Vancouver {Lone Star to Last Frontier, 2015}

For the backstory, please see the post "Courage, Dear Heart!"

{If you are viewing this in an e-mail and cannot see the photos, you may wish to visit the Web version of this blog post.}

My family spent the evening of our arrival in Vancouver strategizing how we would spend our one full day there before embarking on our cruise. My dad discovered the Hop On and Off Trolley, which proved the ideal way to maximize the amount of the city we saw within our party's walking limits.

Our journey took us past several public art installations:

To our delight, we also drove past the stadium where the US Women's National Soccer Team had won the World Cup (2015) earlier in the summer:

We left the trolley long enough to tour the Classical Chinese Garden, a peaceful and remarkable quiet refuge in the middle of the urban bustle. Although a number of Japanese gardens exist in North America (with one near us in Fort Worth), this one, according to our guide, is the only Chinese one.

bonsai crape myrtle

Silk double-sided embroidery, free of knots and loose ends on both sides

Limestone sculpted by the sea

Each of the numerous doors and windows framed a different picture as we moved through the gardens.

We reboarded the next trolley which passed the gardens and arrived at Canada Place to eat lunch and change to the Stanley Park trolley line. This was our first glimpse of the port from which we would sail the next day.

On the way to the park, we passed the Olympic torch:

Olympic torch from Vancouver's winter games

We disembarked the trolley again for the Stanley Park Rose Gardens:

Photo credit: my dad (Amore was inside the tree trunk.)

A musician played a traditional Chinese instrument along the path from the garden to the Vancouver Aquarium, our next stop:

Sea Lions

Beluga whale

Moon Jellyfish

The trolley picked us up next to the harbor to take us to Prospect Point and the Tea Room at Stanley Park, where we ate supper and enjoyed the view, grateful for the mild and sunny day God gave us in Vancouver.

"Courage, Dear Heart!" {Adventure-Bound}

At the gate, waiting for our plane to board

When 2014 was new, my parents told Amore and me that they wanted to take each of their daughters on a special trip. Terza’s family had chosen Walt Disney World, since Rocky and the Thunder Twins were just old enough to appreciate it, so we needed to consider where we’d like to go.

Amore was excited, but then I suspect he secretly keeps a packed carry-on and passport in the back of his office closet “just in case.” (You can take the boy out of the mission field, but you can’t take the mission field out of the boy.) I, on the other hand, was mostly panicked. Those who have followed my travel attempts since 2010 can understand why, in my rheumatologist’s words, I might “seem to have a little travel-related post-traumatic stress going on here.”

But this was important to the three other people involved, which made it important to me, and my rational self knew it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Amore immediately started researching the most exotic, rugged wilderness locations in North America. After burying my head in the sand a while, I asked a well-traveled friend for suggestions we could all 4 enjoy. Based on an extended family vacation of her own, she recommended an Alaskan cruise. With a balcony room, beautiful scenery would be accessible from our own cabin for anyone who needed to stay and rest, but the wide range of excursion options would accommodate more active inclinations too.

We booked passage for the May 2015, made airline reservations, renewed passports, and began thinking through what we had and what we lacked for the trip. My doctors all approved, but as the journey approached and tasks began to be checked off our list, my anxiety only increased. When unforeseen circumstances postponed our journey until September, the delay only worsened the worry cycle.

Three times in 2 months we planned to visit Amore’s family a couple of hundred miles away; my health or pain level postponed the visit twice, and the third time he went without me. How would I manage a couple of thousand miles away, and outside the lower 48 states, no less? Yet I was ashamed and lonely in my anxiety, chastising myself for ingratitude.

In addition, several ongoing situations left me worried about being out of touch with the home front for 2 weeks. Besides that, we’d never left the Ebony Dog or Wits’ End for that long; the last time we were away from home for 15 days was for a mission trip to Southeast Asia in 2000, before those trials had arisen, when all we had was a 1 bedroom apartment of borrowed furniture, and my dog Steinway was already in the care of my parents, in preparation for our imminent overseas move. At that time I was running 4 to 6 miles a day and only had one chronic illness, which we knew how to manage and did not pose a difficulty with travel.

