On the Journey

Artist's Eyes

2011-07-04T09:42:00.000-07:00

[My 18-year-old neice succumbed to the rare disease HLH on June 29, 2011]

Even though I'm Megan's aunt, I didn't know her very well; my own health issues, geography, and Megan dividing her time between two households were several of the barriers.

But on those few occasions when she graciously indulged my company at family gatherings, the subject was always our shared passion: photography. Megan was to begin classes in the fall pursuing this love.

Reviewing hundreds of photos on her Facebook page these past weeks, it was immediately obvious that she possessed the artist's eye. This is something that cannot be taught; it is a gift. I'm fairly certain Megan had no clue how talented she was artistically, which makes the gift all the more beautiful.

I've often wondered what life in heaven will look like. We will finally be the persons God created us to be, perhaps much like Adam and Eve happily and busily tending that exotic garden/orchard/animal preserve known as the Garden of Eden, before the advent of the Crusher of Everything Exotic, sin.

What could it possibly be like to have the artist's eye- pre-Crusher, like, uh.... on steroids? The closest my tiny brain can come up with is to recall a time when the experience of beauty was Grand Canyon-big.

Or, when passion for some artistic endeavor has rendered me unaware of hours passing.

I know there is no time in heaven, but imagine this:

Jesus: Wow, Megan, that is a beautiful work of art! Very creative.

Megan: Well, I get that from you, bro!

Jesus: Yeah, I know, but I love the Megan Olivia Hoogeveen version of the gift.

Megan: Yep! And there is so much more that I wanna explore!

Jesus: I've noticed that. I was just walking with your Aunt Carol and she mentioned that you were so immersed in your creating that you hadn't noticed her watching you as you worked.

Megan: She's the one who encouraged me to try this type of artistic expression. When I finished it I was a little surprised that a millennium had passed! It's so awesome that eternity is well...., eternal!

Jesus: It keeps getting better...
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The following are photo celebrations I created this past month.

I Love You This Big by Scotty McCreery - This was a video to celebrate Megan (who like I, loved Scotty!) making it though the night of June 14 following this CaringBridge post:

Tuesday, June 14, 2011 8:46 PM, CDT

Once again we plead for your prayers. Megan has spiked a 103 fever. The nurses moods have definitely changed and they are working with more determination, much like when we came in here the first night. They thought it might be best if we stayed here tonight. I pray that whatever way this ends up, may God's will be done.

I love you Megan! dad

I felt God's touch of clarity and passion that morning of June 15 as I put this video together in Blank's front lobby at 4:30 in the record time of 20 minutes, in spite of the handicaps of one of my editing programs malfunctioning AND the effects of staying overnight on the PICU waiting room floor.

This Big This is a remake of the former, utilizing more of Megan's photos.

Teresa A video made for Teresa, Megan's mother, to remind her, me, and now you, that Christ's (The Artist) eyes see past our 'junk' to our beauty.

Breakaway This song was chosen for Megan's funeral. I interpreted the lyrics as a metaphor for Megan's illness being the avenue to break away into the eternal. It didn't hit me until I was almost finished with it that the picture of Isabel (Megan's fellow PICU patient) at minute 2:26 in the video, followed by two shots of her with her cell phone, could be a metaphor for Megan calling on God to heal Isabel. Isabel attended Megan's funeral.

Family members may chuckle at the PUSH/PULL photos, since even though we spent a month going in and out of those PICU waiting room doors, we often pulled when it plainly said PUSH, and pushed when it obviously said PULL. And...all of us were happy to 'breakaway' from the world's most uncomfortable couch!

Ordinary Blessing

2008-06-26T18:57:00.000-07:00

Ways to bless people are as varied and numerous as the people. I was recently encouraged to be a blessing by praying for and with people I encounter in an ordinary day. The following are scenes from such days.

Scene 1
I was on my way that evening to a class at church when I noticed the highway patrolman I’d just met on the road suddenly do a U-turn and drive up behind me with his lights flashing.

This was a clue that perhaps I’d been speeding.

The very polite officer informed me how fast I was going, what the speed limit was and asked me for my license and registration. As he went back his patrol car a terrifying thought crossed my mind.

It wasn’t, Will my insurance rates go up because of this? Or, Will my husband drive by on his way home from work? But, Is this one of those situations that pastor Jay has been talking about where we should bless someone by praying for them?

First I prayed for myself, “God if you want me to do that, let there be an obvious opportunity.”

The officer returned to my open window and handed me a ticket, noted the court date and explained that I could pay the fine online. Then he said, “Do you have any questions?”

This question seemed to fit into the category of obvious opportunity.

“Well, yes I do,” I started. “You probably don’t get this much, but I believe every interaction has a purpose. Obviously one purpose here was that I be reminded to slow down. But I was wondering if there is anything I could pray for you about.”

Following a brief curious pause, he said, “Yes.”

Another pause. I began to wonder if he had more to say.

“For my safety on the job.”

Figuring it might be a safety risk to pray for him then and there, I said, “Okay, I’ll pray for you.” He said thank you and walked back to the flashing red lights.

I arrived at church a little later, without further incident, and discovered our class had been postponed at the last minute.

Maybe I’m rationalizing, but the thought occurred to me that perhaps the only reason for that trip was to have that conversation. All it cost me was a little time.

And $76.40.

Scene 2
I was at the hospital with my cousin when he was going through admission procedures on the oncology floor. Allen, a hospital volunteer, showed us to my cousin’s room while explaining his reason for volunteering on the oncology floor was due to the fact that he was a cancer survivor. When we got to the room, I asked Allen how his cancer was being managed. “So far so good,” he said, “but you never know.”

It was apparent that the cancer coming back was a concern, so I asked Allen if we could pray for him. We did, briefly asking God for health and peace of mind.

“Thank you,” he said. “That was very kind.”

Scene 3
Several months ago I was in visiting a friend in a city where our family had lived twenty years earlier and decided to drive by our old house. We’d done a lot of work restoring the 100-year-old house, and I wondered what it looked like now.

As I drove past I decided at the last moment to pull in the driveway and knock on the door, curious about who might live there now. A young-looking woman answered the door with a couple of small children peering curiously at me. I explained we’d lived there once, and she invited me in and ended up giving me a tour of the whole house! Her response was much more than I’d expected.

I learned that she was a Christian and the mother of six boys. As I was getting ready to leave I asked if I could pray for her.

“Sure,” she said. We sat on the landing of that familiar stairway—which still had not been refinished—and prayed, her two youngest boys laying hands on me like they were used to doing while praying. We exchanged email addresses, and I was on my way.

Several weeks later she emailed me asking for prayer for a difficult family situation.

Scene 4
We had just been dropped off at the concert hall and I spied a place in the lobby where my daughter-in-law and I could wait until the guys got the car parked. As we approached the bench, the woman sitting there slid over a bit as we sat down. Apparently the woman had scooted over a bit too far, because she lost her balance, fell sideways into the protruding metal frame of the window, hitting her head.

Several people rushed over to help her upright when it became obvious she was having difficulty doing that. The paramedic on the job that night came and made sure she was alright, noting she had come away from the incident primarily with a bump on her head.

As we watched this transpire I noticed she used an arm cane and after a bit of chit chat about her embarrassing moment, I asked her if she had a disability.

‘Yes, ataxia.”

This was a familiar term to me since ataxia, or the lack of muscle coordination, was one result of having Parkinson’s. So I responded, “I have Parkinson’s.”

I asked her if she was a candidate for deep brain stimulation, the pacemaker-like device that people with advanced Parkinson’s have to relieve ataxia and other debilitating hallmarks of Parkinson’s. She said she didn’t know anything about that but the only thing she had to address her illness was medication explaining that her ataxia resulted from her nerves slowly dissolving.

“So, if you live long enough, you become immobile?” I wondered out loud.

“I’ll live long enough;” she assured me. “I’m only sixty-four. It used to be that I only noticed it getting worse at my yearly check-up. But lately I can tell a difference monthly.”

Just then the guys arrived. Wishing the woman well and an enjoyable evening, I got up to go into the concert. The others had already gone past the ticket taker when it dawned on me to pray for this gal. So I told them to wait and went back to the bench.

“Can I pray for you?” I blurted.

Tearing up she said, “Yes, but I might cry.”

“Tears are good,” I assured her. “What’s your name?”

“Shirley.”

So there in the hubbub of the lobby, I took her hands, bowed and prayed about the bump on her head, her ataxia and remaining mobile for a long time. At this point I happened to look up at her and found her looking at me, with a look—I’m not sure how to describe it, I’ve rarely seen it—peace? Wonder? The slight smile perhaps indicating the blessedness of being cared about?

I concluded the prayer looking into her face with, “But God, whatever you choose for give her your peace and comfort. Amen.”

"Jesus enables us to take seriously who we are and where we are … so we needn’t be someone else or somewhere else. Jesus keeps our feet on the ground, attentive to children, in conversation with ordinary people, sharing a meal with friends and strangers, listening to the wind, observing the wildflowers, touching the sick and wounded, praying simply and unselfconsciously." –Eugene Peterson in Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places

Days later I was thinking about these encounters and couple of things occurred to me. No one said "no" to being prayed for, how simple praying for a person was--not requiring an appointment or a program, and that I just needed to be myself-with my own history and then pay attention.

Finally, it dawned on me that the reason for people's thankful reactions to being blessed and for that awesome look on Shirley's face was that, in me, they may have gotten a glimpse of Jesus. By just being my ordinary self.

Now, that's an extraordinary blessing.

New Horizons

2008-06-04T14:58:00.000-07:00

[The following observations by Katherine Kersten* about falling in love and marriage between a man and a woman could also apply to our relationship with Christ.]

In Mere Christianity C. S. Lewis compares the thrill of “falling in love” to the exhilarating sensation we experience upon first encountering the ocean as small children. We stand there on the beach, with the waves swirling around our knees, and we're overcome by a heady sensation that's at once bracing and spine-tingling.

But Lewis observes that as we grow older, we discover that standing in the waves no longer brings the same intoxicating thrill. Wading and paddling, we learn, are all very well, but there's something even better -- we can actually learn to swim. Learning to swim doesn't exhilarate us the same way that splashing in the breakers does.

It's not the pastime of a summer afternoon; on the contrary, it requires time, work and perseverance. But when we have mastered it, we have a gained lifelong skill that extends our horizons immeasurably. When we can swim, we can enter deep water confidently, exploring far beyond the shore that initially marked the limits of our world.

Lewis compares standing on the beach to infatuation, and swimming to the mature love that grows through marriage. It is the love that blossoms after the honeymoon passes -- when the breakers have ceased crashing over us, so to speak, and routine sets in.

It is the love that develops as a couple puts down deep roots in each other, and awakens to the immeasurable satisfaction of knowing that the other will always be there. Falling in love, says Lewis, is the explosion that starts a marriage. But this deeper and quieter love is the engine on which a good marriage runs.
Lewis points to a great paradox in all this.

He observes that it is just the people who are ready to submit to the loss of the initial thrill -- the infatuation -- and settle down to more sober interests, who are most likely to discover new thrills where they least expect them.

Let the first thrills subside, counsels Lewis, and together, "you will find you are living in a world of new thrills all the time." Lewis found it sad that middle-aged couples so often fret about their lost youth "at the very age when new horizons ought to be appearing and new doors opening" all around them.

As memorable as one's wedding day might be, it isn't the best life has to offer. It's only a beginning, and it points to something far more glorious.

*Excerpted from Check Out C.S. Lewis Instead Of Modern Bride, Star Tribune, April 7, 1999, By Katherine Kersten

email Connie at shoogeveen
@aol.com

More Than Enough

2008-03-22T16:10:00.000-07:00

The baby was a boy. The nurse took him, examined him, cleaned him up a bit, wrapped him in a blanket and brought him back for us to hold.

Even though I’d given birth several times before, I was again surprised at how perfect he was, and like every new mother I examined fingers and toes, fingernails, eyebrows. Everything was there, and so very small.

The most remarkable was his skin, which was dark and shiny, presumably due to the time he’d spent in floating in amniotic fluid after his heart had stopped a week before. In spite of the eerie sight umbilical cord still wrapped around his neck, we gazed at our son for a long, long time, his eight inch length no barrier to our silent speculation on what he may have been like, what he might have done.

Even though we knew this was the one and only time on earth we would see him, finally the fatigue of eight hours of labor, the hour of the day, and the self-consciousness of staring at a dead baby moved us to ask the nurse take him away. We tried not to think about his unceremonious end in the hospital incinerator; had he lived a couple weeks longer and made it to five months gestation, we would’ve been planning a funeral and burial.

Instead the only ceremony we knew about had been suggested to us by a nurse friend and was what we’d just done, bringing from home the blanket for holding him, taking some pictures and giving him a name. These artifacts were among the precious few that attested to his existence, along with sympathy cards, the tiny stocking that had hung on the mantle that December, and a dried up single rose that would be housed in a shoebox for the next 22 years.

That is where they were one morning this week when I got out the box and opened an envelope I’d forgotten about:

A flood of tears came.

That morning twenty-two years ago was unremarkable, other than the fact that it was my thirty-first birthday. I was a happy healthy mother of three kids and excited about the impending arrival of the fourth.

Come to think of it, maybe it was a remarkable day. I had felt the baby kick for the first time just a week or so before and had finally gotten over being angry about this unplanned pregnancy happening after I’d declared our family complete, ironically signifying its end by giving my maternity clothes away to a gal with her own unplanned pregnancy, and no husband.

At the time, I was quite involved in pro-life activities and remember thinking upon discovering my unwanted pregnancy, so this is what it feels like. I could see why girls would opt for an abortion, a quick solution. I too, felt trapped. One reason I’d declared an end to childbearing was, even though all our babies were healthy, and my pregnancies were uneventful, they had successively gotten longer- my third pregnancy finally ending one day shy of ten months with the birth of a ten pound boy, and that after labor was artificially started. In addition, I didn’t like what such pregnancies and deliveries had done to my body.

So I borrowed some maternity clothes and joined an aerobics class, determined not to gain fifty pounds again and to be in shape for perhaps another long labor. I had also changed obstetricians to one who delivered at a hospital that had a policy against performing abortions. I’d already had two prenatal exams and had heard the familiar chug-a-chug of the baby’s heartbeat the month before.

My exam that morning was routine until I noticed the doctor seemed to be taking a long time with the stethoscope on my belly finding the heartbeat. The baby must be in an awkward position, he said. He tried more angles; I rolled from one side to the other. After some time he said he was unable to find a heartbeat and that I should have an ultrasound at the hospital that afternoon.

That scared me. There’s something wrong, this isn’t routine, there’s something wrong with our baby; I hadn’t dared think the baby might be dead.

I collected our three-year-old son, John, from a friend’s house where he’d been while I was at my appointment (Laurie and Anne, 7 and 10, were in school), and went home. As it happened, my husband, Steve, came home for lunch that day for the purpose of delivering a single red rose for my birthday. With guarded tones I told him about my morning and the ultrasound appointment that afternoon and asked if he would be able to go with me.

He met me at the hospital that afternoon. I didn’t know how he felt, but I felt like I was in slow motion, in a dream, a bad dream. The ultrasound exam table was freezing cold; why did it have to be so cold? I began to shiver uncontrollably, much like I had during the delivery and following the births of our children.

