Breaking the Silence... with Love...

It's been months since I've written anything here.

There's lots of reasons for that. Some good, some just... reasons.

The Holidays are always heavy for me, always.

Heavy with memories of hard times, good times, bittersweet times.

Heavy with heart ache.

Heavy with grief.

Grief that is growing instead of lessening as time moves on.

Heavy with schedules, and performing, and gifts... and food.

(Food is another blog for another time... oh yeah.)

Holiday time is heavy with the weight of sacrifice and gratitude for Jesus life, and death.

And at the close of the Holiday season, at least for the last several years, comes severe health issues.

Apparently my Auto-Immune Disease doesn't like the heaviness of the Holidays...

Last year at about this time I was in Scripps Hospital in San Diego.... they were ruling out a possible stroke or heart attack.

Not Good.

This year, I recognized the change in my biological weather before it hit hurricane status and we caught things before they were completely out of control again.

I mean, they were out of control for sure, but not to the degree that I needed to be in the hospital.

(Photo Credit: My 13yo son, The Squid)

So off for lots of testing.

And now we wait.

I can't count how many times my life has felt out of control.

My choices out of control.

My eating out of control.

My family out of control.

My reactions out of control.

My circumstances out of control.

And then it hit me...

My Saviour is never out of control.

He is always, ever, continually in control.

And peace rushes in like fresh air on the Oregon Coast...

I can rest in Him because He knows it all.

He knows how all this started, where it's going, and how it ends.

If I quiet myself to spend time with Him he gives me insight into how to navigate these waters and assures me that He is with me all the while.

His banner over me is love... even if I'm laid up in bed with bones that don't know what they want to do, or not do.

It's an interesting life for sure, full of way more good than bad, living with auto-immune disease and other health issues that really like to give me a run for my money... But I know this more than ever, that He is TRULY in control. That He loves me and wants the very best for my life, even if it doesn't look that way to me... especially if it doesn't look that way to me.

Gratitude washes off the grime of years spent focusing on elaborate lies cloaked in fear.

The Lord has built a step ladder out of thousands upon thousands of daily love gifts to me that allows me to peek over the wall of health issues... and the view is stunning.

I'm surrounded by miracles.

I don't have to look far and I see them, talk with them, walk around in them, hold them in my arms, watch them play football, listen to their coos as they nod off to sleep on my lap....

Jesus has been so good to me, good for me, good around me.

He is so good. 

I'm thankful for His guiding hand, His light for this path, His healing here or There... For Him.

For His endless love gifts all along the way.

And for opening my eyes to see them.

Life gets heavy for sure, but it never outweighs His love.

Never.

Ever faithful.... Ever true.... Jesus in the Fire.

Communicating isn't easy at the moment...

This body fights me sometimes in ways I can't even fight back.

My perspective has changed so radically, so drastically, so completely.

I can remember thinking constantly about what other people thought of me, of my kids, my clothes, my car....

Fear had me by one hand and Pride had me by the other.

I put Jesus in a box with a glass front painted with the words, "In Case of Emergency Break Here."

He was my plan B.

I don't like seeing that in type. I don't like admitting it. But it was true.

It WAS true...

I have seen the most devastating things build the most beautiful moments in the midst of rubble as far as the eye can see... literally.

I can't pretend that Jesus isn't GOD.

That He isn't on the throne of all Heaven.

That NOTHING HAPPENING ON EARTH will make Him get up and pace that sapphire floor....

Nothing.

Not Ebola.

Not cancer.

Not financial ruin.

Not broken relationships.

Not war or famine or death.

He has seen it all.

He knows that in the end everything will be alright.

He's already there...

He is from Age to Age the same.

From before the foundations of the Earth.....

Jesus

I have been at the end of myself on a road I didn't know with my children crying out to Him with tear stained faces in between asking me if we were going to live through that World's Largest Tornado... 

...and in that moment I could say, with my heart banging like an old tractor engine, "I don't know. But if we don't we know where we will go. Jesus will never leave us. He will carry us home."

Truth.

Solid truth that you can stand on. That you can hold onto when the winds are raging, and the floods are rising, and the sky is swallowing homes and cars and people...

Stillness in the Storm, He is.

Direction in the Chaos, He is.

The Hand that reaches out, not to hold your hand, but to HOLD YOU.... He is.

There hasn't been a moment in this day that I haven't prayed for a dear family that I love that is going through a nightmare... a raging swirling nightmare of pain and suffering and love and praise and prayer and aching and hope and courage and terror..... It's their world's largest tornado.

It's a storm they can't navigate alone...

I watched as the people in the actual Tornado Alley banded together regardless of income, race, beliefs, age.... they came together because there was such great need. They sat together on half obliterated curbs and ate barbecued pork sandwiches out of foil wrappers that some college guys brought all the way from Texas.

They came together to share their strength. Their love. Their understanding. 

I drove across the U.S. those times not because I wanted to be a part of something bigger than myself, but because I understand devastation. I understand desperate need. Pain and suffering are no stranger to me.

Pain and suffering are no stranger to Jesus.

I prayed yesterday over a task that I really wanted to do well at. I was feeling shaky at best and I said to the Lord, "I just really want to nail this Lord."

His reply was, "I already have."

And in that moment I saw his nail scarred hand and I remembered the truth that IT IS FINISHED.

He has already gone before me and prepared the way, for everything.

There is nothing I will face that He is not aware of, or makes Him shaky at best.

He is the Author and the Finisher.

In my heartache for my friends facing this terrifying inoperable brain tumor I have come to the place where I just say His name...

Jesus Jesus Jesus...

I know that He is with them because He is with me.

He says He will never leave us or forsake us.

Never.

Not in the wildest storm.

Not in the darkest night.

Not in the deepest pain of the body or soul or mind.

Never.

