Advent

The baby has the flu and the two year old wont stop throwing up. The older four kids are restless and I feel the weight of not pulling Christmas cheer off for them. There is Jonny's colonoscopy tomorrow and my surgery on Wednesday. An ovary not doing what its supposed to be doing, cysts that wont leave and the waiting and groaning continue.

I think of Mary, and that cold, dirty barn where she labored. I wonder if she felt alone and scared and abandoned by the One who created this miracle. I think of what Advent really means, a waiting, a groaning for the appearing of what our hearts are longing for. Only the ones who have suffered and waited and been afraid can know all that advent means. We will not make it if You do not show up, we will be consumed if You do not save us. Prayers are reduced from phrases and lists to a gutteral cry for help.

I remember that there has been darkness before. The 400 years of slavery in Egypt, the hundreds of years of waiting for His birth, the darkness of waiting after His death. And He always comes, He always shows up. The time of waiting is not indefinite, the suffering will not continue forever, this will not be all you know. Because the cold, lonely darkness will be pierced by a cry, and whatever she was feeling up until now will be forgotten, lost in the glory and the joy and the light.

These Fragile Breaths

These breaths are all so fragile. On a walk with Liam today we picked up half of a robins egg...that beautiful blue. I balanced it on top of the stroller but it kept falling off and each time more shell chipped away.
 
My brothers baby is sick and its hard to breathe. Its hard to go about life when someone you love is struggling for theirs. I wake up in the middle of the night to the darkness and the reality of how fragile we all are. And I grasp at 3 am for something to hold on to....something stable.
   
 Near the end of Acts Paul feels he is to go to Jerusalem. Well meaning believers have visions and prophesy and even go as far as to act out what is going to happen to him if he goes. And it doesn't look good. Certain imprisonment and likely death. Paul's response is that he is not only willing to be imprisoned but to also die for the name of the Lord Jesus. Living out what he has already stated that for him "to live is Christ and to die is gain". He's already given it all up long ago. This is not a crisis. His hands are off his life and he has stopped seeking to control and manage it long before this moment. The believers see that his is set on this path and respond "let the will of the Lord be done".
Yes. This is peace. Is not this the only stable place? Wanting only His will.....and wanting this from a place of deep security in the His great goodness and wisdom. That He is so tender to us and will only allow us to hurt for a time and the hurt is for a reason. That He is burning away all other desires but this one: a longing for His will  and His kingdom to come....where there is no more tears or sick babies or sleepless nights. Come Lord Jesus!

Following

Lazarus dies.
Jesus comes too late, weeps and commands life back into the corpse.
One of the most beautiful scenes in the Bible occurs shortly after this miracle, when Mary, heedless of social norms or practicality, pours out her perfume over Jesus and wipes it up with her hair. I understand her here...she is overwhelmed with gratitude to the One who gave her back her dead. In her joy she is thinking....its all yours, you can have all of me....I don't care what anyone else thinks, I don't care how much it costs me....all I know is that you are beautiful and all I am is yours. I am dead to all other passions, opinions and I am fully alive to you.

Later in this same chapter Jesus states that a life that is given up, buried into the ground will be raised up and will bear much fruit. He goes on to say if anyone wants to serve Him they will follow Him. This thought is intriguing....servanthood is not overseas missions, or diligent prayer and a Bible reading program. Its not serving in the nursery or bringing a meal or even doing the dishes. Or it is. Its sticking close, its having an experience with Jesus that is so powerful that you become so captivated by His winsomeness that you say with Mary...I don't care how much it costs me or where it leads me...all I know is that you are beautiful and all I am is yours. So we go where He goes.

I like this.....I like the adventure this breathes into my rather normal life. You just don't know where He is going next. He's rather unpredictable and its exciting to be right on His heels watching Him raise the dead, and open the eyes of the blind. I like this until I don't like it anymore. When He washes feet, when people hate Him, when He walks up to calvary and dies there. I told Him last week, standing over a full washer, I told Him I didn't want to follow Him anymore. I would rather He would just leave us alone. I want safety, quiet. But no...thats not completely true. I want to want His will more than mine, I want to want to follow Him, no matter where He goes. And in that confession in that cramped laundry room on a Monday morning the Kingdom of Heaven broke in a little in my heart.

Jesus says the one who follows Him, His Father will honor.
I wonder about that statement. What does it mean to be honored by the Father? I have to think its better then safety and quiet, predictability. I taste it when I tell Him I can't even follow Him without His help...on my own I'm a coward. But He is gentle and His yoke is easy and I get the feeling He does not mind slowing down for the weak one.

