Enlarging the Boundaries

 

For the harried, hurried, faint of heart, or short of attention span, feel free to skip ahead to the TL:DR section.

Click here to listen to me read the post, with Moose Tracks chiming in a bit at the end. 😉

“Lord, you are my portion and my cup of blessing; you hold my future. The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance.”

‭‭Psalms‬ ‭16‬:‭5‬-‭6‬ ‭CSB‬‬

Celebration

Good morning to you, crumbles! Or shall I say, “Happy blog anniversary”? Today marks 14 years since that first welcome blog post. The first series we explored was called “Blessing the Boundaries.”  At the time, I had crashed into the worst lupus flare I had ever had, one from which I have never entirely recovered. The Ebony Dog and I lived on the sofa, and my chest hurt almost too much to breathe unless I lay on my side.

In that wilderness season, my dear husband Amore told me I needed to start a blog to find my online people and redeem that time. Through that initial post series, I sought to make peace with the very narrow boundaries the Lord had imposed on me (us). I sought to proclaim His boundaries as good and pleasant and to find joy in this “inheritance.”

My health is better now than in those early days, but I am substantially homebound again and don’t know when that will change. We have walked through the loss of Amore’s parents and sister and the recent loss of my mother after a long journey with Alzheimer’s. I have had cancer twice and a long list of surgeries. We have moved house and lost my faithful Ebony Dog but gained Moose Tracks (Mayhem).

Through all this, the Lord has used this place and other online interactions to link me with kindred spirits. He has made real friendships from long-distance interactions with people I may never meet this side of heaven.

His boundaries have indeed proved good, pleasant, and joyful.

A Need

Over the last year or so, He has brought new friends to me through this place, my online home. From them, I have learned that many people with energy-limiting conditions—ME/CFS, Long COVID, fibromyalgia, autoimmune diseases like I have, and many more—find screen reading too challenging to undertake long or often. For some, it exacerbates a wide range of symptoms. However, they may be able to listen instead of read.

Other new friends are caregivers as I have been. Stewarding that gift and responsibility means their best chance to engage with my posts is in their ears while they walk or work on household tasks.

For those new friends and readers, I began recording most posts, but Blogger isn’t very friendly to adding that feature, is it?

It has also become increasingly clear that the normal isolation of chronic/prolonged illness, caregiving, and aging has intensified in desperation and alienation, especially with numerous churches and ministries discontinuing the remote worship, discipleship, and fellowship options that opened up the world to this population at the beginning of the pandemic.

While I can’t address any of these illnesses, the needs requiring care, or the debilitating aging process, I have been praying over what might be mine to do to offer gospel hope and encouragement in this peculiar time. Joni Eareckson Tada has said that people with disabilities constitute the largest unreached people group in the world. The number of people suffering with chronic illness and disability has grown very rapidly since 2020 and does not seem to be slowing down. With regard to Long COVID alone, for example, the research team led by Dr. Danny Altmann estimated a year ago that some 400 million people around the world are experiencing some level of long-term illness months to years after their initial infection. 

An Opportunity

In praying for the people whose names and situations I know and the millions I don’t, the Lord has led me to enlarge the boundaries of this writing ministry in order to diversify and expand the ways that the Lord’s work through me can serve the reader or listener. The next step toward that end is to move most of my online energies to Substack: crumbs from His table fellowship here.

Substack makes it much easier to offer and access audio versions of the blog posts. Comment conversations also seem less cumbersome there. That platform additionally opens up numerous new ways of interaction such as a dedicated chat space for subscribers; discussion threads where readers’ thoughts are the featured attraction; video posts and messages; and even a private subscriber podcast for listening to post readings on the go through most common podcast players.

Dreams I have for the fellowship include a Brave Hearts Book Club tailored to those with energy-limiting and financially draining conditions. By choosing Christian classics in the public domain, I can record (or embed) one chapter or section at a time with a few questions to generate discussion. Those who want to and can read the selection can access that kind of ebook at little to no cost if a physical copy is too pricey.

At other times, we could potentially have Zoom book discussions or community Bible reading and prayer or mini-retreats on a spiritual discipline which I’ve found helpful. (We can also have guest writers and teachers.) In this season of loss, it has blessed me to dream about the possibilities (even while daunted by the change).

Topics of more limited interest can have their own sections to which interested readers can opt in if they wish to access the material.

Much of that lies in the future. For the present, the transition itself is the order of the day.

You may be wondering how much effort and complication this will require of you, dear readers.

TL;DR

• If you read now via RSS feed reader or on the web and have no interest in audio versions of posts, posts in your inbox, and the other prospective added features, you don’t need to do anything. I will continue to post written and photographic pieces here, though without audio or comment interaction.
• If you already receive posts via email, between now and the next post, Lord willing, I will export those subscriptions from Mailchimp to Substack. You also don’t need to do anything. You should be receiving a welcome email from the new platform. You may still reply to me directly from the emails instead of in Substack comments if that is more comfortable.
• If, however, neither of the above applies to you, and you want access to audio and video posts and, Lord willing, the kind of online encouragement, discipleship, and fellowship sketched out above, with the style and tone you are used to here, you are cordially invited to subscribe to the new crumbs from His table fellowship at crumbsfromhistable.substack.com

All my Substack content is free, just as this place is. If—and there are no definite plans for this—a paid subscription option became needed in future, we would offer scholarships and/or discounts of some sort so that those who need this community are included, regardless of ability to pay.

