A Spring of Joy

Because of these beautiful words in my inbox from a friend who understands grief… “John makes it clear that Jesus delays because of His love for Mary and Martha. The Spirit makes it clear to me that His delay in my own circumstances was (and continues to be) rooted in His love for my soul. My head understands this; my heart is a bit slower to catch on.” I thought of this post I wrote years ago. A post I struggle to believe today. My heart is slower to catch on, too, but this is still true.

In John 11, Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead. He enters in to the grief of his friends Mary and Martha. He weeps. Then He moves miraculously and brings their brother back to life. I’ve always been struck by His heart, His tenderness. He knew where He was going with this. He knew when He was first told Lazarus was sick what would happen. He knew He’d be demonstrating Gospel power and raising Lazarus from the dead. He knew all that would happen, all the good things He was going to bring to that home, yet He took the time to sit with them in their grief.

I love this. A Savior Who could look at us and say, “See? See how I have it all under control? See my power? See my mighty hand? See that I am God?” But He chooses to grieve, to feel their pain, to feel His own pain, to know the sting of death.

I’ve always focused on that act of love. His heart for His friends.

But grieving with them and raising Lazarus from the dead aren’t the only acts of love in this passage.

How did I miss this?

“Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. When He heard therefore that Lazarus was sick, He stayed two days still in the same place where He was. (vs. 5-6)”

He knew Lazarus was sick. He knew He would heal Lazarus for the glory of God.

He loved Martha and Mary and Lazarus.

So He stayed two days.

Wait.

He loved… so He stayed.

He knew His friends were hurting. He knew His friend was sick. He knew Lazarus would die.

Yet He stayed His hand… out of love.

“Love?” I want to ask, “Wouldn’t love have raced to the rescue and healed His friend and spared Mary and Martha the ache of losing a loved one? How could this be love?”

But I know the answer before I even ask the question…And I see once again that it is just as He has done with me, with my family, with my friends. It is not just simply because He knows best and He knows beyond what we see, although that is all true.

It is because suffering has a loving purpose, too.

Suffering molds, sanctifies and grows, and in His love, my Father, my Savior, my Lord has allowed me to walk through years of physical suffering.

In His love… a love that allows pain.

A love that sees far beyond what I can see. A love that has sometimes stayed its hand when I begged for relief, but a love that has also moved to my rescue, not just physical rescue, but rescue from death because of His own death and resurrection.

“Who can estimate how much we owe to suffering and pain?…Where was faith, without trial to test it; or patience, with nothing to bear; or experience, without tribulation to develop it?” (L.B. Cowman)

He allows suffering, yet sits and grieves with me in it.

Such love, y’all… such love.

A few weeks ago I reconnected with one of my former youth group girls for lunch. As we were catching up, the conversation inevitably turned to my family and how they were doing, and she about fell off her chair when we made the connection that my Ash is the same age she was when I was her youth leader. I’m getting old, y’all. How is this happening?

I regaled her with stories of life with boys and a princess. We laughed over the shenanigans they try to pull and the ways they still misunderstand the world. I teared up as I shared the struggle of their hearts as they watch their mom fight cancer. We both got misty-eyed as I described the moments of tenderness we share and we shook our heads at the drama and the arguments that seem pointless and frivolous. As she drove me home, she said, “There’s one thing I’m seeing in all this, Ang, You love being a parent.”

Y’all she couldn’t have hit the nail any more solidly on the head.

This is what I love to do. This is what I want to do. This is what I have always wanted to do.

Is it the hardest job I’ve ever done? Yes. Are there days when I wonder about my sanity? Yes. Are there days when I question if I’m doing my job well? Yes. Is the job getting harder and harder each day? Yes.

I could go on… but I could also ask…

Is it the most rewarding job I’ve ever done? Yes. Are there days when I could do this forever and never complain? Yes. Are there days when I believe I’m doing well? Yes. Is the job getting harder and harder each day? Yes.

But here’s the thing with all those questions. They’re all about me! That’s not what I want.

My love of parenting isn’t about me. It’s about them. It’s about getting that front row seat for what God is doing. It’s about seeing those minds and hearts shaped for His glory. It’s about growing them to learn the world and interact with the world and build relationships and do their best in all things for Jesus. It’s about laying the groundwork for who they are to become and praying like crazy for God to protect and cover them. It’s seeing their unique gifts and abilities and giving them the space to grow in those areas. It’s fashioning those little arrows and then letting them fly.

