Bittersweet

I read an astounding few verses of Scripture the other day.  They came from Psalm 119:76-77.

It was good for me to be afflicted so that I might learn your decrees.  The law from your mouth is more precious to me than thousands of pieces of silver and gold.  Your hands made me and formed me; give me understanding to learn your commands.  May those who fear you rejoice when they see me, for I have put my hope in your Word.  I know, O Lord, that your laws are righteous, and in faithfulness you have afflicted me.  May your unfailing love be my comfort, according to your promise to your servant.  Let your compassion come to me that I may live, for your law is my delight.

I couldn’t believe what I was reading.  Not only am I supposed to be happy about being afflicted I’m expected to request afflictions so that I can learn to live.  Now I don’t think that God afflicts people so they can learn how to suffer and die; I think these afflictions are meant to teach us how to live with Christ as our center.  Afflictions teach us that without God we are nothing.

For in our suffering we become Christ-like to the point where Christ shines from us like a beacon of hope.  People who see you may not understand what you are going through, or even know what you are going through.  The one thing they do know is that they want what you so obviously have.  They want that hope exuding from you in streams.  They want that unfailing love that seems to surround you like a blanket. They want that security that seems to have you planted like a rock in the middle of cyberspace.

Through our walk the light of an eternal God shines forth and we become a radiant lighthouse for those whose hope is nearly gone.  Being a lighthouse is a lot of work.  We have to be obedient to God, not easy when we’re used to ordering the world around us.  We have to continually search God out through studying his Word so that we understand his precepts and can share them with others.  We have to believe without reservation what we can neither see nor hear nor touch. 

God is good at making the intangible tangible.  Walking through life is full of pitfalls and dangers, and sometimes we get stuck in the mire.  I’ve often been tempted during those times to give up and say God doesn’t care about me so why should I care about anyone else.  Then I remember that just because I can’t see him doesn’t mean he’s not there.  He’s always there and we can see him if we want to in many small but significant ways.

Sometimes God is in the whisper of the wind in the pines above our house.  Sometimes he’s in the billowing clouds in the sky wafting across the mountains.  One day he was a beautiful doe standing still in the woods by the creek.  Another day he was the sound of children laughing. Many times he’s the next song on my play list.  He’s a big God who knows how to work in the smallest of ways to reach even the most destitute, hidden, lonely, hurting people. 

I wear a lot of purple.  I have purple shoes and purple coats.  Even my keyboard is purple.  People laugh at my purple mania.  I get a lot of advice centering around the discovery of other colors in the palette.  True, purple is my favorite color, in all its shades and nuances.  Most people assume I’m nuts and never ask why purple is my favorite color.  If they did this is what I’d tell them.

Purple reminds me that I am a child of the King.  I am a member of the royal family; I have a place in his heavenly mansion.  When I see purple I think about God and how he has so often brought me out of the mire.  I get stuck a lot so I need God a lot.  He’s never let me down though I have often failed by thinking he has. Very simply I forgot to look for him and because I didn’t look, I didn’t find him.  But he was there all along, waiting for me to see him.

When cancer came along I finally learned how to see him everywhere, even in the bleak mid-winter of tax season.  Cancer is a bitter pill to swallow, yet so sweet when I think that it brought me closer to him.  The bitter and the sweet are part of our lives here on earth.  Pain and sorrow teach us the beauty of God’s unfailing love.  It is in the bitter that we learn to run to God and find the sweetness of his mercy and grace. There’s nothing quite like the safety of the Father’s hands.

I’ve seen the hardships of life turn many a person to dark, dreary thoughts of gloom and doom.  And there they remain, unable to see beyond the bitterness to which they cling so mightily, some to an untimely death.  It would be easy, oh so easy, to give in to the threat of cancer or whatever it is that’s hurting you.  But don’t do it.  Run to the Father as fast as you can.  Look for him in the rustling leaves, a rambling brook, a child’s heartbeat, the squeak of a rocking chair.  Once you find him, stay a while.  The Father’s comfort is like no other.

Go Ahead and Cry

This past week I had to go back to the chemo therapy doctor for a checkup. He seemed surprised that the blood work didn’t show any cancer markers.  I’m not surprised he thought that; it was what the Enemy kept telling me for a week before the appointment – the blood will show you are riddled with cancer; you will die within months.   

Such a cold, hard threat! Obviously, he's never met my God.  Oh, he may think he has, but he hasn't.  My God is a wild, outrageous God who loves unconditionally and whose burning fire in my soul compels me toward him and his path for my life.

Instead of choosing to accept this decree over my life, I ran to God, who gave me soothing Scripture.  It happened to be John 15:7-9 -- If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you. This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.  “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love.” 

