Hopeful Thirteen {A Blogiversary Post}

 

Giant yellow swallowtail on unidentified plant, July 2023

Listen to me read the audio file

If the player isn’t working in your browser and you’d like to listen, here is the link to the audio:

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In the summer of 2010, I was working my way back to full strength after sinus surgery that spring. Although I had received a lupus (SLE) diagnosis 8 years prior, my illness had been quite stable, with medication and lifestyle adjustments, for more than 5 years. Prior to surgery, the Ebony Dog and I walked 3 1/2 miles most days, and Pilates and strength training were added several days a week. I learned more about nutrition and followed a healthier diet than most Americans, with lots of produce, lean protein, and whole grains and not a lot of sugar.. Amore and I had both worked hard to find a rhythm that worked for my illness, and he worked hard providing for us. 

Surgery has extra difficulties for autoimmune patients, so we weren’t surprised that recovery was slower than the doctor promised. Lab tests several weeks after surgery showed that I was still mildly anemic, but otherwise things seemed fine.

In July 2010, the day we departed for a stay with Amore’s parents due to a surgery for his father, I felt more tired, almost out of breath. On the drive down, my voice seemed oddly hoarse as I read aloud. The elastic around my ribs hurt. The seatbelt felt too tight. How odd.

Once we were settled in the home of my in-laws, I couldn’t seem to recover from the five-hour drive. I was so tired. As much as possible, I rested and read, but even sleep proved difficult. And what was that pressure on my chest?

(Aside: Yes, we should have visited urgent care or the emergency room. Chest pain is not a “wait and see” medical symptom. We were away from home for my father-in-law’s cardiac bypass surgery; this was not supposed to be about me. And, truth be told, I was more anxious about going to the emergency room, and in a different city, than I was about waiting out the pain and trying to breathe. But if you have new chest pain, please do the smart thing and urgently seek medical care.)

My father-in-law’s surgery was successful, but he had a long road ahead to full recovery. When our stay was over, we passed the support baton to one of my husband’s sisters. I was truly convinced I would feel better when we were back home and away from the stress and worry over Amore’s dad.

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But I didn’t. The fatigue was so severe that unloading the dishwasher was too strenuous to do all at once. If I took a shower, I needed someone else in the house in case I passed out. My chest hurt so much that I could hardly breathe unless I lay down on my side. So I lay on my side on the sofa all day, for days and weeks and months.

As soon as we returned, I scheduled appointments with my sinus surgeon, asthma doctor, and rheumatologist. Perhaps after sinus surgery upper respiratory infections looked like this? Perhaps I only needed another course of antibiotics?

I did need a round of antibiotics, and my asthma did require a new inhaler, but that didn’t resolve the symptoms. The rheumatologist sent me for a series of scary, expensive tests on my heart and lungs. He was afraid the membrane around my heart was inflamed, so he ordered a month of bedrest and increased steroids and told me not to leave home except for medical care.

Driving was beyond my strength, and Amore did not have remote or flexible work, so my mom drove me about to all these appointments and brought her work to my living room when she could, so I wouldn’t be scared, in pain, and alone.

Eventually all serious explanations for my symptoms were ruled out, and it was determined that my lupus was flaring and causing painful inflammation of the cartilage connecting the ribcage and sternum (“costochondritis”). In other words, “It’s not serious, just painful.” The doctor told me I could resume normal activities, but there remained that pesky problem of my chest hurting too much to breathe when I was upright.

After 6 or 7 months, we finally found a medication to manage the pain safely. I could have wept with relief that first morning after the new medicine. For the first time in months, my first conscious thought of the day wasn't chest pain. I had slept through the night. By that time, however, other pain issues had arisen due to the prolonged forced inactivity. It took years to work through the fallen row of dominos and set a substantial part of them upright again. Not all losses have been recovered even 13 years later.

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There have been unexpectedly good and gracious enlargements of my capacity at times, such as a voyage to Alaska with my parents and husband and a journey to Virginia for the wedding of a young lady I love dearly. The Lord has given me several years of enough stability to assist my parents with time, meals, and company. I now sit with my mom in her living room as she sat with me so many times. Last week the Lord enabled me to walk a whole mile in a state park with my husband. Two days in a row. This is a far cry from where I was before lupus or before 2010, but it is the farthest I have walked at once (without paying for it later in post-exertional malaise) in a very long time. The last few times we’ve been to the arboretum, we have also been able to do without a wheelchair for me. I don’t know whether or how long this will last, but I receive it as a good gift from a loving God and give thanks to Him.

