the termination procedure at the old job?

A sign at the Christmas tree farm echoes loud and true as I ponder this turn of events:

God's will won't ever lead you where Grace cannot protect.

I need prayer - prayer for peace of mind and spirit, prayer against the suicidal thoughts that returned to torment me yesterday.

Finding clarity

2011-12-04T09:11:00.001-06:00

"Nor height, nor depth, neither any other created thing, shall be able to sever me from the love of God, which is in our Lord Yeshua The Messiah." (Romans 8:39)

I panic in the flashback because I can't remember who I'm married to. My husband looks long and deep, brown eyes meeting faltering brown, and says he'll help me remember. Day turns into evening, thick with snowflakes as we slip slide our way to town to watch my old hockey team play. Another snippet of the nightmare creeps into consciousness...I remember trying out for the girls' summer softball team there in my dream, and they tell me I am too old to play, 28 already. I have forgotten a decade of birthdays and I squeeze my eyelids tight and try to remember them, shadows sliding across consciousness as impressions of memories try to break through my sleep.

I find truth in my sons kisses and my husbands laughter, in the pages of my Bible as Romans leaps out like a sword to sever me from dreams. The kids rock out through the night to Shawn Groves, and his lyrics soak in, make my brain slippery to dreams and nothing catches all night long. I wake up to peace, the world under the blanket of winter and my mind calm and clear as the whispering air, crystalline in the cold. I praise God for the night's sleep, uninterrupted and serene.

Praise God for the Word that is alive and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, dividing asunder soul and spirit, joints and marrow, judging reasoning and consciousness of the heart. (Hebrews 4:12)

No death, life

Angels or demons,

No height, depth

Can come in between us

And Your love

~Shawn Groves, Come By Here~

Outside looking in

2011-12-03T18:04:00.001-06:00

I look down at my arms, and they are alien arms stitched on my body. I am not that old. I search the sand dunes of memory, sifting for a name, my husband's name. The doctor in my nightmare tells me I've had children. I can't remember this. My mind is a white snowbank of blank, and I am holding cards that should have memories on them instead of hieroglyphs I can't understand.

I fall back into self with a thud, and the only physical sensation I have is that I am much too tall. Is it possible to grow three feet while you're dreaming? I touch my head, and the soft fuzz there feels foreign. Like my brother's summer buzz cut when we were children.

My husband says, "Look at my glasses." So I do, I stare hard, but I still cannot remember marrying him. The buzzing in my ears drowns out the sounds and I see the light in a hard line on the floor as the children crack the bathroom door to see who is crying. It takes a moment to realize that it is me making that low moan.

So I lay back into flannel sheets and down comforter, and try to purge the nightmare from brain cells. I was drowning, falling, broken, bleeding. Others were hurt in my crash. Yet I am trying to walk, trying to look alright. A pastor in a flashy suit asks me if I am okay. Of course I am. Of course I am. I plod along to a river and soak my bloody feet in the dark bracken there.

I wake up still falling, and my husband is a stranger whose name I can't remember.

Oh, for sanity. I pray for sanity.

Beginning December

2011-12-02T08:35:00.001-06:00

We woke up to a white world yesterday, a damp snow clinging to the hillsides and trees. Today the sun shines through a fine hoar frost. We are enjoying an unexpected December vacation at home, Aaron off for my graduation dream that did not materialize. We make plans to get our Christmas tree and take a short trip to the Cities. It is a lovely way to start December, and I shake off sleepiness this morning to join in the fun.

Thank you for all the comments on my post "grace in the discards". I have been truly blessed by each and every one of you who called or commented to support me on a gray day!

All I want for Christmas

2011-11-30T20:11:00.001-06:00

Even in the deepest canyons of life, when we sit huddled in the rocky bottom, unsure of our way up, the sun hits the ledges above and lights the mountainside with glory, reminding us of warmth and promise and propelling us in our search of a path out. Sunrise this morning reminds me of this ancient truth once again, the hillsides lit golden and scarlet by the ascending sun, the valleys still dark and frost-bitten from the winter's dark night.

It is always so, when I am hermetically sealed in the warmth of my home, and I gaze out the windows at the beauty He lays at our doorstep faithfully with each sunrise. Creation is my beacon home, the light that both guides me to the safe channel and warns me of the dangerous cliffs and rocks of the dark sea. Sitting on the other side of the window, in the shadows, I am daily in awe as the sun hits the ice crystals on the windowpane and sends me twirling in the chandelier light of the morning's prism.

All I wish for Christmas is this: that I remember that, no matter how long, deep, wide and dark the canyon of my winter's discontent, my way is lit by the Light of a holy and unfathomable God who speaks loudest through suffering and draws us closest through days such as these. Holy, holy, holy, merciful and mighty!

I’ve been climbing my whole life

and I’m only at the bottom of the mountain,

Rising up from my feetin the daylight

rising up into the clouds and out of my sight

is the height of that mountain

Well my hands cannot reach it

and my mind can’t comprehend it

but my soul is gonna get there one day

Lord, these shoes are gonna need some help

so we can make it to the top of the mountain

Many feet have gone before us

with a habit of faith and courage

they’ll meet us at the road’s end

~Christa Wells, On the Mountain~

Pocket full of sunshine

2011-11-29T13:25:00.001-06:00

No matter how deep you bury joy, it bubbles up like an underground spring and overflows on days when the sun is shining.

I got a pocket, got a pocketful of sunshine

I got a love and I know that it's all mine,

Do what you want but you're never gonna break me

Sticks and stones are never gonna shake me,

Wish that you could but you ain't gonna own me

Do anything you want you can't slow me down,

Take me away, a secret place

A sweet escape, take me away

Take me away to better days

Take me away, a hiding place

There's a place that I go that nobody knows

Where the rivers flow and I call it home

And there's no more lies in the darkness there's light

And nobody cries, there's only butterflies

The sun is on my side and takes me for a ride

I smile up to the sky, I know I'll be alright

~Pocket Full of Sunshine, Natasha Bedingfield~

Grace in the discards

2011-11-28T07:31:00.001-06:00

Writing here has been difficult; cancer looms large but I am called to proclaim the Cross more and more through this remarkable journey. I blog hop and scatter pebbles and crumbs and the readers come more and more slowly. Will you do me this favor, encourage me with a comment when you read this? You will grace me with your presence and response.

Keeping an online journal has hidden blessings: I hit "search", and, thanks to Google, realize that I have written about my messy house every October and November since I began writing in 2008. Really, this whole journal is full of Joy's life: unmasked project - the inner workings of the mind and the heart when faced with the large difficulties of life.

Even while I'm asleep, the chairs set out for devotions with my husband mock me with their piles of clean clothes and discarded summer quilts. I know it would take 15 minutes to clean up, but I spend that 15 minutes sleeping with my nightmares every day instead. He and I are like ships passing in the dawn in the dark anyway, too tired for anything beyond a quick and quiet romp in the sheets.

Hats litter my dresser, along with the remnants of my last shift working as a nurse, the watch ticking off time and the furry blue hat a reminder of hairlessness now a memory of three weeks past.

Just as Christ chooses to love me with all His heart instead of focusing on my flaws, I look past the mess to the yellow daisies in the antique milk bottle standing on the head of my bed.

Winter has come back again

Feels like the season won't end

My faith is dying tonight

And I won't try to pretend

I've got it all figured out

I don't have any doubts

I've got a busted heart

I need You nowYeah, I need You now

Hold on to me, hold on to me

Don't let me lose my way

Hold on to me

I am the wandering son

Your love is never enough

I keep chasing the wind

Instead of chasing Your love

I'm screaming out Your name

Don't let me fall on my face

I've got a busted heart

I'm in need of a change

I'm desperate for grace

Broke Your heart a thousand times

But You've never left my side

You have always been here for me

You never let me go

Until it comes to an end

Soon this season will end

I'll surrender tonight

You meet me right where I am

~Busted Heart (Hold on To Me), For King & Country~

Is unity as reachable as repentance?

2011-11-26T15:09:00.001-06:00

It's a dark and rainy day in Wisconsin, and I am hit with a severe case of the post-Thanksgiving cum se, cum sa blues. I realize I've done this to myself with too much turkey gravy and pie, coupled with my choice to watch a Hitler movie last night and read about Rwanda this morning.