The technician applied the cold gel to my promisingly-bulged belly. On the screen we could see our baby for the first time. He or she (wanting to know the gender didn’t even occur to us) looked whole. I suppose I lay there thirty minutes while she traversed all possible landscape with the doppler to detect a sound. Conversation –what little there was– was awkward; she gave no indication anything was wrong although we could see no heartbeat, it was much too quiet. I stopped looking at the monitor. She said we would meet with the doctor at his office to learn results.

It was 5:00pm by the time we got to the doctor’s office. While we waited for the doctor I read a magazine article about a woman who’d had a miscarriage. The doctor called us in. All I remember him saying is, “The baby is dead.” The disbelief and denial of the preceding hours gave way to tears. We cried.

With the tears came a flood of questions: Did I do something to cause this? What happens now? How would the dead baby be removed? And this absolutely terrifying thought: Would I have to go through labor and delivery?

The doctor assured me that nothing I did caused the baby to die and recommended we wait for labor to start on its own and if it didn’t in a week, labor would be initiated. Since we had driven to the appointments separately, I drove home alone and I took the opportunity to wail loudly.

Once we were home, having picked up the kids, we gathered in the living room. The kids sensed from our demeanor and reddened eyes that something -some terrible thing- had happened. I sat limply in the rocking chair as we explained that the baby had died. Anne and Laurie understood what that meant -in the past year three of their great grandparents had died- and cried along with us. John, at three, only knew that everyone was crying and was afraid. We explained the baby was in heaven, the only comfort available at the moment. I put the red rose in the baby’s new stocking on the mantle.

Labor didn’t start on its own and we went in to the hospital five days later. I knew that the focus required to use LaMaze breathing to control the pain, as I had done with my previous labors, would need to be far greater considering the result would not be a wailing baby. The contractions started out steady and got increasingly stronger.

About six hours into the eight hour ordeal, I closed my eyes to keep focused, and kept them closed; Steve thought I was asleep. I couldn’t risk opening my eyes and telling him I wasn’t sleeping for fear of losing concentration. Then came the irresistible urge to push, but I had to wait for the doctor to check my cervix. With one push, the baby was born.

I don’t remember much emotion at that moment except great relief that it was done. I hadn’t let myself think about anything other than the formidable task at hand. Now that it was done, I was mostly numb, and exhausted.

We went home to resume life and ponder other questions like, physiologically, why did this happen? We got some insight a week later when the pathology report arrived in the mail from the autopsy that we had requested. We had wanted to know of any abnormalities in case we would decide to conceive again. After a lot of technical lingo, the report concluded that, “no definable ideology of death was determined”.

That, with the fact of the baby being born with the cord wrapped around his neck, confirmed in my mind what I had begun to fear, that I could pinpoint the exact moment of his death.

It was two days before that fateful doctor’s exam that Anne and I were driving home from Wednesday night church activities. I remember exactly where we were on the road home when I made a comment to her that the baby must be a gymnast considering how much he was jumping around just then. I don’t recall any movement after that. Of course, there is no way to know for sure that he was suffocating just then, and I am thankful that I didn’t know it, because there would’ve been nothing I could’ve done about it.

The BIG question of course was theological, Why did this happen? Why did God let our baby die? I came to the inescapable conclusion that we live in a broken world where pain and death are very much a daily occurrence. Specific reasons beyond that were unknown then, but since have become somewhat clearer. As it was, the pain I was living helped me to long for that place where death and pain won’t be part of the landscape.

Which brings me to this Saturday morning- the day between Good Friday and Easter. In the predawn darkness I was listening to a radio broadcast of a Death Mass sung in Latin. The haunting, heavy dissonant sounds acutely conveyed the tragedy of death, Christ’s death. I closed my eyes and imagined that scene in Gethsemane where he not only cried tears of sorrow, but experienced the unimaginable -even to him- excruciating sweating-blood pain of the entire history of this very broken and defiant world.

In that listening dissonant moment it occurred to me that my recently shed tears were but a portion of the sum of his. I thought of the miscellaneous brokenness in lives I’d encountered in just the past month: a marriage gone sour, the stranglehold of addictions of various kinds, emotional deadness, bitterness, busyness, my left hand not being able to type very well, my own pride.

I remembered reading a simple but profound summary of the most important thing I’ve learned in the last few years about the ‘why’ of sorrows and tragedies from Frederick Buechner in his book Telling the Truth: “God himself does not give answers. He gives himself.”

This is the shocking, surprising truth that can be discovered through brokenness the size of Job’s, or my own, the life-giving gospel truth that easters up in us in the midst of the pain common to man. Incredibly, the Creator of the universe bends to tenderly embrace, dry tears, heal, and put life into things long-dead.

Time itself is measured from the centerpiece event where God gave himself: Mary’s baby was a boy. The God-man grew up in this same broken wailing world, submitted to death, and then did the unimaginable by walking out of his tomb.

More than answers to pain, more than a pathology report, what we really need is him.

As it turns out, he is more than enough.

Contact me at shoogeveen
@aol.com

Harvest of Gratitude

2008-02-23T15:54:00.000-08:00

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This morning the ten seconds that it took you to regain consciousness, and reach for the snooze button has taken Calvin the better part of five months to do- 145 days to be precise. That’s a factor of 1,252,800.

Calvin has been recovering from a brain injury as the result of a farm accident last fall. Come to think of it, what you did in ten seconds this morning, Cal routinely used to do in five, and since hitting the snooze likely wasn’t included in that five seconds, he was probably half dressed for another day on his dairy farm. So for Calvin, that’s a factor of 2,505,600.

To get a teeny idea of what emerging from a coma might be like, imagine waking up in a mental fog not being able to figure out where you are or what day it is, or perhaps WHO you are –which is unfortunately, perhaps like some of you, easy for me to imagine. Then, very slowly, you become increasingly aware of pain in spite of the sense that perhaps a crazed dentist (?) may have injected your whole body with Novocain, rendering you paralyzed, but not pain-free, unable even to open your eyes to glimpse who or what may have done this to you.

From that perspective, just waking up, hitting the snooze or not, and getting out of bed seems a privilege for which to be grateful.

In fact gratitude was Calvin’s prevailing emotion when I visited him on Day 145 of his journey out of the ‘fog’. I found him in the gym at the facility for the brain-injured where he is recovering, playing, as he would say later, ‘pretend’ volleyball, batting a green balloon back to Josh, his therapist, with his good hand (that the mad dentist missed).

The thrill of seeing Calvin in a standing position (with the help of the vertical board), laughing, talking, making wise cracks to the uninitiated about how standing directly behind a cow within range may be ill-advised for several reasons, would have been inconceivable considering the excitement generated on Day 10 when Calvin ‘merely’ opened his eyes for the first time for two seconds, or even the absolute joy on Day 122 when he simply laughed for the first time since the accident hurtled him deep into a coma.

“It was a good day today, a good day today,” Calvin repeated with his half-Novocained mouth and face as his wife Diane pushed his wheelchair back to his room. Perhaps because of the reference to cows and the review of his newly regained skills he said, “I can kick good.” And then remembering how that ability would need to submit to good will added, “But I shouldn’t do that.”

I inserted, “But it’s nice to have the option.”

“Yes,” smiling big with the cooperative side of his face, “Nice to have the option.”

Calvin recalled the inevitable pain he endured in getting his atrophied muscles to the performance level seen at Day 145, as well as the pain-in-the-posterior he realizes he must’ve been at times to staff (not unlike the risk of standing behind a cow), he lamented, “I bellyached about the pain, bellyached about the pain,” a phrase familiar to him presumably due to having Not Bellyaching near the top of his list of virtues.

After a few more recollections, I asked, “What do you think God is up to with you, Calvin?”

He paused, then said, “People tell me I encourage them, I hope I can yet…I'm going to try, to the best of my ability;…I hope I can…”

Tearing up he affirms, “I’m so glad to move legs and arm and play pretend volleyball.” He pauses, the work of speaking much more intense than milking the herd. “It's so hard to wake up [in the morning] and not be able to move.” Then, thoughtfully, “God is strong, I am weak,…I am weak…God is good,” now sobbing, “I didn’t know [how good].”

Another pause. “There was a baby died in our church- stillborn.”

The thought makes his upper body heave and he struggles to get out the words, “Much… worse… than my… prob…'ems.”

I fear I may have brought him into territory too painful and searched my brain for a happier thought. “Maybe the baby will meet your dad in heaven.”

Cal calmed and smiled at the prospect of their meeting and the wonderful thought of his dad living.

I added playfully, “I wonder if your dad will be smoking a cigar in heaven, and doing that [peculiar quasi-spit that endeared him to so many].”

“That's funny,” he practically blurted.

A few minutes later Diane was explaining how badly his left jawbone had been shattered, like corn flakes, the doctor had said, and repaired surgically with multiple metal plates. Calvin’s response was a confirmation-to-me that Calvin was indeed on his way back was when he responded with one of his favorite phrases, “No kiddin'.”

“No kiddin',” was music to my ears much like it would be to Calvin’s ears to hear that his crop yield was double or triple the expected bushels per acre- or that he’d inherited a billion dollars- to which he would likely respond with his classic understatement, “No kiddin'.”

The post I wrote at the time of Calvin’s accident last fall was titled Harvest. I observed, “…Now that I'm older I have the privilege of looking back and seeing that God has 'gifted' me with some painful experiences where my trust in him has taken deep root and grown, like corn in a hot Iowa summer… It's harvest season. And our Father is Lord of the harvest.”

‘Coincidentally’, one of my scheduled scripture readings for Calvin’s Day 145 was about harvest: “But the good soil represents those who hear and accept God’s message and produce a huge harvest - thirty, sixty, or even a hundred times as much as had been planted.”

Over this cold Iowa winter, when the landscape seemed dormant, the seeds of possibility for glorifying God ‘planted’ in the fertile organic matter of Calvin’s ‘accident’ have been growing and the harvest is beginning to come in thirty, sixty, a hundredfold.

Not only has his family witnessed their own bumper crop of trust in God, but Calvin may indeed be experiencing to a fuller, overflowing, need-to-add-sideboards degree what he already knew, that God works ALL things together for good to those who love God, a yield, the proportions of which, he couldn’t have imagined when healthy and whole.

He summarized the fruitful panorama in which he finds himself in his own words on Day 145 with typical understated simplicity, “God is good…I didn’t know [how good].”

Beyond the harvest yields of being conscious, upright instead of supine, laughing, joking, and playing ‘pretend’ volleyball, Calvin finds himself more alive than ever to the Lord of the Harvest. By definition, that aliveness, that becoming a bit more of who he was created to be, comes with a bumper crop of gratitude -perhaps by a factor of 2,505,600- for which he will likely have to build new barns.

No kiddin’.

Email Connie at:
TheJourneyBlog
@aol.com

One Moment of Grace

2008-01-23T18:49:00.001-08:00

It was Sunday, day two of our otherwise uneventful tent-camping vacation. We’d gotten comfortably settled into the same camping spot as we’d done each of the three years since we discovered it. I say ‘discovered’ since the campsite was the perfect- on the edge of the park next to the woods with a large grassy area that has an almost perfect circle of trees in the center that says to anyone with sense, “Put your tent here.” So we always have.

Around noon Steve was off getting a newspaper or something and I was getting back to our campsite from a walk. At a distance I saw a white vehicle parked at our site and an older man in a green uniform looking at our site and writing something down. I knew we’d paid our fees for a week, so he couldn’t have been there for that reason. And we hadn’t violated any ordinances that I was aware of. I was really curious what he was up to.

I walked up, said hello and saw on his shirt the insignia of the Army Corps of Engineers who ran the park. He turned toward me, said the same and then asked if this was my campsite. I replied in the affirmative. Motioning, he asked if that was my tent. Yes, again. So far I hadn’t discerned any reason for his presence.

Then he asked, “See that white post over there?” It was a steel post about 40 feet from our tent along the road.

“Yes.” I’d seen it many times in our last three years of visits.

“That’s the boundary of the park and your tent is outside the boundary.”

An incredulous look must have come over my features. “Wow, we’ve camped in that spot the last three years and no one has ever mentioned that to us.” Then curious about the degree of my guilt I wondered out loud, “How far outside?”

We walked over to the tent and according to where he said the boundary was our tent was a tent-width over the line. Moving it would put us outside the circle of trees and be labor intensive redoing about 40 stakes and tiedowns since our aging canvas tent needed to be covered with a tarp. We’d always stayed in one spot for two weeks to avoid this very thing.

I appealed to reason. “I’m curious why the park hosts have never mentioned this to us.”

“Oh, they’re new.”

“And what about the couple from 2 and 3 years ago?” We had gotten to know the red-headed wife and her laugh; her husband returned from heart bypass surgery last year during our stay.

He didn’t know.

“So how were we to know?” I thought surely this seemingly minor infraction of the rules would be excused on the basis of ignorance.

“You should’ve asked.”

He couldn’t be serious, could he?! This was not a minor infraction to him.

Then he asked, “How long are you staying?”

“Two weeks.”

“From when?”

“Yesterday.”

“Well, one of the jobs of the Corps of Engineers is to make boundaries and I have to enforce them.”

I realized had we been leaving in the next day or so he may have let it go. But 13 days of violation wasn’t going to happen on his watch. It was becoming increasingly clear that this encounter was going to require a fair amount of self-control, and that I shouldn’t say what I wanted to say which was, Are you serious?! Do you mean to tell me that you spend your Sunday afternoons busting campers for silly things like this?!!

If this was his usual approach I could see how he probably regularly got verbal lashings from campers and rarely got respect. I offered, “I understand it’s your job, but person to person, I’m wondering if leaving our tent there would be such a bad thing.”

“Oh, I hear you. But what if we let that go, then we let something else by and then the next thing. Pretty soon, where would we be? What if 30 people came and put their tents across the boundaries, what kind of a mess would we be in then?”

I was simultaneously fascinated and frustrated. This guy is obsessed with boundaries and rules. Keeping them was perhaps what held his world together.

“I’m all for keeping the rules and doing what’s right,” I offered.

He continued, “What if the land owner came over here and made a fuss about your tent being here?”

I wondered what would make a person act this way. “Well, of course we’d move it then.”

If we ended up really having to move the tent, as it appeared, we’d probably just pack up and go find another park with another site worth driving eight hours for, as this one would no longer be.

“Your tent is clearly over the boundary, so you’ll have to move it.”

Resigned to packing up instead of climbing into the hammock as I hoped, I responded with a sigh, “Okay.”

“I suppose you put the tent here for the shade,” he observed.

“Well, yes.”

Then he looked at the other campsites within view, about seven, one of which was occupied. “Well, there’s lots of shade over there. Why didn’t you choose one of those?”

Now I was offended at being treated like a child. I wanted to say something like, “Any idiot can see this site is about five times bigger than of any of those.” But I was pretty sure that wouldn’t be helpful.

“This one’s big,” I said.

“Yeah, especially when you go beyond the boundary!” he laughed. Perhaps the deep lines on his face were evidence of a career in boundary line enforcement.

Then he spied the tarp we’d draped over the unoccupied neighboring campsite’s picnic table. We’d put it there to dry after using it to keep the light rain off of things while we were setting up the day before. “Did you rent that site too?”

