A Spring of Joy

Glimpses of our world…

  • Ask, Seek, Knock

    It’s hard to be brave when you’re a Very Small Animal.
    (~Piglet, from Winnie the Pooh)

    My “Very Small Animal” or rather very small boy or rather medium-sized boy who is growing up much too quickly has been very brave lately, especially Tuesday.

    He’s been fighting something for months… aches, fevers, flu-like symptoms, general malaise. My Buddy hasn’t been himself in a while.

    And Tuesday I watched him writhe and struggle while they took six vials of blood from him to test him for all sorts of things that this momma doesn’t even want to think about. Things like lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, lyme disease, thyroid dysfunction…

    And, y’all, I’m a mess.

    The mess began when his vein blew. Yes. He inherited his momma’s veins. Two vials in and they had to re-stick him.

    The mess got worse when I heard his quavering voice beg the nurse, “Please, can you be done now? Please, stop!”

    And then I shoved the mess all down inside me, because I don’t want him to know what a mess I am over this, because I don’t want him to worry. Right now all he’s worried about is that he’ll have to have blood taken again, because he doesn’t “ever want to go through that again, Mom.” And I cry on the phone with Monica, who has watched her child suffer in ways I can’t even begin to grasp, and I hear understanding, tenderness, compassion, and then I become an even bigger mess.

    This on the heels of a tooth extraction for my Bear on Monday because for some odd reason he had one tooth come in with no enamel on it.

    Then yesterday was jam-packed with doctors for me and more blood tests and more decisions to be made.

    And now today I am in bed with the stomach flu.

    And I am an even worse mess.

    I have been so overwhelmed with all the doctor’s appointments and trying to fix meals and keep my home together that I barely have any time to sit, and when I do, I cry. A lot.

    There is a pervasive heaviness that is squeezing my heart so I can’t breathe. Waiting on Asher’s blood tests is killing me… dealing with stuff from my appointments yesterday… wondering how we’re going to pay for it all… stretching leftovers night after night to get us through…

    I want to see Jesus. I know in my heart He is there, but the walls of life are just way too high and are blocking my view.

    Then I read to my little ones this morning before school and we sing, “Ask, and it shall be given unto you. Seek and ye shall find. Knock and it shall be opened unto you.”

    So I ask, I seek and knock.

    And I know He will answer, because He always does.

    I will keep asking, keep seeking and keep knocking.

    And I will keep waiting.

    Will you ask and seek and knock for me? for us?

    I just want to see Jesus in the mess.

  • Sunday Selections

    As I have been praying through, working through, and seeking wisdom in what it looks like to live my life full out for God, this post by Stephen Altrogge blew me away… and made me ask myself again, “Am I honoring Him in every choice I make? In the shows or movies I watch that are laced with innuendo or even more in your face sin? How about the jokes I laugh at? Or books I read?” Talk about conviction…

    Stephen writes:

    Not even a hint. Not even a hint. Not even a HINT of sexual immorality. Paul doesn’t write, “Don’t sleep around with people you’re not married to.” He says, “There must not be even a hint of sexual immorality among you.”

    You can read the rest of his thoughts on The Blazing Center blog.

  • 7 To 10 Days Turned Into 4

    My dear friend, Dr. Nat, came for a couple days. A couple days of wonderfulness… good conversations, yummy food cooked by Chef Nat, playing games with small ones, early morning coffee together, book time with Super Nanny Nat, sharing new music finds, and just being.

    The letter arrived just before she left, and I ripped it open, a feeling of nausea in my stomach. They weren’t supposed to contact me for 3 more days at the earliest.

    It was awesome to be able to tell Nat in person that…

    The scan was CLEAR. There is no recurrence. And I am not facing any more scans for another whole year. A year, y’all. It’s all a bit mind-blowing and overwhelming to think they aren’t going to be actively looking for cancer in my body because well, there’s none there!

    I feel like I can breathe for the first time in 2 1/2 years.

    EXHALE.

    Then I breathe in again and steel myself for the months of recovery ahead. I know there will be a lot of trudging. A lot of digging and climbing out of this chasm.

    But as weary as my steps will be, each footfall will be a bit lighter knowing the cancer burden is gone.

    We are so grateful.

    God has brought us through so much. You, my group of blogosphere friends, have bolstered me and encouraged me through your words and prayers. Each comment to remind me of truth and support has lifted me up in ways I can’t even begin to describe. You’ve made your presence known to me and shown me Him.

    Thank you for walking in my dark chasm with me, for helping me as I work to climb out, for encouraging me as I’ve been knocked about in ways that hurt abominably. He has shown me Himself and His beauty through you. Here’s to the next phase of my journey–with Him and with you.