There have also been expected and unexpected brokenness, trials, and sorrows. The last 13 years have held far more funerals than weddings. Three of our four parents have suffered the long farewell of dementia. My mother is still suffering it. We lost Amore’s oldest sister to cancer. Many more surgeries and two rounds of cancer have added complications to my own medical history. Amore has changed jobs three times. Family members have faced life-changing diagnoses and financial hardships. My church has endured an astonishing amount of tumult and loss.

Oh, yes, and there’s this apparently never-ending pandemic that has required a few changes to our lives.

So far, there is no “back to normal” for families like ours, with immunocompromise, long COVID, and other high-risk conditions. Amore and I are still very much isolated in our tiny village of four with my parents. We are very grateful for the many circumstances that allow us to do that, even though we miss things about “before” life. We continue to seek the Lord and seek to steward health, illness, duty, and opportunity one next step at a time. I don’t know whether or how long this will last, but I receive it, too, as a good gift from a loving God and give thanks to Him.

Does that sound strange to you? Life's plot twists don't always feel like good gifts from a loving God, do they? They may come to us wrapped in sandpaper and tied with barbed wire instead of golden ribbon. For those who brave the bloodied hands and tear-stained cheeks, however, trials offer the Christian treasure that cannot be attained any other way.

Only those who mourn know the divine blessing of God's comfort. Only the weak know the sufficient power of God's strength. Broken hearts are uniquely able to receive God's nearness. Knowing Christ in the communion of His suffering (Philippians 3) requires suffering ourselves and experiencing the astonishing grace of His nearness in the midst of it. Suffering can bless us by chiseling our character into greater likeness to Christ.

"Good" isn't always happy or fun. Sometimes it is holy and soul-growing. It is good and worthy of our gratitude when we receive it as one means of knowing the Triune God more deeply.

🦋

My heart breaks for the tens of millions suffering prolonged illness, uncertainty, medical fatigue, inability to find treatment, financial hardships, isolation, and fear from the tsunami of new chronic illness the last three and a half years. And suffering those same afflictions from flaring chronic illnesses. They never seem to stop surprising us with new party tricks, do they? I have drunk from the bitter cup of dreams crushed and youth upended due to unexpected health collapse. If that is you, whatever the nature and cause of your illness (if you even know), please hear this:

You are not invisible to me or to God.

Your life matters. You are worthy of care and support. God loves you.

God hears and answers honest prayers. He doesn’t always answer yes, but He always answers. Call on Him.

Please keep going. You never know when the sun will peek out again and your life will turn for the better. However bleak things seem in this moment, if you are in Christ, this is not the end of your story. All the afflictions of today are actively at work producing the eternal weight of glory ahead of you.

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One gift the Lord has given to sweeten my cup the last 13 years has been this place. Near the end of that first month on the sofa in pain, unable even to care for myself fully, Amore told me it was time to start a blog. He had decided I needed to write my way through whatever was going on. He helped me set it up, and this website was born.

To celebrate 13 years of writing here (and perhaps, for a few of you, 13 years of reading), I am retelling the story of my health journey during that time and leaving you with five things the Lord has taught me in the peaks and valleys of this quarter of my life.

• No matter how isolated, alienated, and exiled you or I might feel, no weakness, illness, or disability can alienate or exile us from God. If we have thrown ourselves at the feet of His throne of grace to receive mercy and forgiveness through the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ, then nothing can separate us from His love. Even the humans who love us most will reach the limits of their compassion and energy, but there is no compassion fatigue in the Triune God. The tinuviel paraphrase of Hebrews 13:5b says, “for He [God] has said and not changed His mind: ‘I will never ever leave you without support, nor will I ever ever desert you in distress.’” He promises that He will never, never, never, never leave His people in the lurch.
• Hope is not a feeling of optimism. Hope is not dependent on a happy change in circumstance. Hope is not incompatible with sorrow and grief. Hope is eager expectation born out of confidence in the promises, person, and purposes of God. Jesus our forerunner has dropped the anchor of our hope in the Most Holy Place of God’s presence (Hebrews 6:13-20). With Him securing it, nothing can uproot it, no matter how hot the flame, how fierce the wind, or how intense the storm. God cannot lie. He will not let go of us. He will hold us fast. Hold fast to hope. Hold fast to His promises. Hold fast to Him who holds fast to you. And if you can’t hold fast, lean in. He can hold on tight enough for the both of you.
• I am weaker and less in control of my life than I ever really thought, and Christ in me is stronger than I ever really believed. His strength, goodness, and love, even when I have least felt the consolation of His presence, have kept me putting one foot in front of the other. He is the reason I have not abandoned the faith. The weaker I am, the stronger He is, and His grace really is sufficient (2 Corinthians 12:7-10).
• “Acceptance with joy” is a lifelong lesson. When I think I have learned it, a bend in the track reveals more mountain to climb. And that’s ok. Anything is a blessing which makes us pray, as Spurgeon wrote. Anything is a blessing which reminds me of my dependence on God. The “hard eucharisteos” (things for which we struggle to thank God) are material for sacrifice. He transforms them when we offer them, with ourselves and our tears and our inability to accept them with a grateful heart, to Him.
• Finally, don’t underestimate the providential grace of God, which can create real friendships out of zeroes and ones, pixels and screens. I cannot thank Him enough for the kindred spirits He has brought me from across miles, oceans, and continents. You know who you are. Thank you for reading and interacting. Thank you for extending kindness to this poor bell sheep, whether I could reciprocate properly or not.