This is such a small beginning in the face of immense need, but the crumbs of my loaves and fishes are before the Lord. May He be glorified in multiplying them to sustain faith and hope in those He brings to this fellowship.

I would be grateful for your prayers with and for me and the community which will come together in His time.

“You reveal the path of life to me; in your presence is abundant joy; at your right hand are eternal pleasures.”

‭‭Psalms‬ ‭16‬:‭11‬ ‭CSB‬‬

Elisabeth Elliot: A Life, by Lucy S. R. Austen {A Book Review}

In Elisabeth Elliot: A Life, Lucy S. R. Austen has crafted a meticulously researched literary biography of one of the most influential women in twentieth-century Christian history. In describing it as a literary biography, I meant two things: that it paid particular attention to the formation, values, and sustenance of Elisabeth Elliot the writer; and that the biography itself consisted of beautiful and polished literary prose, not unlike what readers might expect from Iain Murray or David McCullough. This style was a pleasure to read and also contributed to the nuanced, complex portrayal of a nuanced, complex woman. Austen’s love, compassion, and respect for her subject shone through, even as she did not gloss over inconsistencies, generational sins, and personal blindspots.

 

One of my favorite themes Austen brings out from Elisabeth’s life was her writerly bent, beginning in  childhood and blossoming at Wheaton College. Long before she wrote professionally, for seemingly all of her life, in fact, Elisabeth metabolized life through words on paper. She poured out and tried to make sense of circumstances and feelings primarily before God and in her journals, far more than she seemed to have done with close family and friends. Even during her young adult years as a missionary in Ecuador, another missionary told his wife “‘how he was impressed that Betty’s gifts tended more toward intellectual pursuits than to personal ministry’ and that he was beginning to pray for a ‘writing ministry’ for Betty” (203). As Providence would have it, that missionary’s death with Elisabeth’s husband Jim, when both men were relative newlyweds, became the catalyst for Elisabeth’s vocation to begin to shift toward writing and, secondarily, speaking at Christian events.

 

Austen described the genesis of many of Elisabeth’s books, including two I have known of and not yet read and several unknown to me until now. She let Elisabeth tell, in excerpts from letters and books, her own philosophy of biography and her values as a writer. Elisabeth longed deeply to see truly and convey to the reader what she saw. Throughout her life, she pursued a determined quest for truth and commitment to live accordingly, even if that meant contradicting one’s prior experience, writing, or teaching. Like most writers, Elliot fought recurrent battles with imposter syndrome, wondering what audacity gave her the idea that she had anything to say worth reading and whether she would ever find the right words to reach her readers.

 

In one of my favorite passages, Austen wrote:

 

Her talks were drawn from the things she had been wrestling with in her own thinking. At the [Wheaton College annual writers’] conference she spoke on “Writing as Personal Discovery,” arguing that we can only write with integrity about what we have learned through experience. The writer’s task is to faithfully portray the things she has seen. This requires a posture of uncertainty and active searching in order to be able to see. It requires openness to change—it will mean that “we don’t think the same way that we thought last year”—and to messiness. The psalmist, she pointed out, says in Psalm 37 not to fret, and then writes other psalms that are “just one long fret.” And it requires a commitment to excellence in the craft of writing: good writing can be trusted “to give form to…truth,” but “bad writing is a lie.”

 

In contrast to this vision, Elliot said, much of what is called Christian writing begins from the assumption that the writer’s job is to expound the right doctrine, win adherents to the cause, create certainty, prevent change, preserve tidiness. The result, she suggested, is not art but propaganda: “It is the search for truth which gives rise to creativity.” “I believe one of the reasons for the lack of really true Christian art is first of all that we start with the answers. We begin with the cheerful assurance that we know the truth and so the search that is the basis of art is thwarted” (392-393). 

 

To my mind, Austen honored Elisabeth’s aesthetic and biographical values faithfully in this fine volume.

 

Also through Elliot’s own words, I saw her lifelong struggle with the introversion that made her the observant, thoughtful writer she was but was often not socially acceptable (or even considered sinful) in the evangelical milieu in which Elliot worked. Austen made note of this struggle with gentle compassion and more understanding of various temperaments than perhaps Elliot had. Austen’s own reserved, introspective style suits her subject in this regard.

 

Along similar lines, Austen chronicled what Elisabeth was reading (as mentioned in journals and letters) at frequent intervals throughout her life. These lists demonstrated shifts and expansions in thinking over the decades and what ideas informed Elliot’s writings. A reader could build a lifetime reading list from the books mentioned in this biography and likely not be able to finish. The breadth of authors and content surprised me, despite my long familiarity with Elisabeth’s work.

 

This book held other surprises too. I had not realized how greatly her paradigms shifted on matters such as dating and courtship or liturgical worship. The progressive views on certain areas of morality and ethics she articulated in correspondence also raised my eyebrows and seemed likely to delight some readers and dismay others. Her deep and abiding friendship with her younger brother Tom was a bright and happy surprise. On a lighter note, her frequent and emphatic use of italics and underlining in her private correspondence and notes just tickled my funny bone. I could clearly hear her voice in my ear as I read those passages.

 

The most striking and meaningful insight I received was the depth, diversity, and duration of Elisabeth’s suffering. In no way was her sorrow concentrated in her bereavements of her first two husbands. In fact, it seemed to me that the only periods of her adult life in which happiness prevailed were her marriage to Jim and perhaps her early years back in the United States, when she lived in New Hampshire with her daughter Valerie and another former missionary, her friend Van (Eleanor Vandevort). Many times Elisabeth’s trials brought tears to my eyes. It saddened me that she endured so much for so long.