I've been thinking a lot about cookie cutter solutions to life, how we tend to latch on to the vision God gives us that sets us free, and prescribe it for every sufferer we encounter for a while. I do this myself, take the things that healed my marriage and, assuming the things were the magic key, tell others about them. I do it myself as I try to employ Ann's key to spiritual freedom to my life, counting up small joys and trying to make a similar ladder out of them as I try to climb out of cavern created by a painful leave from one church and the painful joining of another.

What if what works for one person is not how God will free another? I face this hard truth as two dear friends go through divorce, and slowly realize that perhaps God is allowing divorce in their lives to set them free. I face it again when death's door opens for a patient, and that is how God heals them. I would love to jump on the Prosperity Gospel bandwagon, and believe that God heals all people in this life if only they trust Him enough. My life experience fights tooth and nail against that theology, showing me time and again that instead, God moves in mysterious ways. Speaking of mysterious, I never thought I'd change my mind about Rick Warren after reading The Purpose Driven Life, seeming so full of that false theology. But what if he is also changing, growing, learning as he leads a large church in California and begins to dive into the world market of suffering as a missions minded pastor?

As I read about Warren's PEACE project in Rwanda, a movement designed to change church planting from an extraneous solution to world spiritual poverty to an intrinsic one, involving only the shareholders of that church instead of the financial aid and support of Western churches, I am intrigued. Director Odendahl (PhD and Doctorate prepared) writes eloquently about the project, stating in his conclusion that Saddleback Church desires this project to be

"one in which Jesus' prayer that all of them may be one, Father...so that the world may believe that you have sent me (John 17:21) becomes a reality; a partnership that truly empowers all partners and transforms individuals and communities. It is a journey towards a partnership that integrates national aspiration with cultural appropriateness while calibrated against the Biblical mandate of being the body of Christ where each member needs the other." (from Mission Frontiers, November-December 2011)

I didn't think much about cultural appropriateness when I was working in medical missions, beyond not drinking beer where women don't and wearing clothes considered modest in the culture I was visiting. In retrospect, however, a host of issues with medical missions have concerned me, even down to the medications we prescribe and the way we expect people to manage their health and prevent disease. I think about how proud I have been, to assume that a northerner from snowy Wisconsin could assume to understand the healthcare needs of people living in the tropics. The PEACE project, part of a host of post-post-modernism movements that seek to critique and change the poorly executed mission work of their forerunners, is admirable in it's goal to refine and improve church planting and associated mission work in impoverished countries. My admiration is balanced, though, by the mindfulness of my friend Joy's current blog project, 12 Causes for Christmas. She is striving to decrease competition between aid associations in the U.S. and increase awareness of the diversity of opportunities for missionaries and supporters.

In that spirit, I am tempted to revisit my younger naïveté, believing once again that it really is as simple as serving. Maybe the differences between us that seem cavernous under the microscope of critique are really very small when seen with the naked eye of love.

Maybe I am only as different from the tropical nations I served as snowflakes on the tongue. Maybe joy is just a small step from grief, and unity a hop-skip from discord. Maybe it is all as simple as repentance, turning yourself around right where you stand, refusing to look upon the deadness of sin and focusing your eyes instead on the Grace of the Cross.

Linked up to We're All on the Same Team: 12 Causes for Christmas

Thanksgiving round-up

2011-11-24T05:00:00.000-06:00

A few of my favorite things for Thanksgiving Day this year. How about you? Post your Thanksgiving mash-up of favorite links and music using the link tool below and tell us what inspires you this holiday season.

Ex-fundie firecracker Elizabeth Esther writes about giving in and giving up when faced with graceless "church discipline"

Amazing cover of Lady A's "Need You Now" by Adele and Darius Rucker

A description of my physical exhaustion after starting shift work again

Favorite new I-phone app? Ann Voskamp's handy organizer, 1000 gifts (also available for Droid)

Don't forget to post your faves below!

Wake-up call

2011-11-23T09:58:00.001-06:00

You are as purple as the winter sunset sky, and my pulse quickens as the code bell rings, signaling to the hospital that another fragile person has fallen prey for lack of oxygen and a good heartbeat. We flock around like sightseers to the sunset, but you rally and suddenly you are gray, and then pink again. You, the reason I pried little fingers off my scrub pants last night to go to work. You, whose dying day is written in His book...but it is not today. I stuff the yellow tag from the code cart into my scrub pocket, the rasp of the ziptag tugging at my fingers cracked and bleeding from hospital soap. A reminder of someone who breathes again because of quick feet of these people who live out lives in the fluorescent of the hospital lights, working through the night to watch God push up dawn for a few dozen people who lay on beds hovering between this life and the next. To me, for most of the night, you were just the patient moaning in the room next door, not my patient, not my burden. My heart was heavy for the one in my room, as that code call looms for us in that room, the patient struggling to maintain a blood pressure as two nurses scurry all night to keep the veins open and the heart pumping strong.

As the code bell rings, and I look down at my patient, still breathing, heart still beating, I run with the rest to the room that calls, and see you there, purple like death. For this I have given up sleep and a warm bed full of husband, for this I have washed my hands a million times, sat through countless classes, and worked my way through an orientation folder thick with tasks at a new job miles from my home. For this my laundry piles high and the doorway clogs with coats. For this the dishes lie undone and I rush from the door anyway, emancipated for a few hours to tend the sick.

It has been a hard transition from stay-at-home mom and scholar to working mom. Even if it is two or three shifts a week, pulling on my nurse scrubs is hard when I wake up in the afternoon red-eyed from a day of interrupted sleep against the sun and Circadian rhythm and crying children. I have questioned my sanity many times since taking this job, and suddenly it all flashes into focus as I watch you vomit and eyes open to see us all sweating over your bed.

As I drive home from your code, the day you didn't die, I am sobbing for my husband, thankful we're all together and breathing this hectic life in the same rooms. I realize afresh that He put this calling in my being because it is a job that matters to him. It is not just extra income or a night off from the house. It is saving lives and loving people and being the hands and feet of Christ in the desolation of the dying night. You cause me to see the sunrise with fresh eyes. You bring thanks to my lips anew. You open the channel I've been searching for days to find, the channel that brings me to heaven's doorstep in a way that the Word alone on paper sometimes cannot. You, with your purple skin and first new breath, fill the world with new verve and my legs with new vigor. I ran fast to bring you life through the oxygen tubing, and instead I find it is I breathing afresh, the world washed clean as all of life that doesn't matter scatters clean away in the sudden rush of thankfulness for home and hearth, kith and kin.

Thank you, stranger, for waking me up this morning to His mercies made new every dawn. Thank you, Father, for breathing life into the dust of our fragile human frames and raising us again to see that You are enough, more than enough, the richest of blessings and bringer of sweetest days.

I was on a fast curve, lost my nerve on a dead end road

I was goin’ nowhere faster than two legs can go

Never thought I’d slow down

I’m glad I finally know now

I never really noticed when he moved in next to me

Sometimes it’s amazing just how blind a girl can be

If I weren’t busy runnin’I might have seen it comin’

That’s life, if you open up your eyes

You’ll find it gets better all the

Time, time, time

Running out of time, I’m runnin’ away

I’m running out of ways of running away

Got to slow down, if you don’t, you’re gonna break down

I’m runnin’ out of time, time, time

I was cooking dinner, heard a ring at my front door

I opened up and saw him, never felt like that before

The moment that our eyes met I knew I’d never forget

Sometimes the thing you most need is right there, but you can’t see

That’s life, if you open up your eyes

You’ll find it gets better all the

Time, time, time

~Sugarland, Time, Time, Time~

Novemberish

2011-11-21T11:38:00.001-06:00

The weekend dissolves into a chaos of sleep and awake, night shifts wrecking havoc on my already Novemberish brain. The house a pigsty of dirty dishes and laundry, summer clothes and shoes yet to be packed away, a sheet music scattered living room and clothes-riddled bedroom. I feel my failures deep and sure, the housewife that never can be found in November, when the seasons hush and slow to winter's lone-harp song, and my body slows with it, always sensitive to cancer meds in this fresh winter. I bog down into low thyroid days, when all I do is sleep or dream of sleep. The children call me Mama Bear, hibernating for the winter, and I wonder why my cubs don't climb into the den for a long winter's nap like the black bear in the woods.

On Saturday, we are up late to cheer my hockey team on at an important semi-final in a tournament, and I sit with hockey moms who are still perfectly coiffed at 10 p.m., talking about how much housework they got done between games today, each mom one-upping the last with her beauty and time efficiency. I feel the prickles of my newly growing hair like a crown of shame, think about all I have not managed to do this weekend, and realize this is what Joy is after: life unmasked in the blogosphere, where we let our imperfections be part of our beauty and don't hide in the dark when life doesn't go as planned. I slide on thankfulness like a warm coat, and insulate myself from the tyranny of this perfectionist motherhood. My husband smiles down at me, sensing my soul rest, his brown curls unruly under his wool cap, our children running amok up and down a ramp to the men's bathrooms, burning off late night energy.

