My testimony from November 2017

 Just came across this and decided to post it here for posterity's sake. I wrote this while in New Zealand almost 10 years ago.

There was once a velveteen rabbit, and in the beginning he was really splendid. He was fat and bunchy, as a rabbit should be; his coat was spotted brown and white, he had real thread whiskers, and his ears were lined with pink sateen.

The Skin Horse had lived longer in the nursery than any of the others. He was so old that his brown coat was bald in patches and showed the seams underneath, and most of the hairs in his tail had been pulled out to string bead necklaces. He was wise, ... For nursery magic is very strange and wonderful, and only those playthings that are old and wise and experienced like the Skin Horse understand all about it.

"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day…

"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you…

 "Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.

"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."

"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand.”

To give a testimony is to give evidence in support of a fact or statement: proof.  So what can I stand and testify to at age 44?  What proof can I offer?  Only this… a thousand little pieces of life broken & small, mismatched and smudged, torn and worthless.  A once shiny faith rubbed bare and worn that has failed and fallen far more often than it stood tall and ran on the high places.  But it’s a faith that has become real through this: 

'But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, so that the surpassing greatness of the power will be of God and not from ourselves; 8 we are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not despairing; 9 persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed;”  2 Corinthians 4: 7-9

You see… I have had the clay pot complex for most of my life.  Desperately ordinary, yet knowing we carry glory, beauty…unspeakable creativity within.  We want it to spill out… to run over and flood our reality with its brilliance and wealth.  But to be broken in order to release this abundance…no.  No, broken sounds far too painful…too final… too unfixable and ugly.  Surely broken is not the way.  Spilling over, that sounds good.  Much more pleasant… understandable… lovely.  How wonderful when a vessel is overflowing with abundance and good things!  This is what we want.  Broken?  Not so much.  Yet we will never see the eternal treasure of Him within until we allow for the pot to be broken…contents poured out in a rush of glory.

For so many years I focused on mending every crack…despairing over small leaks and chinks in the pot, trying to shore things up… keep a lid on the ugly… don’t acknowledge the broken bits, but in truth…the only way to avoid brokenness is to avoid love.  

I definitely wanted to avoid the skin horses in my world…if I could see a bare spot, or stuffing coming out, or heaven forbid, if you were broken to bits... I was most likely going to edge away from you… slowly and carefully so as not to be noticed.

Thus the stage was set…que loss and grief.  8 years ago on an ordinary Thursday in March my dad stepped into eternity with one single breath…my biggest fan, gone.  The loss of my dad was followed by the decision to let go of our wedding photography business…our creation…our baby if you will, formed through sleepless nights, hard work, sweat, a little blood and more than a few tears.  It was a death, plain and simple.  The death of a dream and a way of life and a hundred other things…but unlike the death of my dad which I had been able to grieve openly, this death had to be celebrated because of our decision to “save face” and technically sell our business for a dollar in order to give the new owner a better chance a success and look more successful ourselves.  It was a lie.  And my heart wept.  Then only months after we let go of VERGE we sold our other dream… our beautiful home on 35 acres that had also cost us dearly in sweat, blood and tears.  The only home my kids had known and to make it worse, we sold at the bottom of the market and walked away with only $10K to our name.  It was a bitter cup indeed and every last swallow burned all the way down. 

After this series of losses, I waited.  Daniel was being still and knowing God…I was waiting for God to reward, to restore, to replace… redeem this mess of a life we were left with.  No money, no home, no job!  This was not the Christian life I had signed up for.  I was angry.  No… not angry… raging.  Where was all the good?  Where was the calvary?  Where was "And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.”  Romans 8:28  I did not see the good.  I was trying to hold on for the rejoicing that was meant to come in the morning, but I was in a dark night of the soul with no light in sight.  In these years, we wandered… moving… moving… always moving. Financially broke, following one hopeful idea after another to no avail…our marriage was suffering, we were arguing all the time, barely scraping by and I was thrashing… a churning mess.  We had endured years of disappointment, disillusionment and loss… I was like a dry husk just barely hanging onto the stalk.  