 

One of those difficult sections to read described Elisabeth’s growing awareness of what would be diagnosed as Alzheimer’s dementia, an illness I have witnessed in more than one close relative. Elisabeth Elliot had a dazzling intellect, a vibrant love of reading and learning, a sharp wit, and a practically unmatched gift for articulate, thoughtful Christian writing. Many of the lifestyle habits contemporary medicine has advised for Alzheimer’s prevention were consistently part of Elisabeth’s disciplined life. For her to lose the life of the mind must have been like dying while she yet lived. This was heartbreaking to read but only increased my respect and empathy for her.

 

And yet—the deepest waters and hottest fires she passed through enabled her to speak on and into suffering with authority and compassion. I believed Elisabeth when she addressed the topic of affliction because I knew she spoke from experience. When I have needed help in my own trials and heartbreak, I have wanted someone like Elisabeth (or Joni Tada, Amy Carmichael, Vaneetha Risner…), who endured hard things with grace; airbrushed, glossy celebrity Christianity has offered no cool water to soothe those in the furnace of affliction. Thanks be to God for those who have persevered.

 

Elliot clearly experienced doubts and changes of convictions over the years, but she never abandoned faith in God and in the Bible. Many earthly things were shaken, but the foundation of her life was the everlasting love of God upon her and the everlasting arms of God beneath her; therefore, her foundation held firm.

 

This biography provided a long, thoughtful read that amply repaid the investment of time and attention. It was not a book for those who have placed Elisabeth Elliot on an idealized pedestal and committed to keeping her there. The real woman, with all her complexities and contradictions, was much more interesting than the ideal, and seeing her humanity and need to grow and change through this book pointed me back to the Savior she loved and served. Her legacy has always been about His faithfulness, not her own.

 

The only thing I wished to add to Austen’s biography was an audiobook version. Not everyone could read a book of this length; I thought especially of those suffering profoundly, such as those living with chronic illness and disability that might make reading difficult but Elisabeth’s testimony needful. Perhaps one will come about if reader demand makes it feasible for Crossway to undertake? 

 

Eight years ago, Elisabeth Elliot Leitch Gren took her place in the cloud of those witnesses whose races were finished, and finished in faith. Along with them, her life testified that Jesus was (and is) better than anyone or anything else; that Jesus was (and is) worthy of our full and glad surrender; and that persevering faith was (and is) possible for those who fix their eyes on Him and on the invisible, eternal truth of Scripture.

 

 

The embedded link above is an Amazon affiliate link. It will yield me a small commission at no extra cost to you. To purchase directly from the not-for-profit publisher Crossway, visit the website www.crossway.org. The listing for this book is here: https://www.crossway.org/books/elisabeth-elliot-hcj/

 

Crossway+ members receive 30% off the retail price and a PDF copy with each hardcover purchased.

The Thing

 Two years ago the twentieth-century English author Elizabeth Goudge came to my attention in several different places in a short span of time. When this happens (and not because of current events or the topics trending on social media), I have learned to pay attention. Many years ago I had read her children’s classic The Little White Horse, but she had written many more novels for adults of which I was unaware.

On our last vacation, to a family friend’s wedding in 2019, we stopped in the small town of Staunton, Virginia, to stretch our legs and eat lunch. Walking the streets of the town and taking in the character of the old buildings, we came upon a quirky used bookstore and had to stop in.

 

In the bookshop window

To my surprise, the shelves held a whole row of Goudge hardbacks in the fiction section. I restrained myself and purchased only two. Last year I finished the first of those, one of a series about the extended Eliot family of Dameroshay. The Heart of the Family surprised me with its quiet introspection. The majority of the action seemed to occur in hearts and minds and conversations. If Evelyn Underhill, the Anglican writer on mysticism, wrote fiction, I suspect she would have written something akin to this. It also reminded me a bit of Marilynne Robinson's Gilead books.

One of the Eliot grandsons, David, had apparently attained a degree of celebrity as an actor after the second World War. The book began when he brought his new assistant, Sebastian Weber, home with him to work but also to take his place in the life of the larger Eliot clan. Sebastian, himself an artist who formerly played piano in packed concert halls, was dying of a heart condition and embittered by the loss of his family in a wartime bombing.

In conversation with this same Sebastian, the parish priest Hilary (one of the Eliot sons) introduced a motif that has continued to percolate in my thoughts in the months since I finished the book. He called it “the Thing.” It seemed similar to one’s besetting sin or “thorn in the flesh,” but not exactly the same as either of those. Hilary tells Sebastian this:

“For there is always the Thing, you know, the hidden Thing, some fear or pain or shame, temptation or bit of self-knowledge that you can never explain to another…. And even in those very few healthy insensitives[1] who do not seem to suffer, a love of something, of their work perhaps, that they would not want to talk about and could not if they would. For it is the essence of it that it is, humanly speaking, a lonely thing. . . .  Returning to the sensitives, if you just endure it simply because you must, like a boil on the neck, or fret yourself to pieces trying to get rid of it, or cadge sympathy for it, then it can break you. But if you accept it as a secret burden borne secretly for the love of Christ, it can become your hidden treasure. For it is your point of contact with Him, your point of contact with that fountain of refreshment down at the roots of things. ‘O Lord thou fountain of living waters.’ That fountain of life is what Christians mean by grace. That is all. Nothing new, for it brings us back to where we were before. In those deep green pastures where cool waters are there is no separation. Our point of contact with the suffering Christ is our point of contact with every other suffering man and woman and is the source of our life.”