I wake up Sunday to a road too icy to trek to church, even in all-wheel drive. Slide under the down comforter and praise for a few more hours rest. In the sunlight, the world is frosted with snow, a wonderland of crystalline beauty, in all our yards autumn messiness. The children track mud and snow into the house and there is a small snowboot track on my sheet music still scattered on the front room floor.

I don't have time to maintain these regrets when I think about how He loves. ~John Mark McMillan

Instead of sliding down into the nothingness that perfectionist thinking breeds, I count my blessings at Sunday's end,

...the white glare of snow making sunshine bright and world clean
...hair growing back, black and plentiful
...music from The Story blaring through speakers
...safety on icy roads
...moments with my dear aunt and uncle
...Sunday dinner with Grandma and Grandpa, gales of giggles echoing
...sleep, sleep and more sleep
...another week of night shifts winking at me
...down comforters and warm husband

Growing into cancer

2011-11-18T10:39:00.001-06:00

Go.
Today I purchased a domain name: Turquoise Gates. Just type my blog name without the ".blogspot". It's a big step, growing into my own skin as a writer, committing in a new way to this blog. I started it on a whim and the push from a friend in those early days of cancer, between biopsy and surgery, when life was amorphous and too mist-like to grab hold of. I didn't know where truth lay, whether I'd be fighting for my life or breathing a sigh of relief. Three years later, I can't stop writing because I'm still fighting. Cancer is still present and I am still dealing. And so I buy the domain. It feels like buying cancer. Saying I'll have it for another year. Really it's just $10 and two little words, a space on the internet and nothing more.
And so I wave to cancer today, through the sunny sky and under the fluffy down of my comforter. November is here again, marking 3 years since I counted pearls on a string the last day before my big treatment. I should be going in for a scan and a treatment, but there is shortage of the medications I need and I won't do it until January this year. And so I breath, the fall air crisp with dying bracken and heavy with the smell of snow, and glory in this day of just waving at cancer, not being it, not living it, not fighting it. Just being. I guess I have grown into the cancer skin and it feels comfortable these days. Being alive is what I grasp for now. Really alive. I rub the 7 day fuzz of new hair on my scalp, think they must have invented velcro from stubble, and smile at the sky.
Stop.

Today I wrote for 5 minutes using TheGypsyMama's prompt: Grow.

When gratitude comes slowly

2011-11-17T12:38:00.001-06:00

The e-mail comes from Bonnie, and the topic for today is gratitude. It comes to me on a day when trouble boils up at my brand new job, a day when my mother is able to go with an old friend from church and I realize that they are all gone, every single friend still at that church, beloved people I miss so much. It comes to me on a day when I struggle to enjoy hockey, my legs like jelly and muscles pulling as I drag goalie equipment around for the first time since babies. It comes to me on a day when I simply feel like an outsider, and I wonder where I'll find community. Perhaps at the ice rink?

I think about the paradox of I John 2:15: Do not love the world or the things of this world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in Him. Yet the New Testament also constantly exhorts us to love the people of this world, to reach out to them, to lavish love upon them, to bless them and draw them to Christ's all-surpassing love. There is an unmistakable inner craving that constantly dogs me, to find a home here, a place where I can love and be loved. For what Christian is a stranger among Christians?

My mind always settles on the picture of my closed baby fists, gripping this world tight, unbendingly. As we slowly grow old, our hands open, until they are flat on our deathbed, no grip remaining, no tie to this world, ready for the next. This is a painful process, the breaking of the grip, the loosing of the anchor lines. But just like a great oceanliner held down by ropes and cables, only the tide of God's ocean of grace is necessary to pull us away from the dock, break the chains that bind, and leave us forever adrift on the waves of His mercy.

For this, and the binding of my soul inexorably to my home and family, I am grateful. I am ready to leave whenever He calls, but understand that for now, His call is toward my husband, children, the healing of us all so we can go out on the mission we crave. For each and every small joy of each and every day, I am grateful. He has brought me through the refiner's fire, and it is with a glad face I look upon the trials coming tomorrow, for I know that He is shaping me, molding me, and loving me through the best of times and the worst.

Poetry and Instagrams

2011-11-15T07:19:00.001-06:00

Sun glints off diamond, yellow

day before another night shift

I know when work turns sour

you'll hear my story rift

Where our talents and passions collide

kaleidoscope of the wise mind

Thoughts, emotions melt to one

Our heart beats closer to the Son

The scenes flash by on memory

caught for a moment in my dreams

A small black book of stories done

each word inks a silent scream

I write on palms the chorus line

We fell in love in a hopeless place

And so the journey carries on

we hold their hands when the race is done

The moon flies silver in the west

You sip coffee while I unwind

Two ships passing in the night

Two shadows crossing in the dawn

~Thoughts after Night Shift~

Yellow diamonds in the light

And we’re standing side by side

As your shadow crosses mine

What it takes to come alive

It’s the way I’m feeling

I just can’t deny

We found love in a hopeless place

Shine a light through an open door

Love and life, I will divide

Turn away cause I need you more

Feel the heartbeat in my mind

~Rihanna~

Blessing of the Receiver: Thoughts from the Counselor's Couch & Being "Girl, interrupted"

2011-11-11T17:08:00.001-06:00

He says it is more blessed to give than to receive. Journey notes of this recovering perfectionist and Christian perform artist tend to agree.

I am a nurse. I give of my time, my energy, my skills - and am lucky enough to be paid for the giving. I help sick people, no matter what caused their ailment. This includes people just like me - people right where I was in April, depressed, anxious, full of fear, looking for a way out of their painful life. Years ago, these patients were confusing to me. They didn't really want my help - in fact, they were frustrated that they weren't left for dead instead. I remember one boy, who chased a bottle of Tylenol with a bottle of vodka. He was just a teenager. None of us could understand his pain, growing up parentless on an Indian reservation, in abject poverty, without help. We didn't know his father had suggested the Tylenol in a fit of rage over his son's constant plea for help. It took many days for us to determine that his liver function would never recover - that he would get his wish after all, unless a liver became available for his transplant. I remember his anger with me when I helped the doctor deliver the news. It turned out that the bottle of Tylenol was just a cry for help, not a death wish. He was horrified that there was nothing we could do to reverse the effects by the time his grandma drove him all the way from western Minnesota to our hospital.

In April, I had the unique experience of becoming one of those confusing patients. A patient with a death wish, locked up in a white room on a cot, leathers holding my wrists and ankles down. I was stuck spreadeagled on the hard cot, two days once. I will never forget the scorn with which I was treated by some of the staff, staff that didn't believe it was right to help someone like me. Someone who did this to their own body. My wounds weren't by accident or trauma or something that easily labeled me a victim. They were self-inflicted. Wounds on the outside to express the deep pain inside.

Patients with mental health issues receive different care. We don't fit in. We can't explain what's wrong with us. We are too weak and confused to challenge the care that's provided us. Disrespect is rampant, amongst health caregivers and lay people alike. You would think that nurses, with their creed to help all people, would be first in line to treat people with mental health issues respectfully. But that simply isn't the case.

My diagnoses were post-traumatic stress disorder, borderline personality disorder, and suicidal ideation. Taking ownership of your own course of action is difficult for everyone. When the course of action you've already picked landed you in a mental hospital, with damaged friendships and marriage, bandages on your wrists and a pocketful of despair in your standard issue scrub suit, it is hard to believe that you did this to yourself. We tend to blame circumstances that overwhelmed us.

But in my year of psychological chaos, I have learned that taking responsibility is the first step toward healing the wounds of the mind and emotions. Once I took responsibility, I had to learn how to prevent such a thing from happening again. For me, it clicked while sitting in a boring classed called "Skillful Living". As a successful professional woman with a nice house and beautiful children, I thought I was already living skillfully. Turns out I was doing skillfully, but my mind was a loose cannon of chaotic thoughts and dark temptations. Over months of counseling and group therapy, I learned to "turn my mind" - imagine myself staring that dark temptation in the face, then turning all the way around and focusing instead on something God was giving me in that single moment - my child's smile, perhaps; the sunshine; the smell of laundry drying; a tune played on the piano; music streaming from the speakers. Being faithful in this one act, turning my mind away from suicide and anxiety, proved to be the key out of the Pandora's box of pain I had been locked up in for months.

