Triumphant Loser

She was obviously not the fastest runner in the longest girls race at the track meet.

A girl from another high school, average height, average build.

She started out at a decent clip, nothing to shout about but steady.

But as the race wore on, the girls going round and round, her brow began to furrow.

Toward the end she was a full lap behind everyone else...

But she was still running. 

Still at the same pace she started at.

Still with the furrowed brow.

Maybe there was a reason she ran at that pace,

Maybe she was injured,

Or a novice,

Or sick,

But she kept going.

Even as the last of the runners jogged off the lanes to cool down and stretch...

She headed into her final lap...

Alone.

I watched her all around the track

My eyes glued to her french braid as it bobbed behind her

And one word thumped like a heartbeat in my head...

Faithful. Faithful. Faithful.

She wasn't going to give up no matter how far behind she was.

She was running her race.

Her race.

As she came around the last bend and began her last pass in front of the bleachers I cheered,

Her team mates cheered

Everyone cheered...

Cheered for her determination

Her steady steps all the way to the finish line.

In my eyes she won.

She really won.

The competition that's the hardest is always in our own head, and she beat it.

She was triumphant.

She didn't just not come in first

She was in last place...

The last girl running.

The consummate loser.

I can so identify with her.

I have felt like the ultimate loser on so many levels.

Loser at academics

Loser at relationships

Loser at parenting

Loser... loser.. loser. 

Back in the day when I was in Junior High that was the word

You know, with the hand gesture to go along with it...

That big sign language L on the forehead.

And then some kids thought they'd be witty and start calling people winners instead

Totally wiping out any positive connection with that word.

Kids can be so cruel.

People can be so cruel.

Life can be cruel.

But the other day I didn't see any cruel at all.

Just cheering as that courageous, determined, steady young girl finished her race.

It's really all we're called to do.

To stay in our lane and finish our race.

It doesn't matter if we're a lap behind

Or two laps behind...

Or maybe it's dark out and the stands are all empty 

and our knees are bloody from falling

and we're crawling...

But right there at the finish line will always be our Coach...

With eyes full of love and compassion. 

I saw the same girl later running laps around the parking lot with her coach.

What a different countenance she had...

Laughing and smiling.

Both of them.

She had run her race and he was proud of her. 

Well done...

That's my goal.

To run my race until I cross that finish line

To fall into the arms of my Coach and hear Him say

Well done...

Not because I did everything well

Or because I was the best at anything

But because I stayed the course when I wanted to bow out.

Because even when I knew I had failed I kept trying.

Because I lifted my eyes back to Him even when I had fallen in the dark and got up again.

Let the sound of my steps be...

Faithful... Faithful... Faithful...

to the last stride of my race.

Internal Leprosy...

Sick as a dog...

Who came up with that term anyway?

I mean, I've seen plenty of dogs sick. And for the most part they still wag their tails and recover fairly rapidly... So long as it isn't something terminal.

Definitely sad...

But cats?

Cats on the other end are GNARLY when they're ill, at least in my experience.

Especially with respiratory stuff... The wheezing, the coughing, the runny eyes and bubbling mucous from their teensy nostrils....

Gnarly.

I'm currently sick.

Caught a bug from my sons and it's running it's course through my head and joints...

 Not necessarily gnarly, but it got me thinking...

My husband read a devotion to me a few mornings ago about Jesus and the Leper.

Leprosy is gnarly.

Gruesome.

Debilitating.

Isolating.

A person with leprosy in Biblical times was marked.

Commanded to cry out 'Unclean!' as they made their way through the streets to warn others of their approach.

Hopeless.

As a girl who scored a 12 out of 12 concerning touch as my Love Language, the thought of being ostracized and untouchable makes me shudder.

As my husband read the devotion he was noticeably moved. He could relate to the feelings expressed by the author.

The shame.

The horror.

The disconnectedness.

The ridicule.

Painful doesn't really do it justice...

Leprosy starts out painful but results in numbness.

Deadness.

Irretrievable loss.

What begins as a wound ends as a gaping vacancy.

There is an innate inability to heal.

We always pray after we do our devotions and that morning wasn't different.

As he held my hand I was grateful for his touch in a new way.

But as he prayed he said something that pierced me....

"Lord, I can't begin to comprehend what it would be like to be a leper. But I do know what it's like to feel shame. To feel marked. To feel disconnected. To struggle daily. To live with internal leprosy in desperate need of a Healer..."

Internal Leprosy...

What started out as a wound now numb and rotting,

or maybe even just gone.

Oh it rang through the halls of my heart and found so many places to land!

I too walked so many years with the internal dragging of emotional and mental limbs.

The rot of sin and it's consequences eating away at the beautiful gifts the Lord so carefully placed there.