It was almost as if he was testing my self-restraint with more knit-picking. I marshaled my shrinking patience. “No, but that is our tarp. We put it there to dry.”

“Well, you can’t put your stuff on other sites,” he informed me. I knew that pointing out our knowledge of camping etiquette wouldn’t be of much use.

Then I did something I should not have done. I’m really not sure why I did it since I had little hope it’d make any difference with this no-exceptions enforcer. I played the Parkinson’s card.

“I know this isn’t your problem,” I explained, “but I have Parkinson’s and moving the tent will be a lot of work. Just hauling the stuff from here (the parking spot) to there (about 50 yards) was a lot of work.”

At the very least I’d hoped he would see that our doing THAT instead of violating the rule about driving on the grass to get closer to the tent to unload would testify to our being rule-keeping folk, even if it was inconvenient. I was thankful I could truly say that, since the year before we HAD driven on the grass to unload. Call it selective righteousness, but I didn’t mention that.

I looked for some indication of compassion and I thought I saw a brief look of regret soften his resolve. He looked at the ground and said quietly, “Yes, I have a brother-in-law with Parkinson’s and I know how it is.”

I didn’t expect what happened next.

In a softer tone he asked, “What’s your name?”

“Connie.”

“Well, Connie,” he said evenly, “in the year 2007, the Army Corps of Engineers is going to make an exception.”

Unbelievable. There was a person in there after all.

“What’s your name?” I asked, conferring on him the same honor.

“Jim.”

“Jim,” I said reaching out to shake his hand, “thank you for your grace.”

I can’t be sure, but I’m almost positive I saw a glimmer of a tear when I said the word grace.

As he walked back to his truck he said, “I’ll make sure the hosts know I’ve approved your tent staying there.”

“Thank you!” I hollered. “If anybody comes around giving me any trouble, I’ll tell ‘em to talk to Jim.”

Closing his citation book, “You do that. I’ll take care of it.” Now he was taking care of me! Incredible. With that he drove off.

What had just happened?

Weak-kneed, I sat down at the picnic table and reviewed the encounter. I thought of several other ways it could’ve turned out, most involving anger: me hardening my position, being disrespectful toward him, resentful; he leaving angry, confirming his belief that breakers of the law need to be prosecuted. Or me acquiescing to his enforcement; he feeling he’d done his job.

But somehow we both got a blessing out of the deal. I wondered why my use of the word ‘grace’ seemed to touch a place in Jim. From under that prickly and hardened exterior something grace-ful had emerged.

It seemed I’d witnessed a miracle.

As it turned out, I had. The camp host came by the next day and after some chit chat said she really came by to meet the only person ever to out-talk Jim. Even though she was new, Jim’s reputation apparently wasn’t. I told her the only explanation I had was that I treated him with respect and had told him I had Parkinson’s. She didn’t believe the Parkinson’s info would’ve swayed him.

I felt extremely humbled by the power of this thing called grace. We’d both been ambushed by it- he in the apparently unexpected joy of granting it and me in the sheer surprise -not to mention gratitude- of receiving it.

I wonder if Jim left that day feeling he’d done something Godlike. He had, you know.

In his book Living a Life of Distinction Lewis Smedes has noted that, “Anywhere, everywhere, somebody may at any moment cross our path and ask us: What are you going to do about me? When they ask it, they give us a moment of grace. We can write beautiful stories out of our moments of grace."

This is one.

Seeing More Clearly

2007-12-16T16:27:00.000-08:00

Our small group has been reading the book by Lewis Smedes, The Art of Forgiving. “Forgiving,” says Smedes, “…is the art of healing inner wounds inflected by other people’s wrongs."

In chapter one Smedes tells us the basics of forgiving are the same for everyone:
1. Rediscover the humanity of the person who hurt us.

2. Surrender our right to get even.

3. Revise our feelings toward the person we forgive.

We’ve been stuck on point one for months. And it may be years.

Rediscovering the humanity of the person who hurt us.

Hurts can be significant. Sometimes those hurts are like having a broken arm; sometimes they are like having an arm hacked off.

Debbie Morris knows more about significant pain than she would have chosen. In her book Forgiving the Dead Man Walking*, she tells her story of being kidnapped and repeatedly raped at the age of 16 by Robert Willie and another man. That unfair pain in her young life was preceded by unfair pain of her mother's alcoholism and her parents' divorce.

Smedes asserts that the only remedy for the unfair pain of the past is “a surgical procedure called forgiveness.”

For Debbie that very painful surgical procedure took years. As it turns out, the basics of forgiving for her were the same as they are for everyone, starting with point one, rediscovering the humanity of the person who hurt us.

The implausible notion that buried somewhere beneath the blatant inhumanity of her kidnapper there may be a human being created in the image of God became less remote when she had a son of her own, Conner.

"I realized Robert Willie, too, was a baby once,” helpless and vulnerable. “Over the years, …my heart [was softened] little by little so that I was finally able to forgive him for what he did.”

Part of that ‘little by little’ was her searching the Bible for stories about grace and forgiveness. She remembers, “The parable in Matthew 20:1-16, about the workers in the vineyard, leapt out at me. In it workers were paid the same price despite how long they'd worked. It infuriated the people who'd worked all day that they received the same wages as those who'd put in only a couple hours. I realized I was just like them. I felt I deserved heaven—and Robert Willie didn't. But that parable showed me God's grace is accessible to all of us, regardless of when we turn to him.”

Debbie was surprised that rediscovering the humanity of the person who hurt her was easier to do with Willie than with her own mother. She more or less stumbled upon the discovery of her mother’s humanity, seeing her as a person with frailties not unlike her own, when she herself went into rehab for alcoholism. “I finally realized I needed to accept my mom as she was.”

So, why is rediscovering the humanity of the person who hurt us so difficult?

Smedes points out, “We shrink him to the size of what he did to us; he becomes the wrong he did. If he has done something truly horrible, we say things like, 'He is no more than an animal.' Or, 'He is nothing but a cheat.' Our 'no more thans' and our 'nothing buts' knock the humanity out of our enemy. He is no longer a fragile spirit living on the fringes of extinction. He is no long a confusing mixture of good and evil. He is only, he is totally, the sinner who did us wrong.”

The very logical reason we don’t see the humanity of the person who hurt us is simply because we don’t see clearly. We’re vision impaired.

Smedes explains, ”We filter the image of our villain through the gauze of our wounded memories, and in the process we alter his reality.”

Not surprisingly, it would be difficult to see ANYTHING clearly through bloody gauze.

“As we start on the miracle of forgiving,” Smedes asserts, “we begin to see our enemy through a cleaner lens, less smudged by hate. We begin to see a real person, a botched self, no doubt, a hodgepodge of meanness and decency, lies and truths, good and evil that not even the shadows of his soul can wholly hide…We see a human being created to be a child of God.”

As it turns out, in rediscovering the humanity of the person who hurt us, we see person not wholly unlike the one we see in the mirror- "a human being created to be a child of God.”

The forgiveness miracle begins with seeing more clearly.

*Debbie's story

Email Connie at:
TheJourneyBlog
@aol.com

Slow Learner

2007-11-30T19:58:00.000-08:00

…being formed into a people who love God and one another…[is] slow work. We are slow learners. And though God is unendingly patient with us, we are not very patient with one another.
–Eugene Peterson in Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places

I was standing in one of those long checkout lines, about three people away from the register, a couple of people behind me. I was facing forward, minding my own business, when a man’s voice behind me launches into a monolog that could have gotten him the role replacing Joe Piscopo as Doug Whiner on the old Saturday Night Live “Whiners” spoof. Those episodes had titles like The Whiners at the Doctor, The Whiners in the Hospital, The Whiners on a Plane, and featured Doug and Wendy Whiner complaining about everything including any food that wasn’t macaroni and cheese. The episode I found myself in could’ve been called, The Whiner in the Checkout Line.

“Never fails. I get in the line where this happens,” he sighs.

I had been blissfully unaware what ‘this’ was.

To the back of my head he goes on, “She waits until all her stuff is scanned, AND THEN decides to pay with a check, fishing around trying to find the checkbook and THEN trying to find a pen. (Sigh.) Always in the line I’M in.”

If he would’ve had a nasal tone like Joe Piscopo as Doug Whiner I would’ve laughed out loud. But he didn’t. As it happened, my initial decades-of-being-a-Christ-follower thought was, “Oh great, a whiner,” a response which, as it happens, is conspicuously absent of Christ-like love.

John Ortberg in The Life You’ve Always Wanted says, “…the true indicator of spiritual well-being is growth in the ability to love God and people.”

Shoot. Why couldn’t it have been spotting personality faults at two-hundred yards or keeping score on who’s naughty and who’s nice? You know, stuff I’m pretty good at.

Since I wasn’t in a hurry myself, I was able, half-turning, to offer, “Would you like to go ahead of me?”

“Oh no,” he said quickly. I think he was a bit embarrassed because he proceeded to justify his aggravation by listing other irritations in his life, including idiot drivers. His theory- apparently unique to him- was that it didn’t matter what lane he chose to drive in, amazingly some idiot driver always ended up in front of him.

“This guy must be an idiot magnet,” I thought, “And it’s always the people in front of him,” noting my place in line.

I couldn’t think of anything appropriate to say. “Have you ever considered you might be an idiot magnet?” just didn’t seem quite right.

I took the 'less is more' option and didn’t say anything. I discouraged more details about his magnetic properties by avoiding eye contact and facing forward, hoping the line would be idiot-free and move quickly.

Later I thought of this response, “Yeah, when that happens to me I just figure God’s trying to teach me something. And since it happens so much, I must be in the slow class.”

Now that I think of it, God was probably trying to teach me something. About love. Again. I am a slow learner. Apparently.

I must be in the slow class.

Email Connie at:
TheJourneyBlog
@aol.com

Providence

2007-10-31T20:15:00.001-07:00

Providence. God’s sovereignty. I usually don’t think about it unless something bad has happened. When all is well, I don’t question why, only when things go wrong. Sometimes horribly wrong.

In the last chapter of her historical novel of the American Northwest in the late 19th century, The Living, where things going horribly wrong was as abiding and massive as the 200 foot Douglas fir trees the settlers spent their lives felling, Annie Dillard has one of the characters ponder this question, “How was it possible to endure the losses one accumulated just by living?”

My first real encounter with mortality and loss happened on my 31st birthday, when my obstetrician couldn't find a heartbeat at my 5-month prenatal check. My reaction was the same as anyone’s would be: shock and then denial. Even through the two ultrasounds that day I still couldn't bring myself to believe that our baby could be dead. I was young, in excellent health, had already produced three healthy children and experienced zero complications in pregnancy.

But reality became clear about 5pm that day in December when the doctor spelled it out. He wanted to let labor start spontaneously, but after a week when it hadn't, labor was initiated and eight hours later I delivered a dead baby boy.

It was BY FAR the most difficult thing I'd ever done in my young life and took every last ounce of strength I could manage to summon.

Years before I had learned the answer to the Heidelberg Catechism question #27 as a fifth grader but now I needed a review.

What do you mean by the providence of God?
Providence is that almighty and everywhere present power of God, whereby, as it were by His hand, He still upholds heaven, earth, and all creatures, and so governs them that herbs and grass, rain and drought, fruitful and barren years, food and drink, health and sickness, riches and poverty, yes, all things, come not by chance but by His fatherly hand.

I believed God was in control and our baby had died because there is sin in the world and these things happen in a sinful world.

As the novel The Living illustrates, to truly appreciate life, a person must first be reconciled to mortality. I had a whole new appreciation of life.

Some years later, again in December, I visited my doctor with some symptoms for which I had no explanation. She was the first medical professional to speak the word “Parkinson’s” as a possible explanation for my fatigue and left side weakness: “You’re too young to have Parkinson’s”.

Now it was the certainty of my own what-had-seemed-distant mortality that I was faced with. It was time to review the doctrine of Providence. I was greatly comforted by it. I memorized it.

Eighteen months later I got a call from my neurologist that my chest x-ray the day before for my routine screening for a Parkinson’s drug study revealed what she called a ‘concerning mass’ of some size in my left lung. Her call was followed by another from my regular doctor, who was less able to restrain her fears about the ‘concerning mass’.

The doctrine of sovereignty was pretty fresh in my mind; little review was needed, the comfort was abiding.

Why is it so comforting? Why is it comforting to believe that the One who loves you the most allows, even ordains, things that go horribly wrong?

The most horrible explanation for life’s trials is that there is none- that they are random, pointless and meaningless and wasted. That belief can only produce despair.

Comfort, on the other hand, grows from being rock solid sure that ultimately my Almighty Father has control of every molecule in His universe, even things going horribly wrong. He doesn't cause sin but has a leash on it.

“[The Bible is] an extensively narrated story of life assaulted by death but all the time surviving death, with God constantly, in new ways and old, breathing life into this death-plagued creation, these death-battered lives...” observes Eugene Peterson in Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places.

How IS it possible to endure the losses one accumulates just by living?

My Father's control coupled with His intimate love means there is an eternal purpose for what is happening that is beyond my control and far beyond my knowing. My pain is not meaningless and will not be wasted, but meticulously used as organic matter by my Father to grow something good and glorious.

Like a stately 200 foot Douglas fir.

What Do Big Boys Do?

2007-10-24T16:01:00.000-07:00

Our daughter and her husband are in the midst of potty training their son, Shannon. As you might expect, part of the process is a clear understanding about the basic premise and goal of potty training:

("Shannon, where do big boys go pee-pee?" "Pee the potty, pee the potty. Not the pants.")

That’s what BIG boys do. Easy, right?

Anyone with a smidgeon of experience in this department understands that knowing what to do and doing it are entirely different planets in the growth galaxy. Shannon knows what to do; it may take some time before the doing comes without effort.

It’s the same with any aspect of being a Christ-follower. The knowing part is comparatively easy and doesn't take all that much effort in a Christian community. It's kind of like Shannon showing the greatest interest in the aspects of potty training he loves: flushing the potty and washing his hands. He could do that all day long. And would if left to himself.

Or take the challenge of becoming physically fit. The easy part is doing the research, acquiring the equipment, activewear, memberships, magazines and paraphernalia ‘needed’, and then doing some more research, to be sure.

I've read about prayer for decades. I've gone to seminars, heard messages. It’s only recently that I actually started put those ‘knowings’ into doing. Consistently. I’m a long way from having prayer be effortless. But it’s more so than a couple of years ago.

My favorite part of prayer used to be making a list of things to talk to God about. Type A folk love lists. I could do that all day long if left to myself.

I don’t make as many lists anymore.

Or talk as much. Being quiet is WAY more difficult than filling God in on how to run my corner of the universe.

Making progress from knowing to doing is not a new challenge. The apostle Paul chides, “By this time you ought to be teachers yourselves, yet here I find you need someone to sit down with you and go over the basics on God again, starting from square one - baby's milk, when you should have been on solid food long ago!”

If having a church full of folks who prefer liquid diets doesn’t sound so bad, imagine a church full of folks who aren’t potty trained yet. Kinda gives a new perspective on the importance of growth, or the consequences in the absence of it.

I am beginning to leave ‘childish things’. I, too, want to be 'big'. I don’t always want to make the effort, but more and more often I do. It takes effort. And that’s how things change.

That's what 'big' girls and boys do.

