A Spring of Joy

This past Sunday in my church God gave me the opportunity to share my testimony. This is my story and all He had done in my life as I learned about a necessary desperation for Him. The prayer I prayed so often as I wrote this:

I pray it still.

I found that every day looked different. Some days intimacy was about fighting for survival. This necessary desperation to know Him and know He is true.

Some days it was in a quietness and trust, feeding in green pastures and lying beside still waters.

Immersing myself in the Word and prayer, I longed to know more and more of Him even though some days it seemed as if my prayers were talking into darkness, but I found prayer so central to my being that if I ceased to pray, I would cease to live.

And I begged for eyes to see Him.

I found myself asking, “Is this you, God?” and as time passed, the question passed with it, and now I find myself saying, “This IS you, God.”

And He showed Himself to me over and over again… glimpses of His grace throughout each day, and I found joy in Him that gave me strength.

He showed Himself through others… through those friends with whom I could fully entrust my heart, through others from this church body and community serving us and through the prayers of many asking Him to sustain me, through YOU… you fostered my intimacy with God.

He showed Himself through my husband, who denied so much about himself to walk through this with me. Who looked at a wife who had lost everything, scarred and bald and ugly and weak and wounded and never once, never ONCE looked away. Brian fostered my intimacy with God.

He showed Himself through the childlike faith of my children. My children fostered my intimacy with God. He showed Himself over and over and over and over, because He knew I needed to see.

Because there were days when the darkness was overwhelming. I cringed through the nights because that’s when Satan’s lies were loudest, chanting in my ear. And yet because I knew Him, I could take those thoughts captive and scream truth over the lies of Satan, and because I knew the Light, the darkness would dissipate. Not overnight, not immediately, but faithfully and always.

And I knew, that even if the struggle of this trial never ended, I had a future and a hope…. eternity in fellowship with Him.

As I saw Him over and over and over, as my life became more and more about Him, then my life became less and less about me.

One Friday night during my chemo treatments, some friends took Brian and me out to the Joshua Wilton house for supper. After putting the finishing touches on my outfit for the evening, I sat down next to Bella while she ate her supper and we waited for the babysitters to arrive. I watched as she relished each bite, smearing stuffing and veggies all over her face and hands. After a bit, my red-headed beauty turned her mush covered face toward me, stretched out her smeary hands and opened her arms in a hug. “I yuv you, Mommy.” she belted with gusto. And immediately I shrunk back from those messy hands. After all, I was dressed to the hilt. “Oh, honey, don’t touch Mommy, you’re all messy.” Then it hit me what I had just done, and I looked at Bri.

“I wonder what it would be like if God said that to us.” I said.

What if God said that to me? But He didn’t… He didn’t the day I asked Him in my heart and He never does nor will He in my mess, in this becoming… this beautiful dance of faith, repentance and obedience. He doesn’t turn away, He only draws me in and shows me Himself.

As I long to abide more and more with God, to go deeper with Him, part of that process is seeing more of my sin. It’s a good thing. It’s a necessary thing. But it’s a hard thing. It’s hard because instead of being consumed by my Savior, it’s easy to be consumed by guilt. The accuser wants me to focus on the sin and the mess and become even more self-consumed. And in turn, he wants me to become messier. He wants the mushy, smeary face and hands to get mushier and smearier as I shovel in the lies of the world, the flesh and the devil. He wants me to lose sight of the unsearchable riches of Christ.

But God doesn’t look at me and say, “Don’t touch me. Don’t reach out to me unless you’re clean.” I am already cleansed because of Christ, and nothing can change that. His love for me isn’t based on anything I do or don’t do. He doesn’t look at me and focus on my smeary hands and my mush-covered face.

He looks at me and sees beauty.

He looks at me and see His child, His daughter.

He looks at me and He sees my mess.

And He reaches out to me.

And still He says “I love you.”

I long to live every day feasting on His sufficiency and not my own. Fully satisfied in Him. And when I am satisfied in Him, I am satisfied with all He has called me to do and bear. Living in grace for each day.

Grace. Strength. Peace. Beauty. Rest. Forgiveness, Joy. Surrender. Love. LIFE.

George MacDonald wrote:

“Oh God, I said, and that was all. But what are the prayers of the whole universe more than expansions of that one cry? It is not what God can give us,but God that we want.”

When this all began, there were two questions I wrestled with the most.

Is He enough?

Is he worth it?

I stand before you today, alive, to tell you.

He is far more than enough.

And more than just being worth it, He is the only one worthy.

To God ALONE be the glory.

This past Sunday in my church God gave me the opportunity to share my testimony. This is my story and all He had done in my life as I learned about a necessary desperation for Him. The prayer I prayed so often as I wrote this:

I pray it still.

A few months before I received my cancer diagnosis, having no clue what was ahead of me, I wrote in my journal, “For what am I longing? I am longing for peace. I want to be characterized by a heart of unfailing trust in my God. I’m feeling cluttered–not only in the physical realm of home, but in my relationships.. my walk with God, my marriage, my friendships. I am restless, discouraged, and down. But I want a heart focused on you, Lord. I want to see you for Who You are and myself for who I am. I want to see life for what it is… this gift for this day.

