Friday, February 16, 2024

Breath work

When the day dawns grey and heavy, I find myself at work practicing breathing.  

Breathe in God's goodness, breathe out disappointment.
Breathe in God's mercy, breathe out despair.
Breathe in God's kindness, breathe out anxiety.
Breathe in God's truth, breathe out the lies.
Breathe in God's lovingkindness, breathe out resentment.

Is this what apprenticeship under Jesus involves?  How do I practice walking in the way of Jesus?  I know for certain he is using/will use these hard and heavy things I'm facing to train my arms for battle... but what does that daily training look like?  This is not book work.  These are not hypotheticals.  This is life.  My life.

About 2 miles from me a nurse is beginning to inject poison into the body of my oldest son.  I can't be there physically, but I'm there in spirit and I'm practicing breathing.

Breathe in God's perfect shalom, breathe out pain.
Breathe in God's faithfulness, breathe out all the brokenness.
Breathe in God's love, breathe out death.
Breathe in God's redemption, breathe out bitterness.
Breathe in God's hope, breathe out rejection.

On a day when every breath is a conscious choice, I have to be aware of every single one.  This is how the mind is renewed, one breath at a time, one choice at a time.  I have no idea how well I'm doing at this.  Just that I'm trying.

"Be prepared. You’re up against far more than you can handle on your own. Take all the help you can get, every weapon God has issued, so that when it’s all over but the shouting you’ll still be on your feet. Truth, righteousness, peace, faith, and salvation are more than words. Learn how to apply them. You’ll need them throughout your life. God’s Word is an indispensable weapon. In the same way, prayer is essential in this ongoing warfare. Pray hard and long. Pray for your brothers and sisters. Keep your eyes open. Keep each other’s spirits up so that no one falls behind or drops out."  Ephesians 6:13-18


Friday, February 9, 2024

Say the word...

Growing up in the Catholic faith every Sunday after communion we would collectively give this response: 

"Lord, I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word and I shall be healed."

This is in reference to Mathew 8:8: 

"The centurion replied, "Lord, I do not deserve to have you come under my roof.  But just say the word, and my servant will be healed."'



I've been thinking of late about how this has been/is kinda my beef with God oftentimes.  "Good grief!" I'm thinking, "God, just say the word!!" (Aside from the very obvious situation at hand that I desperately want him to say the word over, there is a LONG list of others).  Knowing that the God of the universe loves me and has the power to utter one. single. word. and all things will be made right feels like a pent up scream. 

But if I take a moment to contemplate I realize, God has already said the word, and the word is Jesus. "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  He was with God in the beginning.  Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it."     John 1:1-5  

This is so intensely profound and also in my very humanness not what I want to hear. When everything is going sideways in my life I struggle with this.  I'm just like the Jews of old who missed Jesus cause he's not showing up in the ways I want him to.  I want him to say a single word and fix ________! It's one of the area's in my faith where I have to keep pressing into this truth: God has never promised, in this life, to fix all the things, he's promised himself, his presence with me... and he is enough.  

It's definitely a hard truth for me to digest (and I am continually learning it btw).  I traversed many years not understanding this pretty much at all. Railing at God in dark days that he couldn't possibly actually love me if I was being asked to walk through _______. Early on I totally took the bait hook, line and sinker that as a believer in Jesus I would be insulated from pain. God is for me, who can be against me?  My translation: "I mean, if the God of the universe is in my corner I'm gonna come out on top! God is going to get behind all my causes and all my asks. He's for me!"  

You know that famous CS Lewis quote: "We are not necessarily doubting that God will do the best for us, we are wondering how painful the best will turn out to be."  Yeah.

All that to say, I try to hold the hard differently these days. (Try being the operating word). What I realize now is that I have no idea what God might be up to when hard things come to my door. I can only pray through the following:

If the hard thing is something I think the enemy of my soul is testing me with, I resist his lies and stand, held tight in Jesus.  If the hard thing is something I've brought upon myself via sin, I turn, repent and surrender held tight in Jesus.  If the hard thing is something 100% out of left field that is probably just a by-product of living as a human on planet earth, I lean into God, held tight in Jesus.  God alone knows.  He might speak a single word that changes everything in this temporal existence, but I know he has already spoken the Word that changed everything for eternity.




Tuesday, January 16, 2024

being sick, mourning loss and all things January

Today I'm emerging from the foggy haze of being sick for the last little while where all my days mushed together in a muddy soup. Yesterday as I aimlessly shuffled about the house, kleenex in hand, like a disheveled lost soul, I was ruminating on my mom and how when a person feels sick or low in life they just want their mother.  Yesterday marked 9 years without mine.  