    (Monica sent me this quote when we heard the news that I was cancer free from the thyroid cancer… and it is perfect. Just perfect.)

    Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of – throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself.
    C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

  • Need Some Perspective?

    Shaun Groves is in Kenya right now with a team of people blogging for Compassion International.

    These pictures struck me today.

    Kenyan for Washing Machine

    Kenyan for Sink

    I sit here curled under a heated electric throw surrounded by more than we’ll ever need and I whine about the plumber that scammed us and the exorbitant heating bills we’ve received.

    Most of us have no idea, y’all.

    No idea what struggle and poverty are.

    And so I ask myself the question I have read on Shaun Groves’ blog.

    How do I “live simply so others may simply live?”

  • God’s Presence is My Good

    She stood next to me in the kitchen asking about my future. “You’ve heard the impossible. So many of us just go to routine appointments and scans and check-ups and assume all is fine, and we don’t think about the ones who get the phone call. But you were that one. You know what it’s like to pick up the phone and hear the impossible,” she said.

    Those words rang in my ears all morning as I prepared for my scan today. Another scan. Another waiting period. Another limbo.

    And while, as others have told me, I have no reason to think the breast cancer has returned, I also have no reason to think it hasn’t. I don’t mean that in a pessimistic way. It’s just the reality of life. My statistics aren’t very promising for the stage of cancer that it was, and I know that.

    But more encouraging is that God knows that, and with God I’m not a statistic.

    Yes, it’s another scan, another waiting period, another limbo. But it’s another opportunity to trust God. To have faith in the One Who knows me and loves me whether or not there’s cancer again.

    God glimpses… reminders that He loves me.

    The voicemail from Nat saying she loves me and she’s only a phone call away. Hugs from my mom, tears and understanding how fearful this all is. The phone call from Beth on the way to my appt. letting me know she’s in St. Louis but her heart is here. The email from a far away bloggy friend reminding me of truth, that she hasn’t forgotten and neither has God. She covered my heart with this verse:

    Psalm 73:28 (NIV) “But as for me, it is good to be near God. I have made the Sovereign Lord my refuge…”

    What she didn’t know is that this was a portion of Scripture that was read at our wedding years ago, and has been the heartbeat of our life. God is our refuge. God is our goodness. God is our life.

    And no matter what the scan reveals in the next few days, God’s presence is my good

    (Thank you, Donnetta!)

  • March

    This morning when I looked at the calendar and saw it was March 1st, I cheered inwardly.

    March is the month of my Brian’s birthday, and I must say it’s one of my favorite months of the year.

    So here’s just a little post to say how much I love marriage.

    I truly do. I love marriage.

    I find it to be absolutely delightful.

    And even better.

    I love being married to this man!

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    I couldn’t have done better.

  • Creation’s Groans

    Our children pray every day for Haiti–numerous times a day. They are giving money from their Christmas and birthday stash to help with the relief effort. They ask me all the time how the recovery is going, how long it will take, who is taking care of the children without their mommies and daddies, etc. They have a heart of compassion for hurting and needy people.

    I read this morning about the Chilean earthquake and the catastrophe there, and I prayed for them. I ached for the suffering and listened to creation’s groaning for it all to be “made right”.

    Then I scrolled down gazing at other headlines and I wanted to punch my computer screen. I got so angry… because these were some of the headlines:

    Stars Strip for a Cause

    Hollywood Without Makeup: Who’s Hot or Not?

    Gatorade Drops Tiger

    It’s not the first time I’ve gotten angry at the headlines. They slam me every day, whether it’s in the grocery store line or online, it’s in my face constantly.

    People’s 100 Most Beautiful People

    These Celebrities Have Everything, Beauty, Fame, Fortune, so Why Can’t They Turn Their Frowns Upside Down?

    Best and Worst Celebrity Beach Bodies

    World’s Most Beautiful Politicians

    Hot or Not: Can A Woman Still Be Hot Even When She’s Bald?

    It’s all so empty and so irrelevant. So meaningless. Frankly, who cares? Who cares about what star is hot or not? What does it matter? What benefit is it to me or you or our society?

    But then I stopped and listened again, and I realized that even in these headlines I was hearing creations groans. The groaning of idolatry. The groaning of empty promises. The groaning that success, beauty, fame and money will bring happiness.

    It’s a groaning that places joy in what the world has to offer. And that’s an offering world will never be able to fulfill, because this world will always be searching for more, better, happiness in empty things.

    So I pray. I pray for Haiti and for Chile and for protection for Hawaii and California. But I also pray for my country as a whole. I pray for a turning back to God the One Who, as Tim Keller writes in his book, Counterfeit Gods, “is the only Lord… who can truly fulfill you, and if you fail Him, can forgive you.”

