Beauty From Ashes

So, I have been processing the whole Joplin disaster and doing some personal grieving myself—though my grief is minuscule compared to others, but grief is grief.  My mother-in-law lived in Joplin for thirty-five years in a house with St. John’s hospital in her backyard.  We lived in Joplin for two years, our children attended Cecil Floyd School, so I do have some connection even though it is very small.

The church my father-in-law pastored for many years was destroyed and many landmarks that stir up fond memories for my husband’s entire family are gone.  Much of their community decimated in one swift whirling blow along with the even more intense grief of the loss of lives.  Although it appears at this time that there were no fatalities of close friends or family that they are aware of, there are other friends who have lost loved ones and neighbors and the grief from the loss of lives is more of a blow than the massive heap of ruins.  I can’t imagine having the community where I grew up blown away with many of the places that I connect happy memories destroyed and looking into hundreds of grief-stricken eyes of people with whom I have a long-standing connection.

But in the ashes there is beauty.  People are coming out of the woodwork to offer whatever consolation they can to ease the pain and they are giving of their resources and doing many benevolent acts to try to provide for those who are without the necessities to exist.  It’s beautiful!  It’s how we were designed by God to be and to see this kind of philanthropy is emotionally elevating.  This invisible beauty is not evident when we view the photos of the mass destruction, but it is still real.

Mostly on a day to day existence, we speak to our neighbors on our way to our caves and we come out to make our way to perform our usual daily tasks, complete the list of tasks on our schedule, and seldom look into the eyes of people to try to see if we can detect any grief or take time to offer whatever consolation we can; but when tragedy of this magnitude happens, the best in human kind comes out.  What if we lived our lives at our best everyday, not just when tragedy has struck?

I hate it that God takes the brunt of so many tragedies, somehow He always gets put on the stand for failing to do what He should and He seldom gets credit for the way He designed our souls to reach out and show compassion and live outside of ourselves for something greater—now that is amazing and beautiful.  I worship God today for His design though it doesn’t shine through as well as it always should, when we get a glimpse of it, it is truly breathtaking.

Perhaps as we consider the beauty arising from the ruins, we could purpose to live our lives more in accordance to God’s design everyday, to bring beauty into ashes on a more regular basis.  We will have to sacrifice and be willing to alter our lives to accommodate the commitment and take up the cross that this new priority will establish, but isn’t the beauty of obedience worth it?   Isn’t the beauty of seeing grief-stricken eyes light up worth it?  Isn’t that what Jesus did?  The joy He must have felt as He saw eyes not only healed, but lit up by the healing that came from the grief of the ashes of people He touched.

Making A Comeback

Baseball is the theme of our children’s church curriculum we recently started for the summer months at the church where I am children’s pastor.  The curriculum is a study based on the lives of the twelve disciples.  I am amazed at how God speaks to me through my preparations and search for material to make the lessons both interesting and relevant for the kids.

This week our study was about Peter—the “Comeback Kid”.  In the curriculum there was a brief write up about Dave Dravecky, a former pitcher for the San Francisco Giants, who had to give up pitching due to complications from a cancerous tumor in his pitching arm.

I went to youtube and found a video of an interview with Dave where he shared his testimony.  He shared about his desire to be a baseball player from the age of eight years old and his journey to finding himself a pitcher in Major League Baseball.  His life was a dream come true finding himself pitching in the World Series and having the “woman of his dreams” for a wife then finding he had cancer in the deltoid muscle of his pitching arm.

Dave made a baseball comeback though and found himself once again pitching in the major leagues even though he had been told that outside a miracle he would never pitch again.  One day while having lunch with teammate, Bob Knapper, Bob said to Dave that it was not the miracle of the comeback that was so important, but the miracle of his  salvation and what God was doing in providing a platform through major league baseball for him to share God’s love with those who were hurting,   

It was right after that Dave’s career ended when his arm broke while delivering a pitch and after two surgeries and staff infection, they had to remove part of his shoulder and pitching arm, but the true comeback for Dave was that he embraced the platform given to him through his painful trial and used it to bring glory to God and minister to those facing painful circumstances.

What a novel view of “miracle” Bob Knapper had, that the true miracle was what God did in Dave’s life about eight years previously through salvation and then presenting Dave with a platform to share his faith to an audience given to him through baseball.  