Letting. them. fly.

I’ve made no bones in my blog about where I stand on honoring my children. It’s something I feel very strongly about. Is it hard work? Yes. Do my children and I argue? Yes. Do I struggle to believe I’m having an impact? Yet. But as I mold those arrows and prepare them to fly, I also honor and protect them. I protect their reputation. I protect their hearts. I protect the way they are viewed by others. And I fight for them and beside them, because we are in a war against powers and principalities and darkness, and I don’t want to be in a war against my children, too!

Each moment is full of the need of grace. And I fail far more than I succeed, but failing does not make me a failure.

This parenting thing is hard, but if it were not hard, it would not be parenting.

This parenting thing is not convenient, but if it were convenient, it would not be parenting.

These children are gifts no matter how difficult parenting them may be. Difficulty does not diminish the goodness of God. It only increases my dependency on Him and His goodness.

That is how parenting can come. Through Him. Because of Him and His grace. That is only how I can give grace.

“let NOTHING unwholesome proceed out of your mouth… only that which edifies…for the need of the moment…so it will give grace…”

It is only when I am not dependent on Him that the lens through which I view my children blurs and cracks and distorts.

But when I look at them through His eyes I see them clearly. The way I need to see them. The way I want to see them. As gifts. And I beg God for wisdom and strength. For grace and love. Because I so desperately need Him and so do my children.

“let NOTHING unwholesome proceed out of your mouth… only that which edifies…for the need of the moment…so it will give grace…”

They need to see Him through me, and how can they see him through me if I view them as a nuisance, an inconvenience, an interruption to my day or my plans or my life? How can others see Him in me if I complain and groan and disrespect my children and their reputation?

No. I parent them and I love them, and I accept parenthood for what it is.

Daily denying self.

Work.

But oh, what joyous work!

At the end of the day when they curl up beside me, head on my shoulder, the words, “I’m sorry…” come… or the words, “well done…” and always the words “I love you…”

“let NOTHING unwholesome proceed out of your mouth… only that which edifies…for the need of the moment…so it will give grace…”

Their words. My words. Our lives. They have changed from unwholesome to edifying because of God’s grace.

And I see the Gospel.

It is there and they are growing.

And as I bend them toward the son of righteousness, I see the shoots deepen into the earth and the saplings stand tall.

And I fall to my knees. Thankful for His gift.

This joyous work of parenthood.

Each day I think to myself, “Today I will write more about my journey, and it won’t include grief.”

Notice how I’ve not written?

Oh, friends, I ache to write the joyful news I wrote last week and stay there, joyous and celebrating! And I am. I am still so very, very thankful that the chemo seems to be working, that we are moving in the right direction, that there is a glimmer of hope in the medical sense of the word.

This last week and a half though, was just really hard. There is no other way to say it. Life is just really hard for us right now.

I walked into my hair salon on Wednesday morning last week, and my stylist and I bemoaned the thinning of my hair and the way it was becoming so dry and damaged from the chemicals of chemo. I had been trying to grow my hair out for locks of love, but I sat instead with tears streaming down my face while he cut six inches off because locks of love wouldn’t take my hair in the shape it’s in. I needed to give it lightness and bounce to hide the thinning, and we had to have the discussion of “if the time comes” that we shave it. My eyebrows are disappearing, too. It seems small in the scheme of things, this grief… but I love my hair. I love the femininity of long hair. I love styling it and trying new looks with it. It’s one more thing I’m holding with open hands to my God… I must hold with open hands.

My children are struggling. We can’t seem to get our footing underneath us as to what this new normal even looks like, and Bri and I laugh wryly and call it “new chaos”, and then I cry because chaos overwhelms me, and my ability to multi-task is lessening each day. The children cheer when it’s my week off chemo because I get to cook dinner and while we love that we are loved by those bringing us meals, they just want some normalcy. We bicker more and we cry more and things impact us more deeply, so we find ourselves sitting around the dinner table reading Little Pilgrim’s Progress, and we look around to see tears glistening in all our eyes as we take in what it means to climb the Hill Difficulty and the sad end of Formalist and Hypocrisy who chose to go around met with doom. This feeling things so deeply, this chaos, this longing for orderliness, It’s one more thing I’m holding with open hands to my God… I must hold with open hands.