That scene of Daniel's friends in the fire there in the Old Testament has been in and out of my mind for weeks now off and on...

My husband and I are in our own fiery furnace... So many dear friends in fires of all sorts... and I am reminded time and again that the only things that were lost in those hottest flames were the things that bound them....

If Jesus is in the fire with me then I can count on only being more free on the other side of it.

Truth.

Unchanging Truth.

Those three men so long ago walked around in the fire with Jesus. 

WALKED AROUND IN THE FIRE.

They were bound up and thrown in that furnace, but once they were in the flames...

They were free to move. To walk. To walk with Jesus.

Even the flames obey Him. They can only do what He allows.

And Faith says that what He allows sets me free...

Oh Lord I DO believe.... I DO.

Help my unbelief...

Watching friends and family members suffer is so hard. The temptation to ask God "Why?' at every new twist and turn in the road is sometimes like the worst itch you just can't reach.

I don't think He minds the why's. He knows who I am. He knows what I'm made of and how He made me.

I remember my little children looking up at me asking why about more things than I can count...

So inquisitive. So observant. So smart.

I didn't mind their why's either. 

Oh to have faith like a child... 

Complete trust. 

Sometimes the best prayer I can offer in the fire is, "I trust you Jesus. Thank you for being here. Thank you for your faithful love. Change me Lord. Change me."

I used to want for my circumstances to change so badly. I just knew I would be happy when...

I had a better smile.

I could live in a different place.

I had more time, more money, more hair...

Oh no.

No no.

It just isn't really like that.

Ever.

You are who you are wherever you are.

Not my circumstances Lord....

"Change me Lord. Change me."

There is no glass to break in case of emergency.

No glass... just His name...

Jesus. 

He's with me in the fire.

He's with us in the fire.

Delivering from those things that bind...

Ever faithful.... Ever true....

Free to walk with Him

Jesus,

in the fire.










 

Compared to What?

I received some news today that carried with it a certain amount of stress.

The news wasn't altogether shocking, but it was unwelcome for sure.

I heard the words, took a deep breath, and then began to pray and feel the myriad of emotions that come at stressful times, all at once.

It wasn't pretty.

My body doesn't seem to know what to do with stress. My head tries to give instructions, my heart believes all the right stuff, but my body.... well, it just doesn't listen.

And life? It just keeps going.

House cleaning, dog feeding, football practice chauffeuring, teenage parenting, they all still demand the same amount of attention.

Don't they know that my world just changed and my body's freaking out??

I found myself in a local grocery store a bit dizzy.

Not fun.

My husband and I had been in communication all day, texting some... talking some... and we decided to go to our parents for prayer and discussion, (always a good idea in our case), praying with them helped and I left a bit lighter than when I arrived.

But it didn't last long. Am I human or what?

I climbed back on that roller coaster of  emotions and began to feel pretty ill again. I asked to drive down some scenic roads instead of the usual ways home, so we did. No relief. I bought some coconut chocolate ice cream. No relief. I tried to think about the positive aspects of this news. No relief. I talked about how I was feeling with my husband. No relief.

I was miserable.

I felt mislead. Disappointed. Lied to in a way. I felt angry and sad and ridiculous for feeling all this stuff.

At home I gravitated toward normal comforts... prayer, pups, comfy couch. I chatted with a few trusted gals online.... and kept praying.

Then I asked the Lord for a new perspective....

...AND BOOM.

He changed it alrighty.

I had opened a tab that held links to all kinds of  good stuff on another blog I frequent, but I had never returned to look at the links... much less click on them and really take them in.

The Lord immediately drew my attention to one link and it was as if he moved the mouse over the link and clicked it for me. As the page opened I saw two people in hospital chairs hooked up to IV's. I recognized the body types... Cancer.

The photo journal that followed was pictures of the author's parents who had been both diagnosed at the same time with stage 4 cancer. He with pancreatic, she with breast cancer.... again.

I held my breath.

This has been a week of breathless moments for sure.... watching my middle son who not so long ago had five and a half hour cardiac surgery walk onto the field for his first high school football practice in our town... reading the news of a fellow home school mama of four precious little children whose 31 year old daddy and sole provider was killed by a hit and run driver... hearing our news that changes our world some... and then this.

These beautiful people married 34 years facing the meth-infused demon called Stage Four Cancer.

The photos were not incredibly recent, the husband had lost his battle with pancreatic cancer, but they are incredibly perspective altering.

I can't really help the way my damaged auto-immune disease ridden body reacts to stress, but I can choose how I filter it. What my attitude will be. Where I turn for wisdom and support. Who I trust. I have choices about how I handle the things that I didn't choose. The things I focus on and the way I react are mine to claim.

I looked at one of the photos and soaked in the smile of the wife as the husband did a funky dance move to get her to grin.... Her resolute and regal expression as she was being fitted for a new wig... Taking turns driving to treatments while the other slept in the back seat...

But the one that really got me, even beyond the photo of her mastectomy scar, was the one of their embrace. She so bald and thin, he bearing scars from countless treatments.... holding each other come what may. I'm not sure what the mood was, or the moment that spurred the photographer to capture it... but it caught me. I gazed at it a long while appreciating their willingness to share the heartbreaking intimacy of such commitment and compassion in the face of such a relentless enemy.

My shoulders softened. My breathing slowed. The permanent wrinkle between my eyebrows got a little less etched.... and I looked again at our news...

It's hard news for us sure, but COMPARED TO WHAT?

I asked and I received.

Maybe you did too.


See the photo journal here>>> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/17/cancer-family_n_4455720.html


Help the mom with her 4 sweet kids here (her husband did really just die yesterday) >>> http://www.gofundme.com/dbo2mw


Proverbs 3:5-6
James 1:27

Jesus be all you need and so much more.....