Remember my affliction and my wandering, the wormwood and bitterness.

20 Surely my soul remembers

And is bowed down within me.

21 This I recall to my mind,

Therefore I have hope.

22 The Lord’s loving kindnesses ]indeed never cease,

For His compassions never fail.

23 They are new every morning;

Great is Your faithfulness.

24 “The Lord is my portion,” says my soul,

“Therefore I have hope in Him.”

25 The Lord is good to those who wait for Him,

To the person who seeks Him.

26 It is good that he waits silently

For the salvation of the Lord.

And then…just when you think there should be a crescendo in the soundtrack and the tempo of this story should change, my mother was diagnosed with cancer and died within a month of the diagnosis.  Just like that, my second biggest fan in this life, gone.  Just when I’m on my hands and knees mustering the strength to get up one more time from the last hit… I take one to the gut. For one year after my mom died we didn’t move…didn’t change jobs…didn’t chase dreams…we just caught our breath.  Surely now we can cue the music, right?  Now we stabilize?  Find rest..peace.. rhythm…healing?  No…Daniel hears God calling him to step out in faith, so we throw over every small piece of stability and calm and small sense of normality and head out to Capernwray in New Zealand for Daniel to attend BML. I won’t lie to you.. with this move I seriously contemplated walking away from God, from Daniel… from it all.  I was reeling from the weight of hard… of loss and grief and I knew I had absolutely NOTHING left… I was at the bottom.  There wasn’t a superglue made that could keep this pot together.  And sadly, it was not a rush of glory when this last smashing came…. it was the yuck… the anger… hate…all the thrash and all the ugly and all out there with no way to stuff it back in.

“For a seed to come fully into its own, it must become wholly undone.  The shell must break open, its insides must come out, and everything must change.  If you didn’t understand what life looks like, you might mistake it for complete destruction….brokenness can make abundance.”  The Broken Way, Ann Voskamp

In truth…I think my testimony begins here.  Here at the end of myself and in this place where I have had to decide if I’m going to surrender to Jesus almost 30 years after deciding to follow Jesus… to fall hard on Him and live. That’s pretty much my only option aside from chucking it all and to be honest over the last year I’ve been in an even split between the 2.  Was I a believer at age 15 when I first bowed my knee and acknowledged Him as LORD? Yes, I was.  Was I a disciple at 17 when I had to take a public stand for Him in my strong Catholic family? Yes, I was. Was I a follower when at 19 I moved to the Republic of Georgia to serve Him on the mission field?  Yes, I was. So what is the difference between then and now?  It’s knowing that I can’t be a believer, a follower, a disciple of Jesus… I can only fall on Him and trust He will do it in my stead.  He will accomplish what concerns me, I cannot.

For the last few years I’ve been chewing on how God authors faith in us.  I’ve mostly been critical of the plot line, the setting, the characters, the unforeseen twists and turns, and basically the bulk of this story He’s writing that is MY life for heaven’s sake!  Really?  Do I trust Him to write this story… my story?  To weave in the cliffhangers and the loss, the gut-retching tears and the beauty from ashes all in the interest of authoring faith in me?  I’m saying yes.  And I’m bearing testimony that I know that my yes may well be tested tomorrow and that I know for certain I will find Him sufficient in that valley, on that mountain top, in that broken mess… will it be easy?  No.  But will He be with me?  Yes.  He is good and He is enough.  Amen.

Relent, LORD...

The week of Alex's last PET scan found me uttering this phrase over and over..."Relent, O Lord, please relent." Maybe that seems like a strange prayer, but it was almost all I could ask God in those days. Begging Him to relent and grant Alex a reprieve from this cancer.  And then on the morning we were waiting to hear what the scan revealed I opened the word to this word: 

Lord, you have been our dwelling place
    throughout all generations.
Before the mountains were born
    or you brought forth the whole world,
    from everlasting to everlasting you are God.