The injury of abuse, divorce, addiction, unforgiveness, envy, selfishness...

And in my mind always the echo of  "Unclean... unclean.... unclean..."

On the outside, however, everything looked pretty great...

The to-do list was checked off.

The smile was intact.

The house was reasonably clean.

The obligatory duty to God and man was in order...

But inside?

Rotting.

My husband and I know that all too well...

The exhaustion of constantly covering up...

And finally the admittance that we desperately needed the Healer.

The Leper in Matthew 8 went in search of Jesus,

1 "When Jesus came down from the mountainside, large crowds followed him.² A man with leprosy came and knelt before him and said, “Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean."

He approached Jesus...

in a large crowd.

Do you think that he was crying out 'Unclean!' as he moved in that crowd?

Or do you think that the had carefully bundled himself so that nothing showed, making sure not to let anyone get too close, planning each movement with meticulous care to assure he wouldn't be identified as...

Grotesque

Unacceptable

A lost cause

Beyond help?

I tend to think the latter...

It's my opinion for sure, but it fits the image that Scripture paints for me.

Jesus would have been the focus of the crowd.

The Leper knelt before Him.

I'm thinking the Leper was right in the middle of it all...

And how many of us are right in the middle of it all?

The middle of ministry

The middle of chronic illness

The middle of grief

The middle of parenting

The middle of mental illness

The middle of loss...

No one is immune.

We're all in the middle of something.

But I guess the question is: 

Are we in the middle with Jesus?

The Leper believed that the Jesus could heal him if He was willing...

And this was Jesus' response:

³ Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. “I am willing,” he said. “Be clean!” Immediately he was cleansed of his leprosy.

"I am willing."
 
 Jesus is compassionate to depths that are unfathomable to us.

He was willing and the Leper was cleansed immediately!

I understand the heaviness of trying to make sure that my internal leprosy is covered so that I'm not identified in negative ways.

I understand the numbness that results from years of rotting wounds that eat away at mental, emotional, and spiritual nerve endings.

Jesus does too.

He knew that the wounds on the heart, mind, and soul of the Leper were in even more dire need of healing than his eroding body.

And He was willing to cleanse them all.

He has done it for me...

And He has done it for my husband.

As we continue to come across areas that fester we kneel before Him and say:

  “Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean.”

And He is.

Push through the crowds in your careful wrappings if you must.

Plan your steps meticulously and keep others at a distance if that's where you're at.

But make your way to the feet of Jesus.

Come in all your wounded, rotten, numbness.

Ask Him for wholeness, for cleansing, for healing.

Jesus is still about the business of healing leprosy of all kinds.

Even yours...




 

Too Far Gone...

Don't believe the lies.

Oh, I mean they are convincing, and sometimes even based on your reality.

You know them like the back of your hand.

The ones tailored to fit your insecurities like a glove.

Sometimes they come floating in like a stray cloud, soft and seemingly harmless.

Only blocking the sun a little.

Other times they move in like a storm front, in droves, and you're caught in the howling mayhem of their force.

And then there are the dripping lies.

That one that you've been listening to for longer than you can remember.

You can almost ignore it.

But in the quiet of your heart, in the moments when you get still enough, it's there.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

Failure. Hopeless. Too Far Gone...

Too Far Gone....

That's one that likes to slither into my thoughts pretty regularly.

But enough about that... for now.

Yesterday I was gardening.

At the first signs of Spring my husband and I get the urge to go outside and poke around in the dirt.

Botanical Therapy. 

It's good for us. Body and Soul.

I find myself pondering life and praying a lot when I work outside.

There are things I love about it, and things that I honestly wish were not in existence.

For example: I think stinging nettles are from the pit.

Conversely, I love Hens and Chicks.

Hens and Chicks are like little roses gone succulent in my mind, and there isn't anything more adorable in my opinion than the little babies that shoot off from under the mother plant.

Hence their name.

So, yesterday I set out to attend to the Hens and Chicks.

I had received a whole passel of them, like a third of a large black trash bag full, last Fall.

It was so exciting to me!

The moment I saw the ad for free Hens and Chicks I jumped on it.

I've always loved them.

Really loved them.

I had large containers of them years ago that just went wild in the California heat.

But last fall I dropped the ball with these.

I live with chronic health issues, (that's another blog post), and last fall things were headed downhill... again.

When we head down one of these trails my energy levels bottom out, my motivation nearly disappears, and strength and memory don't show up to do their job.

My sweet husband asked a few times what I would like to do with them, and the first few times I said something in the neighborhood of, "Oh, I'll get them in the pots soon."

But it didn't happen.

And finally they were carted off to sit in a corner by the trash cans.