    And I pray for my heart… that instead of wanting to punch out computer screens or burn magazine covers, I’ll stop, repent, listen to Creation’s groans and pray.

    Because nothing is too big for God.

  • Puzzle Pieces Revisited

    Life for our family right now feels like we are desperately trying to keep our heads above water. I tread and tread and tread until I am exhausted and feel like I’ve gotten nowhere. I don’t know how to even explain it… what it is like to walk halfway up the stairs and then sit for 20 minutes crying because I can’t make my legs move any more. Then I preach the words of Eleanor Roosevelt to myself and I “do the thing I think I cannot do.” And I move forward to put away that random toy or toss the stray pair of pants in the laundry. Recovery is exhausting work. Poor Brian works all day and all night, and dear Asher prays every day for Mommy to get her strength back… We are all still feeling it. We will for a while.

    I revisited this post from almost two years ago today and thought it was a great explanation of life in recovery. So I am reposting it… because the truth hasn’t changed… my heart hasn’t changed… and the beauty of Jesus hasn’t changed… it never will.

    Written June, 2008:

    Have you ever tried to put together a thousand-piece puzzle? With no box or picture to show you where the pieces go?

    There’s this jumbled pile of hues and patterns and images. Some of them are obvious while others might be miniscule specks of color. It is easy to begin the puzzle, organizing the shapes, sliding together the edge pieces that make up the framework of the picture. Then you have hundreds of mismatched patterns that you know fit together somehow to create a beautiful artwork. But you don’t know what it is supposed to be.

    What does it look like? How do these pieces work together to create a masterpiece? Looking at that pile is defeating and sometimes you want to grab the whole pile and throw it back in the box and give up. Sometimes you want to take all those pieces and shove them haphazardly on the floor in frustration. Sometimes you press on and manage to match two or three parts and the beginning of a picture forms, and you have hope. Some days you just sit and stare at the pieces trying to figure out what goes where. Some days you stare at the pieces blankly, just a jumbled mess in front of you. Some days the puzzle sits dormant and you don’t even look at it.

    But you press on, because at the end you know there will be something beautiful.

    That, my friends, is my life. Right now. The jumbled mess of shapes and colors and images and expectations and frustrations. I don’t know how all the pieces fit right now. I am struggling through that jumbled mass of confusion as I try to piece my life back together. As I try to grasp this new “normal”. How does it all work?

    At my recovery group two weeks ago, we were told that often survivors find it more difficult after their treatment than they found it during their treatment. I can’t tell you how good it was to hear that. To have someone affirm everything that I’ve been feeling. Trying to reclaim my life is hard. I am awash with emotions and fears and struggles. During treatment there was one focus–survive this! Now I am torn in thousands of different directions. Puzzle pieces of my life falling all around me, and I don’t know how they fit.

    It feels like I am blindly trying to piece back together a life that has been shattered into a thousand fragments. But the picture has changed, and where pieces would meld easily before, they’re now fractured and splintered into unrecognizable shards. There are days where I can take deep breaths and live in the moment, grateful for each exhale the Lord has given. But there are other days where the frustration builds to eruption, and I explode into a grief deeper than I’ve ever known. This is hard. Harder than I expected it to be. It is a daily struggle.

    Yet I don’t give up. I am a survivor, because the Lord has heard and answered prayer. I cling to hope. I know the artist who has painted the strokes of my life, and I seek to live each day grateful for the pieces that are already arranged, forming the beginnings of my portrait.

    I may not know what the puzzle is supposed to look like, but He does. And because I know the artist, I also know the end result will be an image more beautiful than I ever dreamed. He takes my hand as I timidly place puzzle piece after puzzle piece in the holes of my life, and He guides me and shows me the place for each one.

    I am beginning to see the picture, but there are a lot of pieces still left on the table. We will work on the puzzle together, He and I, until that final day comes. The day all of creation groans and longs for when He will slip that final piece in its place. And then as I gaze back over the canvas of my life, the picture I will see is Him.

    And it will be beautiful. Breathtakingly beautiful.

  • Sages

    “Here’s the difference between the pragmatists and the Puritans: pragmatists do not have the patience to sink the roots of hospitality and brotherly kindness and authentic love in the deep rock of Romans 6-8. We want to jump straight from justification to the practical application of chapter 12. Just give us a list. Tell us what to do. Fix the problem at the immediate surface level, so it goes away. But the Puritans were different. They looked at the book of Romans and saw that life is built another way. Being a sage, being a Redwood, being unshakable in storm and useful in times of indescribable suffering – that does not come quickly or easily. Romans is not two chapters long. It is 16 chapters long. It does not skip from chapter 5 to 12. It leads us down deep into the roots of godliness, so that when we come up, we are not people with lists, but people with unshakable life and strength and holiness and wisdom and love.” (John Piper, on Romans 6, September 24, 2000)

    I am a list maker.