Same story with Bethany Hamilton, the young Hawaiian surfer girl who was given a platform to share her faith when a tiger shark attacked her and she faced the loss of her arm but came back to become a professional surfer.  Her faith has been given a platform through the movie “Soul Surfer”, the story of her faith journey after losing her arm, and through many interviews on national television as well as a devotional book she has written.

These aren’t exactly the kind of platforms we usually look for to step into, but God works mysteriously and usually through tough stuff.  The kind of faith it takes to fill these callings isn’t for the weak of faith, but it’s these kinds of circumstances that give authority to the words spoken from the “platforms” that have the power to truly minister.

It was extreme circumstances like these that give credence to the words of Paul when he writes “But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.  Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.  That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties.  For when I am weak, then I am strong”.  2 Corinthians 12:9 & 10

There are a number of recorded errors on Peter recorded in the Gospels, but on the Day of Pentecost, Peter embraced the platform and raised his voice to share a powerful message resulting in three thousand accepting his message and being baptized--now that's a comeback.

So what is your “platform”?  Where has God given you a place to speak out of your personal difficulty to inspire others to have faith despite their circumstances.  Have you stepped up to the plate and used your voice to speak courage into people’s fears?  It doesn't have to be a public platform, but embrace the opportunities that present themselves to share how God has given you the grace to bear the trials life has thrown to you.

How has God broken through with His truth, love and grace into your crisis and given you something to share with others from the platform that he prepared for you?  Don’t miss out on the comeback!

Separation Issues

Humor me for one more blog as I write about my dog and my experience at the vet’s office.  If God can send Jeremiah to the Potter’s house for a message, I guess He can send me to the vet’s.

So—I take Panther in for his laser treatment on his foot and as we entered the room where he gets the treatment, Panther and I hear the dogs that are boarded by the vet barking incessantly—they barked persistently during the time we waited for the vet raising Panther’s already abnormally high anxiety level even greater.

When the vet came in, he noticed that Panther had been chewing on his splint and I told him that I had used the anti-lick gel that he had given to me, but it wasn’t working and I shared with him some other naughty things Panther had started doing since the accident during times when I would I leave him alone at home.  He said something like this—Panther’s anxiety level is high because of the trauma of being hit and that makes his separation/abandonment issues worse.  My first thought was that I have already raised my kids and I don’t need to be dealing with this from my PET, but I love Panther so I kept an open mind to what he was saying.

He told me that he had a sample of some anti-lick gel that actually had an anxiety-relieving drug in it.  I thought—I wish I would have had that when my daughter bit her nails.  Anyway, it was free so I took it.

On the way home I was processing the whole experience and it hit me—I have separation issues too.  When I think that God has forsaken me, I do naughty things as well—not so very different from Panther.  Sometimes I withhold praise from God and instead of ministering to needs of others that I am aware of, I spend too much time watching TV or I focus too much on my own needs and allow myself to think thoughts that raise my anxiety level instead of practicing spiritual exercises that I know will decrease that level of fear.

I know that God does not ever leave or forsake us, but we are in a world that is broken and it is not our home.  We are kind of like the dogs in the boarding pen although we do have the spirit of God living in and through us, we are still aliens and foreigners in a place that is only temporary.  We are supposed to be anxiously awaiting our Master’s return to take us to our eternal home—so maybe while I am here I am going to just have to live with this longing to be home and suffering from “separation” issues is just part of the whole picture.

I keep doing things to settle in here in my boarding pen to try to ease the pain of separation and sometimes I bark persistently, but I am smarter than the boarded dogs.  I know that I have a promise from my faithful Savior.

In Jesus final words to His disciples before His crucifixion in John Chapter 14, He said, “Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid” (vs. 27) and in verses 1 and 2 of Chapter 14, He says, “Do not let your hearts be troubled.  Trust in God, trust also in me.  In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you.  I am going there to prepare a place for you.  I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am”.

For now I have to live with my struggle to have faith and not have a “troubled heart”  because I’m stuck here for a temporary time, but I’m not stuck in a pen and I can use my time to accomplish God’s will for me and continue to do good.  My heart and soul still long to not be separated though, but that's okay—you can’t love somebody and be okay with separation.

Tough Stuff

Last Tuesday while I was visiting my mom and dad, my dog, Panther, was hit by a truck when he escaped and ran into the highway in front of their house.  He was lucky and his injuries were not fatal—just expensive and requiring high maintenance.  My life and schedule pretty much ceased and were rewritten by the demands of Panther’s care. 