I still sit there, once a week, on the counselor's couch. She works to desensitize me to the traumas of my past. I work to forgive myself and move on. Being a "recovered" borderline personality is a rarity. The doctors and counselors cite my case as a "miracle" case - the fastest recovery they've ever seen from so deep an agony. By calling out my willfulness and discouraging thoughts of suicide, which can lead to chronic behavior modification, my counselor struck the fear of God back into my soul, and offered me tools I can link to strong Scriptures to bail me out of my present distress.

I've learned that depression can strike me anywhere, anytime. Being willing to ride the waves of the cold water of sadness and loneliness has allowed me to ride until the waves stop, then get up and persevere. I still must turn my mind whenever there's a knife on the table, a gun left with ammo accessible, a noose, a bag full of unused and unmonitored pills at my disposal. But as I turn it, again and again, I find this habit overcomes the old one and I am mostly free of suicidal thoughts and mostly filled by the moments of joy that sprinkle my day.

The blessing of the Giver

2011-11-11T09:18:00.001-06:00

Sunday night I sat alone in darkness, wounds gaping wide to swallow me whole again. Monday night, I was at work, witness to a miracle of healing. This patient, another dear saint, was a blessing to me as those who receive are always double blessing to the giver. Every time I entered her room, she whispered to me that I am beautiful, a gift to her, another saint's hands to tend her in her hour of greatest need.

I walk away humbled. For this is why He allows our wounds, that He might heal us. Our pain, that He might bless us in ways we would never be blessed without suffering first. Would He build my gates with stones of turquoise, if first I wasn't the city lashed by storms and not comforted? Just when my heart feels broken beyond belief, the yellow glass of this tiny heart fragmented and glistening with tears, not a piece touching another...He steps in and binds each of those pieces with pieces of His own broken, bruised and torn heart, and now I am a patchwork heart of gold and red, each piece of my emptiness fitted perfectly with a piece of His own. I am not alone, I am not ever broken when He does not bind back up.

I praise for this new job, a job where the saints are marching in, and I can be one of them, left standing, the witness in the corner who signed the death paperwork and washed the body of that soul for the last time here on earth. One day it will be me, marching in, but for now I am left here, to do the work before me, to give when I am broken, to stand testament to His glory in the chaos of the critical care unit. To hold hands, to be blessed as I give.

It ain't where

It's how you live

We weren't raised to take

We were raised to give

The shirt off our back

To anyone in need

We bow our heads before we eat

Before we start our day

Before we fall asleep

Cause in God we trust and we believe

And we see what's wrong

And we know what's right

And ol Hank he said it all

When he said country folks can survive

~from Country Must Be Countrywide, Brantley Gilbert~

A promise of snow

2011-11-10T19:45:00.001-06:00

Autumn whirls by like a flutter of leaves emancipated from the backyard by a rake, lifted and swirling in one iridescent moment of final glory, and then gone forever into the black plastic of a lawn bag. Long night shifts caring for sick strangers, hockey practice, first flurries of snow. The week hurtles on and I don't pause to write or hardly to think. The incomparable adrenaline laced rush of joy after physical accomplishment washes over me and drowns me in happiness after hockey practice. Nine years of having babies, and I can still stop a puck and have fun out on the ice with a group of women.

My friend from afar is in Ecuador, meeting children helped through the Compassion International program. It is a hard thing to have a missionary's heart and not bend to the constant plea of so many people. But in uncertain times, when we are making budget cuts $10 at a time, that $38 a month seems like a large commitment, especially when so important and a must every month for that one family. All kinds of things fly through my mind, my doctoral degree, so expensive - really necessary? Well, yes, if we're going to go to Central America and start a nursing school. The winter boots for kids - should I have looked longer at thrift stores in search of cheaper options? Well, no, not when the snow is already falling. What about hockey? How much money do you spend just to rediscover an old joy?

It's hard to be the bud holding promise of next spring, a handful of snowflakes to water the earth when the frozen times are done. Yet this is what young families often do, hold the snowflakes to point to the thaw. We are still growing and learning, learning this one income life, learning what it takes to be a missionary, stem frozen in time by cancer and encephalitis. We can't go yet. We will go one day, to the vast reaping fields. The fields holding the promise for the spring yet to come. They will still be there when we are ready...for the poor you'll always have with you. Perhaps that is one of God's great and incomprehensible gifts: a world where we stay in touch with our poverty. For without a visual picture of poverty, if every man were rich, would we really keep needing God? Not until the grave's doorstep, when we finally realize we can't take it with us. Money is just a dusting of snow on frozen ground...the promise of food for this life while we wait for the next. Autumn holding spring's thaw.

Linked up to Joy's life: unmasked writing project

Joy dawns again

2011-11-07T13:07:00.001-06:00

The writing heals, forming words to express the ache, and I go to bed calm. Last moments of wakefulness are given up in prayer...praise for the majesty of nature He bathed me in as the moon rose, praise for family home, praise for experiencing the full breadth of life from exquisite joy to gripping agony, just as Christ experienced this life on earth.

As the day arcs full, from dawn to deepest night, He heals in the moment and soothes that stabbing desire to be home, home in heaven. It is true that He has allowed this life and heart to be carved out and emptied, but I don't see the stories arc full yet, don't know where He's taking this short life of mine.

I close eyes tight against sun in the morning, trying to sleep long enough to survive a 12-hour night shift. In the slumber, dreamless, He changes the heart and molds it to fit a new day. It is a sunny day, warm, kids cuddled up with me in the dawn, husband calling gleeful with joy from work.

This is how emptiness sings. It may be a moan of melancholy loneliness on the strings or a rush of notes sung in sweetest harmony. Today I can sing the chorus to the song...

Brother, he’s suffered like a tree taken down

Wept as he witnessed his dreams carved out

And how can a man just keep walking around

With his heart full of holes

But ooh,His bow is on the strings

And the tune resonates in the open space

To show us how emptiness sings:

Glory to God, Glory to God!

In fullness of wisdom,

He writes my story into his song,

My life for the glory of God.

Sister carries her loneliness

In a hidden hollow inside her chest

And sometimes all that she wants is an end

To the long, long night

But ooh, her bow is on the strings,

And the tune resonates in the open space

To show us how emptiness sings:

Glory to God, Glory to God!

In fullness of wisdom,

He writes my story into his song,

My life for the glory of God.

In the middle of a party,

I’ll just want to goHome.

But ooh,My bow is on the strings,

I’m beginning to learn where to find the words

To the song that emptiness sings

Ooh, bow is on the strings:

Glory to God! Glory to God!

This is how emptiness sings, oh,

This is how emptiness sings

~How Emptiness Sings, Christa Wells~

Longing for home

2011-11-06T20:58:00.001-06:00

The silver of moonlight's dawn shivers over the last stubble of hay in the field. Headlights glow their yellow incandescent as they snake along sleepy down the country road. I hear the rattle of the oak leaves percussive against the bare arms of their mother's trees, feel the vibration in the frozen ground as the wind rushes like wave of thunder through the pine stand.

I am alone on the hill in the darkness, watching stars appear like pinpricks in the night sky. It is a day of brokenness, the emptiness of my hollowed out heart palpable in the church surrounded by strangers and the echo of a pastor's tears unfamiliar in my ears. It grows pregnant in my chest as I drive aimless through the countryside, alone with Jesus and my tears. Music flows in fragments through the ache, sister carries her loneliness in a hidden hollow in her chest, and sometimes all she wants is an end to the long, long night...her bow is on the strings, and the tune resonates in the open space, to show us how emptiness sings.*

I plead with Jesus, feel Him in this space with me, beg Him to please take me home. End the long long night. Bring me peace. Tears flow like raindrops down windows, beat on the soul like ground too parched to soak up this sorrow. Sometimes in the middle of a party I just want to go

Home.

Yesterday the heartache of friendships lost last year swirled up in the drain like so many tidbits of uneaten food in the sink, ten years gone in the blink of an eye with not a shadow of the relationships left to warm cold hearts. I hear it again, those friends fall around me like pearls from an open string, the necklace of life broken, torn and losing it's beauty in one wild rush out of the hollow of my heart. My scream is the dustpan scraping the floor, my wail the swish of broom and the quick descent of all that wild love into the trashbin.