Hearing Impaired

2007-10-18T14:09:00.001-07:00

We need to quit whatever we're doing and sit down. When we sit down, the dust raised by our furious activity settles; the noise generated by our building operations goes quiet; we become aware of the real world. God’s world. And what we see leaves us breathless: it’s so much larger, so much more full of energy and action than our ego-fueled actions, so much clearer and saner than the plans that we had projected. – Eugene Peterson in Leap Over a Wall, Earthy Spirituality for Everyday Christians

I once knew a man who, as far as I know, rarely hurried. He was quite deliberate in all he did. He has since died. In the eyes of our culture, his life wouldn’t be particularly impressive. He didn’t amass a fortune, invent anything, write any books, wasn’t famous- not even for 15 minutes.

It’s interesting to note that to everyone who knew him, his nick name was ‘Happy’.

It may well be that his unruffled approach to life was his natural bent. Those of us who don’t have that advantage have to ‘work’ at slowing down and occasionally stopping. (It just occurred to me that seeing slowing down as a ‘project’ initially may help us to get it done, especially if there’s a deadline.)

The fact is that most of us are clueless about how fast we’re going until some external force stops us. Pastor John Ortberg, when questioned by the police officer if he was aware what the speed limit was on the road where he’d been stopped, quipped something like, “Goodness no. That sign whizzed by WAY too fast for me to read it.”

Bingo.

If Moses had checked the sheep zipping around on a four-wheeler it’s possible the term ‘burning bush’ would have no significance to us now.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning said:
Earth's crammed with heaven,
And every common bush aflame with God.
But only those who see take off their shoes.
The rest sit around and pluck blackberries.

There is a price to pay for consistently exceeding the speed limit of life, besides the physical ailments that come from adrenalin addiction.

Running without pause from one building project to another- whether it’s shameless wealth accumulation or meritorious good works- robs one of the wealth and rewards of regularly letting the dust settle, rereading God’s love letters and listening. Not to mention, it's impossible to take your shoes off while running.

As it turns out, the recommended speed limit for hearing from God is zero.

Harvest

2007-10-02T18:03:00.000-07:00

[Editor's note: My cousin was recently seriously injured in a farm accident.]
I remember about 38 years ago being in our Grandpa Kelderman's living room, Grandpa in his vinyl throne, er uh... recliner as usual, Evelena, our step Grandma, either playfully chastising Grandpa for his ceaseless teasing or getting more cookies for the horde of rambunctious grandchildren. This happened delightfully every Sunday morning after church.

Two of those grandchildren, Calvin and his younger brother John, were the subject of our prayers then, as they were in a far country called 'Nam. I remember how unreal 'Nam, and the killing that must be there seemed, me being a giggly teen, and having had no real experience in pain, other than the usual ones a daughter of a pig farmer with a STRONG protestant work ethic would be familiar with.

But I DID know that prayer was what one did when a danger, known or subversive like the Viet Cong, lurked. You prayed. It didn’t matter how much you knew about the problem. That was God’s job. Knowing.

Now that I'm older I have the privilege of looking back and seeing that God has 'gifted' me with some painful experiences where my trust in him has taken deep root and grown, like corn in a hot Iowa summer. I suppose it’s something like the 'gift' of things becoming crystal clear for a soldier in a hot bunker in 'Nam, the world exploding all around.

Peace and terror co-exist for a time.

Calvin may or may not be able to hear the voices of those who lovingly surround him in that hospital bed. But this is sure, the same Brother who was beside him in 'Nam all those years ago, has been with him in the calm as well as the ‘explosions’ of life on this planet, is there now, comforting him more than we can know, with a peace beyond imagining. A peace greater than the terror of the unknown and the unthinkable possibility of his remaining comatose, lurking in the minds of those of us who are lucid.

Being of Dutch descent, I am extremely thankful that our Father doesn't waste anything. He uses numbness of heart, loss, loneliness, pain, sometimes-impatient waiting, anger and ingratitude as the organic matter to produce a bumper crop of good. Being a pig farmer’s daughter, I have an intimate knowledge of organic matter. There’s no getting around it- some of it stinks! But boy, can it make things grow.

It's harvest season. And our Father is Lord of the harvest.

Thank you, Father, for the harvest you are producing in Calvin’s life and in the lives of all those who have a part, large or small, in this story. Thank you for being intimate enough to be concerned about that one root worm, and big enough to have the grain bins all ready to hold this particular crop.

With the Psalmist we say:
I lift up my eyes to the hills--
where does my help come from?
My help comes from the Lord,
the Maker of heaven and earth.
He will not let your foot slip--
he who watches over you will not slumber;
Indeed, he who watches over Israel
will neither slumber nor sleep.
The Lord watches over you--
the Lord is your shade at your right hand;
the sun will not harm you by day,
nor the moon by night.
The Lord will keep you from all harm--
he will watch over your life;
The Lord will watch over your coming and going
both now and forevermore.

Amen.

Worth Far More- Ann's Response

2007-09-19T13:41:00.000-07:00

Last post I talked about an unlikely friendship. Ann responds this post:

Looking at this picture from about a year ago really brought me full circle.

I know firsthand that the power of prayer is amazing. Look at me now from four years ago. God is amazing!

I wanted to share this with Connie’s readers, just a few scriptures that come to mind. The first one is:

Philippians 4:13. “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”

It is only through. Christ that I remain drug-free and smoke-free.

Joel 25:25. “I will restore what all the locusts have eaten.”

God has blessed the union of me and my soul mate- Jeff, and gave me a wedding, even at my age. He gave us a home and returned my daughter to me and works all the time in restoring my family to where it should have always been. We are constantly trying to keep God as our center. Thank you God!!!

Then just these last two scriptures that come to mind:

Psalms 84:10. “A single day in your courts is better than a thousand anywhere else! I would rather b e a gatekeeper in the house of my God than live the good life in the homes of the wicked.”

Coming from me, this is a miraculous statement- that even I feel this scripture applies to me. I was so young and so crazy in love with meth that I couldn't see past the fun, the edge, the crazy money that I had access to all the while caught in the web of lies that Satan had surrounded me with.

Not until God opened my heart and opened my soul and my eyes, only when I begged Him to help me and was on my hands and knees pleading with him for some kind of intervention, did this happen.

I had to be ready.

And all this time I thought he just didn’t want to help me. Surrendering is what broke my strongholds to that life.

And this last scripture is how I felt like when for the first time I tried to stay clean with His help and it really worked:

Psalms 6:9. “The Lord has heard my cry for mercy; the Lord accepts my prayer.

For thirty-some years I had believed this was impossible. That God actually hears me? I was seriously convinced that I was too bad that he wouldn’t want to hear me because of my history of use and my lies and my [lack of] parenting and all the lives I helped ruin by selling drugs to other people, and…, and…, and….

But God Loves Me.

The picture of all my Christian sisters surrounding me and laying hands on me is such a powerful thing to see. God is real and God cares about ME and MY salvation.

Our church is an incredible church. Praise God. He is incredible. Twelve or thirteen drug treatment programs later [I’ve lost count] I rely on my God, no AA or ‘Big Book’. It is my Lord’s book the Bible where I seek my answers for today.

Praise Him!

Love,
Ann

Worth Far More

2007-09-14T22:20:00.000-07:00

Affection [teaches] us first to notice, then to endure, then to smile at, then to enjoy, and finally to appreciate, the people who “happen to be there.” Made for us? Thank God, no. They are themselves odder than you could have believed and worth far more than we guessed.
- C.S. Lewis in The Four Loves

This is my unlikely friend Ann. We have looked at each other on more than one occasion in the past and said, “I would NEVER in a million years have guessed I’d be spending time with someone like you.”

Ann came to our church in the fall of 2003, just having walked out of drug rehab for perhaps the tenth time. She was disillusioned with ‘the same old crap’, as she would put it, on recovering from an addiction and was looking for more power. She suspected God might have it. She was 31 and extremely street smart. She, however, didn't know church-speak and, I’m sure, had absolutely NO idea what the term propitiation meant.

Then there’s me, the Church Lady as she called me, then age 48, current or former director of anything church-related, street-stupid, with the capacity of being intoxicated with a thimbleful of communion wine. Yeah. Oh, and I and could’t talk smack and no idea what the term tweaking meant. (If you don’t know what smack means, that’s a good thing.)

We’re kind of the Odd Couple. She’d get pretty excited about teeny tiny pieces of Ice. I, on the other hand, thought you needed a mug-full for it to even be worthwhile.

We have some similarities too. She’s been assaulting her dopamine supply for the last 14 years with uncontrolled substances; my dopamine supply has been assaulted by some unknown enemy to the point where I have Parkinson’s. We both like a good guffaw and are both recovering Control Freaks. (I went to a Celebrate Recovery meeting with her once and actually got to say, “Hello, my name is Connie. I’m a recovering Control Freak.”) Ann was very popular in high school and an active athlete. I wasn't popular or an athlete, but was active in academics and student government.

Perhaps the most striking similarity between us is that we are both beginning to understand the truth of this statement by Eugene Peterson:

…[In following Jesus] we have renounced initiative and taken up obedience. We have renounced clamoring assertion in favor of quiet listening…we accompany Jesus into new relationships, to odd places and odd people. Keeping company with Jesus, observing what he does and listening to what he says, develops into a life of answering God, a life of responding to God, which is to say, a life of prayer.

A year ago people who love Ann prayed for her and donated the tuition for her to spend 60 days in the residential treatment program of Teen Challenge in Minneapolis.

While there she experienced the love of God, accepted her identity as his child, quit smoking, and dealt with her drug dependency. She also received more pieces of mail than anyone there in recent memory .

After she returned home, she and her longtime boyfriend decided to honor God in their relationship with marriage and her Dream Wedding was put together in two weeks. Ann returned to her job as a customer service representative for a medical insurance firm where she continues to receive stellar ratings by clients for her patient and compassionate help.

Several months ago another dream came true when she and her husband were able to move out of their mobile home into a home they’d purchased, which just so ‘happened’ to be the home her husband’s mother grew up in, coming onto the market at just the right time and for the right price.

Ann has seen God work so many times that she knows for a fact that he is real, he loves her and has a plan for her that is unfolding daily. Hourly.

She is still getting her mind around the irrational fact that grace is free. She admits, when she thinks of her past, she sometimes struggles with feeling unworthy of so many blessings.

Thankfully, she is slowly discovering, what I and many others have already figured out, and what God knew all along, that she is “worth far more than we guessed.”

Getting In

2007-08-22T10:52:00.001-07:00

[Prayer] is the gift to him of time, the only coin we have to spend: the gift of ourselves, one we find all too difficult to give. -Emilie Griffen in Clinging

When I was diagnosed with Parkinson’s several years ago I learned that muscle rigidity is one of the pyramidal symptoms of the disease, the other two being tremor and postural imbalance. And since I’ve had some time to observe what PD does to a body, namely mine, I having jokingly referred to this muscle petrifying process as gradually turning into Lot’s wife, who, as you recall turned into a pillar of salt, which I’m guessing was fairly rigid. While her experience with rigidity was instantaneous, Parkinson’s allows a much more gradual decline to inflexibility.

I recently started taking a new breakthrough Parkinson’s drug. Actually, it’s a skin patch that does something to stimulate the surviving small colony of tired dopamine-producing neurons –the ones that tell muscles to move. The wonderful, feels-like-a-miracle result for me is that my muscles are getting the message! They are much less stiff, so basic things like standing up and walking take less effort.

In fact, on my second day on the drug, I went out for my daily not-fun walk/jog (not-fun since jogging takes a lot of effort). I broke into a jog and wondered what was going on since it was so . . . well . . . easy. The same thing happened the next day! I’d forgotten what running had felt like and was a bit surprised how rigid I’d apparently become.

As you know, all drugs have possible side effects. This drug has some interesting ones.

The compulsive behavior category is interesting, huh? Sexual desire is grouped with gambling and meaningless action. Hmmm. (After I’d had the patch on for oh, three minutes, my husband asked if I felt anything. I said, “I have a sudden hankering to play Bingo.")

Here’s a side effect that was NOT listed on the label: Less time for God.

The fact that merely moving takes less energy means my flagging stamina has been revived to some extent. The irony is that having more energy feels so good I DO more and now it takes much more energy to STOP, sit down and talk to God.

I knew this would be a problem if I ever was able to have more energy instead of a steadily declining supply. Doing is my drug of choice. My compulsive behavior of doing comes naturally- without drugs; it’s supremely rewarding and gives the intoxicating illusion of control.

With PD I had the benefit of enforced slowness as a result of a circumstance. I’ve experienced the many benefits of the imposed lack of speed without having to actually discipline myself to slow down- I couldn’t be anything BUT slow.

Now that I’ve got a bit more speed, I suppose discipline is in order.

Humph.

It’s always something. I wish I had the discipline of Brennan Manning.

Larry Crabb relates this story about when Brennan told him he was planning to go on a seven-day silent spiritual retreat.

“Why?” Larry asked. ”What do you get out of this? Are you a different person because you’re doing this?”

Brennan was bewildered. “I never thought of what I’d get out of it,” he said.

“Then why---"

“I just figured God likes it when I show up,” he concluded.

Larry concludes, “That was a paradigm shift for me. Here was a man whose focus was simply on union with God. When you’re older and your children want to come home to spend time with you, it feels kind of nice. Maybe God feels the same way.”

But I suppose Brennan didn’t get discipline -which has now become desire- by wishing for it. He had to do the hard work just like I’ll have to do.

Humph again.

On the bright side, I suppose it may be a bit like the considerable planning and list-making it takes to go on a summer camping vacation which is then hopefully followed by joy when you actually get there. The To Do list is forgotten for a time and you reap the benefits of your efforts.

You put up the hammock and actually get in.

Storm Trust, Part 5

2007-08-02T12:29:00.000-07:00

“Say this: ‘God, you're my refuge. I trust in you and I'm safe!’ That's right - he rescues you from hidden traps, shields you from deadly hazards. His huge outstretched arms protect you - under them you're perfectly safe; his arms fend off all harm. Fear nothing - not wild wolves in the night, not flying arrows in the day, not disease that prowls through the darkness, not disaster that erupts at high noon… I'll give you the best of care if you'll only get to know and trust me. Call me and I'll answer, be at your side in bad times; I'll rescue you, then throw you a party.”
-from Psalm 91, The Message

My pre-surgery appointment with the thoracic surgeon was delightful. He walked into the exam room, and with a befuddled look hesitantly asked, “Mrs. Hoogeveen??”

“Yes?”

“My patients are usually older,” he hastened to explain. “I wasn’t sure I had the right room.”

We laughed. His patients apparently look sicker too, as he was surprised by my ‘negative medical history’, which is medicine’s illogical term for ‘healthy’.

“No surgery? Ever?”

“Only if an episiotomy counts.”

“No previous chest x-ray?”

“Nope.”

“So you’ve basically been able to avoid our profession until Parkinson’s last year?”

“Yep.”

He discussed the biopsy results which weeks earlier had indicated the tumor was a fibroma, a very rare benign growth. I’d begun to refer to the fist-sized thing embedded in my chest as Fred, the Fibroma.