“You could put it another way,” said Sebastian. “We are all the branches of the vine and the wine runs red for the cleansing of the world” ((Elisabeth Goudge, The Heart of the Family, 128-129).

 

Farther on in the book Sebastian mentioned the Thing to the family matriarch, Lucilla, and told her that worry for her children was her Thing. She asked her son Hilary for more explanation and learned that Hilary’s Thing was all the dailiness and busyness of parish life, all the meetings and fundraisers and church repairs that kept him from uninterrupted, focused prayer, which he saw as his true work. Even in childhood he found his prayers interrupted by imaginations of a multi-headed hyena “who lived in the night-nursery cupboard behind the cistern. It came out at night and sat on the foot of my bed and made the most distracting noises when I was trying to say my prayers” (266). After that the chief obstacle to praying as he longed to do was the physical suffering caused by his service in World War I. It was in that distress that he discovered the heart of the matter regarding one’s Thing:

“When you are burned, and can’t get your breath, and are afraid you are going blind, it is impossible to pray. And then one day, with great difficulty, I suddenly put into practice and knew as truth what of course I had always known theoretically, that if pain is offered to God as prayer then pain and prayer are synonymous. A sort of substitution takes place that is like the old story of Beauty and the Beast. The utterly abominable Thing that prevents your prayer becomes your prayer. And you know what prayer is, Mother. It’s all of a piece, the prayer of a mystic or of a child, adoration or intercession, it’s all the same thing: whether you feel it or not it is union with God in the deep places where the fountains are. Once you have managed the wrenching effort of substitution the abominable Thing, while remaining utterly detestable for yourself, becomes the channel of grace for others and so the dearest treasure that you have. And if it happens to be a secret treasure, something that you need not speak about to another, then that’s all the better. Somehow the secrecy of it increases its value.”

“You put it better than I could do,” said Lucilla gently. “I did feel after that way of prayer in the war, but I did not try hard enough, and when the war was over I fell away. But I recognize what you say as a truth that I know.”

“Of course,” said Hilary, “I do not think that anyone who has experienced disaster is not in some way aware of one of the fundamental paradoxes of our existence. Only we don’t live in a perpetual state of disaster, and it doesn’t occur to us to apply the paradox to the worries and frustrations and irritations among which we do perpetually live. We lack the humility.”

“Well, really,” said Lucilla, “if I couldn’t put up with my everyday worries and aches and pains without having to regard them as prayer I should feel myself a poor sort of coward.”

 

“As I said,” remarked Hilary dryly, “we lack the humility. One feels ridiculous, as you don’t feel ridiculous when it is some disaster. But it’s not just the way you look at it, it’s a deliberate and costly action of the will. It can be a real wrenching of the soul. Yet the more you practice it the fresher and greener grows your life. And it’s the same with joy as with disaster and Things, lifted up with that same hard effort even the earthly joys are points of contact and have the freshness of eternity in them” (266-267).

 ********************

For months I have been pondering this mystery of Things and how they could be a point of contact with Christ and the suffering world; how the offering up, the oblation, of what prevents my prayer becomes itself a kind of prayer; how the Thing that seems to keep me from the life I want, the life I feel called to, can become like the wilderness rock split open to pour forth a wellspring of living water for the Israelites of old.

The Bible teacher Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth is wont to say, “Anything that makes us desperate for God is a blessing.” As Hilary notes, in pleasant times of no great crises, we often lack the humility to pray continually, offering every little thing to the Lord. In that way, the disability and chronic pain that brought this blog to life 11 years ago today are a blessing. Opportunities to lack urgency and dependence on God in prayer have been few and far between. What I then thought was a temporary time of being laid flat on the sofa because of intense ribcage and sternum pain has become my new normal (except it’s not normal, even now).

My autoimmune disease and other diagnoses affect every aspect of my life and much of Amore’s. From what I wear to whether/how/how much I exercise to how I read and pray to how I sleep, my life is full of adaptations in order to do what I need to do with the limitations the Lord has placed upon me. I miss the old ways of ballet flats, pretty dresses that required ironing, being able to travel without the humiliation of asking for half a dozen extra pillows (or taking our own) and packing an extra suitcase of just the assistance devices and medicines I need (instead of an extra suitcase full of books, as was previously my habit).

I miss kneeling in prayer with my face to the floor. I miss curling up in the corner of a big overstuffed arm chair to read for hours at a time. I miss running, a thing I never thought I’d say. I miss dance. I miss the normalcy of medical appointments being occasional instead of 2 or 3 per week most weeks. I miss serving in missions, my husband’s and my shared calling at the time of our wedding. My health brought us home with our tails between our legs, and it has dictated many of his job decisions since then.

Perhaps the reason the question of Things resonated so much with me is that it offers a possibility of transformation. It means that all those limitations, especially the frailty that to all outward appearances keeps me from prayer and serving the Lord, might themselves be prayer and service when surrendered to Him (and myself with them). It means that the thorn in my flesh that drives me to desperate prayers and dependence on God for the ordinary tasks of daily life opens me up to experiencing more continuously His glorious grace. It means the difference between the inherent isolation of chronic illness and the fellowship of Christ’s sufferings.

********************

What is your Thing, beloved Crumble? What is that one big Thing you think keeps you from following God fully, keeps you from prayer, keeps you from freedom? For some of you, like me, it may be chronic illness. For others, it may be shattered dreams, a tragic loss like Sebastian suffered, or worry for prodigal loved ones as Lucilla knew. Or perhaps it is a stressful, draining job. Or the lack of one. Or the longing for children or spouse you do not have. Or the exhaustion of caregiving. Or something else entirely.