Further up and farther in! Courage, dear hearts.

Dear Me Letter

In response to Ann Voskamp's "Dear Me Letter" post and challenge

Dear me,

Above all, remember God is faithful. His mercies are new every morning, and His compassions never fail. He is faithful, and His faithfulness is great. He is good and kind, trustworthy and true.

You listened to a writer recently who quoted another writer, who said, "Every writer only has one theme, and mine is love." That got you thinking, what is your one theme?

What you're realizing and don't really want to accept is that your theme is brokenness, or perhaps better, the sufficiency of God's grace in brokenness. Your imagination keeps returning to the idea of the kintsugi Christian, a broken person mended with gold, more beautiful after the breaking than before. It is a beautiful idea, but the cost of such a testimony frightens you. So much brokenness already. So many losses. Is that to be the pattern always? If His golden beauty in the soul's dark night is the theme of your song, is breaking and mending, breaking and mending, breaking and mending to be the rhythm of all the days of your weary Shadowlands pilgrimage?

I don't know that. Loss is engraved so indelibly in this postlapsarian life, as it was on our Savior's (and is even now in ascended, nail-scarred glory); such a rhythm is a distinct possibility.

But I know this: if such is your calling, your testimony, God will be faithful in it. He will unfold joys and beauties in the brokenness that would not be yours otherwise. The grace and courage and strength will be there when you need it, though likely not before. The fearful imaginings of impending losses, realized in full, omit the imaginings of the sweet presence of God in their midst.

What's more, consider the outcome of such breaking and mending, breaking and mending, breaking and mending. Every cycle will make you more of gold and less of clay. Every breaking will cause His light and glory to shine through you more brightly, until your journey is complete and you are like Him when you see Him face to face.

Courage, dear heart. Life is hard. There will be more death-shadowed valleys before the end. But Christ is worthy. He is worthy, and He is with you. You will never be alone or abandoned by Him.

Dive ever deeper into His presence in His Word, and soar ever higher into His presence in prayer. If brokenness is to be your theme, let Him be your song in the house of your pilgrimage.

You can trust God with this. 

cm

#DearMeLetter #SummerOfJournalling

Immeasurable Treasure and True Freedom

"The course of my life is in your power;

Rescue me from the power of my enemies

And from my persecutors.

Make your face shine on your servant;

Save me by your faithful love."

Psalm 31:15-16, CSB

"Many are the the fiery darts of the evil one, but our shield is one. Though the javelins of the foe were dipped in the venom of hell, yet our one shield of faith would hold us harmless, casting them off from us. Thus David had the grand resource of faith in the hour of danger. He uttered a glorious claim, the greatest claim man has ever made: 'I say, "You are my God."'

He that can say, 'This kingdom is mine,' makes a royal claim.

He that can say, 'This mountain of silver is mine,' makes a wealthy claim.

But he that can say to the Lord, 'You are my God,' has said more than all monarchs and millionaires can speak. What more can we have?

We do not have the world, but we have the Maker of the world, and that is far more. There is no measuring the greatness of that treasure….

"[David] was not shut up by the hands of the enemy, but his feet stood in a large room, for he was in a space large enough for the ocean, seeing the Lord had placed him in the hollow of his hand. To be entirely at the disposal of God is life and liberty for us."

~Charles H. Spurgeon on Psalm 31

Spring Prayer {A Poem}

God of the wildflowers,

I worship You.

Profligate sower of beauty

In unexpected fields of pink and white,

In a cluster of purple iris peeking 

Royal heads our from the underbrush,

In flashes of perfume lavished on wild honeysuckle vines

Scampering up tree, over bridge,

Like a schoolboy at recess--

I give You praise.

Forgive my disbelief

That You,

God of the wildflowers,

Would be any less generous

With me.

Let Your bright gaze

Open my heart

And affections

Like morning glories.

