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.

The Last Day of School....

There are almost no words to describe this day in our region...

No mother raises her child to send them off to school to die.

Or pull a gun out of a backpack and shoot people in the cafeteria.....

...and then turn that gun on himself.

I have prayed and cried and prayed again and again today...

People just keep coming to mind that desperately need the help of someone in charge.

Someone who can do something.

Someone who is in control when

everything

is 

out of

 c o n t r o l....

Just three weeks ago I sat in the bleachers with my husband at Marysville Pilchuck High School. I distinctly remember thinking about the moms on the other side of the field... about how right at that moment we were cheering against each other, but in the face of something harder... a real battle perhaps... we would be on our knees together. I told my husband that as we left the field that night...

...and today is that day.

Nothing can prepare you for something like this.

Nothing.

But I do believe, with all my heart, that you can be carried through something

JUST

LIKE

THIS....

By Jesus Himself.

I asked today that the Lord would carry the parents who were frantically trying to locate their kids...

 The teachers who were doing their best to protect and direct terrified students...

The law enforcement officers that were responding...

The medical staff that were readying themselves to attend to unthinkable wounds...

For teens across the region that would get this news and respond in every imaginable way...

And that as people look for answers that they might find The Answer in Jesus Himself.

Only He can make sense of this. 

Only He can comfort and heal on the level this requires.

I sit here in my quiet room, my chosen coping mechanisms close by, (hot tea and sunflower seed/thompsons raisins mix), and two peaceful pups relaxed from the bath I inflicted on all three dogs this evening as part of a therapeutic exercise as well. I hear my son clomping around downstairs with his size 11 shoes...

and I am beyond thankful that he is down there doing whatever it is that his teenage stomach is dictating.

I lit a candle today in the midst of the unfolding of the details of the horror at MPHS, to be a tangible reminder that Jesus IS the light of the world. That no matter how dark the situation, that darkness doesn't dim his light. No, He shines all the brighter. 

I don't understand the whys of today.

But I do know Who.

Jesus. 

Always.

Jesus.

Nothing is too big, or terrifying, or horrific for Him.

He is always the First Responder... For He is always, ever, there.

I will be praying for everyone involved, all those affected by this tragedy, for a long time to come.

And especially for the families of the students whose last day of school was

today. 

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.