The final months before the cruise included emergencies in every single area of concern, and some I hadn’t thought to worry about. None of them caused lasting or life-changing harm, but they only fueled my fears. My good ankle swelled up without any inciting trauma, resulting in the same diagnosis the other ankle has had for 3 years. Both my sisters and a brother-in-law moved and changed jobs. My mother and I both suffered painful falls. A nephew had a swimming accident that was 20 underwater seconds away from tragedy. (He’s fine, and it was astonishingly, graciously minor in hindsight, after the initial, fraught 48 hours.) Even though being home didn’t prevent any of them, it felt more right to be with hurting family members in person and by phone, to take Ebony to the vet myself for his first-ever back problem and work out the needed behavior modifications, and to be able to check the back garden morning and evening after the watering timer broke and turned the lawn into a swamp. I feared being out of touch for 2 weeks and returning to find those I love had been suffering without me even knowing how to pray. Sometimes a vivid imagination can be a blessing, but where worry is concerned, it’s definitely a liability.

This is not a how-to-beat-anxiety post, in the event you’re still reading and hadn’t figured that out yet. If anything, it’s a how-I-was-anxious-and-the-Lord-rescued-me-in-spite-of-myself post. God-sized challenges, some much bigger than a cruise, have not stopped since our return, and I need to remember how He got me through this one as a means of grace to (please, Lord) get from fear to faith sooner next time.

• Recollect. The Lord graciously used a sermon clip to remind me of Lloyd-Jones's words on the merits of talking to oneself, and I realized they exactly described what I’d been doing: listening to myself instead of talking to myself. As I began reminding myself of the Scriptures I knew and the Bible stories of impossible victories in times past, the words, “Courage, dear heart!” bubbled up again and again in my soul. My concordance didn’t reveal anywhere in the Bible for that precise phrase, so I asked Google, which pointed me to The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. (Lewis. Of course it would be Lewis.) My body and hands were too full of duties to read it all in search of that one phrase, so I listened as I worked, and in listening discovered the passage and the treasure in that phrase.

• Recognize and repent. One lesson the Lord has been teaching me in the last few years is that an immediate impulse to fear in response to an actual threat may be a biological process I can’t control and an emotion I cannot extinguish, but what I do from there is my choice and responsibility.
  
  If I take the fear and threat straight to God and lay hold of His grace to exercise the will His Spirit rules to fill my mind with truth that will eventually replace the fear with peace, all is well. If, however, I take the fear to my imagination, if I coddle and indulge it so that it spirals into catastrophizing, I sin. If I allow the fear, especially fear of a threat which only yet exists in my imagination, to persuade me not to obey God’s will, I sin. If I let fear restrain me from loving my neighbor, I sin.
  
  Once the Lord illumined the fact that I was sinning in my indulgence of an anxiety that could only bring selfishness and retreat from God’s path, I saw how ugly it was and turned from the fear to the Lord. Or perhaps I should say “began turning,” for it was at least a daily need to turn my heart toward Him and away from fear’s bullying taunts.

• Remember. Remembrance is one gracious means of abiding in an attitude of repentance and faith. The Scriptures both model this and provide content for remembrance. Starting there primed the pump for my personal remembrance of the “memorial stones” God has raised in my life, and there have been plenty of God-sized challenges in which He has shown Himself strong on my behalf. To help with this I ordered a pendant from Etsy with the simple words, “Courage, dear heart.” The weight of it on my chest reminded me of God’s invitation to trust Him.
• Request. I admitted my powerlessness and anxiety and asked for help, from God first and from a few trusted friends second. “Show up and show off, Lord. I can’t do this unless you do.”


• Respond with resolve. Taking a deep breath and stepping forward into the actions God had assigned to me, saturating every step with prayer, helped prepare the way for whatever “adventure Aslan would send” and also helped calm my anxiety. Planning was able to mitigate some of my concerns and make arrangements in advance for my known medical problems in case my joints behaved badly or medications had to be replaced onboard ship despite every safeguard.
  