As I left the appointment God gave me the opportunity to encourage a co-worker who has been diagnosed with cancer and was coming in for a treatment.  He is a dapper, distinguished-looking gentleman; a little pale and a little sad this day.  I hope my words brought him some measure of comfort.  What I hope most for him is that he, too, runs to God rather than believing the Enemy’s lies.

When I arrived back at work another Scripture was waiting for me, this time from Psalm 62:5-7 – Find rest, O my soul, in God alone; my hope comes from him.  He alone is my rock and my salvation; he is my fortress, I will not be shaken.  My salvation and my honor depend on God; he is my mighty rock, my refuge. 

Running to God has taught me that God never gives up; there is always hope in him – even if the cancer comes back, even if it kills me.  God is there, always.  I am safe with my Father.  Healing, as Kay Arthur says, is sometimes not what we expect it to be but as we choose to believe, obey, and cling to God and his Word, healing appears. 

That is reason enough for the Enemy to cry; he loses again.  Of course, he doesn’t like losing, so I’m sure he’ll be back.  But I have the response down now – run to God as quickly as you can.  Pray and read Scripture.  Go to the Father – it’s what he demands.  Obey even if your emotions are raw and you don’t want to.  Cling to him when your world is falling apart even if your mind tells you to go lie in bed and wait to die.  There is life in the Father, and hope, and love, and healing.

Right after running to God, I run to people I know support and love me along my journey, sometimes when I least deserve it.  They don’t feel sorry for me; instead they gather around and pray for me, instruct me if I’ve made an unwise choice, and rein me back in when I’m in a hurry.  I need their support; they keep me grounded.  God gives us people like this because he knows we need the connection.  We need God’s people to surround us and help care for us.  Their viewpoint is often much clearer than mine.

I hate admitting I need help; I’ve been on my own so long that I sometimes fall into the trap of believing I don’t need anybody else.  Connecting with others means I have to be open and honest, facing the possibility of rejection. It would be oh, so easy to whine and cry and grieve for myself and this dark reality I have to face with cancer always looming in the background.  I fear that others, should I go to them and let them in on my battle, will actually do something to pull me up out of the mire I’ve settled in.

God designed the body of Christ that way.  He wants us to seek each other out and encourage one another.  I need people who will laugh with me, cry with me, pick me up when I fall, send me down the right road, pray with me, counsel me, forgive my errors, accept me for who I am, and love me anyway. These people help me learn each day to submit, to obey, to forgive, to honor, to be kind, and to serve without reservation.

I chose the people I told about the Big C very carefully.  I knew I could count on them to bring me up out of that mire and agree with me in prayer that God’s healing was forever, even if healing meant an early demise.  Scripture calls us to connect with each other, to weep with one another, to counsel and teach one another, to depend on each other as the body of Christ. We bear each other’s burdens, minister in love to each other, and experience healing together. 

Early on in my journey with cancer I participated in a women’s conference at our church.  It was a relatively small gathering but an important one. One of the best things that happened was an altar call where I had several Church of God saints praying over me.  There’s no experience quite like it.  Your trial is lifted up to God by their hands and you have a bond with them that is unequaled.  That is when you truly know how much being a part of the body of Christ matters.  The body of Christ sustains you.  I am less without them, my journey more difficult and dark.

Please note that when I speak of connecting I’m not talking about just the people at the church I attend; I’m talking about the entire body of Christ, all believers.  Some of the most able support I have found has been that of co-workers who have come alongside me and kept me going.  Most times they had no idea I wanted to give up and quit.  That one kind word or action did more on those days than they will ever know this side of heaven. 

What I love most about my “connectors” is that they don’t avoid the truth.  They are willing to tell me when I’m wrong then stand ready to help me figure out how to make it right or do the right thing.  They comfort me when I’ve made an error, but they don’t let me get away with them.  These folks make me face the problem and work with me to overcome it.  They cover their truth-telling with love for me.  Their love carries me over the threshold of grief and burden to a place where I can make mistakes and be forgiven, have things done to me and forgive, and move forward. Having these folks around makes it possible to be positive, even when the subject is cancer.

Faces

Rodney Griffin doesn’t know who I am but I know him.  He’s a songwriter and a singer with Greater Vision.  Their albums were often all that kept me from jumping off the cliff of “I don’t care anymore.”  Their songs went with me every day to radiation treatments, followed me to work on days I felt like death warmed over, and rocked me to sleep at night when all I could do was cry.  While I didn't experience the side effects of radiation and chemo therapy as doctors expected, I was worn out from the impossible schedule I kept trying to keep it all together.

Rodney has no idea what his songs have done for me. I am one of those faces he will see when God shows him the lives of the people he has unknowingly touched with his ministry. I'm one of the many he has touched without knowingly having done so.  But I treasure the songs he writes because they keep me going, even as the enemy tries to tear me down again, piece by piece, threat by threat.