I see His delight in this offering of our own precious perfume. And His joy is infectious and worth it all.

In the Night

     Sometimes there are truths that are clear and make perfect sense in the broad light of day. We enthusiastically believe when our future looks bright, the sun is shining, our hopes and dreams are moving towards fulfillment. I can fully understand that God is all powerful, that He's good, that He has good plans for my life and that He is moving the world closer to redemption. However, when the dark descends and deepens, doubts and questions begin to rise.
       
   An encouragement to me in the questioning is that my darkness as well as my questions are not unique. Darkness has been the experience of Christians throughout the ages starting with the very first, original Christ-follower. John the Baptist was not only Jesus' cousin but his calling and occupation was to know who the Messiah was and point Him out to others, to prepare the way. So it brings me a strange sort of comfort to hear him asking "are you really the One or should we look for another?" What has changed? What has shaken the confidence of the man who wandered about in the wilderness eating locusts and honey and who recognized and baptized the very Son of God? Prison is what changed. Darkness descended, life depending on the caprice of an insecure king. Who are you anyway? Is any of this really true? Should we be on the look out for someone else? Someone maybe a little more predictable, secure, safe???  
         
Even more comforting than John's questions is Jesus' response. No criticism, no hurt feelings that His biggest fan, His own cousin was questioning, was doubting. This is what was sent back to John locked in the darkness
     
" the blind receive sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them. And blessed is the one who is not offended by me"
     
       Jesus goes on to praise and confirm the calling and personhood of John. He does not give him a spiritually abstract answer, He does not quote prophets, He does not berate his lack of faith. He gives concrete evidence and He states that among those born of women there is no one greater than John the Baptist.
   
  So I am wrestling, questioning. I'm not ok with whats happening to Jonny's body, to our family, to our future.  I believe that joy always comes in the morning and I believe there will be a morning. But how long will this night last and how dark will it get before the sky starts to lighten? Will we make it through this? And who are you Jesus in this? I'm angry at times at Him, but I'm also in love with Him. I cant help it. I don't know how long or dark this is going to be, I don't even know where He is in it most of the time. But I believe Him when He says we are blessed when we are not offended by Him....when we stay close with our questions instead of stuffing them deep and taking them somewhere else. So there is very little that we know, but I have tasted and seen enough to hang tight to the One who makes blind eyes to see, deaf ears to hear, lame legs to dance and dead bodies to breathe.
           

He is always the Lord

  

          We just got back from doctors appointments and I wanted to send out a quick update. Everything is healing good....Jonny's been running fevers at night so they put him on a antibiotic to hold off an infection. 

    The surgeon took out 25 lymph nodes during surgery and 6 came back showing cancer. The ones with cancer were the ones closest to the tumor and the rest were clear. So he will definitely need 5 months of chemo to make sure that anything microscopic floating around is cleared out. 

 Jonny is in good spirits, still uncomfortable and having pain but able to take it a day at a time. The kids were unimpressed by his "poop bag".....a little after we had showed them Jack came up to Jonny and asked to see his "coffee" b/c Jonny had told him thats where what he eats goes. I guess Jack figured coffee is one of the main things he sees going into Jonny's mouth:)

  

 I wanted to put in a quote I read last night by a guy named Fenelon, a 17th century archbishop in France. This will be long so feel free to skip or skim. I keep wanting to be told that everything is going to be ok...we are out of the woods.....its smooth sailing from here ....and I'm never satisfied. Over and again I am forced back onto the fact our only foundation is Jesus, our only surety, our only hope.

"the crosses we make for ourselves by over anxiety about the future are not heaven-sent crosses. We tempt God by our false wisdom, seeking to forstall His arrangements, and struggling to supplement His providence by our own provisions. The fruit of our wisdom is always bitter. .....the future is not ours.....we may never have a future, or, if it comes, it may be completely different from all we foresaw. Let us shut our eyes to what God hides from us in the hidden depths of His wisdom. Let us worship without seeing. Let us be silent and lie still. The crosses actually laid on us always bring their own special grace and consequent comfort with them...but the crosses brought about by anxious foreboding are altogether beyond God's appointments.

