I have to keep telling myself that no matter how it looks right now, this is not the end of the story.
Every morning I’m reminded by the “Cock-a-doodle-doo!” of my early rising roosters, that the light is coming….
Read the rest here: Crowing in the Dark
The months roll by, the calendar pages turn, soon school will be back in session and you are still not here.
Sometimes I think I have figured out how to do these days that remain between now and when we will be together again.
And sometimes I realize that I haven’t.
Today is one of those days.
I miss you.
I love you.
I can’t round a corner without thinking of you and wishing this was not my life.
But it is.
So I’ll keep on keeping on. Just like you would want me to.
Just like you would do.
Even when it’s hard.
And some days it is so very hard.
So many times I choose to designate those who are doing great things for the Kingdom of God as having special talent, or a special calling or extraordinary grace.
In doing so I try to excuse myself from my obligations as a Christ follower.
I set those “super Christians” aside as “holy” and “other” to make it easier to trudge blindly on, ignoring the people God places in MY path as MY assignment.
And that is sin.
If my life is too busy to bend down,
if my calendar is too full to make room for helping my neighbor,
if my heart is too hard to break over the pain and suffering and hopelessness that is splattered across headlines and newsfeeds,
then I am not listening to my Savior.
When my heart is turned toward Christ, it is filled with His love, His compassion, His mercy and grace.
Loving others is not a special calling or talent or gift.
It is a command.
[Jesus said] So I give you a new command: Love each other deeply and fully. Remember the ways that I have loved you, and demonstrate your love for others in those same ways. Everyone will know you as My followers if you demonstrate your love to others.
John 13:34-35 VOICE
One of the things I’ve been forced to embrace in the wake of child loss is that there are very few questions, experiences or feelings that are simple anymore.
Read the rest here: It’s Complicated
Every time the headlines scream death and destruction, I feel like I’ve been punched.
My heart hurts.
It hurts for the community of people who feel targeted by police.
It hurts for police officers and their families who feel targeted for simply doing their jobs.
It hurts for the mothers, fathers, husbands, wives, brothers, sisters and others who will bury someone this week.
It hurts because the possibility for constructive conversation around what has been done, what should be done and what might be done is drowned out by wailing and yelling and strident protests and incendiary social media posts that leave no room for real change.
We are all on one side or the other.
And that is beyond sad. It is diabolical.
Jesus said that the thief comes only to “steal, kill and destroy”. (John 10:10)
I refuse to be part of the enemy’s plot to destroy us by dividing us into opposing camps.
No matter where I fall on the political spectrum, if I add my voice to the screaming and drown out reasonable and meaningful discussion, I join with those advocating anarchy instead of progress toward positive change.
We are making choices right now that will affect ourselves, our children and our grandchildren.
I choose to listen.
I choose to learn.
I choose to try to understand different perspectives and to work toward our common goal of protecting all lives.
Everywhere.
Every. time.
I’ve lived with some level of physical limitation for over a decade due to rheumatoid arthritis.
When it first struck, I had no idea what was going on and it took more than two years to be diagnosed. Since then, I’ve learned to work around the swelling, joint pain and limited range of motion-most days.
But this morning while trying to separate an eight pack of Powerade bottles, I was brought to tears over how something so simple for others to do is so very hard for me.
Grief has made simple things hard too.
Just as I schedule tasks around my stiff morning joints, I find that I must schedule meetings, social events and appointments around the times when I know I’m most vulnerable to being overwhelmed by sadness.
I can’t “think on my feet” anymore so I try hard to avoid being put in a situation where I might be called upon to do or say something without adequate warning or preparation.
Multitasking is a thing of the past.
I prioritize everyday chores so that I can do them sequentially instead of simultaneously. I forget things in the oven, in the washing machine, upstairs…
A morning of phone calls usually means that I’m wiped out for the rest of the day.
And just like the Powerade incident, I am brought to tears over the discrepency between what I used to be able to do, what other people can still do and what I struggle to do now.
It takes so. much. energy. just to get through the day.
Both my physical limitation and my emotional burden is invisible to others.
I’m not alone. Others are struggling too.
All around me are people who feel like they are traveling uphill.
Both ways.
It’s easy to become jaded and impatient and irritated when those around us are unable to keep up.
I’m trying to learn to lead with grace, mercy and compassion instead of anger, frustration and dismissiveness.
When I do, I’m rewarded with the knowledge that I’ve been a stepping stone rather than a stumbling block.
And isn’t that really what we all would rather be?
It is a hard, hard truth that we all need to hear: we are battered and torn, tossed and bruised and it is not only OK to admit it, it’s what we have to do.
“Loss and heartache translate into vulnerability and weakness. And in this day and age both are intolerable to society at large. We are a nation of overcomers. We pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and keep going. We deceive ourselves into believing that through sheer force of will and dogged determination we can overcome every challenge, every trial in life.”
On my more philosophical days, I have been known to think that I am far more blessed than those around me who seem to live lives devoid of tragic loss and health challenges. Truth be told, I’ve not found myself terribly philosophical in the two and a half years since Bethany and Katie’s lives were stolen by the selfish and reckless actions of an unlicensed driver. But I remember those moments in what feels like the distant past.