In these days of standing alongside Alex as he does everything he can to beat cancer and we do everything we can to beat fear, I have quite often wished my mom was still here.  She was a tower of strength and truly a unique woman.  She knew how to do hard things and how to pray.  Mom wasn't one to sit on her hands, if she knew of a need that she thought she could meet she did everything in her power to do so. And what she couldn't do practically, she prayed for God's intervention in. She would have been all hands on deck to help any way she could during this stretch of road for us.

So, very selfishly, I wish she were still here... lending extra strength, cheering me on, helping to pick up the slack, knowing that no matter what, she's rock solidly in my corner.  But I guess it's my turn to be as much like her as I can. In which case I'm gonna fix my eyes on God, do what's in my hand to do, plant my feet and pray.


"Be prepared. You’re up against far more than you can handle on your own. Take all the help you can get, every weapon God has issued, so that when it’s all over but the shouting you’ll still be on your feet. Truth, righteousness, peace, faith, and salvation are more than words. Learn how to apply them. You’ll need them throughout your life. God’s Word is an indispensable weapon. In the same way, prayer is essential in this ongoing warfare. Pray hard and long. Pray for your brothers and sisters. Keep your eyes open. Keep each other’s spirits up so that no one falls behind or drops out."   

Eph 6:13  The Message 

Friday, January 5, 2024

Breathing out...

On Wednesday, after weeks of waiting, Alex was finally able to get a PET scan! Mid afternoon he got the results that showed the chemo is working and his tumors are greatly reduced! He sent that amazing and encouraging report out to his community and within minutes an impromptu celebration had assembled.  People cancelled plans, came from miles away and gathered around Alex to rejoice with him.  It honestly touched my heart so deep.  People who show up are truly just amazing.  We all hopped into vehicles and drove to Cheyenne to the newly discovered Sanfords to feast and laugh and just be happy on Alex's behalf.  It was great.  





Today marks the half way point in his treatment.  He's done 6 chemo sessions and he has 6 to go (God willing and everything keeping the trajectory he's on).  We've done a lot of breathing out and giving of thanks to God over the past couple of days.  It's not the end of this journey yet, but it's a positive inflection point of joy and we are super grateful for this moment.


Wednesday, December 20, 2023

waiting...

Today was meant to be a day that brings more clarity, and instead it's another day of waiting.  Alex was scheduled for a PET scan today that would reveal if the chemotherapy is working or not.  It’s a fork in the road with his treatment and whatever it shows will either make the path ahead a bit easier or much harder.  And so it is that we have been waiting on this day with a mix of hope and dread. As I’m here, in this waiting, I’ve been contemplating why it’s so incredibly hard to hold the tension of outcomes in life. I think as a human I struggle with the work of being still and waiting. Ask me to do almost anything else, but please don't ask me to wait in the tension of not knowing.




About 6 years ago God highlighted to me this scripture:


“The LORD will fight for you; you need only to be still.”  Exodus 14:14


How beautifully simple.  How excruciatingly hard.

I’m sitting in this today. I’m trusting that God is fighting this battle, for my part? I’m doing my best to be still.  To wait.  And if the battle turns in a direction that to me looks bad, I’m going to continue to trust, to wait, to be still. It’s all I can do.


Monday, December 18, 2023

Newsletter post

 Just popping this in here for posterity's sake.



Hello friends!


I’m sitting down to write this the week of Thanksgiving, and as I do I’m ruminating on all the things we

have to be thankful for at this moment in time. While our family is in a moment of distinct challenges, if I

really stop and evaluate, the evidence of God’s provision and goodness in our lives is overwhelming. 

We are seeing (even at this early stage in the journey) how God pre-lined up provision for a season we had

no idea was about to begin.


I’m going to tell you that just a few short years ago when we were walking through another challenging stretch

of road, I did not feel this way!  If you know me even a little bit you will know that I am not a Pollyanna. 

The Pollyanna's in my life have been a continual source of annoyance to me through the years. 

In my mind the glass had always been half empty… is this even a real question??  But one Kiwi summer’s

day in December of 2018 as we were beginning to pack up our lives in that lovely land and my heart was

heavy with loss, I had a conversation with my oldest son about my half empty glass. For whatever reason,

his perspective and attitude just struck home to my heart.  This is by no means verbatim, but the essence

of what he said to me as I was looking to him to commiserate with me on all this loss (since I knew he

personally was losing a lot having to leave NZ) was, “I’ve decided to be thankful for the time we've had here,

the friends, the culture, the experiences… all of it.  I’m choosing to look at all the good.”  It was one of those

frozen moments because for whatever reason that came home to me in a way it never had before. 

There was nothing I could control about my circumstances, but I could control how I responded.