The cat sits sentinel against my leg and I am a field stone on the hill. The silver of the moonlight dances at my feet. I am so still and quiet a deer glides like a ghost out of the treeline, tawny sleek in moonshine, almost close enough to touch. But I am riveted in the dark shadows, and she is quickly gone. The dog senses the sorrow friable in the winter night air and her moan gives voice to the pain as I beg again.

Just take me home.

Take me home.

A tractor roars to life rusty on the valley's edge. I am sliding like the wheels in the muck. I watch it crawl down the arched back of the far hill, the next farm over alive with corn dryers and cows lowing and fertility. I sit on our dry ground, just a witness to this busyness.

The headlights slide golden down the road's curves and the children echo laughter from the porch steps. Husband slides warm next to me, but there are no words for this pain and the explanation is just a whisper.

I want to go home.

I can't live like this, a stranger in my own skin. I live anyway, I make my mind busy at work, I surround the silent echo in my heart with the crash and slip of a hockey game, my dad's voice a familiar rumble next to me on a day of strangeness.

And all day, I beg. And all day, Jesus says no.

Nothing swallows me in the black night and I reemerge lost and with no answer. The family whirls with laughter and tears and piano notes and wolf-pup game howls. I am drowning in a sea of life when all I want is heaven.

I choose life, over and over again, but it is a compulsion, a duty, something I give like an unbirthed baby cold in the grave, a gift of a frozen heart to a Savior who sweats blood and begs too, not to drink this cup. I choose life where the guardrail ends at the river's edge, I choose life with a credit card burning a hole in my pocket and guns and ammo for sale just down the street. I choose life when I stand stock still at the edge of the treestand twenty feet in the air above the sweet death hidden in the bracken. I choose life when I could just lie down on this cold hill and never wake up, turn into a field stone and sink into winter's earth, cover myself with the first blanket of snow.

For He drank anyway, the thunderous wrath, the stones split in two, the world flooded with darkness as He breathes last on the Cross. And so I follow. Bitter draught of life.

Oh, to be eighty instead of thirty-two.

Oh, to be close to the release, the relief, the Love.

*lyrics from Christa Wells' How Emptiness Sings

Expectant loneliness

2011-11-04T04:40:00.000-05:00

Depression coming storming through the door today and takes me off guard. It's been so, so long. I am tossed by it's waves and struggle to keep hold to the Father's hand as the tide grips me tight and pulls me away. I miss the women I just met, wish I had friends like that in real life. Two long evenings this week, Aaron's been out late on call, and we are ships passing in the shadows of dawn and the dark of the cold night. I have a weekend alone to daunt me.

As He so often does, it is with a song He whispers comfort in my longing ear, head resting helpless on the hard wooden side of my swing, my eyes full of tears, and the quiet of country stifling in it's loneliness. So many times during this life, I've run from that ever-present sense of the God who fills all the spaces and places. Today I close eyes to squeeze tears down cheeks and breath a quiet thank you to the God who never leaves and ever loves and lavishes.

She's a sparkle in her Father's eye

kind of like the moon tonight

she's destined for divinity

His portion is His purity

and a glance His way comes across her face

He sheds a tear, oh oh

amazing grace how sweet the sound

amazing loveoh she's been found

a sparkle in her Father's crown

holy love come raining downcome storming in,

be jealous found

come violent love

come stormy seas

sweep fear away and you shall be

a sparkle in the Father's crown

and even if he had ninety nine

stayed at home and stayed in line

he would not be satisfied

He would still go out to find

the one who's always on His mind

and bring her back, arms opened wide

~Jamie's Song, Kristene Mueller~

Mistakes

2011-11-03T13:55:00.002-05:00

The sun sets unbelievably pink and lavender, sets on a day filled with mistakes, brings the darkness that has filled my heart all day into the world, night always to be weathered before it pulls up day. Two of my best friends hover on the edge of divorce, and I am there to pray and love and accept. But I flee that sorrow-filled room, back to the warm arms of the husband who still loves me, whom I still love. My son acts up all day and finally goads me to explosion in the evening, ironically the evening I write about how I want to parent. It grates. I flee his constant tears and whine and I am on the porch swing with the black cloud of self-reproach stealing from the sunsets glory.

I want to be so much farther on the trajectory of Christian life, so much further from that old sin that I've supposedly died to because Christ lives in me. It's not dead yet. I'm still trying to pack down the grave site of my sin, pack it in so it can't reach an arm up through the dirt to grab my ankle anymore. Sin's bony claw reaches through, now and then, and I am in the grip of an old way of living that I thought I buried years ago when I lost my voice after cancer surgery. But no, I can raise my voice, I can stamp my foot in frustration, I can wither the child lost in temper tantrum with a look, hard and fierce, from my brown eyes.

And so my heart breaks a little on that porch swing. I am so disappointed in self. This steals from Christ all over again...the pity party that follows my fall keeping my attention focused on self instead of the Cross. Ugh. I throw off the despair like an unwanted moth-eaten sweater, and try to shrug on Grace.

The darkness is gone. The sun is up. The Son is out. But the Son isn't finished. One surprise still awaits them. "Suddenly, Jesus met them and said, "Greetings". The women came up to him, took hold of the feet, and worshipped him. Then Jesus said to them, "Don't be afraid. Go and tell my followers to go on to Galilee and they will see me there'" . The God of surprises strikes again. It's as if he said, "I can't wait any longer. They came this far to see me; I'm going to drop in on them." God dies that for the faithful. Just when the womb gets too old for babies, Sarai gets pregnant. Just when the failure is too great for grace, David is pardoned. And just when the road is too dark for Mary and Mary, the angel glows and the Savior shows and the two women will never be the same. The lesson? Three words. Don't give up. Is the trail dark? Don't sit. Is the road long? Don't stop. Is the night black? Don't quit. God is watching. For all you know right at this moment he may be telling the angel to move the stone. The check may be in the mail. The apology may be in the making. The job contract may be on the desk. Don't quit. For if you do, you may miss the anwer to your prayers. God still sends angels. And God still moves stones. ~Max Lucado, "He Still Moves Stones"

One of those shipwrecked friends sends a prayer in letters to me, and I pray them with her. Lord, I'm broken....I boldly claim your promise that you will not break a broken reed. I'm broken. Please send me help. Help to heal my broken heart, help not to become bitter, help in finding a job wit benefits, help to caring for my son, help to find the right council for the divorce, ;;;to "forgive those who trespass against us....". Lord I need a legion of your angels to surround me, I desperately need your protection, your love, your grace, your mercy, your healing -physically and spiritually. Please Lord....hurry....Amen.

O come, Lord Jesus, and rescue us from these lives rotting around us. Rescue us from the power of sin, teach us to lean hard into your Grace. Live Grace. Before I die, might I live Grace?

What shall I do with you, my love

What shall I do with you?

For your loyalty to Me is like the morning clouds,;

Like the dew that goes away so early.;

What shall I do with you, my love?

You keep bringing Me sacrifices

To ease your mind,

But it's your heart that I want.

Hasn't it been a long road

With disappointments,

Chasing after lovers

That just throw you away?

And are you done fighting now?

All the love it takes to lighten you,

Shame was never meant to be your portion.

Though these sins are red as scarlet,

I will wash them white in My mercy.

~Kristene Mueller, Mercy~

The mountains never-ending

2011-11-02T16:29:00.001-05:00

The last of the maples shine gold on the backdrop of the rusty oaks and their gray maple sisters, bare now of the leaves of scarlet, stripped by the winds. A blue jay fans his wings of evening sky and black over the gray quiet before the rain. The world is silent and still. The hill facing me a mountain on this valley landscape. I wear her words tattooed on my t-shirt No, my hands cannot reach it, my mind can't comprehend it, but my soul is going to get there one day. I've been climbing my whole life, and I'm only at the bottom of the mountain.

My parents were good parents, are good parents. But oh, the mistakes we all make on the weary road of mothering, the ways we bend children to our own image of children, the way we knock self out of their little souls and fill it with should be and must be instead of I am.

Last year, I pushed my children up each doorstep, their fear in the dark palpable, but the draw to Halloween candy beating it's bass drum through their little bodies. A year earlier, I couldn't take them trick-or-treating because Amy was hovering between life and death in the hospital. This year, they run pell-mell, us chasing after them between houses. The fear is gone and they are free spirits, football players among the ghosts and goblins, dancing in the dark night. My eight year old is suddenly rocketing into her "tween" years, body developing, little wise mind carried on shoulders heavy for her child's frame.