A monument to failure and neglect.

They sat there until yesterday.

I remembered a few days ago that I had planned to put them in the ground last fall, and that maybe that black bag was still out there.

I had a moment of guilt wash over me when I decided I would go look and see if there was anything left worth rescuing. Just a moment.

You know, the guilt that comes that has nothing to do with the present at all but is tied to a whole paper chain of failures from eons ago.

Yeah that.

But I shook it off and headed back to the trash, gardening gloves on (stinging nettles are the most potent teachers), and hopeful tray in hand.

(It's handy when your health care team finally nails down what's going on with you and you can begin to sort of get some ground back memory-wise.)

I rounded the corner of our garage and trained my eyes on the spot where the bag had been.

I didn't see it.

Maybe my dear husband finally threw it away to save me from the pain of another incomplete project, of seeing these things I love go to waste.

He's like that.

Loves to shield me from unnecessary pain.

But this time he hadn't.

The bag was there, much smaller than it had been last fall.

Much.

A puddle of rainwater had formed on the top, and the mouth of the bag was a large frown similar to an unhappy toad.

I set my tray down on the grass beside me, and opened the bag.

My heart sank.

It was a mass of decaying goo.

There were worms and slugs noshing on rotten roots and squishy black masses.

I'm pretty sure at this point if I hadn't grown up a consummate tom-boy I would have gagged and tied that bag up for good.

But I didn't.

I felt an urging to dig around in that pile of muck and sludge.

I felt some small hope that I could find maybe just one little plant that was still viable.

So I reached in and grabbed a mound of rot...

And upon touching it I felt something firm!

I turned the mass over in my hand and there were three perfectly good Hens staring back at me!

Not just one....

Oh yes, they were covered with muck....

They looked as if they had showered in cow excrement.

(There, that's more accurate.)

But they were not just viable, they were lovely.

So I heaped them on my tray and began to dig through the rest of the sludge with renewed hope and a determination that I would save any that were retrievable.

I spent thirty minutes digging meticulously through the smelly goo, working my way through knots of worms, fascinated by the sheer girth of a green and black spotty slug I encountered.

It was search and rescue on a small botanical scale.

When I had finally come to the end of the bag, the bottom was filled with rainwater and a black murky soup from the decay, so I pulled up the top and headed off with my HEAP of plants.

I got the hose and set up a small metal table to begin the process of clearing off the filth and rotten petals.

Tedious work.

My tender husband helped me.

Some of the petals had become so engorged with the excess water that they literally fell off when we touched them.

Some petals were pure white from lack of sun.

A few of the Hens taproots were gone and had only thread-like roots left to obtain nutrients.

I started out with my gloves on, already covered with the glop and mess from the bag, I worked at getting all the decay off the Hens and separated knots of roots to free each plant.

And then came the moment when I needed to take the gloves off....

The tiniest Chicks needed to have my bare hands to work with them.

There was just no way to feel all the small ridges and avoid damaging them further behind the barrier of the gloves.

So off they came.

I continued to work on the little plants, the rot getting all over my hands as I removed the slimy yuck from their roots.

As I gave each one a final rinse I smiled at their beauty.

It didn't matter that the overspray was covering my own feet with their sludge.

It didn't matter that some were only a fraction of the size that they started out to be due to petals that couldn't take the pressure.

It didn't matter that some had grown crookedly straining for any chance of light in that disgusting bag.

No.

They were alive!

Totally usable.

In need of care? Yes.

In need of planting and watering? Yes.

In need of time and a Gardener that remembers them? Yes.

And they have it...

What joy! What satisfaction!

What botanical redemption....

The experience spoke to my soul. The deep down part of me that for the most part doesn't get any air time.

I have felt too far gone.

November 1st of 1991 I felt that way for sure... That night that Jesus saved my body and soul.

But it wasn't true then...

And it's not true now.

There are situations in my life that feel too far gone, relationships that are fractured, health issues that are mind-numbingly complicated, some days it's just the tasks that pile one upon another until I become so overwhelmed it's tempting to hang up an 'Out to Lunch' sign and not come back....

But feelings and truth are rarely friends.

I feel overwhelmed, but the truth is that in Christ I have access to unlimited strength and peace.

I feel hopeless about shattered relationships, but the truth is that Jesus is the restorer of the seemingly impossible.

I feel weak and unwell, but the truth is that in His time and His way He will heal me. 

The Lord is all about the search and rescue.

It's who He is.

There is never too much sludge.

Too much wasted possibility.

To many slimy worms lurking about.

Too much time gone....

He comes in and gently begins the process of redeeming.

Even the most delicate are safe with Him.

Redeeming it all.

With the pure, clean, life-giving water of His word.

And His own tender hands...