If you aren’t overburdened by some painful trial like those, perhaps your Thing is the forgetfulness that so often comes from not having one, from being in a time of joy and peace that does not drive you to desperate prayer at the foot of the cross. Or loving God’s good gifts just a little too much, more than their Giver. (Haven't we all experienced that?)

Dear one, what would change if you offered it all to the Lord as Hilary suggests? If I did? If we undertook the hard, costly wrenching of soul to offer our joys, sorrows, disasters, and delights to the Lord, and ourselves with them, is it possible we might more deeply experience His companionship in whatever our days hold just now?

It occurs to me that this has been one objective of my scribbled thoughts in this place for the last 11 years, as if the invisible, inward oblation or surrender were poured out through my fingers and words. I pray constantly that you who come will find refreshment and comfort in Christ here. Thank you for walking this journey with me. Thank you for lightening the burdens with your kindness and attention and encouragement.

May the Lord open the heart’s eyes of each one of us to our unsurrendered Things. May He open our hands, oh, so gently, to offer them up to Him. May He transform them with His grace that makes green the wilderness and produce from them His abundant, eternal fruit. May they become our treasure as we yield them into His gracious hands. May He use them to open us more fully to the life of Jesus the true Vine, in whose name I ask these things. Amen.

---

[1] In this passage “sensitives” refers to what we might call those of artistic temperament or the more recent phrase “highly sensitive people.” “Insensitives” would be those gifted with relative stoicism and emotional toughness.

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A Writer's Prayer

(If one replaces "book" with "blog," this works just fine as a blogger's prayer too. Amy Carmichael's "Take This Book" opens the anthology Mountain Breezes and her long book on her life in India, Gold Cord.)

Take this book in Thy wounded hand,

   Jesus, Lord of Calvary;

Let it go forth at Thy command;

   Use it as it pleaseth Thee.

Dust of the earth, but Thy dust, Lord;

   Blade of grass, in Thy hand a sword--

Nothing, nothing unless it be

   Purged and quickened, O Lord, by Thee.

A Decade of Crumbs

Ten years ago today, I hit "Publish" on the first blog post here. It still doesn't feel routine. Every time I open a window for a new post, a window into my heart of hearts, the resistance and insecurity rise up. Am I doing this right? Who am I to think I have a story worth telling? Is anyone even seeing this? Is this the best way to steward my limited concentration and time? 

In the last week or so, 2 different, completely unrelated people have said or written the same thing in similar words, which I took as a reminder from the Lord in response to those unspoken questions:

"My nightmare is someone else's survival guide," said stroke survivor Kathryn Wolf in the Desperate for Jesus retreat livestream.

"Tell the story of the mountain you climbed. Your words could become a page in someone else's survival guide," wrote Morgan Harper Nichols on her Instagram feed.

Paul touches on the same thing in 2 Corinthians 1:3-5 (CSB): "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort.  He comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any kind of affliction, through the comfort we ourselves receive from God. For just as the sufferings of Christ overflow to us, so also through Christ our comfort overflows."

This blog, then, bears witness to the comfort of Christ overflowing in the overflowing afflictions of the last decade. I'm not at the top of the mountain yet, but by God's grace I'm still climbing, and if the Lord wills I'll keep leaving notes for other climbers telling where this pilgrim found bread and shelter and companionship along the steep and treacherous path toward Home.

If I had to choose a verse to write on the trail marker to sum up the last 10 years, the hardest 10-year period of my life, I suppose the most apt would be 2 Corinthians 12:9 (CSB), "But he said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is perfected in weakness.' Therefore, I will most gladly boast all the more about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may reside in me."

For I have been weak, and His grace has been sufficient.

Through months homebound and mostly bedridden due to chronic chest pain, His grace is sufficient.

Through 7 surgeries and countless procedures, His grace is sufficient.

Through at least a dozen new doctors and so much imaging I should probably glow in the dark by now, His grace is sufficient.

Through 2 rounds of cancer, most recently this last November through January, His grace is sufficient.

Through multiplied joint pain and disability, His grace is sufficient.

Through multiple changes of the church we call home, His grace is sufficient.

Through traumatic changes of pastors, His grace is sufficient.

Through job changes and a move, His grace is sufficient.

Through devastating new diagnoses for loved ones, His grace is sufficient.

Through many days and nights apart when Amore's help was needed elsewhere, His grace is sufficient.

Through too many funerals...grandmothers, aunt, uncle, cousin, sister-in-law, father-in-law, and my Velcro dog who stayed by my side through all of the above...His grace is sufficient.

Through the other Big Scary Things I haven't been free to discuss here because others share those stories, His grace is sufficient.

Through this global pandemic, His grace is sufficient.

Through intensifying racial strife, His grace is sufficient.

Through an economic recession, His grace is sufficient.

Through months homebound, this time with Amore and Moose Tracks and the rest of the world in their respective homes, His grace is sufficient.

But that only tells part of the story.

In a larger, nicer home with a pool closer to my parents, His grace is sufficient.

In my dad's retirement from his computer career to enjoy more time with my mom and the rest of the family, His grace is sufficient.

In both my sisters moving closer, His grace is sufficient.

In a good new home for my mother-in-law, His grace is sufficient.

In more opportunities for time and laughter with the 3 youngest nephews, His grace is sufficient.

In the gift of new friends, both locally at church and scattered abroad through this blog, His grace is sufficient.