I took him to my vet to have a complete set of x-rays to determine the extent of his injuries and found that there was some internal bleeding in his chest area and urinalysis revealed “stress” to his kidneys—and “stress” was a good word since his stress involved stress for me also since I was the one responsible for clean up from incontinence caused by the stress.  The vet also found that Panther had a bone broken in his paw, so they sedated him twice—once for the x-rays and once to reset the bone then put his leg in a splint.

The lady who was assisting the vet carried my eighty-pound Weimaraner to the car with remarkable poise.  I expressed to her how impressed I was with her ability to carry my big hunk of puppy to the car with such ease.  She suggested to me to have someone ready to help me get him into the house when I got home, so that I didn’t hurt myself. 

My husband came home and helped me get him in the house and things were going okay—I got his five pills down him easily by wrapping them in thin-sliced deli chicken and was feeling pretty competent till he began to exhibit signs of needing to go to the bathroom.  Normally I would just open the back door to the deck and he would go down the stairs to the backyard, do his business then come back and notify me that he was ready to come in—but because of his injuries and the anesthesia, I couldn’t allow him to go down the back steps.  All of this I failed to plan for and now was having to think quickly of a solution.   I put him on his leash and supported him as I took him out the front door.  He made it down the couple of little steps off the porch then Panther just flopped down on the sidewalk.  He was obviously not going to make it to a bush or some really special blade of grass to do his business, so I had to figure out how to get him back in the house.

Now I was really faced with a dilemma—my husband was at church and I couldn’t get Panther to come back in the house despite my every attempt at coaxing even with his favorite treat, I could leave him outside passed out on the sidewalk or make an effort to get him in by myself.  I thought to myself--if that young lady at the vet’s office could carry him—maybe I could carry him if I just positioned myself like she did—maybe there’s a special secret to carrying him the right way that would distribute his weight in such a way that I would be able to lift him like her.  I put my one arm under him behind his front legs and my other arm under him in front of his back legs just like she had then I lifted with all my might and his front paws came about six inches off the ground.

I tried again and this time I actually lifted his hind legs just a little—my confidence was boosted, so I lifted his front legs again and drug his backside as best I could till I got him back on the porch then just dropped with him.  I was only about three feet from the front door, so I decided to try to drag him through the door to the rug just inside the door and then drag the rug with Panther on the hardwood floor to his palette.   It worked—I was successful.  I ran into the kitchen to get another treat to try to coax Panther from the rug on to the palette and when I came back, Panther lay half on the rug and half on the floor in a puddle of urine.

That night I moved Panther’s palette next to my bed and I would get up and lay with him on his palette when I would hear him licking or biting his splint.  I prayed for him and then wondered if praying for my dog in light of all the more serious requests I was acutely aware of was fruitful.  The verse about God being aware of even a small sparrow falling came to my mind and the next morning, I looked up the verse and was surprised at the context with which this verse is written.

It is found in Matthew chapter 10 in the middle of a section titled “Discipleship and Suffering”.   Jesus is preparing the disciples for persecution that is coming and exhorting them to not be afraid.  He's preparing them for the possibility of losing close family relationships because of their stand of faith and admonishing them not to love their fathers or mothers or sons or daughters more than him.  He also says that anyone who does not take up his cross and follow him is not worthy of him.  He reminds His disciples that they are valuable to the Father and that He is aware of everything—He’s even aware of the number of hairs on their head.  I was reminded that God is aware of all we give up to follow Him—every sacrifice, every trial, every painful experience we suffer while trying to obey and do the will of God.

Sometimes I want God to be like a pet owner—a really good one like me.  I want Him to always make sure my food bowl is full and enough water so I won’t have to drink out of the toilet.  I want Him to wrap my pills in deli lunch meat and never stick the pill in my mouth then hold my snout closed till I swallow it.  I want Him to give me treats when I do tricks and behave well and keep me on a leash so I don’t run blindly and stupidly on to the highway while trying to exert my independence or cross boundaries set up for my safety.

I got kind of tickled at verse 27 in this section that says, “What I tell you in the dark, speak in the daylight; what is whispered in your ear, proclaim from the roofs”.  It was in the dark--actually about 2:18 am that God brought the verse that drew me to this portion of scripture.   It’s kind of funny how God brings us encouragement sometimes.

 There are a lot of times that I feel like quitting and feel frustrated that I can’t see more fruit from my endeavors in the kingdom.  God in His quirky way reminded me that it’s tough to follow Him and I just need to keep speaking what He gives me.  It’s normal to be tough—it’s actually a very good sign.