Life is hard. Circumstances have driven me to my knees literally and figuratively. In fact, circumstances have led me to a full body prostrate position, the nubby carpet of my bedroom floor, imprinting my cheek as I’ve petitioned the Lord for the hearts, souls, and health of my children.
And I’ve lost. I’ve lost too many of the things I love most in this life. No great spiritually inspiring story to be…
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Every idea of [God] we form, He must in mercy shatter. The most blessed result of prayer would be to rise thinking ‘But I never knew before. I never dreamed…’ I suppose it was at such a moment that Thomas Aquinas said of all his own theology, ‘It reminds me of straw.’
—Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer (1964)
It’s possible that you haven’t thought of it this way, but if you are a believer in Christ and have yet to walk through faith-shattering trials, you may have placed God in a box.
I know I had.
I thought that after decades of walking with Jesus, reading and studying Scripture and wading through some fairly significant trials I had God pretty well figured out.
I could quote verses for every occasion, open my Bible to any book without looking in the Table of Contents, and had something sprirtual to say about everything.
But now, like Job, I cover my mouth.
C.S. Lewis shared his grief journey after losing his wife in the book, A Grief Observed.
What many may not know is that he was pressured to publish it under a pseudonym.
His publishers and some of his close friends didn’t want people to know that this giant of the Christian faith, this celebrated apologist for believing Christ was shaken to the core by the death of his beloved bride.
Lewis resisted and I am so thankful.
It brings me great comfort to know that one who was much more equipped to face a faith crisis found himself floundering in the ocean called sorrow and grief.
He knew where the boat was.
But he, like me, wasn’t sure he wanted to climb back in.
Not that I am (I think) in much danger of ceasing to believe in God. The real danger is of coming to believe such dreadful things about Him. The conclusion I dread is not ‘So there’s no God after all,’ but ‘So this is what God’s really like. Deceive yourself no longer.”
C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed
Grief has forced me to reexamine every notion I had of God and how He works in the world. I’ve had to pull out all my theological assumptions and compare what I thought I knew to what is in the Bible and what I have experienced in life.
It is exhausting. And necessary.
Like Lewis, I’ve discovered that I had ideas about God, but that they were not necessarily true: “My idea of God is not a divine idea. It has to be shattered time after time. He shatters it Himself.”
I had decided that God acted in certain ways, that prayers guaranteed certain results and that my life as a believer in Christ was destined to be one of favor and blessing because I was honoring Him.
My box for God included room for some pain and suffering-but definitely not enough space for Him to to allow the death of my child and plunge me into this abyss of grief and sorrow.
What do people mean when they say, ‘I am not afraid of God because I know He is good’? Have they never even been to a dentist?”
C.S.Lewis
At the dedication of the Temple, Solomon prayed:
“But, God, will you really live here with us on the earth? The whole sky and the highest heaven cannot contain you. Certainly this house that I built cannot contain you either.”
2 Chronicles 6:18 ERV
God has broken out of my box–He was never really in it to begin with.
Only my ideas of Him could be contained in so small a space.
God bless the inventor of Band Aids!
That little tacky plaster has soothed more fears and tears than almost any other invention in the world.
Skinned knee? Put a BandAid on it.
Bee sting? BandAid.
Tiny bump that no one can even see? Oh, sweetie, let me give you a BandAid.
Simply acknowledging pain and woundedness is so often all that is needed to encourage a heart and point it toward healing.
It’s the same in the world of emotional, psychological and spiritual wounds.
But we have yet to invent the BandAid for those.
Instead, frequently we ignore, refute, minimize and pass over the one in our midst who holds out a hand or a heart saying, “I have a boo boo.”
Believe me, I understand-so many of these wounds are incurable, they are uncomfortable to think about, hard to look at.
But often the only thing the hurting heart wants is acknowledgement, a moment of time, a face turned full into theirs, eye-to-eye and unafraid to remain alongside through the pain.
Just as a BandAid bears witness to the wound underneath, our compassionate presence can bear witness to the deeper wounds no one can see.
When we choose to lean in and love, to listen and learn, to walk with the wounded we give a great gift.
We spend so much time, money and effort trying to make our decaying frame look less like the temporary shelter it’s intended to be and more like an eternal monument to beauty.
But try as we might, we are impotent against the forces that will eventually drag us to the grave.
What if, instead, I worked as diligently to exercise my inner woman as I do my too-generous bottom?
What if I poured truth and strength into my soul through the Word of God like I force-feed my tummy with smoothies and vitamins?
What if I decided that these brief moments left to me were too precious to waste on things that are destined for dust and I used them to invest in things of eternal value?
I’m not advocating gluttony or lazy living, but I am arguing that most of my time should be spent cultivating a beautiful soul rather than a beautiful body.
I’m looking forward to my new, perfect body-the one Jesus will give me when He restores and redeems everything this broken world has taken from me. Until then, I’ll put up with this one, and work on my soul.
thelifeididntchoose 