The x-ray indicated that perhaps only the lower lobe of my lung would need to be removed, and possibly the mid-lobe. The surgeon warned that he wouldn’t know for sure how much he’d have to take until he actually got in to look around and that it was possible he’d have to take all three lobes, the entire right lung. He would schedule a breathing test to make sure I could get along with one lung, if it came to that.

Unsuspecting Fred would soon be nabbed, having set up covert operations for an estimated five years to occupy more territory in the region. The surgeon told me he’d only ever removed one other fibroma in his career and that one had largely taken over the man’s chest weighing in at eight pounds. Fred was apparently pre-adolescent.

He estimated my hospital stay to be five to seven days and alerted me to the reality that a lung resection recovery is one of the more painful, partially due to the size of the incision (about ten inches) and since the ribs on either side of the incision would be pried apart the nerves on the underside of the ribs would be disturbed.

The day of surgery came, but Fred the Fibroma didn't put up much of a fight and the doctor was surprised how quickly Fred was lying in his hand. (Picturing me at that moment, filleted on the table with the doc’s hand in my lung is a bit unnerving. I am curious, though.)

On day five of my hospital stay when I’d expected to go home, things suddenly went ‘south’, or in medical lingo, my medical history was becoming more ‘positive’ by the minute. The pain level skyrocketed.

At first they couldn't figure it out. Actually for a couple of days they couldn't figure it out. They doubled my pain meds and took cultures of my incisions and the lung fluid which constantly drained out through two tubes protruding from my side into a 'suitcase' beside my bed. The cultures eventually showed a staph infection.

A five day stay turned into twelve. But they got things under control and on day eleven I got a little more insight into why the doc had warned me about the more brutal recovery. My chest tubes were removed and I saw that the wicked things- seven and eleven inches long, resembling rigid garden hose- bumping around against my inflamed lung were much of the reason why any movement hurt.

During those twelve days, when I was coherent, I looked for gifts from God. One was Cliff, the housekeeping guy who had a perpetual mischievous grin accompanied by a continual bounce in his step. That was his not-so-subtle invitation to "Give me grief." And of course, everyone did.

And there was Clyde who wheeled me down to x-ray a couple of times. He had the most gentle and kindly manner AND he was funny.

Stasia bopped in and out of my room, humming while she cleaned. One morning she came to get my breakfast tray. She looked at it. Shocked she exclaimed in her wonderful brogue, “You no eat?!” In my defense I mentioned I'd eaten the oatmeal. Then she pointed at the square yellow thing on my plate and also in my defense she said, “It stink.” We both laughed, although guffawing was definitely something to be avoided even more than the square yellow thing. Then the day I was dismissed, having changed from my familiar hospital gown into my clothes, Stasia walked into to the room noting the change and literally gasped. I responded brightly, “I get to go home today.” She argued, “You no go home,” then gave me a hug.

A particularly wonderful gift was when our eight-year-old granddaughter came with her family to visit and asked, "Grandma, would you like me to read you some scripture?" She chose Psalm 1.

Then there was the amusement of drawing names for Christmas from the piece of medical equipment technically known as the 'throw-up thingy".

And this considerable gift. As it turned out, the tumor was only very slightly attached to my lower and middle lobes so very little lung tissue was disturbed or taken. So the exact opposite of the worst case scenario had happened. Instead of losing 50% of my lung capacity by having a whole lung removed, I had retained the same amount, maybe more, since the tumor was no longer taking up cubic centimeters of breathing space. I hadn’t even guessed that could happen!

Speaking of breathing, I recall a message by Rob Bell where he points out the name LORD (in all caps) in scripture represents the Hebrew too-holy-to-pronounce name Yahweh. When it is pronounced it is the sound of breathing. He asks these provocative questions: “When a baby is born what is the first thing it has to do or it won’t live? Breathe or say the name of God? Is the last thing you do before you die take your last breath? Or, when you are no longer able to say the name of God are you dead?”

And now, I pose this question: When faced with a life-threatening lung condition, was I instantly focused on breathing like I never had been? Or was I desperate to say the name of God?

Eugene Peterson in Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places, testifies, “When nothing we can do makes any difference and we are left standing around empty-handed and clueless, we are ready for God to create."

And what did God create?

That brings me back to the original question not-so-subtly posed in the reflection following my scripture reading on the one-year anniversary of this episode. The scripture was Psalm 91, quoted above. The not-so-subtle question was, “Would you say you’ve gotten to know and trust God?”

The answer is a lusty “Yes!” This song from Desperation’s From the Rooftops seems to be written just for me:

Jesus your love has come one step closer
I will trust that you will never let me go

Jesus your love has won me over
all my trust has found no other

I will declare the beauty of the LORD
nothing compares to the beauty of the LORD
Jesus your love takes my breath away
now I'm living everyday for the beauty of the LORD

Jesus, your love it takes my breath away
Jesus, your love it takes my breath away
Jesus, your love it takes my breath away
Jesus, your love it takes my breath away

As it turns out, in an on-the-edge-of-my-seat drama created and produced by The Creator to reveal to me a bit more of himself, The Breath quite literally, not only filled my lungs with an increased capacity to say his name, but filled my heart with an increased desire through his wooings to know this audacious Romancer of my soul.

In this, another of his signature inversions in the tradition of "the first shall be last and the last shall be first", "the meek will inherit", and "when I am weak then I am strong", I -who can breathe deeply like never before-

am rendered breathless.

And full of storm trust.

Storm Trust, Part 4

2007-07-25T16:31:00.000-07:00

The world is fairly studded and strewn with unwrapped gifts and free surprises...cast broadside from a generous hand. –Annie Dillard in Teaching a Stone to Talk

That day as we got the news in the doctor’s office that the biopsy of my lung tumor was benign, the storm clouds began to break up and the sun started peaking through.

The doctor went on to explain that in order to be sure that the part of the tumor attached to the lung wall was also benign, I would need to have another procedure where they would insert a needle through my back and the lung wall into the tumor to get tissues samples. If that biopsy were also to prove benign, it would probably be recommended that I have surgery to remove the mass. The needle biopsy was scheduled for eight days later.

Even though we were in the midst of a typical hot and humid July in Iowa, I felt like I had gotten the biggest Christmas present ever! And so the email to family and friends had the subject line: Merry Christmas to me!

The day of the needle biopsy arrived. It was a fairly painless procedure. After some local anesthetic I was put in a CT scanner with black marker “x” on my upper back indicate the spot where the needle would go in. The doctor took several needles-full, switching to a larger one to get a larger tissue sample and hopefully a more accurate the diagnosis. The whole process took 6 1/2 hours, most of it waiting and recovery. I was left with just the black “x” covered by a Band-Aid and a tiny bit of soreness.

Already the next day, the pathology report from the first needle-full of tissue was available: benign again! We would go in to consult with the doctor about the biopsy results from the larger tissue sample three days later.

I was on my morning walk the day of our consultation appointment with the doctor and remembered when we went in to get biopsy results twelve days earlier the encouraging gift of the The Hallelujah Chorus ringtone that God had arranged for me to hear as I walked to the doctor’s office. I wondered if God would surprise me again, and how? I reminded myself that I should be watching for it.

Not much later as I was driving to the doctor’s office with praise and worship music blaring from the CD player, I turned onto the freeway and noticed something on the shoulder of the on-ramp in the grass. Something you rarely see on a hot, humid July morning. Something very out of place. A hat. Not just ANY hat. A furry red and white Santa hat.

I laughed out loud!

Then burst into tears.

I realized God was saying, “Merry Christmas to you!” I took it to mean that he had another gift for me.

God had taken the subject line of my email about the good news of my first biopsy being benign and got creative with it. He's like that. Creative.

When stuff like this -rare surprise gifts from God- happens to me, it occurs to me that perhaps they weren’t so rare, but had gone unopened because unfortunately I was: A. clueless and/or B. not paying attention. Apparently, I’m not alone in this.

“I think I’ve missed thousands of little promptings over the years,” says John Eldridge in Waking the Dead, “simply because I wasn’t open to the fact that they occur.”

Philip Yancy in Prayer, Does It Make Any Difference? says, “‘The wind blows wherever it pleases,’ Jesus said to Nicodemus. ‘You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going.’ And so I have found, as I look for God in the everydayness of life. ‘Aha’ moments catch me by surprise...But they catch me, I have learned, only when I am looking for them.”

Yancy continues, “A rabbi taught that experiences of God can never be planned or achieved. ‘They are spontaneous moments of grace, almost accidental.’ His student asked, ‘Rabbi, if God-realization is just accidental, why do we work so hard doing all these spiritual practices?’ The rabbi replied, ‘To be as accident-prone as possible.’”

Archbishop William Temple said, “When I pray, coincidences happen; when I don’t, they don’t.”

Somehow I was able to see through the tears and get to the doctor’s office in one piece. Again I arrived in the parking garage, this time with almost zero anxiety. In the doctor’s office my blood pressure reading confirmed it: 112 over 70. We had to wait 25 minutes, but the doctor finally appeared and spoke the word again: "benign." Surgery would be scheduled for October, after our vacation.

Enthusiastically I shout ‘Amen!’ to John Eldridge in The Sacred Romance where he says, “There are enough hints and clues and ‘tantalizing glimpses’ to keep us searching, our heart ever open and alive to the quest.”

Who is this God who delights in giving me glimmers of joy in the shadows of uncertainty, who woos me with the outrageous intimacy of his grand attention? I am more alive now than I ever have been to the quest for this God who delights in orchestrating custom designed “gifts and free surprises...cast broadside from a generous hand.”

I am beginning to get a clue. Furthermore, I think I may be falling in love.

Storm Trust, Part 3

2007-07-18T18:24:00.000-07:00

[W]e begin to see how our own stories are interwoven with the great Romance God has been telling since before the dawn of time. …we begin to see that each of us has a part in the cosmic love affair that was created specifically with us in mind. –John Eldridge and Brent Curtis in The Sacred Romance

Monday morning finally arrived. Our visit with the pulmonary specialist before the bronchoscopy that day was interesting. He, of course, had looked at my chest x-ray and CT film; his description of the size of the “concerning” mass was, “It’s………….big.” He then went through a long list of pulmonary symptoms I should be having, NONE of which I had.

Here's the interesting part. This man, who by the way, has an extremely impressive resume, was basically scratching his head, trying to reconcile those two facts: big size, zero symptoms. I wasn’t sure if his head-scratching should worry or encourage me.

The procedure itself didn’t take long. They gave me an anesthetic that put me mostly out, but apparently I was still conscious. I say ‘apparently’ because afterward in recovery the doctor asked me, “Do you remember anything?” I hadn’t until that very moment. Just then I distinctly remembered someone saying a certain word three different times. The word was, “Wow!”

“No”, I lied. To which he replied, “Good.”

Again, I wasn’t sure if this should worry or encourage me. It didn’t seem that a reaction of surprise or shock by someone who does this procedure day in and day out would be a good thing. On the other hand, as I’d fantasized a few days earlier on miraculous possibilities, maybe the wrinkles on the tumor DID spell out ‘Guess Who?’ or some cryptic message from God which would force all the atheists in the pathology lab to their knees.

A couple of nights before the bronchoscopy, I couldn’t sleep and got up at 2:00am. I had my usual chamomile tea with toast, and looked up the scripture readings for that day. Since the Bible is a living, breathing (there it is again) document, I was interested to see what Yahweh had to say to me.

The readings included II Kings 20 where King Hezekiah, at the point of death, prayed to God for healing. Verse 5 says, “I have heard your prayer; I have seen your tears. Behold, I will heal you.”

That sounded good.

The passage from Proverbs was 18:10: “The name of the Lord is a strong tower; the righteous run into it and are safe.”

That was encouraging.

But then the New Testament passage in Acts was about Paul being ready to go to Jerusalem, being imprisoned and put to death.

Oh. Wow.

Two days later on the way to the doctor’s office to learn the results of the biopsy I reviewed the possibilities about the thing in my chest; I mostly prayed that I would hear the word “benign”. It’s true, I had decided that if dying of cancer was what God had in mind for me, I’d give it my best shot. But I wanted to live.

As I walked through the parking garage, the thoughts swirling about in my upper lobe were interrupted with something quite unexpected, something I never prayed for, much less even thought of. I smiled big and chuckled when I realized what was happening.

God -at that very moment- had arranged for a woman nearby, probably on her way to an appointment as well, to emerge from her car and have someone call her on her cell phone just as I walked past. The ringtone was unmistakable: The Hallelujah Chorus. It was like God was playing a cosmic game of ‘Name That Tune’ with me. I got it in four notes.

I thought, “Thank you! And I’ll take that as a hint that I needn’t be anxious.” I further noted, “I love your attention to detail!”

My husband met me in the lobby and the nurse led us to an exam room where we waited until the door opened and the doctor came in. I don’t remember much about what he said except that the word finally came out of his mouth: “Benign”. I felt like singing The Hallelujah Chorus myself on the spot! (I didn’t because the doctor had more to say.)

As excited as I was about the biopsy result, I just couldn’t get over the experience preceding it. The Hallelujah Chorus?

I was beginning to see that I had a part in the cosmic love affair that was created specifically with me in mind.

Storm Trust, Part 2

2007-07-11T20:28:00.000-07:00

Over the years [trust] ripens into confidence. Based on the solid, irrefutable evidence of God’s relentless faithfulness, a certainty in the trustworthiness of the tremendous Lover evolves without the least sweat and strain on our part. –Brennan Manning in Ruthless Trust

That Wednesday the storm clouds were getting darker. Now two medical procedures- a chest x-ray and a CT scan- confirmed the presence of a large lung tumor. Oddly enough, I wasn’t overwhelmed with fear.

In the initial trauma of learning his wife had an orange-sized brain tumor Peter Greig in his book, God on Mute reports, “…yet strangely, I was also becoming aware of a kind of inner warmth. It was the comfort of huddling into a thick coat with deep pockets on a bitterly cold night. Doctors would probably call it shock, but to me it felt a lot like the presence of God.”

My next procedure, scheduled for Monday, involved putting a tiny camera down my throat to get a good look and snip some tissue from the thing to see if it was cancerous.

It’s a long time from Wednesday to Monday. Too long. I like how Peter Greig put it, “How do you relax once you discover that the human body is a time bomb waiting to explode?...We all get hijacked eventually. One moment you’re cruising from A to B at 30,000 feet, fiddling with the earphones and feasting on life’s pretzels. The next, you’re more scared than you’ve ever been before, caught in a situation you prayed you’d never be in, and heading somewhere that you never asked to go.”

One thing that crossed my mind was since I’d just experienced the time bomb of Parkinson’s the previous year would being hijacked with a disease become an annual event? I also wanted to know how exactly does lung cancer kill you?

The year before I’d gone online to find that answer about Parkinson’s and learned the cause of death is often from other things that old people die from. Causes of death directly related to PD were aspiration pneumonia or choking, since the swallowing muscles cease to work well, and sepsis because of a non-functioning bladder. Life span is reduced somewhat mainly due to increasing inactivity as PD progresses.

My search on lung cancer confirmed that the realities of dying from it are much more sobering: death is by suffocation and eighty percent of people with lung cancer die within a year of being diagnosed.

I had never been this close to the seemingly imminent certainty of my own death.

There were only a couple of possibilities that I could see: 1. lung cancer or 2. a non-cancerous growth. I’d never heard of option 2 happening to anyone.