    I long to be a sage.

    And I don’t want it for me.

    I want it so that I can live a life that glorifies Him, that points to Him, that honors Him, that highlights Him. A life that fulfills my reason for being: to glorify Him and enjoy Him forever.

    Psalm 90:12

    So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom.

    There is something about tasting mortality.

    It is a bitter cup.

    But it is a sweet cup, too.

    My life is very different than it was three years ago. What is important in my life is very different than three years ago. How I live my life is vastly different than it was three years ago.

    I long for that heart of wisdom. Wisdom so that I know how to honor Him with this different life. Wisdom to fully understand and grasp the Gospel. Wisdom so I can love and honor my husband. Wisdom so I can love and parent my children. Wisdom so I can love and respect my parents. Wisdom so I can love and nurture my friendships. Wisdom so I can love and evangelize my neighbors. Wisdom so I will not waste my life but live it fully for Him.

    Wisdom.

    Not so I can be a perfectionist, instead so I can live in the freedom of His perfection.

    Wisdom.

    Not so others can say, “Wow, you’re so wise.” Instead so others can say, “Wow. God is so amazing.”

    Wisdom.

    Not so I can have an unmessy life, instead so others can see the mess and read the Gospel in my life.

    Because what’s really important in my life is living for Him. It’s doing all to the glory of God, and I need wisdom to know how to do that.

    ALL to the glory of God…

    Which means I am digging into the Word, praying through and rethinking a lot of my life, asking not “what is lawful?” but rather “what is beneficial?”

    I am rethinking the idleness of Facebook and it’s relational convenience in my life.
    I am rethinking the blogs I read. Which ones spur me on to live life more for Him?
    I am rethinking the TV and movies I watch. (“I will set NO unclean thing before my eyes.” (Ps. 101:3)
    I am rethinking the cynicism and sarcasm and complaining that I speak or read.
    I am rethinking the music I listen to.
    I am rethinking the books I read.
    I am rethinking how I spend my time during the day.
    I am rethinking how I talk about my children, my husband, my home.
    I am rethinking what my attachments are and which are healthy ones.
    I am rethinking how I spend my money.

    Yes, I realize the irony of me making a list of what I’m praying over and rethinking. What it boils down to is this:

    I am rethinking who my life is about.

    Too often I make it all about me.

    I long to make it all about Him.

    I long for wisdom to know how to live each day in Gospel certainty.

    I long for the deep roots of godliness.

    I long for wisdom to know how to glorify God in all of my life, because, honestly, those are the times I know the deepest joy. When I know I am living for him I am most content. I ask myself again. Is what I am doing today rooted in what I will gain today? Or is it rooted in the things that will last forever?

    I long to be a sage.

    For Him.

    And Him alone.

    ,

  • Wednesday Worship: Our Hope Endures

    It’s not about optimism.

    It’s not about laughter being the best medicine.

    It’s not about thinking positive.

    It’s about El Shaddai.

    Our God is sufficient.

    It’s about Emmanual.

    Our God is with us.

    THAT is how our hope endures no matter what tomorrow brings, no matter what the past has held, no matter what occurs today.

    He is our hope.

    And He never changes.

    Song: Our Hope Endures
    Artist: Natalie Grant
    Album: Relentless

    You would think only so much can go wrong
    Calamity only strikes once
    And you assume that this one has suffered her share
    Life will be kinder from here

    Sometimes the sun stays hidden for years
    Sometimes the sky rains night after night
    When will it clear
    But our hope endures the worst of conditions
    It’s more than our optimism
    Let the earth quake
    Our hope is unchanged

    How do we comprehend peace within pain
    Our joy at a good man’s wake
    Walk a mile with a woman whose body is torn
    With illness but she marches on

    Sometimes the sun stays hidden for years
    Sometimes the sky rains night after night
    When will it clear
    But our hope endures the worst of conditions
    It’s more than our optimism
    Let the earth quake
    Our hope is unchanged

    Emanuel, God is with us
    El Shaddai, all sufficient
    Emanuel, God is with us
    El Shaddai, all sufficient
    Emanuel, God is with us
    El Shaddai, all sufficient

    We never walk alone
    This is our hope
    Our hope endures, the worst of conditions
    It’s more than our optimism
    let the earth quake
    let the earth quake
    let the earth quake
    Our hope is unchanged