I say it to them, sometimes. Calm yourself down. You aren't allowed to [fill in the blank]. I mount a sign above their bedroom door: Thou shalt not whine. It's not in the commandments, but I'm pretty sure it can be extrapolated by the suggestion of a verse - one of my favorites - that says pleasant words are as a honeycomb, sweet to the soul and health to the bones. I try desperately to walk the tightrope. Teach them self-control, but let them be who they are. Let them stay in their skin, oh please Lord, for many years to come. Caleb will stop his wailing to whimper, "I'm so sad, Mama". I can't stop his sadness, but I can affirm it in my fierce hug. Oh, that he did not already know that life is sad. That life hurts. That people wound you and people leave you. Might I pass on to him that Jesus never leaves, nor forsakes, nor asks us to package up our burdens in stoic faces, but rather asks that we hand them, covered in tears as they come, over to Him to tend to!

Another mountain of motherhood waves hello from across the valley, years of three tween and teen girls coming, as they grow up like weeds around my trunk.

My own words haunt me. I am glad for cancer. Cancer taught me to enjoy this day, and look forward with jubilee to the next. Oh, but the haunt of the possible ending, the way things will go if they don't go how we want them to. Can you live without your mother, ever? Isn't it a world of pain and emptiness you're left in as you stand by her grave, whatever age you are when that grave becomes reality?

And so it is, my thoughts roiling in the quiet countryside, as I watch dragonfly nymphs huddle in a transparent gray swarm of cloud, yearning for warmth as my children yearn for my warmth. I hug knees to chest, and breathe out the ache settled deep in my chest. Lord, help me help them to be themselves, yet ever less of human and ever more of divine. In Your goodness, Lord, bless this little family shipwrecked on the shores of heartache, bind us and keep us and make us whole.

I go to the riverbed, shoes on the shore

I’m shaking a little bit, hardly know what for

Oh, and the water’s cloudy as the sky

I’m looking for answers in the riverbed of life

I’m panning for gold, I’m panning for gold

Until I have all my heart can hold

I go to the pages handed down and worn

I’m hearing the sages with the Truth on their tongues

Sifting beauty from the layers of ash

I’m tracing the universe with my fingers in the sand

It’s there in the city, where the nations converge

It’s in the graffiti and the shapes of the earth

Choir lofts and kitchens, where voices ring loud

Reflections of grace, shining glory over doubt

I’m panning for gold, I’m panning for gold

Until I have all my heart can hold

I’m panning for gold, I’m panning for gold

Take all I can hold

Becoming

2011-11-01T06:46:00.000-05:00

Bald doesn't seem becoming. It's ugly, raw nakedness.

Yet becoming bald is where Jesus shows up again, larger than life, looking on the inside instead of out.

With "flat Brandie" - another cancer patient who couldn't attend Relevant.

He sees and knows, the Potter ever at His wheel, shaping this life into what I'm meant to be becoming.

With Michelle, an online friend finally met in real life.

He crafted the round head, and counted every hair upon it eons ago.

Before His mercy seat, He touches me quietly and whispers, "You. My beautiful bride."

Lingering

2011-10-31T11:17:00.001-05:00

Home to the quietness of country. Home to my swing and purring cats. Home to my husband's arms quiet through the night, and home to the clamor of children excited about everything to do with my travels and my homecoming. Quite a difference from three rather dorm-reminiscent nights with eight crazy, beautiful, creative, God-seeking roommates (and one who didn't sleep there).

The Pilot's Wife, Sara Sophia, Dear Abby Leigh, Ashleigh from Heart and Home,
myself, Gussy Sews, Elizabeth Esther, and Joy in This Journey

Our honorary roommate, Erika, is the blond to the left.

I meet amazing people who have inspired, this time in person. Bonnie Gray finds me in the first moments of the conference, and we hug hard and long. I feel honored by that hug.

Mama Hall in front of me

We sit in sessions and soak up words, words of advice, wisdom, experience, hope, love. Words of this wounded life we live for Christ. Women break open like ripe melons and spill guts and seeds and it is a mixed up revolution of tears, torment, and triumph.

Snow falls that last day, and in between checking the status of our flights home, we laugh and process, hidden in our room, hotel running on generator power. I am from Wisconsin, and I see my first snow in Pennsylvania, and laugh at the irony. We laugh so hard we hurt the next morning, sharing stories and ideas, birthing our own secrets hashtags for Twitter, and talking about a meet-up somewhere central next year. I marvel at how I thought one person was tall (she's short) and one was small (she's an inch taller than me). How you conjure up certain images of people based on their blogs. In real life, we're much messier and less polished, and yet beautiful and rich in 3 dimensions in ways words alone can never reveal.

I am invited on stage by the effervescent Christa Wells, and play tambourine to a beautiful new song of hers. I get to share Sara Groves' Different Kinds of Happy with the last lingerers after worshiping with Shaun Groves (no relation, by the way). It is a weekend full of opportunities, blessings, heartaches and tired bones.

On Monday, I wake up to my quiet country bedroom, looking out on lavendar grass and dry maroon oaks just rustling awake in the dawn. My mind is all befuddled, my house a mess, Halloween costumes yet to complete and a 12 hour shift looming tomorrow. Back in the reality of my life, Relevant seems like a distant and dreamy memory, and I reach through the fog of one night's sleep to catch the shirttails of connections fluttering there in the mist.

Hearts spinning

2011-10-29T15:23:00.000-05:00

Long hours at a blogging conference brings cancer crashing onto my radar. I live like sheets drying on a clothesline, long loops of cloth rising up again to the pins, then the next long loop, and on and on. Rest, participate, rest, participate, repeat. I have made the transition from the mantra of my 20's (I'll sleep when I'm dead) to the requisite realization of my 30's (I'll die if I don't sleep).

Hours are bathed in tears, and then bathed in laughter. I find out what a laughter hang-over is for the very first time in my life. The trancendant beauty of both authentic pain and hilarious joy crash together like two waves meeting to form the monster roll of blue water swirling you down a pipeline of experience, a rush like no other. I play tambourine and sing harmony on stage for one song with Christa Wells, then stand in the audience hiding my face in my hat, hands raised in praise, as her words uncover my pain.

I go to sessions and workshops and marvel at the beauty of newfound friends, souls wounded and worn and ever writing, writing. Sara Sophia is as luminescent as her name, her words like pearls on a string for a whole table full of sobbing women.

New layers of my church history find light in the words of Ashleigh, who was brought to depths of spiritual pain I have not yet endured. As her tears roll, I learn and bask in the beauty of a soul dragging dirty story into light.

I watched from afar as she became famous in the blogosphere, and adored her before I met her, but Elizabeth surprises me with her vulnerability and humanity, her beautiful smile and the mannerisms that are so like my dear friend Amy. My heart aches with missing, and aches at the same time with meeting.

The snow falls in a hurricane of white, and I laugh with some dear children from Florida. We stand in the hall watching out the window and laughing, laughing. It's beautiful.

And so I am exhausted.

Broken.

Filled.

Kept.

Thank you for your prayers.

Here I am

2011-10-28T08:25:00.002-05:00

Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, Who was and is and is to come...the hymn lilts through my consciousness, floating in the pool last night alone, surrounded by the flurry of 7 hilarious roommates, during the morning devotional. I sit down alone to play on the grand piano, and I am soothed from the chaos. Surrounded by these women - high-achieving, goal-oriented, passionate, God-fearing women - feels once again like coming home.

Here is a place where Holiness and love coexist in one congruent flow from one voice to another. The rebels and the righteous, the loud and the quiet, the new friends and old friends - all band together silent, captured by the words. We are word people, a group of writers, and we hang on every one.

We meet other wounded souls, and share our stories of pain and joy through suffering. We talk churches and theology and social media. I find, once again, that I am not alone. In the velvety night, everyone in pj's, we eat chocolate and talk about the world. The strobe of a picture booth and the giddy laughter of friends echoes all the way through the thick walls of our hotel room.

This is a gathering place, an entire nation of Christian bloggers meeting together to encourage, listen, share, and grow. I hear this morning a different take on presenting the Gospel and my brain explodes into fireworks of connections suddenly made because of a single sentence. Every unsaved soul is saved already, and they just need to hear it and believe it. Not "do you want to be saved", but "you are saved already. Can you accept it?"

I struggle with the uniquely female torment over outfits and my reddened bald head, feeling like I look old, frumpy. Like I can't fit in with these women of beauty. Yet their arms are open and I call it for what it is, that old tormentor trying to whisper doubt into my ear. For He has made me beautifully and wonderfully. Even on a small blog such as this, He has given me a message. It is a message about finding joy in small moments, savoring life, fighting for it, grieving losses. It doesn't matter if that message is for a few hundred or thousand readers, like those who visit my small space on the internet, or the tens of thousands and millions the powerhouse bloggers attract.