Mother's Day Turned Thanksgiving Day

Sunday morning on Mother’s Day, I was having a bad morning, feeling pretty sorry for myself and discussing the situation with God.  I got dressed and headed out in the churches big sixteen-passenger 1996 Dodge van which the kids and I refer to as “The Big Green Machine” to pick up the kids on my bus route.  As I was getting into the van, my neighbor yelled, “hello” to me, so I stopped and talked briefly then told him that I had better get going.

As I was getting into the van, I said, “I love to drive this—it’s my favorite thing to do”.  He looked at me blankly—I said, “I’m kidding”.  He said, “I wasn’t sure”.  I thought—what in the world about my personality would cause someone to think that I could possibly not be kidding—I must be really weird.

As I was driving, I ran into a couple of other church vans and waved at the people driving—as is customary for those of us in the elite Sunday-morning van driving club to do, I had the Wind FM playing and was trying to get in a more worshipful mood, but it wasn’t really working.  I told the Holy Spirit that He was going to have to take over because my flesh was interfering with His “Godly” plans and if I was going to minister in any way in children’s church, He was going to have to arise to the occasion or we were sunk.

I got to church and had to go straight in to the computer to put the words of the songs we were going to sing that day into EasyWorship and once again felt sorry for myself because the computer had crashed a couple of weeks before and all of my song library had been lost—every song had to be re-entered into the computer. 

I began putting in the words to “Awesome God”.  I had to listen to the song and then stop and type in the words, so I had to listen really close.  The arrangement was an arrangement for children’s worship and there were readings of scripture by kids about the awesomeness of God interspersed in the song.  I started thinking of the awesomeness of God and how often we fail to recognize His greatness—how often we fail to give Him the thanks that is due Him.  He has a pretty “thankless” job.  I listened as the kid's expressed worship and I just stopped typing and listened to the song.

I went to my concordance and counted the number of times that the Bible mentions to give thanks and it was twenty-five.  Twenty-five times—at least, God instructs me to give thanks.  I know that we pick and choose the things that we decide to be obedient about, but giving thanks should be a priority.  

God is always working in invisible ways to accomplish his good purpose in all of our lives.  He is always at work around us to draw men to Him and sometimes we fail to be attentive because our eyes can only see what is going on in front of our noses.  Our personal circumstances and struggles keep us from looking up to see the greatness of God and hinder our ability to obey in giving thanks.  As Paul says, “my brothers (and sisters), these things should not be”.

Psalm 121—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 Israel 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.

I asked God to help me and He did—He showed up and spoke His truth to me in the midst of my despair and saved the day.  I’m not sure why I was surprised—that’s what He does when we ask and seek.

I don’t want to have any part in God having a “thankless” job.  I want to appreciate and be involved in seeing the minuscule ways that He is showing His love for me.  I want to be able to get my nose out of my problems and look to “where my help comes from”.  I am going to try to do that today and hopefully tomorrow too—I know that my nose will get stuck again, but I’m going to keep trying to give thanks to God because He is good and His love does endure forever.

Making Rain

Saturday we have a mother/daughter tea at our church with a theme of “Weathering the Storms of Motherhood”.  Yesterday my faithful friend, who follows me in all sorts of wacky endeavors to serve together in the kingdom, once again assisted me in another decorating adventure.  This time we endeavored to suspend umbrellas and teardrop-shaped glass pebbles with clear nylon thread from the ceiling tiles in our fellowship hall to give the appearance of rain falling upon umbrellas.

We were a comedy of errors in our attempts.  The threads tangled and it was impossible to see the thread to tie knots when we wrapped the thread around the t-pins.  We concluded that there were two things needed to master the skill of this decorating fiasco, one was good eyes and the other was great coordination and both of us had neither.  I said, “I have a whole new appreciation for God.  It’s so hard to mimic what He does so easily”.

I wondered if God put in eight-hour days when He did creation or maybe the “day” means that He put in twenty-four hours or at least twelve.  I would feel a whole lot less incompetent if I knew that it took Him at least twenty-four hours to suspend the stars in space since it took us both three hours to hang only thirty-two raindrops and five umbrellas.   I’m pretty sure He didn’t use nylon thread.

I wondered if God looked down at my friend and me and watched us something like me watching a Lucy show.  I wondered if he laughed out loud or just smiled and shook His head.