To say the least, this has been a learning process with many faceplants for me.  Am I doing it perfectly and

with ease? No. But I’m trying.


We are saturated with messages about “positive” thinking, and if you’re anything like I was, you’re scoffing

at all that positivity.  Good grief!  Life is hard.  Can we just say that and not try to spin it positive? 

And this is true, "Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something." But life is also amazing and joy laden. One of the significant beauties of life in Christ is that Jesus holds space for all of it and all of us. God gives me all the space in the world to lament, to rage, to

bawl my eyes out and pound his chest over the pain I’m experiencing and in tandem with that he lifts

my head, asks me to count it all joy, holds me close and teaches me to re-frame pain, suffering and loss.  

Having come from a faith tradition that did a good job of embracing the hard things in life but often

lacked joy and then moving into a church culture that only wanted to experience joy and lacked the ability

to look pain in the eye, I’ve come to this: I’m not either a glass is half full person or a glass is half

empty person…I’m a human walking through a broken world and both joy and pain are the experience here. 

Ann Voskamp says this so well, “Joy and pain, they are but two arteries of the one heart that pumps through all those who don't numb

themselves to really living.”  


Ok.  So here we are.  Just at the beginning of this road winding through the bleak wasteland of cancer. 

We are anticipating 6 months of chemotherapy for Alex at least.  His attitude is really good, he’s done

his research on Hodgkin’s Lymphoma and is doing everything he can to beat it. 

The rest of us are trying to provide a support system for him that will see him through to the end of this journey.

Thankfully Alex has amazing friends who are supporting him really well. Do we know what lies ahead?  No. 

It could be gut wrenchingly tragic or soar to the heights miraculous.  We don’t know. 

What we do know is that we are not alone, we have a God who sees, who knows,

who is acquainted with grief and who won’t leave us.


Thank you for all your prayers and kindness, you are much appreciated and loved!

Tuesday, October 24, 2023

Trauma

 Let's talk about trauma. 

trau·ma

/ˈtrômə/
noun
  1. 1.
    a deeply distressing or disturbing experience.




I feel that I can't go forward with posting my thoughts about this journey I'm on without addressing trauma. From the moment the word cancer entered the conversation around Alex's health, it has taken up most of the room.  It was just one month ago that Alex came to Daniel and I and said he was getting an ultrasound on the lumps in his armpit to rule out the possibility of cancer.  "Good." we said. "It's best to rule it out."

We have to acknowledge that cancer is trauma inducing.  I don't think there's a person I know that doesn't either know someone fighting cancer, love someone fighting cancer, has survived it themselves or lost someone to this disease.  It's a terrible, horrible thing, and most of us have been touched by it in some way, shape or form. For myself, the very first time I encountered cancer up close was when my dearest friends mom was diagnosed back in 1991.  Her death ripped apart worlds and shattered every sense of normalcy.  I was young and not at all tempered by the hard things of this life and I'm pretty sure I was next to useless to my sweet friends in their gut wrenching grief. (We are however still friends today, so I think they have forgiven my bumbling inadequacy).  

The second time was in 2014 sitting next to my mom at MCR 4 days after she had a tumor removed from her brain and hearing that the biopsy had revealed cancer.  6 months to live they said.  My mother, with all the calmness in the world, politely thanked the hospital staff for all their excellent care, asked me to purchase See's chocolates for all of her nurses and resolutely declined chemotherapy.  She would not fight it.  6 weeks later I would find myself holding her hand as she took her last breath.  She had resolved to go home to God and she so she did.

Walking with my mother down that road taught me many things.  But maybe the most poignant was her lack of fear around death.  She stepped almost seamlessly from this life into eternity leaving letters for all those she loved and detailed instructions for her handful of belonging.  But of course, she was an unusually strong soul from the start, so it didn't surprise me, but her courage gave me courage.  Do I need to acknowledge that cancer can end in death?  Yes. To not do so would be foolish.  Do I stand at the edge of the Valley of the Shadow and desperately ask God to please, please not ask me to walk down into that valley again?  Yes. I ask. I am asking. Honestly, I don't want to think about it.  But I have to. I have to look the trauma of my past encounters with cancer in the face, and I have to leave the outcome of this current situation with God. It's a very rubber meets the road moment. I either actually believe that Jesus has conquered death, that it has no victory, that there is no evil to fear in it's shadow or I don't.  It's pretty much that simple and simultaneously it's not. Because who among us can walk without knees trembling into that dark shadow?  No one.  Only Jesus.  So here's my deep theology moment for today. The only way forward for me is to tuck my heart and soul into the arms of Jesus and rely on him to carry me through. Today. Tomorrow. Friday and every subsequent day.  Help me Lord.