God is good, all the time - and He's showing up here in big ways through the sistership of shared faith and vision, passion and talent. I am reveling in His pleasure as I watch each interaction, join in the community and the conversation of these women. Praise God that He works through we who are broken to bring His gospel where He's called us to share it.

lord i have a heavy burden

of all i've seen and know

it's more than i can handle

but your word is burning like a fire

shut up in my bones

and i can’t let it go

and when i'm weary and overwrought

with so many battles left unfought

i think of paul and silas in the prison yard

i hear their song of freedom rising to the stars

and when the Saints go marching in

i want to be one of them

lord it's all that i can't carry a

nd cannot leave behind it all

can overwhelm me

but when i think of all who've gone before

and lived a faithful life

their courage compels me

and when i'm weary and overwrought

with so many battles left unfought

i think of paul and silas in the prison yard

i hear their song of freedom rising to the stars

i see the shepherd moses in the pharaohs court

i hear his call for freedom for the people of the Lord

i see the long quiet walk along the underground railroad

i see the slave awakening to the value of her soul

i see the young missionary and the angry spear

i see his family returning with no trace of fear

i see the long hard shadows of calcutta nights

i see the sister standing by the dying man’s side

i see the young girl huddled on the brothel floor

i see the man with a passion come kicking down that door

i see the man of sorrow and his long troubled road

i see the world on his shoulders and my easy load

~When the Saints, Sara Groves~

Being sick together

2011-10-26T16:29:00.001-05:00

We lay in a heap on the hospital bed, her burning up with her daily fever spike, and me lifeless after a few days without my medications.

It's a sweet, sweet thing, her eyes open, her brain functioning normally, this just a scare in a long list of scares. She is spared again. All her sweetness and quirkiness and beauty and love. All there.

And so today, just like the other day in the hospital, I spend most of the day cuddled up in bed, squeezing the dickens out of my baby girl. I've decided to go to the blogging conference in Pennsylvania, but it has been a very difficult decision. I know she'll be fine in Aaron's capable hands, but it's no fun to be far away with a sick babe at home. I scan my memory, and it seems like she's been getting sick since she was born. At 9 months, she had a fever of 106 while I played for a friend's wedding. At 2, she had haemophilus B influenza meningitis and was very, very ill for her brother's 1st birthday party. Just after her 3rd birthday, diptheria encephalitis, and then for her 4th birthday, constant seizures as a result. I don't understand why. All I can do is treasure moments like the ones that filled today, cuddled up under a down comforter, comforting my sick little girl once again.

Please pray that she will be okay while I am gone. I feel this is God's will, but sometimes it is difficult to know if you're making the right choice or not. I have until 6 a.m. tomorrow, when my flight leaves, to change my mind. Hopefully by then I'll be bathed in the peace that passeth understanding and she is on a clear road to recovery.

Watching my childrenfinding their way

thru struggles and triumphsand heartbreak

I hope the roads they take

Are making them strong

I'll still be on my knees

Long after they're gone

Love has made

Has made me unafraid

Love could make

Love can make

Love will make

Make you unafraid...

~Unafraid, Amy Grant~

A prayer for healing and wholeness

2011-10-24T22:01:00.000-05:00

She is too tired to play in the playroom now that her isolation precautions have been lifted. Her fever continues to spike up to 104 despite the antibiotics. Yet the doctors think she's fit to be discharged to home tomorrow. I can't really argue.

Questions swirl. Will she continue to improve on oral antibiotics? Will she lose some of the brain function we've worked so hard for her to regain? Will I be able to work on Wednesday? Should I? What about the Relevant blogging conference I'm planning to attend in Pennsylvania Thursday through Sunday? (By the way, if you are so led, please consider donating. We have used up the current donations on hotel and food costs in Rochester during this unexpected stay away from home. See the left toolbar on the top of the blog.)

I page through old photos and find this set as she works on two piece puzzles with letters and symbols starting with that letter. The beauty of her skin strikes me. Thin and torn in places now, dark circles under her eyes, I long for the peaches and cream chubbiness to return to her little 5 year old fists. Prayers continue to be for her survival and thriving. We pray God led us to catch this early enough this time. Again, we pray against future infection.

Precious Lord, I feel close to Mary in this St. Mary's hospital. The mother who watched her Son pay the price for my sin. Watched His body torn apart. Washed and wrapped Him after He died. Please don't let our family suffer that loss, dear Lord. Sustain and preserve our sweet Amelia and deliver us home with her healed and whole. With you alone this is possible. We do not hold the keys to life or death, and can only beg your mercy on us as we long to spend many long years with this precious daughter and sister you've given us.

For in hope we have been saved, but hope that is seen is not hope; for why does one also hope for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, with perseverance we wait eagerly for it. (Romans 8:24-25)

Refine us

2011-10-23T22:54:00.001-05:00

She is better today, fevers persisting, but with a dose of energy from the spinal tap and the antibiotics flowing every 3 hours. Dark circles under her eyes, she shuts them against the fluorescent light, showing off her new owl teapot with eyes squeezed shut.

The flurry and adrenaline of the initial decision making fades on hospital day 2, and we and the doctors begin to contemplate those hard questions that still persist without answer. Why does she get infections in her brain repeatedly? It's nothing like the question "why does Caleb have allergies all year every year". This has such significant consequences to her health, intellect and quality of life that we must find an answer.

Aaron says it, anguished, as we walk to the hotel for a few minutes alone, kids happy in hospital with Auntie Rosalie. "Why, whenever we start to thrive, why does something like this always happen?" I don't know. I can only offer what I'm learning about accepting your cross without fighting it. Carrying one cross - the one given - instead of two - the one given paired with the anxieties we let sneak in like foxes in the vineyard.

I don't ever want to lose this little life. I don't ever want to wait too long, or miss the symptoms, or run into doctors again who refuse to treat in the early stages. How do we function like this? The older girls and I have a long talk after Caleb sleeps this evening, and talk about refining gold and silver. How it requires high heat. How God is allowing that high heat through trials into their young lives. We read the verses in Malachi that were like timber beams holding up the sagging sanctuary of my heart this morning, before I headed out to the hospital, head shiny and cold in the winter-like winds.

Behold, I will send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me: and the Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to his temple, even the messenger of the covenant, whom ye delight in: behold, he shall come, saith the Lord of hosts. But who may abide the day of his coming? and who shall stand when he appeareth? for he is like a refiner's fire, and like fullers' soap: And he shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver: and he shall purify the sons of Levi, and purge them as gold and silver, that they may offer unto the Lord an offering in righteousness. Then shall the offering of Judah and Jerusalem be pleasant unto the Lord, as in the days of old, and as in former years.

The truth remains. He has always rescued us. We are all alive together still. The needleprick on Amelia's back is just a dot, no bleeding, no complications. The antibiotics seem to be working. We have every cause for praise in this, as in all the previous trials. God is great and good, here in this day of suffering. What a lesson to learn, at 6 and 8! May these children grow up with a deep, visceral understanding of what it means to wait on the Lord, trust in His mercy and grace in the most difficult of circumstances.

Come, come and meet us here

Come and touch our tears

That we may weep no more

Come, come and meet our pain

Come and lift our lame

That we may limp no more

Come that we may want no more

The doubters pray for your signs and wonders

All the cynics say

You’ll let us go under

But we’re here to stay
God, will you come by here?

Come, we have nothing else God

And having You we want for nothing

No death, life

Angels or demons

No depth, height

Can come in between us

And Your love, Your love, Your love, love

Sunday's ray of hope

2011-10-23T10:24:00.000-05:00

Amy is doing better today after 18 hours on IV antibiotics. She is less sleepy and more talkative. The doctors just rounded and told us to expect to be in until Tuesday morning unless something changes for better or worse in her condition.

I wake up from nightmares wandering through hospital ICU's looking for my baby. I hold her realistic baby doll like a sack of potatoes from my arms and get glares from the nurses as I walk the halls. Finally, I find her. She is in horrible shape and her eyes have gone completely dead, no spark when she sees me. I am forced to go back to work and leave her there, listening to her screams echo the halls as I walk away. I sit up with a start and for a moment it all seems real. Then the hotel surroundings seep in and I realize I am left with only the remnants of visceral fear a nightmare leaves as memory and a pounding headache testament to late hours and way too much stress.