I thought of Job’s conversation with God as I drove home.  Job was questioning God concerning the tribulation that had come upon him and God gave Job a response.  I remembered some of the things that God had said because my husband wrote a song about it, but I looked it up when I got home in Job chapters 36-42.  You must go get your Bible and read these chapters to see God’s reminder of His greatness to Job.  You will have a surge of faith.

Elihu says to Job in 36:26-33

            How great is God—beyond our understanding! The number of his years is past finding out.  He draws up the drops of water, which distill as rain to the streams, the clouds pour down their moisture and abundant showers fall on mankind.  Who can understand how he spreads out the clouds, how He thunders from his pavilion?  See how he scatters his lightning about him, this is the way He governs the nations and provides food in abundance.  He fills his hands with lightning and commands it to strike its mark.

His thunder announces the coming storm; even the cattle make known its approach.

I have to go hang some more raindrops today.  I’m a little more skillful today and hope to hang them a bit faster.  I will also do it in a sense of awe of God’s greatness and how He draws me to Him and reminds me of who He is even as I do menial tasks to serve Him in His kingdom.  I am humbled.

Inheritance

My family has some really powerful stories of redemption and since it is the week of Mother’s Day, I thought I would share about my maternal grandma.  Her name was Clella and in my mind she has always been a saint, but yesterday I had a moment of enlightenment that caused me to revere her even more.

I will have start at the beginning telling the story of her husband and my grandpa, James Wilson, to give a full picture of the story.    Grandpa was the son of a single mom during a time when single moms were uncommon.   The story told to me is that my grandfather’s mother became impregnated when she was young and unmarried and the man kept promising to marry her, but just wouldn’t fulfill his promise.  One day he told her that if she would get a disfiguring “mark” on her face removed that he would marry her. 

My great grandma in desperation went to a doctor and had the mark removed, but in the process got blood poisoning and died.  Grandpa was around three years old when his mother passed away.  He grew up in a small community, raised by his grandparents and was continually subjected to derogatory remarks regarding his fatherless status.  It was not a single-mom friendly time.  The practice of grandparents raising their grandkids was uncommon and there was little sensitivity and lack of understanding regarding the situation.

My grandpa worked hard trying always to compensate for his lack of social acceptance and he gained the respect of neighbors and others in the community which allowed him to secure the blessing to marry a young lady of good repute from her father and other family members.  James and Clella married and built a house on the family farm on the beautiful Gasconade River.  Grandpa’s grandparents lived in a house behind them and my grandma cared for them.

Since my mom’s stroke three years ago, I have made it a point to drive a hundred-mile trek to visit them every Tuesday and help with cleaning and cooking.  It has been such a blessing to be able to hear stories they tell me that I might not have heard had I not had the opportunity to visit with them every Tuesday.  Sometimes when I drive home and process our day, I feel overwhelmed with joy that God allows me to have them and serve them in the way that He has provided for me to use my gifts  to bless them.

Sometimes they tell me the same stories that I have already heard many times, but as I listen to them in my station in life now, they have new meaning.  Yesterday, during my drive home, I was thinking about my grandma, Clella, caring for my grandpa’s granparents and it hit me that she was only in her twenties when she was doing what I am doing in my fifties.  I am pretty sure that when I was in my twenties I would have been too self absorbed to be the type of servant my grandma was.  

Grandma not only took care of her husband’s grandparents, I have also heard the story of how she would walk through the woods to her father’s house to cook and clean for him after her mother passed away.  I had heard these stories and somehow pictured my grandma being "old" when she was doing these things, but I suddenly realized grandma would have been about the age of my daughter at the time when she was overseeing these reponsibilities. 

As I was driving and putting this together, I started crying.  I had always felt a sense of bonding with my grandma, a sense that I was following in her footsteps and a joy of knowing that she would have been proud of me for ministering to her daughter every week, but in that moment, I just felt completely humbled.  My grandma was more of a woman than I will ever be and her daughter was more of a woman than I will ever be and I am just blessed to be a part of their inheritance.

I always thought of inheritance in different terms.  More of the dividing of property and assets, but in that moment I started thinking of inheritance as more of a soul blessing than tangible blessings.  I celebrated my soul blessings.  It had been a hard day, but my soul was full.  I was happy and it wasn’t because of anything tangible.  

Psalm 16: 5 & 6  Lord, you have assigned me my portion and my cup; you have made my lot secure.  The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; surely I have a delightful inheritance.

I am thankful for the inheritance of Godly women who modeled for me the path that leads to true joy.