In growth and joy in practicing photography, His grace is sufficient.

In learning better management of my disability, His grace is sufficient.

In the years spent learning Ephesians and Isaiah 40 by heart, His grace is sufficient.

In the trip of a lifetime to Alaska with parents, His grace is sufficient.

In sustaining Amore's job and giving him freedom to work from home, His grace is sufficient.

In last year's travel to Virginia to witness the wedding of a young lady I've loved since her infancy, and in seeing so many answered prayers in her life, His grace is sufficient.

In so very many circumstances which pushed me beyond my strength, Christ has shown Himself strong and His grace sufficient. He will do no less for you. Whatever Big Scary Thing predominates our landscape today, His grace is sufficient. We can trust Him with this.

And it is just possible that this sufficient grace comes, not despite afflictions, but because of them. As Scottish pastor Samuel Rutherford wrote,

Grace grows best in winter. Crosses are a part of our communion with Christ. There is no sweeter fellowship than to bring our wounds to Him. A heavy heart is welcome with Christ. The Lord has fully repaid my sadness with His joy and presence.... Troubles come through His fingers, and He casts sugar among them.... The heaviest end of the cross is laid upon our strong Saviour.... Glorify the Lord in your suffering and spread His banner of love over you. Others will follow you, if they see you strong in the Lord (The Loveliness of Christ).

You Crumbles have been a good part of the sugar He has sifted through His fingers with the troubles of the last decade. Thank you for your companionship, prayers, and encouragement along the way. May you know His communion in your crosses, His fellowship in your wounds. As Tolkien wrote, "The hands of the King are the hands of a healer." May His wounds heal yours, by His sufficient grace.

{Deep breath. "Publish."}

Nightingale Songs

Our Father in heaven likes songs so much that He filled the earth with birds. Each one has its own special song to sing. When the sun peeks its head up each morn, they all sing together to make a chorus of beautiful music.

The cardinals sing a song of joy:
“Sunny day! Come and play. Cheer! Cheer! Cheer! Cheer!”

The wren sings a song of love:
“Ooh la la! My Cherie, won’t you come and be my bride?”

The blue jays sing a song of warning:
“Look out! A person! A dog! Beware! Beware!”

The chickadees can hardly sing for chortling:
“Tee hee! Tee hee! Giggledy ha, ha, ha, ha!”

The mockingbirds sing songs of echo:
“Cheer! Cheer! Be my bride! Beware! Beware! Teehee! Tee hee! Ha ha ha!”

They sing, and they sing,
Songs of cheer and love and warning.
But when the sun ducks its head below the western hills
And the winking moon awakes in the east,
The daybirds cease their melodies.
The cardinals sing their young a lullaby.
The wren stops his wooing and tucks himself into his empty flower pot.
The blue jays let the owls take their turn as sentry:
“Whoo! Whoo! Whooo goes there?”

The darkness wraps the land like a blanket,
And the nightingale takes up her song.

She sings a song of darkness.
She sings a song of loneliness.

She sings, “O God my Maker!
O Lord! O heavenly Father!”

She asks, “How long?
How long will the dark night last?
How long until the sunshine of Your face returns?
How long must I sing this lonely tune?
How long?
How long?”

She cries, “Why?
Why did the sparrow fall today?
Why did the bobcat slash?
Why did You let that hailstone strike?
Why?
Why?
Why?”

All the tears her eyes can’t cry pour forth from her throat.
At last, Venus the morning star gleams in the east.

The nightingale asks, “Maker God,
Send back Your light.
Send out Your truth.
Show us Your goodness.
Shine with Your grace.”

The first bluing of the sky begins to lighten.
Morning draws near.

The nightingale breathes out the last of her melody,
“Good night.
Good morning.
Let me rest now in peace, for You are near.
The darkness will lift.
The sun does come again.”

The sun stretches sleepy arms above the eastern trees.
The cardinals wake and sing their song of cheer.
The wren returns to his wooing.
The blue jays take up their watch again.
The chickadees laugh.
The mockingbirds mimic.
The owls tuck heads under wings and fall asleep.
The nightingale, her song drained dry,
Rests in God her Maker till darkness falls again.

Sun shines.
God smiles over all the many songs He hears,
But He draws closer than close to the nightingale.
He shelters her under His wing, close to His heart.
He treasures her brokenhearted song
And comforts her sorrow

With Himself.

Brainstorming {A Poem}

Moose Tracks, February 2019

Brainstorming~
A misnomer, perhaps,
For something less like storming a castle,
More like splashing in a puddle,
Finding pictures in the clouds,
Wandering through an unfamiliar garden,
As surprised as anyone
At what lies around the next bend.

Word {A Poem}

The Lord God has given me the tongue of those who are taught,

that I may know how to sustain with a word him who is weary.

Morning by morning he awakens;

he awakens my ear to hear as those who are taught.

Isaiah 50:4 ESV

From the ESV Illuminated Bible: Art Journaling Edition

Your Word: morning light, 
Searching shadows of my heart, 
Scouring source of words.