Break me, Lord. Break me of me.”

Little did I know what I was asking for.

Break me?

But not like this, Lord. This is far too painful.

I loved being a wife and a mom. I loved tending my home and cooking meals and training up my children and walking alongside my husband. I loved being a youth leader and the relationships I formed. I loved music and being part of the worship team at my church.

I was good at serving. I was good at being busy. I was good at doing.

But I wasn’t good at being.

Through the last three years of my life, everything was stripped from me: surgeries and chemo and hospital stays and recoveries meant I was unable to care for my children. I couldn’t tend my home and walk alongside my husband. I couldn’t even come to church much less be on worship team. I couldn’t be a youth leader.

I couldn’t… I couldn’t… I couldn’t…

Any shred of self-reliance was gone. And I was broken.

I was reminded, no stripped, of any false thinking that I was in control. My flesh as a control freak fights this, but in believing this, my spirit rests. And this losing control, this breaking… it was a gift.

Because I found in being broken that the Healer is precious and that I am precious to the Healer.

With the idol of my self-reliance gone, I wrestled to believe that everything I knew about God was true. My faith was shaken like it had never been shaken before.

I grew up in a wonderful home. A Christian home where I was taught much of the Gospel and called on Christ at an early age. And I knew much about him… much OF him… but I found myself asking how much do I really know Him?

I learned that intimacy with God isn’t easy. It isn’t about a feeling. It isn’t formulaic.

It’s about fellowship.

Intimacy is about seeking and knocking and asking and worshipping and abiding and becoming and sitting and listening and hearing and seeing. It’s about a life filled with God.

A God who loves me and is wooing me in every single moment, because every day is saturated, every moment is dripping with God.

Whether it’s waking with the sunrise and drinking in His beauty or the exhausting work of motherhood, whether it’s the 5 of us flashlight dancing in our living room or the hard task of nurturing defiant hearts, whether it’s the quietness of sitting by a sleeping child or the frenzy of bathing a fevered brow, whether it’s a quiet evening shared at a movie with Brian or long, hard talks striving to make our marriage thrive rather than just surviving through this, whether it’s a morning in prayer or an evening in the Word, whatever it is, it’s full of Him.

Will I choose to see Him? Will I choose this moment of intimacy?

This past Sunday in my church God gave me the opportunity to share my testimony. This is my story and all He had done in my life as I learned about a necessary desperation for Him. The prayer I prayed so often as I wrote this:

I pray it still.

It’s the suddenness that’s the problem. You’re going about normal life: changing diapers and nursing, potty-training and teaching colors and letters, preparing for kindergarten and working on manners, dreaming and planning and saving for a home. And the phone call comes asking you to come right in to the doctor’s.

And you know. Even though the doctor has been saying he doesn’t think it’s anything.

You know.

But you don’t.

But you want to.

But you don’t.

Then you find out. You hear words that you’ve only heard in nightmares, and suddenly you’re the one sobbing in the parking lot and beating on your husband’s chest. You’re the one making phone calls to loved ones and friends, driving from doctor’s office to doctor’s office with your tote bag full of information that you don’t understand and have no capacity to grasp.

You’re the one looking in the faces of your parents and asking questions you thought you’d never ask. “Who will take care of my children? Who will help my Brian? Who? How? What? WHY?”

Then you’re trying to explain to a 1, 3 and 5 year old something you yourself don’t even comprehend and you’re trying to remain upbeat for them when inside there’s a part of you that’s dying every day.

Then it’s a flurry of surgeries and tests and needles and chemo and radiation and panic attacks and hospitalizations. And you’re quitting nursing cold turkey and changing diapers with gloves on and using hand sanitizer like it’s going out of style. And someone else is potty-training and teaching colors and letters, and manners are forgotten and kindergarten is postponed and the savings depletes into paying bills and the dreaming stops as pain and fear and reality and grief take over.

And you’re staring in the mirror at hideous scars and your skin turns gray and you ache all over and you wonder how it’s possible that losing your hair is so physically painful. And you look at yourself and see how much of your femininity was so brutally stolen from you and you battle to remember that beauty is not about how you look but who you are.

And you’re clinging and hoping and you’re believing and trying not to lose heart. And you’re praying and reading and preaching to yourself. And you’re fighting.

Then it is over.

But it’s not.

And it never will be.

Chronic fatigue and pain will be my life-long companions.

This fighting and grieving–it will lessen, yes. The follow-ups get farther apart and the new normal gets created.

Then one day you’re looking through pictures and “before” hits you like a sucker punch, reminding you of what once was, but what will never be again.

And through it all life gets learned.

You live a whole new way. It’s as if before you were seeing in black and white, but now life’s colors are vibrant and breathtaking and every sense is heightened.

Life becomes more than just something you live. It’s a daily reminder. It’s the Cross. A gift to be cherished.

And you are changed. Utterly and completely.

You are alive.

Alive to live another day (but it is different).

Alive to dream again with your husband (but the dream is different).

Alive to play with and train up your children (but the training and the laughing are different).

Alive to love others as they have loved you (but the loving is different).

Alive to worship and pray and serve (but the worship and the prayers and the service are different).

Alive to live. (But the living is different).

And you are grateful.