  Every time fear reared its ugly head, God’s grace enabled me toward fresh resolve to trust Him and open my hands to His will. If that meant this voyage would be more painful than pleasant, repentance and remembrance enabled me to pray, “Thy will be done,” and to recognize that His presence would drive out fear in the deep waters, fiery trials, and dark valleys, just as much as in clear skies and blue waters. Unbelief is worse than pain, if He is with me in the pain.

• Rallying cry. Finally, over and over again, when fear threatened or my body wasn’t up to the day’s demands, I placed my hand on my chest or took the pendant in my fingers and whispered, “Courage, dear heart. Courage.” (Actually, this has outlasted the cruise.) And to the Lord, “Show up and show off, Lord. Your will be done.”

There’s my Ebenezer, Crumbles, my "Thus far the Lord has helped me." If you who are reading this feel anxious today, I pray God meets you through these words, if only to let you know that you aren’t alone in your fear and that He is big enough for your need.

May He give you grace and strength to recollect the need of talking to yourself, repent of giving fear its head, remember His ways and works, request help in prayer, respond with resolve and obedient trust, and rally your soul with the cry, "Courage, dear heart!"

In the next several posts, I look forward to sharing with you what God did on this journey last September and what I would have missed if He had not pulled me out of the paralysis of anxiety into obedience, whatever the outcome.

"Courage, Dear Heart!" {Dawn Treader}

And he said, “O man greatly loved, fear not, peace be with you; be strong and of good courage.” And as he spoke to me, I was strengthened and said, “Let my lord speak, for you have strengthened me.”

(Daniel 10:19, ESV)

"But you, take courage! Do not let your hands be weak, for your work shall be rewarded."

(2 Chronicles 15:7 ESV)

{Spoiler alert applies to the following.}

In The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, near the middle* of The Chronicles of Narnia series, Caspian, Reepicheep, Lucy, Edmund, Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and the rest of the crew sail east toward the end of the Narnian world on a ship called Dawn Treader. Their journey takes them to many islands, rescuing or at least discovering the fates of many lost Narnian lords along the way and having a boatload of adventures as varied and curious as those of Odysseus. It includes several vivid and memorable vignettes, notably the dragoning and undragoning of a certain hard-to-like character and the fulfillment of a valiant mouse's lifelong desire. Although its episodic character prevents it from being my favorite of the Narnian stories, one brief portion took on sweet personal meaning for me a few months ago, and you will need this glimpse as background for an upcoming post.

Perhaps the most frightening island they encounter, described in chapter 12, is called the Dark Island: an island where dreams--all sorts of dreams, not just the happy ones--come true and where the darkness is so intense and palpable that it quenches all light.

That combination of intense darkness and horrific dreams begins to drive the crew mad, and no matter how long or hard they row, they make no apparent progress whatsoever in escaping this desperate place.

As despair sets in, Lucy whispers a call for help from the only source she knows for such a need:

 "Aslan, Aslan, if ever you loved us at all, send us help now." The darkness did not grow any less, but she began to feel a little--a very, very little--better....
     "Look!" cried Rynelf's voice hoarsely from the bows. There was a tiny speck of light ahead, and while they watched, a broad beam of light fell from it upon the ship. It did not alter the surrounding darkness, but the whole ship was lit up as if by searchlight....
     "Lucy looked along the beam and presently saw something in it. At first it looked like a cross, then it looked like an aeroplane, then it looked like a kite, and at last with a whirring of wings it was right overhead and was an albatross. It circled three times round the mast and then perched for an instant on the crest of the gilded dragon at the prow. It called out in a strong sweet voice what seemed to be words though no one understood them. After that it spread its wings, rose, and began to fly slowly ahead, bearing a little to starboard. ...no one except Lucy knew that as it circled the mast it had whispered to her, "Courage, dear heart," and the voice, she felt sure, was Aslan's, and with the voice a delicious smell breathed in her face (350-351, The Complete Chronicles of Narnia).