Ironically, the very verses I wrestle with during the "day to day" of our family's trials are the ones I cling to, repeating over and over throughout these hardest days. I will not give you more than you can bear. (I Corinthians 10:13)

Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for He who promised is faithful. (Hebrews 10:23)

I can do all things through Christ who strengtheneth me. (Philippians 4:13)

I will offer up my life

In spirit and truth,

Pouring out the oil of love

As my worship to You

In surrender I must give my every part;

Lord, receive the sacrifice

Of a broken heart

Jesus, what can I give, what can I bring

To so faithful a friend, to so loving a King?

Savior, what can be said, what can be sung

As a praise of Your name

For the things You have done?

Oh my words could not tell, not even in part

Of the debt of love that is owed

By this thankful heart

You deserve my every breath

For You've paid the great cost;

Giving up Your life to death,

Even death on a cross

You took all my shame away,

There defeated my sin

Opened up the gates of heaven

And have beckoned me in

~I Will Offer Up My Life, Matt Redman~

Amelia in the hospital again

2011-10-23T01:41:00.001-05:00

My dear sweet third daughter, my Amelia Irene, is back in the hospital again. Almost exactly 2 years since she was hospitalized with life-threatening encephalitis at the University of Minnesota, I ended up bringing Amy to the local hospital because she had a fever for three days, was increasingly sleeping throughout the day, and suddenly this morning developed a stiff neck and back pain, headache, and vomiting when repositioned. A few hours in the ER told us her liver wasn't working exactly right, her heart was slightly enlarged, and yes, she had all the signs and symptoms of another spinal or brain infection.

Because of the liver abnormality, her doctors at the local hospital weren't comfortable doing diagnostic tests because of the increased risk of bleeding. The last thing she needed was a bleed into her spinal column. So she was brought by ambulance to St. Mary's hospital in Rochester, part of "Mother Mayo". In the ER there, she had some tests run, which actually looked a little more hopeful. The pressure around her spine was not as high as it was two years ago.

So for now, she is admitted to the hospital with a working diagnosis of bacterial meningitis. She continues to sleep and is very quiet and talks very little when awake. She will be hospitalized for at least 48 hours for IV antibiotics. She needs urgent prayer.

Think you've gotten maximum sympathy as a cancer patient when you finally shave your head? Nope. Walk into an ER with your deathly ill daughter and everyone realizes you've been given a lot to handle. My mother handed me a little note that made me cry:

"Sufferings arising from anxiety, in which the soul adds to the cross imposed by the hand of God an agitated resistance and a sort of unwillingness to suffer - such troubles arise only because we live to ourselves. A cross wholly inflicted by God, and fully accepted without any uneasy hesitation, is full of peace as well as of pain. On the contrary, a cross not fully and simply accepted, but resisted by the love of self, even slightly, is a double cross; it is even more a cross, owing to this useless resistance." ~Francoise de la Mothe Fenelon

You can see the sun-dog to the left of this photo, just barely (it's a cell phone pic).

And God sent me two little winks on the way down to Rochester. In Wabasha, Minnesota, we caught up with the ambulance and followed directly behind all the way down to the hospital. What a gift to be so close when I was feeling so very far away from my sick little girl! Then, as we entered town, for just a moment there was a sun-dog, a tiny little rainbow in the clouds that lasted not even a minute. I remembered God's covenant with Noah, and I thanked Him for this small visual covenant with me. Not that I believe it means she will be miraculously healed - or even perhaps survive - but it was His covenant with me that I will survive this newest entrance into the refiner's fire, my soul intact and His love never-ending.

Heritage

2011-10-22T09:22:00.001-05:00

A few months ago, I was making schnitzel with my daughter and son. It's not a family recipe for, although I am almost half German and my husband almost all, somehow schnitzel was a recipe that got lost through the generations of make-do housewives in the South Dakota and Minnesota families during the Depression era.

People often have the misconception that homeschool involves 8 hours of teaching your children from books. While books play a part, especially as your homeschooler grows older, one of the main advantages to homeschooling is that anything you do as part of your daily life can become part of schooling. This became especially important when God blessed us with a daughter who has multiple special needs. She sits for about 5-10 minutes at a time, so her performance in a traditional school would probably be markedly poor. But put her to work hammering schnitzel, and you can fit all kinds of lessons in.

Count aloud while you hammer, Amy. How many times did you hit that piece? (Aha - math!)

Let's learn about the trinity. Eggs are the perfect example. White, yolk and shell are all parts of the egg and the egg wouldn't be the egg without any one of those parts. Just like Jesus, God and the Holy Spirit. (Aha - Bible Studies!)

See how the egg sticks to the meat? That's because there is protein in the egg, and protein has long chains of little tiny molecules, so it doesn't slide off the meat like the milk does. (Aha - chemistry!)

Remember the wheat in the field, Amy? That's what this flour is made up. First they pound the wheat to get rid of the chaff. Then they grind it and get rid of the hard outer kernel. Then they bleach it to make it white. Isn't that amazing? (Aha! Agriculture.)

Most of all, homeschooling allows young children to be near their parents, who hold within themselves all of their heritage, everything they've read and seen and experienced. Oftentimes, neither the child nor the parent realizes what is being passed on in these moments, like the busy hour before dinner time.

Call it an art or a skill, homeschooling is one of the most natural things in the world. It's an organic way of transmuting information into age appropriate ideas and concepts just the right size for the child to digest. Pair it with the work of real life, and your child will always remember.

Like a duck out of water

2011-10-21T12:45:00.001-05:00

We all have some type of relationship that scares us. Maybe you had a bad boss, so you're afraid of meetings with bosses. Maybe you got burned by friends all through your childhood and you find it difficult to develop close friendships. Maybe you grew up in a home with an unhealthy marriage and you're afraid of commitment. For me, it's pastors. My experience has always been that they say one thing on Sunday and act a different way the rest of the week. In fact, much like the populous views lawyers, I was almost to the point of believing there was something inherent in their role that prevented them from acting like normal people.

When you have a preconceived idea of how the world works, and you have an experience that is polar opposite to these suppositions, you suddenly have a flash of cognitive dissonance. And so was the conversation I just had with one of my new pastors. For the first time in my life, I went to a pastor with an idea that I thought would offend them, and instead of correction, I received unconditional love and acceptance for exactly where I am at right now.

This type of experience is exactly what restores our hope in a broken, cursed universe, and draws us deeper into relationships instead of pushing us out of them. I have lived dry on hope for many years when it comes to churches. I remember a line from a Grace Potter song, I see a tiny light, like a flashbulb sparkle in the night. Maybe, just maybe, I've really found a home. Maybe, just maybe, there are pastors that are different. Maybe, just maybe, I won't be driven to regret and hopelessness by yet another church.

Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity! Psalm 133:1

Turquoise Gates

Feeling after Him

Penance

Home again, home again...

Urgent prayer request for a friend

The waiting morning

Dreadlocks for earbuds

And so it goes

Anxious thoughts

Take this cup

This hour comes

Lament for the eldest

Unfolding the day

Love > Fear

Emotions on Tuesdays

The best way to start a week

Breathing

A set-back

Adventures and non-adventures

Making a ladder out of counted gifts

2011 in Pictures

A word for 2012

suc·ceed

Top Ten for 2011 & an Author Favorite

Are you generic?

ge·ner·ic

Defying Death: Adventure & Mortality

2011: The Year of My Best Friend

Where the star leads

True humility

Undone

It's the simple things

Tonight in a tavern

Scheduling the next scan

The calm

Stringing pearls

Walking away with dignity

Opposite action

Solving the long-term housing crisis: Ambassadors to the Nations

Reflections on Samaritan's Purse: 12 Causes for Christmas

A new low

Finding clarity

Outside looking in

Beginning December

All I want for Christmas

Pocket full of sunshine

Grace in the discards

Is unity as reachable as repentance?

Thanksgiving round-up

Wake-up call

Novemberish

Growing into cancer

When gratitude comes slowly

Poetry and Instagrams

Blessing of the Receiver: Thoughts from the Counselor's Couch & Being "Girl, interrupted"

The blessing of the Giver

A promise of snow

Joy dawns again

Longing for home

Expectant loneliness

Mistakes

The mountains never-ending

Becoming

Lingering

Hearts spinning

Here I am

Being sick together

A prayer for healing and wholeness

Refine us

Sunday's ray of hope

Amelia in the hospital again

Heritage

Like a duck out of water