So what should I pray for? Philip Yancy in his book Prayer, Does It Make Any Difference? says, “God invites us to ask plainly for what we need. We will not be scolded any more than a child who climbs into her parent’s lap and presents a Christmas wish list.”

My prayers were sparsely worded, mostly about having strength. Although I’d never seen or experienced a miracle that I knew of, I was sure God had the power to do one if he wanted. But I also knew that, “trust in God does not presume that God will intervene,” as Brennan Manning points out.

I began to wonder, IF he did intervene what would it look like? I had some crazy ideas like, what if they put the scope down my throat and try as they might, could not find a 2 1/2” inch mass- it had disappeared into thin air!

OR, they would find it and the wrinkles in the tumor would spell out the words, “GUESS WHO!” I’d never heard of that happening to anyone.

In my more lucid moments I realized I needed to prepare for the worst. As Peter Greig puts it, “There is faith for life, and then there is a darker faith for death. There is faith for miracles, but also for pain. There is faith for God’s will when it’s our will too, but there is also the grace to trust God when His will is not what we would choose.”

Thankfully between Wednesday and Monday there always comes a Sunday. Fellow Christ-followers laid hands on me and prayed. The tears came later though, when we sang these words:

I’m right here before You, asking on my knees
That my life would be something, and not just what I dreamed
That I might find favor, mercy and grace
In the eyes of my Savior, in the light of Your face

Lord, as I offer everything
I pray that my life would make You pleased
That I might move mountains, wake the sea
Oh, that Your light would shine through me

Holy, Holy, Holy Lord, Shine through me
Holy, Holy, Holy Lord, Shine through me

C.S. Lewis in a crisis of his own reflected, “Doubtless, by definition, God was Reason itself. But would He also be ‘reasonable’ in that other, more comfortable, sense? Not the slightest assurance on that score was offered me. Total surrender, the absolute leap in the dark, were demanded…The demand was not even ‘All or nothing’…Now, the demand was simply ‘All.’”

God gave me the grace to trust his judgment. I was willing to submit to whatever would bring him the most glory- living well or dying well. “Solid, irrefutable evidence of God’s relentless faithfulness, a certainty in the trustworthiness of the tremendous Lover,” had evolved in my life, especially in the past year.

I was ready for the storm.

Storm Trust, Part 1

2007-06-27T14:16:00.000-07:00

The basic premise of biblical trust is the conviction that God wants us to grow, to unfold, and to experience fullness of life. However, this kind of trust is acquired only gradually and most often through a series of crises and trials. –Brennan Manning in Ruthless Trust

“Would you say you've gotten to know and trust God? How and why?”

I find it very interesting that God arranged that this particular question would be posed at the end of my scripture reading for today. It was like he was saying, “Let’s review,” since it was exactly one year ago on this date that He enrolled me in a particularly frightening and unexpected course on trust.

It began routinely enough that Monday: blood work, an EKG, a psych exam and a chest x-ray. All were part of a screening process to ensure I was a good candidate to take part in a clinical trail of a breakthrough new drug for early Parkinson’s that was already on the market in Canada and Europe. I considered it a huge blessing to be part of this trial and be able to take the not-yet-FDA-approved drug which was said to slow the progression of Parkinson’s fossilizing effect on the body.

The dark clouds began to appear on the horizon when the phone rang the next morning and my neurologist was on the other end. She called to inform me that the chest x-ray the day before had revealed a 2 1/2” mass in my right lung which she described as “concerning”. She’d set up a CT scan for the following morning to get a more definitive view.

How could I have lung cancer? I had no symptoms. Except for the recent advent of Parkinson’s I’d been in near-perfect health these 51 years. I was sure that trying a cigarette once when I was ten didn't count as smoking. I also knew this: people don’t survive lung cancer.

Not much later my General Practice doctor called. Her concern was a bit less veiled. The fact that both doctors had called clearly conveyed the gravity of the situation.

The sky got darker.

The sight of our 16-month-old grandson playing on the floor nearby brought to mind what I would miss out on if this was the dreaded disease. I cried as inconspicuously as I could.

The CT scan the next morning revealed that the mass was indeed “concerning”. An appointment for a bronoscopy biopsy was made for the following Monday morning.

Storm clouds filled the sky.

My husband, Steve, and I had just memorized Psalm 121:
I lift up my eyes to the hills.
From where does my help come?
My help comes from the Lord,
Who made heaven and earth.

He will not let your foot be moved;
He who keeps you will not slumber.
Behold, he who keeps Israel
Will neither slumber nor sleep.

The Lord is your keeper;
The Lord is your shade on your right hand.
The sun shall not strike you by day,
Nor the moon by night.

The Lord will keep you from all evil;
He will keep your life.
The Lord will keep your going out and your coming in
From this time forth and forevermore.

What was God up to?

Since my diagnosis of Parkinson’s this is the question I’d learned to ask first. I had unshakable confidence that He loved me and had learned to trust Him, or at least I thought I had.

I firmly believed that "all things come not by chance, but by His fatherly hand," that He was in charge of every molecule in the universe. What could be the purpose of this newly discovered collection of molecules in my lung?

Eugene Peterson says, “…catastrophe can be a means of grace. It can be an instrument used by God…like a mighty wind, [to] blow away the abstracting veils of theory and ideology and enable our own sovereign seeing.”

I've lived through enough tornado seasons to know what damage high winds can do. What damage would the wind of this gathering storm do? And how would it be a means of grace? What would I be enabled to see?

Right now I saw thunderheads. I hoped I wouldn't see a vortex.

Secret Garden, Part 3

2007-06-20T20:06:00.000-07:00

“If we allow ourselves to go back to the story most of us knew as children, it is not hard to bring back the early images and sounds and aromas of life’s first revelation – that of a great Romance…” -Brent Curtis, co-author of The Sacred Romance

Curtis recalls, “I was a boy of six or seven, just past dusk on a summer evening, when the hotter and dustier work of the farm had given way to another song…I would walk…down through rows of dark green corn that towered far over my head. The corn…presented its own kind of enchanted forest. Every leaf that gave way before my outstretched arms offered possible mystery. The earth was warm and brown and fragrant and seemed to invite a sort of barefooted ecstasy…”

He walked on to the creek that bordered the farm. “The voices of crickets, katydids, and cicadas would come to me, carried above the sounds of the creek and mingled with the pungent odor of tannins. Tens of thousands of stream-side musicians sang to me the magic stories of the farms and forests.”

As a child I had no idea that hints of the Romance lay across the road from our bottom-land farm until the summer day I ventured across. The wide open spaces of bean and corn fields gave way to the mysterious half-light of the woods. Like a visitor to another world I slowly ventured in noting the unfamiliar: the soft carpet of never-tilled ground and inch-thick grape vines hanging from the trees. And then came a defining discovery of my decade- a sandbar along our section of the river. It was a Huck Finn moment.

Mark Twain wrote a hint of the Romance into this line by Huck, “It's lovely to live on a raft. We had the sky up there, all speckled with stars, and we used to lay on our backs and look up at them, and discuss about whether they was made or only just happened."

Curtis notes that as a child, ”my heart was captured by mystery…mystery that hinted of a story that existed on its own outside my own fanciful creations.”

He goes on to say that these hints are a kind of wooing. “Someone or something has romanced us from the beginning with creek-side singers and pastel sunsets, with the austere majesty of snowcapped mountains and the poignant flames of the autumn colors telling us of something – or someone…These things can, in an unguarded moment, bring us to our knees with longing for this something or someone....[that] only our heart recognizes.

It was such a moment a couple weeks ago I was actually already ON my knees when my weeding led me under the bushes and I was ambushed by the wonder of beetles and worms and bugs busily carrying out their tasks in the created order of their dirt-world oblivious to my presence.

Curtis speculates, “Could it be that the more literal…message of Christianity…in the Apostle’s Creed is the same secret message those singers were sharing with each other and with me on those long-ago summer evenings of my boyhood?”

The message of this Romance story is simple, “Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so.”

As it happens, if my heart is listening, that's the message of the cicadas too.

Secret Garden, Part 2

2007-06-14T10:34:00.000-07:00

[In becoming] silent and still in order to listen and respond to what is Other than us…a world has been opened up to us by revelation in which we find ourselves walking on holy ground and living in sacred time. The moment we realize this, we feel shy, cautious. We slow down, we look around, ears and eyes alert. Like lost children happening on a clearing in the woods and finding elves and fairies singing and dancing in a circle around a prancing two-foot-high unicorn, we stop in awed silence to accommodate to this wonderful but unguessed-at revelation. –Eugene Peterson in Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places

I've felt like a kid this past week ‘playing’ in my newfound secret garden under the bushes, populating it with several elves and tree stumps that I imagine could be their homes. Our grandchildren will have great fun in this pretend village.

Folks strolling down a walking path around Lake Harriet, Minnesota, may wonder if their imagination is playing tricks on them when they spy an elfin door in the bottom of an ash tree there.

This door appeared in 1995 and children began leaving messages which, incredibly, are all answered by someone calling himself Mr. Little Guy.

It is easy for kids to believe, to transition from things seen to the unseen. As a ‘grown-up’ I many times need help with this.

“It is his power and grace that help us pray…” Emilie Griffen notes in Clinging. “We yield. Something happens now for the first time between the Lord and us…We do not speak. He speaks. We do not ask. He asks. There are no words now, for our prayer moves beyond words. And yet there is a to-and-fro about it. He is calling us and we are following. He is surprising us – now here, now there – and we are chasing him. Time stops, the music of his presence moves us, leads us in ways we had not dreamed of, shows us gleams of an existence we hardly guessed at. We are children now, chasing the kingdom, stepping free of where we were and who we were, into new selves, made in his image and likeness, selves of his making…”

Jesus knew all about my ‘grown-up’ tendencies about trust and control. “At about the same time, the disciples came to Jesus asking, ‘Who gets the highest rank in God's kingdom?’ For an answer Jesus called over a child, whom he stood in the middle of the room, and said, ‘I'm telling you, once and for all, that unless you return to square one and start over like children, you're not even going to get a look at the kingdom, let alone get in.’” Matthew 18:1-3 TM

Thankfully, my capacity for trust, awe, chasing the kingdom, and stepping free can be recovered when I am silent, still, and listening.

Then I get a glimpse into an-Other world that is not pretend, where the One to whom I respond -and more importantly, who responds to me- is infinitely larger than Mr. Little Guy.

And WAY beyond my imagination.

Then again, like a lost child "happening on a clearing in the woods and finding elves and fairies singing and dancing," I stand in awe.

Secret Garden, Part 1

2007-06-06T10:44:00.001-07:00

After awhile we get used to [discovery] and quit noticing. We get narrowed down into something small and constricting. Somewhere along the way this exponential expansion of awareness, this wide-eyed looking around, this sheer untaught delight in what is here, reverses itself: the world contracts; we are reduced to a life of routine through which we sleepwalk. –Eugene Peterson in Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places

Recently I was out in the yard weeding and ambitiously tackled an infestation of noxious weeds in a stand of taller-than-me bushes we planted as a bird sanctuary several years ago. One weed led to another and several yards in, shaded by the canopy of leaves above, I found myself in another world- a sort of secret place.

The movie The Secret Garden immediately came to mind where three English children discover an enchanting old garden on the mansion grounds.

I wriggled my way out past the piles of wilting weeds, went to the garage and returned with the hedge trimmer. I felt like an artist with a brush, creating my own secret garden as I carved out a passageway here, a tunnel there. I spread 15 bags of fresh wood chips to make it kid-friendly and invited our two-year-old grandson to play in the Secret Garden.

It was sheer joy to watch him make discoveries. At first he sat and played with the mulch and the trucks we had brought along. After awhile he looked up and noticed a whole world he realized he'd never seen.

He got up and slowly he began to explore the garden, finding little nooks and tunnels, alternately investigating shadows and sunlit spots, giggling with delight in this new place, this new experience. Soon he was running in and out, falling down laughing.

I laughed too.

I wondered if this is what God feels when we discover the secret place where we make discoveries about him: laughter, sheer joy.

I know it’s how I feel when, like a child, I awaken and again become wide-eyed in his presence.

911 Reminder

2007-05-24T09:25:00.000-07:00

There are souls, divinely worked-on-souls, whom the spirit is shaping for eternal habitations. Long before I arrive on the scene, the Spirit is at work. I must fit into what is going on. – Eugene Peterson in Living the Message

It was 2:00 in the afternoon; the house was quiet- everyone else was napping. I was surprised to hear someone frantically knocking at the front door. The sound jarred me from my task at hand, which was helping out around the house at our daughter’s home while she recovered from having their second child.

I went to the door and recognized the young woman standing there as my daughter’s neighbor. She was very obviously distressed about something. On the verge of tears she managed to communicate that her car keys, phone and 17-month old son had accidentally gotten locked in her car while her son had been playing with the keys. She had no spare key. Could she use the phone? Should she call 911?

I got the phone and she followed me over to her car, while she tried to reach her husband at work, although apparently he didn't have a spare key either. We looked in the window and saw the set of keys on the floor, so there was no chance the little guy would accidentally unlock the car. Even though it was 80 degrees out and all the windows were shut, the car was parked in the shade, the little guy was happy and smiling, and since we were in a metro area very near help, I suggested we call the police first and ask their advice.

We went back to my daughter’s house, found the phone number, made the call and yes, they'd send someone over right away, a towing service. She started crying, probably out of relief, and confided while heading to the front door that she'd had a bad day, family stuff. I offered to wait with her while help came, she said no, no. I grabbed a couple of Pepsi’s and a blanket anyway.

It was only 10 minutes that we sat there on the curb sharing other keys-locked-in-the-car stories and kid-raising challenges. The tow truck guy had the car unlocked in about one minute. I gave her a hug, and walked back across the street.

The house was still quiet. As I made myself a cup of coffee I reflected on how much I regularly need a '911' reminder that reality is about much more than me and my little agenda.

That “long before I arrive on the scene, the Spirit is at work. I must fit into what is going on.”

Stop - Dump - Pray

2007-05-17T19:03:00.000-07:00

Beloved, in the Name of Jesus, I commission you to “rejoice in the Lord always and again I say rejoice”. Stop worrying about everything! Dump your anxiety and start praying like mad. – from the Beth Moore Omaha conference commissioning

Beth Moore, a popular author and speaker, describes worries as the distractions that pull us in as many directions. Each of us who has a pulse has plenty of these anxieties: things that aren't going as we had hoped or planned. Irritations, annoyances, pain, suffering.

The antidote to dividing our attention among these, she advises, is to ‘dump’ them all in God’s hands. In other words, pray.

Simple enough.

Except that we love to be in control. And prayer is relinquishing that compulsion. Worry often makes us feel like we're doing something about the problem when actually we're just delusional.

Plus we're expending a whole lot of energy. (You'd think this would be a great weight loss plan- Worry Your Weight Away! -except that I eat everything that’s not nailed down when I worry.)

Jesus asks in Luke 12, “Can any of you, for all his worrying, add a single cubit to his span of life? If the smallest things, therefore, are outside your control, why worry about the rest?” Stop your fussing, he’s saying. Let’s remember who’s God and who’s not.

Note to self: I'm not.

He adds, “[Your Father] will give you all you need from day to day if you make the Kingdom of God your primary concern.”

I like to picture this as the dump truck backing up to make a delivery of provisions- blessings. Beep, beep, beep.