C. S. Lewis: Advice on Writing

In the little volume C. S. Lewis: Letters to Children, the editors include a number of his letters to a young woman named Joan. From his side of their correspondence, it is clear she was an aspiring writer. (I wonder what became of her in adulthood.) In one letter he includes a short list of writing tips which I found convicting instructive:

1. Always try to use the language so as to make quite clear what you mean and make sure y[ou]r. sentence couldn't mean anything else.
2. Always prefer the plain direct word to the long, vague one. Don't implement promises, but keep them.
3. Never use abstract nouns when concrete ones will do. If you mean "More people died" don't say "Mortality rose."
4. In writing. Don't use adjectives which merely tell us how you want us to feel about the thing you are describing. I mean, instead of telling us a thing was "terrible," describe it so that we'll be terrified. Don't say it was "delightful"; make us say "delightful" when we've read the description. You see, all those words (horrifying, wonderful, hideous, exquisite) are only like saying to your readers "Please will you do my job for me."
5. Don't use words too big for the subject. Don't say "infinitely" when you mean "very"; otherwise you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite (p. 64).

As a doting aunt who has frequent occasion to talk with my youngest nephews, I find it interesting throughout these letters what a straight-shooter Lewis is with the children who take books and writing seriously. He doesn't coddle or condescend but gives their work the respect of honest criticism as well as honest praise. I can learn from that, as well as from the investment he made over years in the lives of young people he only ever met through his books and exchanged letters.

Rose from Brier

Thou hast not that, My child, but thou hast Me;

And am not I alone enough for thee?

I know it all, know how thy heart was set

Upon this joy which is not given yet.

And well I know how through the wistful days

Thou walkest all the dear familiar ways

As unregarded as a breath of air;

But there in love and longing, always there.

I know it all; but from thy brier shall blow

A rose for others. If it were not so

I would have told thee.  Come, then, say to Me:

My Lord, my Love, I am content with Thee.

The above poem grew from the pen of missionary Amy Carmichael, who served southern India in the first half of the twentieth century. She bravely put herself at risk to rescue children from enslavement as prostitutes in Hindu temples there, providing them refuge in a children's home and hospital at Dohnavur Fellowship. Elisabeth Elliot told her story in A Chance to Die, and Bishop Frank Houghton in Amy Carmichael of Dohnavur. The rescued children called her Amma, like our "Mama," and so shall I for the rest of this post.

I first made her acquaintance in a Focus on the Family cassette tape (the way we listened to recorded music and speech before CDs, which came before MP3s) my mother gave me during my high school years. I wore out the tape of that message, given by Elisabeth Elliot to Wheaton College students. In it, she recited Amma's poem "Hast Thou No Scar?" from her little volume Toward Jerusalem. That poem captured my imagination. I transcribed it, then memorized it, then went to The Mustard Seed, the Christian bookstore down the street, and gradually acquired a copy of everything they had by Elliot and what little they had by Carmichael. Later my collection grew until I had a copy (sometimes with extras to give away) of everything still in print by either lady.

Sadly for Amma, a fall in a dimly lit building rendered her an invalid in severe chronic pain for the last two decades of her life. For much of that time she was confined to her own room at Dohnavur. Happily for us, her limitations--like Paul's imprisonments in ancient times--meant that she continued her work through the written word. Most of the books she has left to us grew out of the pain that disabled her from more active forms of service.

Her poem "Rose from Brier" was first published in a book of the same name, a collection of letters "from the ill to the ill." In the essay which introduces the book, she wrote,

"reading them through I am troubled to find them so personal and sometimes so intimate. It is not that I think the personal or the intimate interesting or valuable, but that I did not know how to give the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted without giving something of my own soul also (p. 9).

Those words could apply, for me, to the blogging journey of the last 4 years (August 7) as well. So many times when some odd thing prompts me to review an older post, I'll be surprised at just how personal the words are, and how they take me back to that moment. Even in the writing process, the temptation often presses in to protect myself, to hide, not to let you in quite so far, but I know Amma is right. We rarely give and receive comfort without some foundation of friendship, and true friendship is impossible without vulnerability.

Later in the same essay, she ponders receiving a "fat parcel" of pamphlets for the sick and how they "took me nowhere."

This sounds most unmissionary; unhappily, it is true. It was not till some time later, and after several similar experiences, that it struck me perhaps the reason was because they were obviously written by the well to the ill, to do them good; and so they could only flutter past like ineffective butterflies. But I found that things written by those who were in pain themselves, or who had passed through pain to peace, like the touch of understanding in a dear human letter, did something that nothing except the words of our eternal Lord could ever do (11).

My own experience echoes hers, in that the most comforting words into my illness and pain have been those of others who have been there: Amy Carmichael herself, for one, Joni Eareckson Tada, and some "real life" friends who have been there or are there now. Elisabeth Elliot, though she didn't write out of illness and physical pain, has also spoken with authority and comfort into many of my suffering seasons, and I believe this is--in addition to the Scriptures from which she derives her ultimate authority--because she has known her own trials by fire, in the martyrdom of her first beloved husband, in the decision to go back to the jungles as a widow with a toddler daughter to take the gospel to his killers, in loss upon loss in her missionary service, and in the death by cancer of her second husband. She may not have known my particular species of brier, but she knows how thorny life can be and has found the Lord trustworthy in its midst. Her suffering enhanced the credibility of her counsel. When she used to open her radio program with the words, "You are loved with an everlasting love, and underneath are the everlasting arms," I was inclined to believe her because she had tried the One who made those promises and found Him faithful.

I haven't proven to have the courage, staying power, or impact of either Amy Carmichael or Elisabeth Elliot, but from the first posts here, this journey has comprised learning to "bless the boundaries" of my small life, to fight "through pain to peace" in the Lord even when the elusive desire of recovered health remains tantalizingly out of reach, and to trust Him to make a rose bloom for someone else out of my "brier" of pain, limitations, and disappointments. What Amma did not observe is how one rose blooming for others returns to the brier patch as a dozen, how in sharing God's comfort one's own comfort multiplies in the mysterious economy of the body of Christ. Thank you, Crumbles, for that. Thank you for sharing your own roses with me in your prayers, comments, and e-mails. God knows and will reward you for your kindnesses.