The crew follows the albatross without dispute. Gradually the darkness lightens and they escape to continue their adventure. If Lucy were a real girl who had come through this trial, I wonder if she would have entirely regretted it or been glad afterward of that great need that gave her a sweet and calming encounter with her beloved Aslan.

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*It's either the third or fifth, depending on whether one counts according to order of publication or order of narrative chronology. The book links here are affiliate links.

On the Merits of Talking to Oneself

Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God. My soul is cast down within me; therefore I remember you from the land of Jordan and of Hermon, from Mount Mizar. Deep calls to deep at the roar of your waterfalls; all your breakers and your waves have gone over me. By day the LORD commands his steadfast love, and at night his song is with me, a prayer to the God of my life. I say to God, my rock: “Why have you forgotten me? Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?” (Psalm 42:5-9 ESV)

Goldfinches taking lunch in the rain

In the previous century, Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, who worked as a physician prior to entering the pastorate, preached a series of sermons on Psalms 42-43 concerning what he called "spiritual depression," that condition of a "cast down" and "disquieted" soul David expressed in those Psalms. We who were not present in the Westminster Chapel as he spoke can give thanks that his sermons were transcribed and edited into book form and may even be heard via streaming audio at the Martyn Lloyd-Jones Trust website.

Even if I should forget the rest of the edifying book, I hope always to remember a particular bit of counsel as a help in "preaching the gospel to myself" when I begin to give way to discontent, anxiety, and generally being cast down in soul. Lord willing, a future post will refer to and describe an application of this concept. In the mean time, here is the doctor-pastor's advice for such seasons:

"Have you realized that most of your unhappiness in life is due to the fact that you are listening to yourself instead of talking to yourself? Take those thoughts that come to you the moment you wake up in the morning. You have not originated them, but they start talking to you, they bring back the problems of yesterday, etc. Somebody is talking. Who is talking to you? Your self [similar to the "flesh" or "the old man" of the New Testament epistles] is talking to you. Now this man's treatment was this; instead of allowing this self to talk to him, he starts talking to himself. 'Why art thou cast down, O my soul?' he asks. His soul had been depressing him, crushing him. So he stands up and says: 'Self, listen for a moment, I will speak to you'.

"...The main art in the matter of spiritual living is to know how to handle yourself. You have to take yourself in hand, you have to address yourself, preach to yourself, question yourself. You must say to your soul: 'Why art thou cast down'--what business have you to be disquieted? ...then you must go on to remind yourself of God, Who God is, and what God is and what God has done, and what God has pledged Himself to do. Then having done that, end on this great note:  defy yourself, and defy other people, and defy the devil and the whole world, and say with this man: 'I shall yet praise Him for the help of His countenance, who is also the health of my countenance and my God'. 

"...The essence of this matter is to understand that this self of ours, this other man within us, has got to be handled. Do not listen to him; turn on him; speak to him; ...exhort him; encourage him; remind him of what you know, instead of listening placidly to him and allowing him to drag you down and depress you. For that is what he will always do if you allow him to be in control. The devil takes hold of self and uses it in order to depress us. We must stand up as this man did and say: 'Why art thou cast down? Why art thou disquieted within me?' Stop being so! Hope thou in God, for I shall yet praise Him for the help of His countenance,' He, 'who is the health of my countenance and my God.'"
~Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Its Cures, 20-21 [affiliate link]

How do we do this in actual fact? Here are three suggestions, but feel free to add more in the comments:

• Saturate your soul with Scripture. Fill your mind so full of truth that there's little room for panic. Read, listen, memorize, meditate, pray, study, sing, speak, . . . Take advantage of every means available to steep in God's Words.
• Sing. Sing to God and sing to your soul. If you look in a hymnal, the songs there are a mix of pure Godward praise and truth sung to each other. Sometimes those body-directed songs shore up my soul. "How Firm a Foundation" and "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God" are two of my favorites of that type.
• Savor and share the souvenirs. When imagination paints catastrophic scenes, eject that disc and instead replay God's great deliverances and kept promises of the past. Search your memory for times you trusted Him and He came through for you, or even times you gave worry its head and He came through for you anyway. If you're a new Christian, tell yourself (and someone else, if possible) the story of how God saved you. Savoring the great deliverances recorded in Scripture helps immensely, too, and the words on the page can anchor thoughts so they don't stray into worried imaginings again.