This isn't elegant, fashionable or sophisticated. It IS however the key to sanity: Stop. Dump. And Pray.

Fragility

2007-05-09T21:21:00.000-07:00

Not even a sparrow, worth only half a penny, can fall to the ground without your Father knowing it. And the very hairs on your head are all numbered. So don't be afraid; you are more valuable to him than a whole flock of sparrows. -Matthew 10:29-31

These are some newly hatched (and one unhatched) bluebirds in one of our bluebird boxes. They are barely bigger than their 3/4” unhatched sibling. They'll live three to five years, although one of them, percentages say, won't survive fledging. I'm always surprised at how very fragile they look.

From time to time each of us is reminded of our own fragility by a couple days with the flu or a cold. But then we recover and forget about it.

I didn't really understand how fragile I was until I had to deal with things like Parkinson’s, and a major unexpected surgery. I'm guessing most people don't until they face some situation which brings them face to face with their own mortality or someone very close to them.

Being fragile isn't necessarily a good thing, but acknowledging it is. As it turns out, I got a whole new perspective on life when I was lying flat on my back in the hospital counting the minutes until my next pain pill. It was pretty obvious I wasn't in control but was dependant on others. And yet I had an indescribable peace because I knew the One who ultimately was in control.

God seems to be drawn to weak fragile folk. He put “this precious treasure in jars of clay, that is, in our weak bodies so everyone can see that our glorious power is from God and is not our own.” 2 Corinthians 4:7

I'm glad God watches the sparrow; I'm glad the hairs of my head are numbered. And I'm glad that I can go directly to the Numberer of Hairs and access that glorious power.

Even the sparrows can't do that.

Growth

2007-05-03T07:13:00.000-07:00

Perhaps you are familiar with these fungi – morel mushrooms - that appear practically overnight, almost miraculously, this time of year. In some places out east they are actually referred to as miracles.

We live near a wooded area. My husband decided he'd go hunting for ‘miracles’ the other day. He has little experience in hunting them and even less in finding them- so his finding them would itself be a miracle. An hour’s worth of searching turned up a one-serving miracle.

Wouldn't it be nice if our being transformed to the image of Christ happened as quickly as morel mushrooms popping up in the spring?

But then, do you pursue transformation like some do morels (or whatever it is you are passionate about)?

Yeah, me either.

You probably know that those tasty delicacies spring up from rotted wood. Perhaps it’s one of the many ways God says, “Look what I can do with dead stuff!”

God has a history of working with dead stuff. He invites me as a Christ-follower to be continually led by the Spirit to give up my dead-end stuff – ego, resentment, unforgiveness, hurry, addictions, all of which are basically manifestations of selfishness - to exhibit the life-giving fruit of the Spirit.

It's a cooperative venture (or should I say ad-venture). He provides the power, I must make the effort.

When any Christlike fruit is seen in me- which, by the way, rarely pops up overnight - okay NEVER pops up overnight but grows after arduous cultivation, it’s a little like God saying, “Look at this particular version of what I can do with dead stuff!”

Now THAT’S a miracle.

If you want to walk on water...

2007-04-29T06:15:00.000-07:00

Our small group recently studied John Ortberg’s If You Want to Walk on Water, You've Got to Get Out of the Boat which invites us to consider what new challenge God might be calling us to which involves risk, trusting Him, leaving the cozy comfort zone.

As it turns out, water walking is both terrifying and thrilling. “Once you [feel the euphoria of being empowered by God],” writes Ortberg, “you never forget it – not for the rest of your life.”

The terror (the storm/trusting God) comes first. I wish it were otherwise.

In order to get to terror-readiness I have to be discomfort-ready and inconvenience-ready, which is difficult since it’s so, well, uncomfortable and inconvenient.

I found I must be in training or I'll never have what it takes for the terror of a storm. I must do things that are uncomfortable and inconvenient.

I started with small things that are not even near the ‘storm’ category, but are about taking small risks and finding out I survived. Things like, not saying that witty, but cutting, comment even though it'd be so pleasurable; praying for that person I really don't care for; doing a good deed without telling anyone about it; choosing to not pass on destructive information about someone; standing in a checkout line without getting impatient.

And sitting down and spending a block of time listening for what God might be saying to me. I love to read books. And I'm learning more and more to love scripture. But just being still is uncomfortable. I'd rather be making a To-Do list, or evaluating something.

How’s my training going? I'm probably NOT the best one to ask, but those small things I listed earlier aren't as uncomfortable or inconvenient as they were a year ago. I'm not water-walking yet.

Maybe mud puddle-walking.

Wounds and Intimacy

2007-04-18T15:05:00.000-07:00

Here is the hard but healing truth: Wounds are, in Christ’s economy, a means of God’s wooing. It is the strange kiss of God, the reverse of the Judas kiss – a kiss to restore us and not to betray us. The pain becomes a narrow passage that leads down into a unique intimacy with the suffering servant. –Mark Buchanan in Your God is Too Safe

[Jesus said] “You're blessed when you feel you've lost what is most dear to you. Only then can you be embrace the One most dear to you.” Matthew 5:4 (TM)

The biblical revelation neither explains nor eliminates suffering. It shows, rather, God entering into the life of suffering humanity…Scripture is not a lecture from God, pointing the finger at unfortunate sufferers and saying, “I told you so: here and here and here is where you went wrong; now you are paying for it.”

Nor is it a program from God providing, step by step, for the gradual elimination of suffering in a series of five-year plans…The suffering is there, and where the sufferer is, God is. – Eugene Peterson in Living The Message

Pride and Brokenness

2007-04-11T18:12:00.000-07:00

Pride grows in most soils, most climates. There are few conditions under which it can't survive, even thrive. But there is one soil that usually withers pride. It’s brokenness… Brokenness…molds our character closer to the character of God than anything else.
-Mark Buchanan in Your God is Too Safe

One thing that sort of surprised me when God slowed me down with Parkinson’s so I could listen to him was how much I had been guilty of the sin of pride. The fact that I was surprised only emphasized its reality. I had to deal with my need for approval, my self-sufficiency, and my subconscious sense of superiority.

I didn't come to this realization overnight but over time as I watched myself, of necessity, give up my identity as a do-er and ‘settle’ for narrowing the focus of my now-limited energy. What I saw wasn't pretty. I remember an emotional outburst brought on by an innocent comment by someone that came to me secondhand who had failed to recognize the value of an act of service I had once done. I was shocked at what was inside me. Apparently serving wasn't my only motive.

Garrison Keillor tells the story of Marilyn Hedlund, the head of the Easter Egg Bake Committee at the mythical Lake Woebegone Lutheran Church, who was found alone in the church basement the afternoon before Easter, sweat running down her brow, breaking 80 dozen eggs and making forty pounds of sausage into patties. She said she was fine, she could handle it but, as Keillor tells the story,

“there was that tone in her voice, the tone of martyrdom, which Lutherans are susceptible to- a people who are brought up not to complain, to do your part, even if other people do not do their part, and take upon yourself the Holy Martyrdom of the Kitchen Women. Turn down offers to help. And suffer. And turn this act of sacrifice into an act of monumental pride. Very much in the spirit of Lutheran women. Holy Martyrdom. Don't worry about me. I'm just fine. I'm just going to put the clothes into the washer; I'm going to fix a little supper for my family. Tell the heathen barbarians out on the front lawn to keep the fire going - I'll be out there in just a moment. They don't need to worry about rope, I have rope of my own and I will tie myself to the post to be burned alive- it’s not a problem- don't go to any trouble. I'll tie myself to the post just as soon as I get my spice rack in order and I plan my family’s menu for this next week.”

The reason that story is so funny is because we've all either done that sort of thing or witnessed it.

“[In solitude and silence] we will come to understand that for the most part our hurry [or need for approval or Holy Martyrdom] is really based upon pride, self-importance, fear, and lack of faith, and rarely upon the production of anything of true value for anyone,” notes Dallas Willard in The Great Omission.

Too bad pride doesn't disappear completely once we recognize it and deal with it. John Ortberg in The Life You've Always Wanted says, “Pride is a potential problem for anyone who takes spiritual growth seriously. As soon as we start to pursue virtue, we begin to wonder why others aren't as virtuous as we are.”

Fortunately there is something else besides brokenness that withers pride- solitude and silence. That’s a soil where conditions are optimal for fruitfulness.

Agenda Prayer

2007-04-04T18:35:00.000-07:00

[It] is ever a weakness in our intercession [to come] into the throne room so bent on our own agenda that we would rather recite our requests than listen to see if God really has anything to say. –Calvin Miller in Into the Depths of God

Why? Here some more thoughts from Calvin Miller I can identify with:

“I conceived of my prayers as my doing all the talking. If I wasn't talking, I wasn't praying, or so I thought…I learned that prayer is not a human monologue...[but] being with God.”

That’s what I used to think too.

“Most people spend so little time in prayer that they have never derived any spiritual growth from it.”

Bingo, in my case. It’s kind of like wanting to be a concert pianist, but never making it through Thompson’s First Grade piano book.

“Most Christians, however, spend their lives being whipped tumultuously through the surface circumstances of their days. Their frothy lifestyles mark the surface nature of their lives. Yet those who plumb the deep things of God discover true peace for the first time.”

“It is those who read [scripture] and pray…who arrive at lives of real power.”

What does God have to say to you? There’s one sure way to find out. Sit down. Read. Listen.

Pedestrian Way

2007-03-28T19:43:00.000-07:00

Ours is a pedestrian way, literally pedestrian: putting one foot in front of the other we follow Jesus. In order to know who he is and where he’s going and how to walk in his steps, we reach for a book, the book, and read it. – Eugene Peterson in Living the Message

I've been looking at the prayers in the Bible. Genesis 5:24 says “Enoch walked with God.” What must that have been like? And for 300 years?

What did they talk about?

It has been noted, “Enoch walked with God because he was his friend and liked his company, because he was going in the same direction as God.”

What do friends talk about? Things that are important to them, things they care about- life, building civilization, death.

Enoch was a father, so I bet parenting came up- “God, Methuselah was acting particularly depraved today, and I'm not sure what to do….”

Do the math and you can figure that when Adam died 930 years into history, Enoch had already lived 308 of his 365 years. The two of them had surely talked about this- Adam having walked with God in Eden, pre-sin.

According to the book of Jude, Enoch prophesied (told the truth) to his generation, which may have made him rather unpopular with some considering it would be a mere 400 years the “earth was corrupt…and filled with violence” and things were so disgusting that God would decide to give the earth a good washing.

Genesis 5:24 starts, “Enoch walked with God…” Apparently according to the Hebrew it could more accurately be stated, “Enoch pleased God.”

The rest of the verse is, “and he was not; for God took him.” One teacher suggests that because the information about Enoch (bypassing death) is put right in the middle of a genealogy of death that the lesson of Enoch is this: Life comes through walking with God.

One foot in front of the other.

Interruptions and Growth

2007-03-15T14:17:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I describe my Parkinson’s disease as fast-forward aging. As a matter of fact, I DO have the same dopamine-producing capacity of a 115-year-old woman. So the slowness, stiffness, and weakness, comes as no surprise. On the plus side, having my life permanently interrupted by a degenerative disease has facilitated a sort of fast-forward growth in my spiritual life.

As I've been on this spiritual journey this question comes: Does a person have to get Parkinson’s to have ‘accelerated’ growth? More simply: Is crisis/pain/weakness a prerequisite for greater intimacy with God? Or, can one have that growth without the pain?
Henri Nouwen, the Dutch priest, reflects, “…it has been the interruptions to my everyday life that have most revealed to me the divine mystery of which I am a part…All of these interruptions presented themselves as opportunities…invited me to look in a new way at my identity before God. Each interruption took something away from me; each interruption offered something new.

Greater intimacy (growth) comes, as Nouwen says, “In weakness….Why there? Because in our weakness our familiar ways of controlling and manipulating our world are being stripped away and we are forced to let go from doing much, thinking much, and relying on our self-sufficiency.”
That’s the thing- relying on our self-sufficiency. That works as long our journey is on a paved road free of potholes. But sooner or later ‘life’ happens, we find ourselves in the ditch and it dawns on us that we didn't have quite as much control as we thought we had. We are weak.

In his inner city ministry Jim Cymbala discovered the astonishing truth that “God is attracted to weakness. He can't resist those who humbly and honestly admit how desperately they need him. Our weakness, in fact makes room for his power.” In fact, God's power is made perfect in this condition, as the apostle Paul learned first hand.

So, can a person ‘humbly and honestly admit how desperately they need him’ (realize weakness) without pain? Dallas Willard in The Great Omission notes, “You rarely find any person who has made great progress in the spiritual life who did not at some point have much time in solitude and silence."

So, yes, but as Willard continues, "This will take some time, and it will require study, experimentation, and guidance by the Holy Spirit. But it can be done, and when it is done, life becomes incalculably easier, sweeter, and stronger.”

Spiritual growth via spiritual disciplines (i.e. solitude and silence) involves another kind of ‘pain’. Emilie Griffin calls it yielding: “laying down our defenses, taking off masks, …putting aside our self-importance, our cares and schedules and undertakings, in order, very simply, to be with God….It is the gift to him of time…the gift of ourselves, one we find all too difficult to give.” There’s the painful part.

Our often guilt-inducing directive from God is Be still and know that I am God. Philip Yancy notes, “The Latin for be still is vacate….God invites us to take a holiday [vacation], to stop being God for a while, and let him be God.’” Anybody who has gotten a family ready to go on vacation knows it takes effort to be still.

So it seems the growth God works in us is a combination of our effort (spiritual disciplines) and his, a collaboration: “…continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you.” Painful interruptions are opportunities for fast-forward growth, not to mention perfect power, if they are taken.

Could I have had that growth without PD? Maybe, but it probably would have taken much longer. And God saw that I didn't have 115 years.

So he gave me an interruption.

My Journey Into Prayer, Part 6: First Things First

2007-03-07T18:06:00.000-08:00

There is a spiritual dimension…in our desire to do good works, but communion with God is [often] replaced by activity for God. – Brent Curtis and John Eldridge in The Sacred Romance

Here’s a question I've pondered lately: How did my communion with God get mostly replaced by activity for God?

I wonder if, in my zeal to be obedient to God, I inadvertently put the cart before the horse, as it were. In Matthew 22 Jesus summarizes the law by saying, “'Love the Lord your God with all your passion and prayer and intelligence.’ This is the most important, the first on any list. But there is a second to set alongside it: 'Love others as well as you love yourself.’”

Perhaps I concentrated on the second part instead of, as The Message puts it, ‘the most important’ part. Maybe loving (serving, doing for) my neighbor seemed more achievable than loving God passionately. Or more likely, serving my neighbor was the sum total of what I thought being passionate toward God looked like.

But the consequence of putting the cart first in this case is, as Eugene Peterson puts it in Leap Over a Wall, “[W]hen we do good, become pleased with ourselves and receive applause and commendation from our leaders and friends, we easily lose our sense of dependence on God.” Not to mention having no time for it.

Emilie Griffin in Clinging, lists another possibility for why communion gets trumped by service: “…sometimes we excuse ourselves from prayer by doing good works on a carefully controlled schedule…doing good works in hopes that this will distract the Lord from asking us anything more difficult. By doing something specific and limited “for God,” something we judge to be enough and more than enough, we skirt the possibility that God – in prayer – may ask us what he wants to ask, may suggest what we should do.”