You turn people back to dust,
    saying, “Return to dust, you mortals.”
A thousand years in your sight
    are like a day that has just gone by,
    or like a watch in the night.

Yet you sweep people away in the sleep of death—
    they are like the new grass of the morning:

In the morning it springs up new,
    but by evening it is dry and withered.

We are consumed by your anger
    and terrified by your indignation.
You have set our iniquities before you,
    our secret sins in the light of your presence.
All our days pass away under your wrath;
    we finish our years with a moan.
Our days may come to seventy years,
    or eighty, if our strength endures;
yet the best of them are but trouble and sorrow,
    for they quickly pass, and we fly away.
If only we knew the power of your anger!
    Your wrath is as great as the fear that is your due.
Teach us to number our days,
    that we may gain a heart of wisdom. 

Relent, Lord! How long will it be?
    Have compassion on your servants.
Satisfy us in the morning with your unfailing love,
    that we may sing for joy and be glad all our days.
Make us glad for as many days as you have afflicted us,
    for as many years as we have seen trouble.
May your deeds be shown to your servants,
    your splendor to their children.

May the favor of the Lord our God rest on us;
    establish the work of our hands for us—
    yes, establish the work of our hands.

Psalm 90

Reading this psalm in the cool of the morning with the intense pressure of this major 
unknown outcome was a balm to my soul. A reassurance that He sees, He knows. 

Wet noodles.

It's been almost 2 weeks since receiving the news that Alex's PET scan did not show a relapse of cancer. The relief was tangible, palpable. An indescribable kind of weigh lifted immediately. A feeling of euphoria, weightlessness and also suddenly a new quiet. The constant hum of this cancer diagnosis gone.

But as I'm reflecting on it now almost 14 days out, maybe the thing that is standing out to me the most is just how quickly we all pivoted back to "regular" life. How quietly we nodded, exchanging relieved hugs, and moved on. What I might have imagined would have been a moment for ticker tape parades, horns, music, honking, the throwing of confetti, turned into just simple quiet relief. 

I think back to the celebration that spontaneously erupted when at the mid-point of his first 6 months of chemo everything looked really good. The troops rallied and off we went to Sanford's in Cheyenne (cause where else ya gonna go in January)! That was a celebration. Entirely too premature, as it turned out, but the joy was tangible. Now, here we are receiving glorious news like wet noodles. Life is strange sometimes.

Jury's out...

This place that I'm sitting right now? This suspension between hope and dread that makes me catch my breath, makes me hold my breath, makes my heart seize? yeah, I can hardly sit in this space. I haven't counted the # of scans because I don't want to. This last moment of hope before having hopes dashed is the worst. I've gone into every single scan with hope. But if I'm completely honest right now, I'm just mad at hope. Mad at the promise that doesn't deliver. If you want to be critical of that, be my guest. Come sit in my seat.

This past week I served on a jury. It was weighty. It's not an easy seat to sit in, listening, weighing facts, deliberating justice, rendering a verdict. As the 12 of us discussed and re-hashed the facts of the case and the unspoken impressions of the case I was thinking of the defendant out there waiting to hear our verdict. Sitting in that seat, knowing his future was in here with us.

At the end of the day, I am grateful that I can leave the verdict of this scan tomorrow in God's hands. I know at my core that if the word tomorrow is terrible, shattering and on it's face feels like complete cruelty, the one who yielded that verdict is trustworthy, loving and sovereign. He sees what I cannot see and therefore often allows what I would never. God renders pure justice, not the frail, uninformed justice of men. So I leave tomorrows verdict with him, and yes, I still hope.

Damocles Sword

Of late when people ask me how I am, I tend to say that I feel like we're living with Damocles sword overhead. Do you know this ancient Greek anecdote? The ruler Dionysius II allowed Damocles to experience the luxury of being king, but hung a sharp sword directly over his head, held by only a singe horsehair, to show the insecurity of such a position. We use this phrase now to describe a situation of impending doom and fear where a potentially dangerous event could occur at any time. 