"Lesson One" in the Graduate School of Faith

New missionary Betty Howard set about her first assignment at the mission station on the edge of the jungle of Ecuador. She had already learned Spanish and now sought to learn the indigenous Quichua language in order to translate the New Testament for the people she longed to reach with the gospel of Christ.

In answer to prayer, God provided her with the one human who knew both Quichua and Spanish. Hallelujah! This man became Betty's informant in her linguistic journey.

Then one day, as she sat at her desk with her Bible and journal, her informant was murdered within earshot. Her hopes of progress in Quichua were dashed in that wasteful destruction of life.

Betty's biographer Ellen Vaughn writes of this crisis:

"It was Betty's 'lesson one' in the graduate school of faith . . . 'my first experience of having to bow down before that which I could not possibly explain. Usually we need not bow. We can simply ignore the unexplainable because we have other things to occupy our minds. We sweep it under the rug. We evade the questions. Faith's most severe tests come not when we see nothing, but when we see a stunning array of evidence that seems to prove our faith vain. If God were God, if He were omnipotent, if He had cared, would this have happened? Is this that I face now the ratification of my calling, the reward of obedience? One turns in disbelief again from the circumstances and looks into the abyss. But in the abyss there is only blackness, no glimmer of light, no answering echo.'

"'It was a long time before I came to the realization that it is in our acceptance of what is given that God gives Himself.'" (Ellen Vaughn and Joni Eareckson Tada, Becoming Elisabeth Elliot)

Not so very long thereafter, Betty Howard became Betty Elliot. This hard lesson was one of God's preparations for the harder lesson of her young husband Jim's violent death at the hands of the Waodani people. Of the five women widowed by that event, she was the one tasked with writing the martyrs' story for publication. It was then, on the cover of her first book, that she became known to the watching world as Elisabeth Elliot. But first she was just Betty, in the jungle, wrestling with God's painful providence that seemed to be at odds with God's calling on her life.

The lessons she learned then and recorded in her journals are still helping me decades later:

"It was a long time before I came to the realization that it is in our acceptance of what is given that God gives Himself."

May the Lord bring us all to the open-handed acceptance of God's gift of Himself.

Christ Crucified

Surely he has borne our griefs

and carried our sorrows;

yet we esteemed him stricken,

smitten by God, and afflicted.

But he was pierced for our transgressions;

he was crushed for our iniquities;

upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,

and with his wounds we are healed.

All we like sheep have gone astray;

we have turned—every one—to his own way;

and the LORD has laid on him

the iniquity of us all.

Isaiah 53:4-6

"Faith finds that Christ has made full payment to the justice of God having poured out his blood to death upon the cross. All of his previous acts of humiliation were but preparatory to this. He was born to die; he was sent into the world as a lamb bound with the bonds of an irreversible decree as a sacrifice. Without this, all he had done would have been labour undone. There is no redemption but by his blood. Christ did not redeem and save poor souls by sitting in majesty on his heavenly throne, but by hanging on the shameful cross, under the tormenting hand of man's fury and God's just wrath. And therefore, the poor soul that would have pardon of sin, is directed to place its faith not only on Christ, but on a bleeding Christ, whom God has set forth to be a propitiation* through faith in his blood (Rom. 3:23). Not everyone who assents to the truth of what the Scripture says about Christ truly believes. No, believing implies a union of the soul to Christ with full trust and reliance."

~William Gurnall, Works, 11:3-6



"...for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus" (Romans 3:23-26).

Come to Jesus, dear Crumbles. Cling to Him in faith. Treasure Him as your sufficient Substitute and Sin-Bearer. Only in so doing will you find Good Friday truly good.

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*propitiation: to use John Piper's term, a "wrath absorber," soaking up like a sponge, as our substitute, all God's wrath which we fully deserve for our sin and rebellion against Him.

Glad Tidings at Midnight

First full moon of March 2018

"Faith helps us bear afflictions in the hope of a favorable outcome.

Faith can prophesy glad tidings at midnight

and see quietness and pleasantness out of affliction

as we lie under the burden of dark strokes of God's providence....

Divine providence has two faces:

that which is visible and seems to be against us;

aye, but there is that which is not seen, and there is love, sweetness, and kindness.

Sense judges only the outside of God's dispensations,

but faith looks within the veil.

There are secret and invisible things that God makes known to waiting souls.

True faith can pick love out of God's angry speeches

and draw gracious conclusions from the darkest events.

When there is no apparent comfort,

and there is not a drop of oil in the cruse,

nor a dust of meal in the barrel,

hope can hang upon a small thread.

Wait,

trust,

and look for the favour from God."

~Thomas Manton, By Faith (formatting mine)