I thought I knew what God wanted me to do. It was a long list of good things. And I really wanted to do them. I didn't realize –largely because I'd never actually tried it- that listening to God in prayer as to what I should do was the FIRST thing I should've done, not just respond to the endless onslaught of urgent needs that came my way.

Even now I can so easily come up with all sorts of ideas and projects to do for God. I don't trust my natural instincts so much anymore- which tend to be influenced by a well defined Messiah Complex, or at least the Mother-Can-Fix-This complex. When I think I have prompting from God, I often wait to see if it’s confirmed in some way, by a scripture, a word from a friend, a “coincidence”. This stopping and listening has kept me from distracting diversions, one of which is the alluring performance track. But it requires constant attention.

As I stop and listen I am joining those who, as Emilie Griffen puts it, “…no longer live, as we once did, for doing. Now what we burn for is stillness. We cultivate not the pleasures of going and coming and doing, but the peacefulness and abandonment of not-doing, which is an experience of the wonder of God. It is the clarity that knows less is more.” (Italics mine.)

As it turns out, God’s list of what I should do seems to be much shorter (not to be confused with easier) than mine. There’s the less. Plus, His power is much more available to get the job done when I'm doing what He wants. That’s the more.

I think it may have something to do with having the horse in front of the cart.

My Journey Into Prayer, Part 5: Breathless

2007-02-28T21:13:00.000-08:00

My recent ‘journey into prayer’ began when I asked God what new thing he wanted me to do, and I sensed him saying, “Learn how to pray,” which technically wasn't doing in my book.

I've been reading my old prayer journals. I'm a little surprised by how long I've been meaning to slow down, how addicted I was to doing. Well, it looks like the fact that I needed to focus more on a relationship with God rather than performance for God wasn't new information to me, as reflected in these journal entries:

Aug. 27, 1997: Forgive my busy-ness. Slow me down so I can have time for who you created me to be.
Sept. 14, 1997: I have neglected my time with You. I have probably suffered for it. Help me to set boundaries. Oct. 13, 1997: How can I get to know you more if I don't spend time?

Too much doing for God and not enough being with God, of course, led to this entry:
Oct. 22, 1997: Lord, I confess I've gotten tired of doing good.

And I knew why:
Dec. 8, 1997: I am distracted from what is good and perfect by the ‘tyranny of the urgent’ and my lack of discipline.

Mar. 10, 1998: I confess over-ambition at times. April 28, 1999: Help me to take time to pray. March 13, 2000: Help me slow down and take time with You.

How did I think God was going to answer that prayer? Presumably by ‘helping’ me have the discipline to say ‘no’ to more activity and ‘yes’ to more time with Him.

I hit the prescription ‘nail’ squarely on the head in this entry:
Jan. 18, 2002: What does God want me to give Him? Probably my competence [my ability to do]. How do I do that? Spend more time with Him, depend more on Him, listen more to what He may be telling me.

Two and a half years later, apparently still not having fully implemented my own remedy, this interesting and rather prophetic entry:
Sept. 27, 2004 Henri Nouwen says: “…the Christian leader of the future is called to be completely irrelevant and to stand in this world with nothing to offer but his or her own vulnerable self…[To] rediscover true [his] identity… and let go of [his] relevant self – the self that can do things…”

What does it mean for me, now, to be “completely irrelevant” ...to “let go of my relevant self who can do things”? I define myself by what I do rather than knowing God enough to be like Him- vulnerable, giving unconditional love, unlimited love. So, I need to become a pray-er, define myself by how well I can love, not by my competence.

I was very soon to find out what being ‘completely irrelevant’ meant when my health and stamina deteriorated and led to the diagnosis of my Parkinson’s several months later. My ability to do was greatly diminished. I recognized that God, after years of waiting for me, had answered those prayers to “slow me down”, to “help me to take time with You”.

April 12, 2005: Long time since my last entry five months ago. Suddenly, I find myself in an imposed ‘irrelevant’ condition. Hmm. I guess God figured I might not get around to that. I fear He was right.

So in January, 2006, when I was finally feeling stronger, the ingrained urge to do for God returned; I was tempted to get back on the performance track. Thankfully, I was listening this time around and heard him say, “Learn how to pray.” In other words, “Sit down; let me show you the real world."

"It will leave you breathless.”

My Journey Into Prayer, Part 4: Amazed

2007-02-22T14:25:00.000-08:00

“I can see God, mom, can you?” my almost-four-year-old grandson said to his mom the other day. “I see him in the sky.”

“What is he doing?”

“He’s just lookin’ at me.”

“Is he smiling or frowning?”

“He’s smiling.” Pause. “Mom, you know what he just said to me? He said, ‘You’re the best boy in the whole world!’”

There’s a reason Jesus invites us to become like children. If I would’ve kept that picture of God into my adult years, there’d be no need for my paradigm shift from prayer being about doing to prayer being a loving relationship, and that a romance, no less.

In their book The Sacred Romance the authors describe a scale of metaphors scripture uses to capture the facets of our relationship with God: clay-Potter, sheep-Shepherd, servant-Master, child-Father, friend-Friend. But, they continue, there is still a higher and deeper level of intimacy- that of lovers.

I hadn’t thought of Christ as a lover much before, I’ll have to confess. The metaphors describing my relationship to God had been more like laborer-Overseer (performance based) or child-Father. But, beloved-Lover? That’s so…well, intimate.

Zephaniah 3:17 talks about this intimacy: “He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing.” One of my favorite songs, “Amazed” by Desperation, is based on that verse:

You dance over me while I am unaware.
You sing all around, but I never hear the sound.
Lord I’m amazed by you, Lord I’m amazed by you
Lord I’m amazed by you- how you love me.

One day last January I was getting ready for my afternoon walk on our trail and remember thinking, “I’m really tired today, God. Instead of me talking to you, could you just talk to me? And when you do, could it be in the park?” I proceeded with my walk, trudging wearily down the hill. As I got to our ‘park’ along the creek, I looked up.

I wasn’t sure what I was seeing. There in the sky next to the sun was a second smaller light- brilliant white and yellow and pink. It was gorgeous. It lasted two minutes perhaps, then was gone.

I sat down on the bench and cried. I felt so humbled- and yet unbelievably special. It felt so intimate- there was nobody around but me. The Potter-Shepherd-Master-Overseer-Father-Friend had come calling as Lover. I was not used to this.

I sat a few minutes, taking it in. After a bit, I collected myself for the walk back up the hill. Reason began to overtake amazement as I thought, “I wonder if that light was a ‘sundog’- one of those natural phenomena when light bounces off ice crystals in the air? Maybe…it was just coincidence.”

Mulling things over, I walked in the house and could hear that our bedroom radio alarm clock had gone off, so I went in to turn it off. As it happened, the song that had just started to play on the radio was “Amazed”. More tears. “Okay, God, I get it.”

C.S. Lewis observes, "It is no good angling for the rich moments. God sometimes seems to speak to us most intimately when he catches us, as it were, off our guard.”

I sensed God was wooing me, reminding me of his intention for a highly customized relationship -intimacy- with me. Why? Because God is all about relationship. And maybe he was preparing me for a hard time ahead by letting me know that without a doubt, “he’s lookin’ at me, and smiling.” In Isaiah 62:5 he tells me, “I will take delight in you, as a bridegroom rejoices over his bride, so will I rejoice over you.”

Still, I am amazed.

My Journey Into Prayer, Part 3: Let Me Nourish You

2007-02-14T14:32:00.000-08:00

To pray is to make the most of our moments of perception. You pause on the thing that has happened, you turn it over and over like a person examining a gift, you set it in the context of past and future, you mentally draw out its possibilities, you give the moment time to reveal what is embedded in it. -Alan Ecclestone

Getting to the realization that perhaps prayer is first about a relationship didn’t happen for me overnight. I needed a major attitude adjustment.

First, I thought I knew as much about prayer as there was to know. But the implication of God’s directive to me to learn how to pray, was that apparently He didn’t think I knew all about prayer. I’d read a number of books on prayer in my life and done bible studies on the subject. I’d even led a mom’s prayer group. Admittedly, my prayer life had been sporadic, devoted at times, focused in crisis, but routine for the most part. I’d journaled in spurts- in 1999 there are just six entries. What I needed to know was, what should I be doing differently than I had been all these years? What had I overlooked?

One obvious missing ingredient seemed to be time spent in prayer. I bravely decided to devote an hour a day to it. And because praying for an hour (or five minutes) is difficult, I’d write out my prayers to stay focused. Learning to pray was now my ‘project’.

I went online to get a list of books on the subject and then to the library looking for Richard Foster’s Prayer, Finding the Heart’s True Home. When I found it on the shelf and saw the size of the book (larger than a pamphlet) I thought, “How can anybody have that much to say about prayer?”

Boy, was that reaction telling! This thought revealed not only my vast ignorance on the subject, but secondly, my arrogance! Things Someone obviously knew about me but I was clueless about.

Along with spending an hour a day praying and journaling, I began to carefully digest Foster’s book, a comprehensive survey of 21 forms of Christian prayer, learning quite a lot. I came to page where he talks about something called ‘breath prayer’, a prayer that can be prayed in a single breath. Foster says, “Breath prayer is discovered more than created. We are asking God to show us his will, his way, his truth for our present need.” I decided to think about breath prayer on my walk that afternoon. On my final round this one ‘popped’ into my head, “Nourish me”.

The next morning my husband, Steve, ‘happened’ to pray with me and basically said that same thing, “Help her to rest in You.” Earlier that week from my reading of four separate scriptures that day, the only one I ‘happened’ to make note of in my journal was, “Oh taste and see that the Lord is good, ” Psalm 34. Later that day while reading Foster’s book I ‘happened’ upon that same verse.

Another day that week (which ‘happened’ to be February 14) I’d been sitting by our fire ring outdoors and closed my eyes, “waiting for You to say something to me,” as I later wrote in my journal. When I opened my eyes for a split-second I saw in my mind’s eye a scene in 3D (it reminded me of the view one would get with the ‘video’ toy of the 1960s, the ViewMaster) of the morning in John 21 when Jesus stood on the beach beside a fire where he had some fish roasting. The disciples had just hauled in their catch for the night and as they approached he invited, “Come, have some breakfast.”

“Hmmm.” I thought, that’s kind of weird. I closed my eyes and opened them again to see if I could repeat the scene. I couldn’t, after several attempts. I wasn’t sure what to think.

I had immediately linked the “Nourish me” breath prayer and Steve’s prayer. But it wasn’t until four days later that it dawned on me that the beach scene and the “taste and see” verse, that I’d forgotten about but remembered when I looked back at my journal, were both about Jesus giving nourishment.

Nourishment. Rest. I began to sense a theme. I may be slow, but I finally got the message. I wrote in my journal, “God, I sensed you telling me to not concentrate so much on ‘doing’ prayer, but that I should rest in your love and let you nurture me.”

I’d been given a custom-designed gift to turn over and over to examine and felt the intimacy essential for such a gift. I began to sense that Someone was wooing me.

A major attitude adjustment was beginning to take place.

My Journey Into Prayer, Part 2: Prayer is Relationship

2007-02-07T14:23:00.000-08:00

After being pretty sure I’d heard God say, “I want you to learn how to pray,”
I begrudgingly took my no-nonsense advice to myself that if I could learn something as challenging as exercising regularly while managing my Parkinson’s, I could probably learn to pray. And thus I approached learning to pray with all the enthusiasm of gulping a spoonful of cod liver oil, which has the reputation of tasting decidedly unlike cotton candy, but nonetheless, has healing properties.

I had thought getting to know God, other than prayer (which was hit-and-miss for me) and study of scripture, was primarily about doing stuff, feeling the pat on the head for all of the good things that I was doing for him. Things he, of course, wanted me to do. And why wouldn’t he? There were obvious needs, things were broken. And I could fix them.

In reality, it wasn’t a conscious thought so much as it was a way of living- I had spent a lot more time and energy doing things for God than developing a relationship with God. And quite frankly, I derived much of my identity and worth from my ability to do good things. This is not new. Henri Nouwen has observed, “Nothing conflicts with the love of Christ like service to Christ.”

The question of getting my worth from performing came crashing to the fore when I was diagnosed with Parkinson’s. My stamina had gotten so low that I resigned my staff position at our church, I was sleeping fourteen hours a day and often I couldn’t even get supper on the table. Most synapses had ceased firing by 5pm. My get-up-and-go had most definitely got up and left. Elvis had left the building. I was eyeball to eyeball with this frightening question, “Who am I, now that I can’t do much of anything?”

One advantage to not being able to do much is having much more time to think. I’ve been familiar with the directive in Psalm 46, “Be still and know that I am God” for a long time, but I suppose I didn’t really understand the necessity of the ”be still” part. I began to spend more time with God and gradually got the answer to my question, “Who am I?”

The answer, as it turns out, was tremendously healing as well as liberating: I am very much loved child of God -even when I’m not doing. Perhaps especially when I’m not doing.

This realization led to a whole new way of looking at prayer. Maybe prayer didn’t have to be something that I really didn’t want to take time for. Perhaps getting to know God is first about being quiet long enough for him, not to pat my head patronizingly for my performance, but to stroke my hair and whisper, “I love you, child.”

As it turns out, that is much better than a dose of cod liver oil!

My Journey into Prayer, Part 1: It will be good for you

2007-01-31T13:22:00.000-08:00

It was a year ago that I had a vague feeling that God had something for me to do. Something new. I was up for something new. It had been a year since I’d gotten my diagnosis of Parkinson’s at the age of 50. I’d spent the following year learning how to manage the degenerative movement disorder, and my much-declined stamina had greatly improved.

I mentioned the vague feeling to our small group when we met the next Sunday morning and asked them to pray that it would become clear whatever ‘it’ was, if anything. This elusive something remained so until about a week later. As I came to the end of my afternoon walk that day the blurred feeling had gradually, but awkwardly, come into focus. I was pretty sure God was ‘saying’ to me, “I want you to learn how to pray.”

My honest reaction was, “Well, shoot. That’s not really what I was thinking, God. You see, I have this list of things I think I could do pretty well, and prayer isn’t one of them. I’m a do-er. One of my top spiritual gifts is administration- I can get things done. Surely you need me to do some stuff for you, not just sit around and pray.”

Despite my protests I knew I would take on this new ‘project’. As I walked back to the house from my walk I turned from arguing with God to arguing with myself. “I don't really WANT to learn how to pray, mostly because it probably means being disciplined, taking time, being super-spiritual, blah, blah, blah. And since I don't have the ‘want-to’, doing it will be that much harder.”

“But,” I chided myself in my mother-tone, “remember when you wanted to be in shape but didn’t want to exercise regularly? Well, since you got Parkinson’s you’ve had to learn to exercise regularly even though there is rarely a day when you want to. And look what good it’s done for you! If you can learn to exercise, you can learn to pray.”

I begrudgingly took my advice and thus approached learning to pray like taking cod liver oil- it’s distasteful, but reportedly has some healing properties.

Well, let’s just say that in the past year I’ve been learning a lot about prayer’s healing ‘properties’. I hope to share some with you in the next few weeks.