The way I saw it...

A translated heart...

Sometimes I'm just in a certain kind of mood, and everything comes into my head in russian.
This week has been that way with me preparing a meal of ukrainian food for supper with our family small group last evening.  It was such a joy to me to cook these favorites once again, I forgot how much I loved it.

I am very thankful to be where I am.  I love my life.  I love my church.  I love my home.  Still... I protect that part of my heart that is somehow forever translated into another place and time. 

Isaiah 1

What a sermon yesterday!  Love that guy.


I woke up this morning thinking about the passage from Isaiah 1, and something additional dawned on me...  I have heard verse 18 many times in my life, most often in a song;


¹⁸"...though your sins are like scarlet,
   they shall be as white as snow;
though they are red like crimson,
   they shall become like wool."


I realize, of course, that this truth applies to all of our sins.  After the message, though, I realized that in context, the sins being addressed are the rebellion and calloused hearts that turned from God and did not


¹⁷learn to do good;
 seek justice,
   correct oppression;
bring justice to the fatherless,
   plead the widow’s cause."

These are the sins that are like scarlet, and will be made white as snow when we humble ourselves in willingness and obedience to our God, whose heart runs to rescue of His children. 


Don't miss an opportunity to help.  Check out the upcoming Haiti Relief Concert, and International Justice Mission.   Listen to the message from yesterday for more options and details.

two great loves of my life...

December

Yesterday she wanted to help shovel the driveway for Daddy...

This morning, she prefers to enjoy it from inside the window...

I think the snow was a bit more than she expected! ;)

A new kind of thankful

She sat by my happy fire the other day and remembed aloud a moment in time when she began to love her body again.  She had been down a path no one chooses and she knows what it's like to feel as though your body has betrayed you, let you down.  Still, she came to a point where she was able to see her body as a noble foxhole partner instead of a treacherous betrayer.

That's where I need to get to in my head.  I need to be thankful.  Not just thankful for the diagnoses I've received of "No Evidence of Disease"; but for this body herself.  So, in one of my recent awakenesses, I began a list of things about this body that I am thankful for...

I say, "Thank you, Lord...

...that my body kept the cancer contained and didn't allow it to spread.

...that she tolerates pain well.

...that she is so unique as to have required custom care solutions.

...that she would not be ignored when a PE was threatening her.

...that she stores calories so well ~ I will not starve! (creative thankfulness!)

...that her skin held out valiantly to the burning, cutting, stretching required.

...that her eyes are still blue.

...that her hair faithfully returned and continues to grow.

...that she has a strong immune system that carried us through chemotherapy on track.

...that my strong heart absorbed the abuses of Herceptin and pumps faithfully still.

...that her bones are strong.

...that scars do fade.

Father, YOU created this body for me, knowing what would be asked of her.  Thank you."

And for some perspective on what has been asked of her, I made a list of all the things we were doing at one point or another...probing, testing, hurting, cutting, tearing, disecting, chopping, poisoning, tapping, weakening, blocking, starving, arresting, preventing, burning, irradiating, scorching, cooking, tightening, thinning, pushing, stretching, sucking, shaping, sewing, fixing, healing...

Can it be, then, that my cancer IS gone? That I can learn to love this body and imagine a long future together?   I think maybe so and today, I am a new kind of thankful.

dreams and stories

Two years ago, my precious friend wrote a song that God gave to her after a conversation we'd had as I was taking my first steps on the road through Cancer.  It moves me greatly every time I sing it, and I find my heart reminding itself of the truth contained in the lyrics... "Soli Deo Gloria..." and "I will not be alone... closer than I've ever been..." The abiding presence of God is something I definitely can attest to from my darkest hours of suffering.

One of my most favorite lines from that song is the one that says, "It means laying down your dreams, and trusting in Me."  When she wrote the song 2 years ago that's exactly what I was doing.  I was laying down my dreams for ministry as a missionary, and for our family as a unit.  I had to choose to trust God and know that He would take care of us.  I had to step onto the sharp belief that God loves my family more than I do.  At that point, my 'dream' became so small in comparison to what it had been... I just wanted to survive.  The thing about that is, what happens after you've survived?

In my experience, God definitely used my suffering, and He seems to still be using me in a variety of ways; but what happens when you're all out of dreams?  When you don't have any real substantive vision for the future because you're afraid of what you might lose (all over again.)?  I really have been trying to live each day to it's fullest and be who God is making me to be.  Still, I don't think one can really embrace tomorrow without a vision for it or a God-given dream to chase.

This past weekend I went with the band to play for worship and a concert in Iowa.  We sang a new song that she wrote.  It's called "Created For" and it talks about a growing dream that's scary and new; but that it's what we were always meant to be.  It was the theme song for the conference.

We had practiced this song several times as a band; but as I sang it for the first time in front of the crowd on Saturday, I could hardly finish singing as God sang the song back into my soul.  I didn't hear an audible voice, that's not the point... I know, with certainty, that God healed a piece of my heart in that moment.  I understand that I can still dream... even better than that ~ I should still dream.  I can remember and adapt the same essential dreams I had before cancer.  I can hold them up for God to take or change or enhance.  I can still dream of doing that which I was created for.  I don't know what all that is going to mean at this point; but I know God is faithful.  I know He's at work in my life and on my behalf.

One of the reasons that this is so important to me ties back to some of the other reflecting I've been doing this fall.  If you read my CaringBridge entries, you might recall some thoughts about the stories I hear in my head each year now as this time rolls around.  Fear pesters me and I begin to prepare my life to move ahead without me.  Another wise friend told me that I needed to think about writing some new stories.  I recognized quickly that she was right; but hadn't a clue about how to do that.  See how it connects to what I wrote up above?  How do you write new stories when you have no vision?  Even when I realize that the story is not mine to write, I am stuck.  I have struggled to open the 'book of my heart' to God... I don't like the plot line that He wrote on the last several pages.  It is not so simple to trust Him to write a story I like on the pages ahead. 

It's unbelief, I know.  I have been praying against it and I know some others have too.  Here's what happened this weekend... I have been given a peace that was so lacking in my soul.  I feel like God said, "It's okay.  I know you're afraid; but I'm NOT DONE WRITING.  You have more story to tell."  There is healing in my heart today I am making ready for the writing.

This morning my handsome, intuitive, loving, firstborn son opened a conversation with me like this;

"Mom, are you okay?"

"Sure," I said, "Why do you ask?"

He said, "You just seem like something changed.  You seem more like you did in Ukraine."

"Wow, son.  Y'got a minute?  Come sit down and let me tell you a story..."