May the Lord bless these thoughts to your encouragement in fighting the good fight of faith. Grace and peace to you in Christ Jesus!

Healing and God's Servants

Last weekend I came upon this essay, written around the time in 2001 when we decided the Lord was using my illness to bring us back to the United States to get the needed treatment. It encouraged me, so I prayerfully share it with you, despite its length. Grace and peace to you in Christ Jesus, crumbles.

Rosemary in bloom

As it has become increasingly evident that the illness I have developed in Thailand will not be resolved here, we (Allen and I) have engaged in several conversations in various contexts about God’s power to heal. We firmly believe that God still can and does heal supernaturally, even apart from medical means. Granted, that does not seem to be the norm, especially in America, but seems more common in developing countries where needy people have much less access to medical care.

Even so, He has not chosen to heal me of this illness at this time, with or without natural means as His instrument, and now that illness is bringing us home from the foreign mission field, probably permanently. Have we not prayed? Of course we have. We have also been supported in prayer by many believers in many nations and from all walks of life, ranging from our Thai maid to our elders in Texas to the archbishop of the Anglican province of Southeast Asia. Missionaries and church leaders have laid hands on me to pray for God’s healing touch, but the illness has marched on unphased and so far eluding conclusive diagnosis.

Have we not faith? Only the Lord knows our hearts, but in all sincerity we believe that He has given us faith for my healing, if that be His will.

Perhaps this is spiritual warfare, Satan’s attempt to interfere with God’s work in Asia by bringing us home? Quite possibly, since Satan was instrumental in both Job’s afflictions and Paul’s thorn in the flesh. Nonetheless, he cannot touch a hair on my head without my Daddy’s permission, and he must withdraw the moment God commands it. Moreover, he cannot hinder God’s work here simply by bringing us home; in fact, this experience serves to remind us as missionaries that we are dispensable. God accomplishes His purposes in spite of us, not because of us, and He certainly does not need us as instruments. Rather, He condescends to use such dust people as we are so that all the world may see that the great power must be His alone (2 Cor 4:7).

The implication in many of our conversations about the cause of my illness and the possibility of God’s supernatural healing has been that as a missionary, as a professional minister of the gospel, I should have more reason to expect that than the average rank-and-file believer. After all, I have to be healthy to do the job I’ve been given to do, right? Actually, the opposite seems to be true.

Looking beyond my own illness to the broader issue of God’s healing and His servants, it becomes apparent how often biblically and historically those who had been instruments of others’ healing did not experience the same healing power of God for their own illnesses. Elisha died from an illness he contracted, though God had used him for the healing of many. Paul received a “no,” in no uncertain terms, after 3 prayers for his own healing. Timothy had some sort of digestive problem demanding medicinal use of wine. Epaphroditus was sent home to the Philippians after a near-fatal illness at Paul’s side in ministry. Had these no faith, no favor with God? Yet they were all afflicted or even struck down by illness while in the throes of ministry. Even Christ on the cross faced taunts that, “He who saved others – Himself He cannot save!”

Historically, the record is no less auspicious: preachers Charles Spurgeon and Dwight L. Moody, missionaries Amy Carmichael and Lilias Trotter, hymnwriters Fanny Crosby and George Matheson, all suffered from chronic illness or disability. And that hardly touches the tip of the iceberg. Francis Schaeffer fought through the pain of cancer for the last 5 years of his life and ministry. Indeed, as one considers the vast proportion of God’s vocational ministers under some trial of long-term illness, Teresa of Avila’s cry comes to mind: “If this is the way You treat Your friends, no wonder You have so few!”

Why this special attention from God to give so very many of His most prominent servants (myself NOT included in that category!) a painful thorn to endure? Wouldn’t they, wouldn’t we, be more effective and productive in good health?