        What are we that we should ask Him, 'why are you doing this'? It is the Lord, and that is enough. It is the Lord:let Him do as seems good to Him. Let Him lift up or cast down. Let Him wound or heal. Let Him smite or smooth. Let Him give life or death, He is always the Lord"

On separate occasions Jonny and I both had an experience with the Lord this week. Jonny will have to tell his but mine happened this morning. I was running (well, very slow jogging) with the sun hitting my face and I felt Him whisper "my favor rests on you". As sure as the sun, no matter if its hidden or not, His favor is on me....and I knew thats all I need to know. I need no other assurance, no other promise than this. I am weary and weak and faithless and full of fear but I am hid in His beloved Son and He is pleased with me. He is tireless, all powerful, faithful and full of joy and I am safe in Him no matter what blows around us. It is His desire that His children walk boldly in this knowledge. He is always the Lord and that is enough.

Ash Wednesday

           So time is moving forward and tomorrow is the big day. Ash Wednesday, a day set aside to mourn our brokeness and to recognize our neediness. Setting in motion the steps that lead us to calvary and the miracle of life bursting out of death. Tomorrow is also the day Jonny undergoes surgery, a cutting away of diseased flesh to make room for healing. Over and again we have been made aware through this season that true healing and life can only come after the grief and the death.
       This is what we are longing for. We desire this in a very physical sense....that the pain and suffering after this surgery would lead to renewal and healing. We have also been longing that this suffering would not be wasted in us or through us. We want to be changed: for the old diseased self of fear, selfishness, anger, and all the manifestations of lack of love in our lives would be cut away making room for peace, long suffering and a muscular love that does not originate in ourselves.
     

   Not only is there mourning but there is a profound thankfulness awakening in me. Thankfulness for the doctors, the skill, the medicines, that make healing a real possibility. And thankfulness for a day like Ash Wednesday that promises whatever dies will live again when it is redeemed by a risen Savior.
       .

 I'm also grateful for a peaceful weekend with us all cozy at home as a family. We had talked of taking the kids away for the weekend but we decided the money would be better spent on a big lego set  and while we were at it we thought we might as well get some chicks

Hope

          Each year our pastor encourages the church to pray about a word for the year, a lens to see the coming year through and possibly a new way of seeing God. Early in December I knew my word would be hope. Walter Brueggeman said real hope only comes after despair, and I am starting to realize that in my own life.
         
          This last year was one of a dark, creeping despair. It was not overt but like a thought in the back of my mind, like a shadow waiting for you in every room. I tried to distance myself from it through running, vitamin D, scripture memory, prayer and I would seem to get a little space only to slow down and and sense its presence again. Sometimes it was near, just a shadow and sometimes it was oppressive, suffocating and I felt I would do anything to get escape it. Looking back I think it was mostly post-partum depression, but it was also a hyper awareness. I felt the reality of the horror of this life...how anything horrible can happen to anyone at anytime and how does anyone get out of bed in the morning or love or function? It all felt so random and I felt helpless to stop it.
   
           There were also some beautiful truths I gleaned during this time that I will never forget. The first and most important is that I'm a mess and God is not surprised by this or disappointed, actually I felt His amusement that I was just figuring this out. The other is He is sovereign. I don't get it fully but when that truth hit me it felt like a rope thrown down in my dark hole, a life line , a ray of light. It didn't make me angry...like how could He allow all of this horror.....it made me feel secure. Yes, there is suffering but it is not random. That rising up in me against the darkness is Him in me...I hate it because He hates it. But He, unlike me, is not powerless against it. And it will not continue unchecked forever. It is His very kindness that is longing for His children that keeps Him from simply wiping it all out. Justice will roll like the mighty waters, and somehow like Paul says in Romans the end result of suffering can be hope. Hope that there is a brighter day coming, that this is not all there is, that we are beloved and we have an inheritance that is imperishable.
     
          These were all crucial truths for me to absorb before our personal crisis hit. When we found out that Jonny had cancer it felt like a trap door opening and we were falling into the darkness. Yet almost immediately He showed up, breaking the fall, shining a light. From the people that prayed with us that first night to a call Friday afternoon letting us know the CT scan and  x ray were good. To the Trinidad lady at the colonoscopy that wrapped me up in her arms and praised Jesus and called out for blessing over us, to the radiologist who loves Jesus and knows many people we do. And it goes on....the prayers, money, food, cards, calls. I have not once felt abandoned by Him and strangely enough my old friend despair has not come around. He truly has given me a hope that does not disappoint. Its not a hope that Jonny will get better and we will make lots of money and be very happy until the end. Its a rock hard assurance that He is all we need and we will never lose Him. John Piper said that at some point in your life you will be separated from everything that you love....people, health, money...until death separates us from everything but God. Through this loss and burning away you have a choice to live in denial, sink into morbid despair or allow what you love most to be transformed.