Brian traveled last week, first to a wake for one of his mom’s best friends, so we grieved together for her pain. Then he went to Costa Rica for four days, and I was so thankful for him to be able to go. He needs to be able to get away, to destress, to escape every now and then. My parents came to stay and help which is always a gift, but I struggle with panic when he’s gone. I feel unsafe. See, when we are all together, at least I know we are all okay in that moment. Yes, this. This desire for safety, for togetherness, It’s one more thing I’m holding with open hands to my God… I must hold with open hands.

On Monday I had chemo, and on Wednesday night we bundled our family up to go to a college leadership meeting. I wanted so badly to be normal, to be with our friends again. I have missed so many meetings. It was a bad idea, and as we packed up to leave early and I sat in a chair waiting, my sweet friend, Jaye, came to me to hug me. As she made her way over, I heaved deep and said thickly, “This sucks.” And she put her arm around me and I buried my head in her side and she just let me cry. “I just want to live life again.” I whispered. Living life again. It’s one more thing I’m holding with open hands to my God… I must hold with open hands.

Thursday I began baking and planning for my boys’ joint birthday party for the weekend. My friend, Tiff, drove from Tennessee to help me for a few days, and I was so looking forward to spending time with her, catching up, decorating, cakes and shopping. I came down with a cold. It was inevitable. We’ve had the flu and strep and everyone else has had a cold, and I’ve remained well, but not this time. By Friday afternoon my temperature was up over the threshold the cancer center allows, so I was making phone calls with nurses and talking through what we do if I have certain symptoms. They called in medicines for me, and Tiff and I had just finished the boys’ cakes when we decided to call off their pre-party sleepover that they’d been planning for months. I was so sick I didn’t have the energy to hold it with open hands… but I knew I must. (With gracious love to my children, friends stepped in, and Bear and Bella were whisked away to a sleepover elsewhere and Ash was picked up for an evening of Wii and board games with a friend.)

By Saturday I wasn’t even getting out of bed, and Brian ran the show. He picked up kids from sleepovers and took Ash-man to his basketball game. He fed them lunch, then piled up all the birthday party supplies, and with the help of his friend, Tim, ran a party for twelve 11-13 year old boys (and they had a blast!). He texted me updates and pictures so I could see for myself all the happenings. Then he came home and got himself and sweet Bella ready for their Daddy-Daughter Sweetheart Dance that night. I cried buckets this weekend, aching for the loss, the disappointment I knew my sons felt, agonizing over missing yet another one of Ash-man’s basketball games, over missing their party, over not being able to help Bella fully prepare for her dance. I knew it was many more things I am holding with open hands… I must hold them open.

This life is hard. The ongoingness of this is overwhelming.

But He meets me.

He meets me, not because my hands are open to Him. He meets me because He loves me.

He meets me, not because I’m not “holding anything back”. He held nothing back for me in His Son, Jesus. He will not hold anything back from me.

He meets me because He loves me.

This morning I listened to a sermon. Y’all, if you have an hour of your day to listen, to sing beautiful truths along with their worship team, to hear the Word opened up so clearly, you won’t be disappointed. It’s the third in a series at Fellowship Bible Church in Nashville, TN: Burnt Offerings, Joy and Weeping. And it was a much needed reminder of where my security lies and my desperate need for worship.

I weep, rightly so, over the brokenness of this life, of all the struggle we fight through.

But there is so much joy to bad had in the midst of the broken. The joy of time with friends… who hug me and feed me and share with me. The joy of forgiveness and restoration when conflict arises. The joy of snuggling with my loves by a warm fire and time with Grand and Grandy. The joy of reuniting with my love when he returns. The joy of a pup who is more therapy for my children than I could ever dream. The joy of boys rushing in my room to open their presents from their party and the tumbling of words over and over as they described their amazing afternoon. The joy of my Bella girl’s face as she trots out the door for a date with her daddy and the sparkle when she returns. The joy of worship in the morning as I sip my coffee by the fire.

The joy of truth. My life will ebb and flow with disappointment and with happiness, but the presence of my faithful God will never change.

“When we bring our fears in worship and when we see God for Who He really is and when we see that He can be trusted, we see in His character that He is faithful, that He is good, that His promises are true, that He is way bigger than we could have ever imagined in our fear, that He cares about us more than we could ever comprehend, then, get this, WE begin to change…our greatest joy is found in our impossibly faithful God.” (my paraphrase from the sermon linked above)