I think this pretty accurately describes how I feel at the moment. Right now Alex feels great. He's living his life normally again. He's making plans for the future, tentatively allowing himself to dream and enjoy life. But cancer hangs by a hair over all of that. This is a very challenging way to live. 

Contemplating this brings me back to how desperately we puny humans crave control. It's maybe one of the most consistent things I grasp for over and over in this life. Just a modicum of control, please? The "correct" thing to say right here would be how I have relinquished that to God, but have I? In truth, I think this thing is moment by moment. It's a constant laying down process. The bid for control is something I'm literally laying down at God's feet in one moment and picking it back up in the next. Ugh. 

Desk Note #2 - At the fringe of words

I often sit at the fringes of words for the sake of title.  This is no way forward into unknown territory!  How are whole word worlds to be tamed with such timidity? But I feel it even still, the weight of writing things down.  There’s a permanence.  No true eraser exists for words spoken into the online world.  No retractions of any real value.  Therefore, one must choose words carefully.  Craft the things to sing to their mark if at all possible and not to veer off into dangerous directions where bleeding and death can occur.  Such power, life and death held in these syllables and yet they are bandied about with very little care.  I do not come to the page lightly.  Now, this is not to say that I haven’t thrown my fair share of deadly words.  Alas, many and often they have flown.  But I’d like to think that as I advance in age, I advance in wisdom.

Here’s a little that James had to say on the subject:

 Don’t be in any rush to become a teacher, my friends. Teaching is highly responsible work. Teachers are held to the strictest standards. And none of us is perfectly qualified. We get it wrong nearly every time we open our mouths. If you could find someone whose speech was perfectly true, you’d have a perfect person, in perfect control of life.

3-5 A bit in the mouth of a horse controls the whole horse. A small rudder on a huge ship in the hands of a skilled captain sets a course in the face of the strongest winds. A word out of your mouth may seem of no account, but it can accomplish nearly anything—or destroy it!

5-6 It only takes a spark, remember, to set off a forest fire. A careless or wrongly placed word out of your mouth can do that. By our speech we can ruin the world, turn harmony to chaos, throw mud on a reputation, send the whole world up in smoke and go up in smoke with it, smoke right from the pit of hell.

7-10 This is scary: You can tame a tiger, but you can’t tame a tongue—it’s never been done. The tongue runs wild, a wanton killer. With our tongues we bless God our Father; with the same tongues we curse the very men and women he made in his image. Curses and blessings out of the same mouth!

10-12 My friends, this can’t go on. A spring doesn’t gush fresh water one day and brackish the next, does it? Apple trees don’t bear strawberries, do they? Raspberry bushes don’t bear apples, do they? You’re not going to dip into a polluted mud hole and get a cup of clear, cool water, are you?

Inner thoughts, and stuff

 It's already the end of January. What? Where does the time go? In truth it's only been 6 weeks since I last wrote a wee little blog post, but it feels like longer somehow. I think I'm back in that place of feeling like there are just too many words thrown out to the the wind on blogs and all social media combined. How much hot air can the world tolerate I wonder? Honestly, it's almost laughable all the bluster and wind of  millions of voices clamoring to be heard. If there had been social media in medieval times would it have been the same? Is this just the human condition but now we can hear EVERYONE's inner thoughts?

I guess I'm not exempt. Here I am giving voice to my inner thoughts. Sigh.

Anyhoo, my inner thoughts have been all over the place. Pondering the needfulness of suffering. Reflecting on the soul's craving to be known. Contemplating the mess that seems to continually be made of Christ's message. Chewing on the brevity of this life and wondering why we all crave legacy so much. (Can I be content to just be one more slight layer in the deep patina of existence?)  Yeah, I know. My brain is such a muddle.