And so, as one who has received comfort in Christ, I offer a small bouquet of it to you all post by post. I pray that the Lord would scent this place with the fragrance of roses, that He would keep bringing those in the midst of their own brier patches here to smell His blossoms and share theirs with me, that He would keep bringing kingdom fruit from what's already been written and whatever He would allow and enable to be written in coming days.

Dear Crumble, maybe your "thou hast not that" has nothing to do with health or relief from chronic pain. Maybe there's some other disappointment or lack altogether which causes you to ache inside. For you I count on God's promise that "He comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any kind of affliction, through the comfort we ourselves receive from God" (2 Cor. 1:4, HCSB). May He truly use this place to comfort those in any kind of affliction with the crumbs of comfort He has given me. May He give you courage to look for roses in your own brier patch.

Know this, friend:  pain never has the last word for those who are in Christ Jesus the Lord. Never. And a day is coming when all the briers will burst forth into bloom, when the God Himself will wipe away every tear from the eyes of His people, when even our scars will become as beautiful as the risen Lord's, to the glory of the triune God.

Ann Voskamp on Family Life, Writing, and God's Mysterious Ways

This hour-long interview of One Thousand Gifts author Ann Voskamp by Dr. Marvin Olasky of Patrick Henry College encouraged me in so many ways when I viewed it Saturday. The following topics most challenged and resonated with me:

• the dedication required of her whole family during the writing process and subsequent speaking engagements,
• how she approaches the writing/blogging discipline from both logistical and spiritual perspectives,
• how trusting God when His ways don't make sense to us compares to feeding on manna from His hand,
• her response to the popularity of her book and blog,
• how she reads and how her reading informs the writing process, and
• what God is doing in her right now.

If you yourself practice writing, if Ann's story in the book blessed you, or if you are a home educator in need of encouragement, this video would, I think, be well worth your time. Settling in for a quiet hour to listen and learn from the conversation recorded here was a highlight of my week.

{If reading in a feed reader or via email, you may need to access the video on the Web at this link:
http://youtu.be/BizOQz4ZQyg.}

Sharing with Michelle, even though I heard it Saturday.

Psalmist's Prayer

Based on the gift each one has received, use it to serve others, as good managers of the varied grace of God. If anyone speaks, it should be as one who speaks God’s words; if anyone serves, it should be from the strength God provides, so that God may be glorified through Jesus Christ in everything. To Him belong the glory and the power forever and ever. Amen.

1 Peter 4:10-11, HCSB

Do you see the dove descending? Its beak is in the bottom right corner.

One reason I procrastinated ever creating a blog was the fear that it would just be a place of self-promotion, and that concern continues to flare up every now and again now in the midst of blogging. Pride and the desire for one's own glory and the approval of people are seductive and insidious temptations, able to taint even our best deeds. That recognition and the desire that this would be a place where God, not self, is glorified and where His church is edified move me almost daily to pray Ann Voskamp's prayer for upside-down blogging.

Last week after a sermon about James and John putting dibs on places of honor in Jesus' coming kingdom, I wondered again if that prayer and intention are enough or if seeking glory for oneself is inherent to the blogging (or even writing?) process. Is this still what I'm supposed to be doing? Is this still the right, best, most legitimate exercise of the writing gifts God's people affirm He has given?

It is frightening and humbling to put words and thoughts out there for the world to see. It is frightening because some of them will be wrong, and what was my private error of judgment risks influencing others along the same path, once it is shared on the screen. It is humbling because only God's Spirit gifting and guiding me in the writing and attracting and guiding you all in the reading can ever possibly effect the mysterious alchemy that occurs when the right word meets the right soul at the right moment. No matter how skillful or beautiful the writing, unless the fire of God falls on the offering, it's just so many words. Only His words always accomplish their intended purpose.

That same truth, however, gives me courage. No matter how clumsy or awkward the writing, if the Holy Spirit transforms it, it will be beautiful and glorious in God's sight. Every time I click "Publish," it is an act of faith.

Long before I even knew what a blog was, these thoughts and concerns about the writing process and writing ministry specifically shaped a prayer poem, my own upside-down blogging prayer, I suppose. In gratitude to and for the Holy Spirit whom we celebrate at Pentecost (just days ago on May 27, this year), in hope that He really can play His tune on this rinky-dink, five-note nursery piano, here it is.

Come, Spirit, come – in Thee I muse;

Illuminate my heart to choose

The words, the matter, rhythm, rhyme;

To draw men to Thy thoughts sublime.

Come, Spirit, come – O sacred flame,

Purge all that’s hostile to Thy Name,

The thorns and brambles, burn away;

Leave only roses for Thy Day.

Come, Spirit, come – O living stream,

Quench Thou my thirst till, like a dream,

Through desert heart a river flows

To water others as it goes.

Come, Spirit, come – Thou rushing wind,

Whose breath is life – Thy pure gust send

To vivify these dusty words

With the sharp strength of Thine own sword.

Come, Spirit, come – Thy holy song

Sound forth.  It is Thy tune I long

To sing to make Thy mercies known.

Minstrel and lay – be all Thine own.

In the comments: if you write, blog, or otherwise serve in artistic or creative ways, do you wrestle with these concerns? I'd love to learn from your thoughts.