Not necessarily. But even if we grant that assumption, it overlooks that God’s work in us takes priority over His work through us. Primary in His purposes is to deal with pride in the human heart, the chief enemy to our intimacy with Him and the root of all other sins. Due to the undeserved and perhaps excessive lavishing of praise and applause on the ministers rather than the God who works through them, we ministry folks may have a heightened propensity to this sin compared to the rest of Adam’s seed (cp 2 Cor 12:7-10; Num 12). Even as insignificant as our little role as missionaries has been in the grand scheme of things, we receive constant bombardment with temptation and encouragement to believe that we ourselves are something. Thus, we find ourselves especially in need of the reminder that we are dust (humus in Latin, from which we get “humility”), wholly dependent on God’s inbreathing, indwelling Spirit. Illness serves as a constant lesson in the inadequacy of our natural human resources; a supernatural task requires supernatural power. God alone – not our strength, skill, or dedication – changes hearts.

Also, illness can serve as a means of guidance and redirection in ministry. Some sort of physical affliction brought Paul and the gospel to the Galatian churches. As previously mentioned, illness brought Epaphroditus home to his loved ones. Illness confined David to the palace in his last years and prompted the passing of the crown to Solomon even before David’s death. Illness served as the means of Amy Carmichael’s relocation from Japan to China to Ceylon to India and the Schaeffers’ move from Switzerland to Rochester, Minnesota, to establish a still-flourishing L’Abri branch there. Though Allen and I don’t yet know to what the Lord is redirecting us, we have no doubt that my illness and our move home evince His hand leading us not only away, but toward.

Furthermore, so many times we observe that physical affliction serves as a greater platform for ministry, not a hindrance, or opens the door to a new ministry otherwise improbable. Fanny Crosby’s or George Matheson’s hymns take on a new significance when we realize they were written from blindness and not a painless, thornless ignorance of suffering. Joni Eareckson Tada has been uniquely qualified for her ministry to people with disabilities through her own disability. Only a fellow-sufferer can truly share comfort first received for themselves with those in direst need without giving the impression of spouting empty platitudes a la Job’s friends. Closer to my own neck of the woods, a pair of dear friends in chronic pain and physical weakness constantly challenge me as living sermons on the reality of God’s rest, joy, and peace sufficient for all circumstances. God has evidently used pain to soften them and pare them down so that more of Him glows through.

This process is not automated or mechanical, however. Any trial acts as a refiner’s fire and brings all manner of dross up to the surface. Apart from God’s grace, however, the dross remains there, and the ill one can become entangled by bitterness, self-pity, selfishness, or even arrogance in wearing suffering as a medal of honor. But with God’s grace to remain open to His activity, that refining process purifies and purges, until the molten silver reflects His face.

Countless others have found themselves moved by illness or age out of “limelight” ministries into the ministry of secret prayer, difficult to overestimate in significance though often overlooked and unnoticed. And beyond even that ministry, there have been times when I have been so exhausted by illness that even prayer was beyond my strength. Learning simply to be before the Lord, my very self a prayer, and to let Him as my Shepherd cradle me in His arms, receiving nothing from me in return, is its own lesson, as well.

In summary, both my illness and the evidence of the great crowd of witnesses send the resounding testimony that God’s puzzling refusal of healing power to His ministers (in this life), though granted to many outside of vocational ministry, serves to advance His purposes and kingdom. As Elisabeth Elliot often says, “Let’s never forget that some of God’s greatest mercies are His refusals. He says no that He may, in some way we cannot imagine, say yes. All His ways with us are merciful. His meaning is always love.” What may appear or even be intended by Satan as a hindrance to God’s work in the world actually advances it! With the magnificence of divine irony, by pruning us of all illusion of our own assets and competence and often slowing our hectic pace to make us lie down in green pastures at His feet, He strips away the pride that obscures His glorious display of strength in us. Let us then say with Paul, “I delight in weaknesses, for when I am weak, HE is strong!”