There were so many songs on Greater Visions albums that kept me going – God Wants to Hear You Sing, The Source of My Song, He’s Still Waiting at the Well, He Is to Me, Pile of Crowns, They Should Have Cried Holy, With All the Many Miracles, Just Ask – but of all of them the one that most taught me how to see cancer through Jesus’ eyes it is He’ll Carry Me, reproduced for you below:

HE’LL CARRY ME

Rodney Griffin

He took the lifeless body down from Calvary

Struggled just to stand beneath the load

The blood spilled on his hands and on his clothing

Still Joseph sang as he stumbled down the road

I’ll carry him upon my shoulders

I’ll bear the marks, endure the shame

I’ll serve my Friend till life is over

And that is when the world will see

He’ll carry me

With every step his mind replayed the memory

Of the day the Lord had made his life anew

So this load on Joseph’s back was not so heavy

Compared to the promise that was waiting at the tomb

I too have walked beneath a heavy burden

Stumbled down a dark and lonely road

Trying hard not to be discouraged

Knowing victory awaits when I reach home

So I’ll carry him upon my shoulders

I’ll bear the marks, endure the shame

I’ll serve my Friend till life is over

And that is when the world will see

He’ll carry me

He’ll carry me when he calls me from my sleeping

He’ll carry me toward the land of perfect day

Across the golden veil into the glory

Where he’ll set me safely down inside the gate

Until then I’ll strive to walk and not grow weary

I’ll gladly bear my cross for all the world to see

I’ll count it joy to carry Christ my Savior

For very soon he’ll carry me

When I heard that song for the first time, it was as if Jesus was standing next to me, holding my hands, and reassuring me that it really would be all right.  Maybe not in the way I expected but in the way he had planned long before I came down this road.  After all, he’d borne pain far worse than mine, died a cruel death, and rose again.  If I believe in his promises, I will see his glory.

That cross I carry may be called cancer.  Healing it totally may not be in God’s plan for me on this earth.  But it doesn’t stop me from serving him every day in every way I can, no matter what the cost.  And cost me it will if I truly desire to follow him.  Following Jesus isn’t all that simple – he journeyed to places no one wanted to go and did things he wasn’t supposed to do.  He’s still sending people outside their comfort zones and asking them to do things they don’t want to do.  I certainly didn’t want to “do” cancer.  I certainly didn’t want to go down that road of total faith in God’s ability to take care of me.  I wanted to deny cancer existed and had no intention of releasing control of my life to God.

That’s simply not the way faith works; you have to believe in the unbelievable, see the invisible, and do the impossible.  Until I take my last breath I have to live every day inside his embrace and follow his plans for my life.  My journey with cancer is designed to bring glory to my Savior in a way that I couldn’t possibly have imagined.  In fact, it was the only way he could get me to that place where the impossible became probable.

I suppose there are some folks who think I’m stark raving mad.  One doctor told me he had no studies to prove that depending on God for healing was worthwhile; that not taking their treatments was a very unwise decision because he had studies that proved he was right.  Unfortunately for them I have lots of studies to prove that depending on God is the only way to be healed; in fact, there are 66 books to prove it.  I have a choice – I can believe man, or I can believe God.  I choose God. Deliberately.  Thoughtfully.  Joyously.

Healing in this life no longer matters because I know God has plans for me before he takes me across to heaven’s side.  I’ve watched as people all around me are taken, yet I am not.  Three people at work were taken within a month.  I’m still here.  My physician was taken suddenly one weekend.  I’m still here.  Why am I still here?  Because God has a plan for my life and he’s not finished with it yet.  When he is, he’ll carry me to the other side of that gate and walk with me.  I will see his glory.

So thank you, Rodney Griffin, wherever you are.  You have absolutely no idea what an inspiration and healing balm to my soul your songs have been. There is a balm in Gilead – his name is Jesus Christ, my Lord. I thank God for Rodney Griffin and all of those who have made my way a little lighter.

Snow in My Heart

It began snowing in the middle of the night.  It’s still snowing.  There is no wind to speak of; even the chimes on the front deck are quiet.  Snowflakes are dancing down to land softly on the white carpet already laid across the ground.  I never used to think much about snowflakes, except perhaps as a nuisance because they landed everywhere I had to drive.   It was a lot of bother to shovel the SUV out, make a path from the back deck to the driveway, and shovel off a place to lay down birdseed.  It was even more worrisome to get out on the roads with people not used to driving in snow.

Snow is, however, a grand excuse not to go to work, to church, to town, to anywhere.  And sometimes it does keep us from doing things we think we need to do.  I’m beginning to think God uses snow to slow us down, to make us think.  Maybe he’s using the snow storm to teach me patience and how to have joy on the journey in spite of whatever I’m seeing right in front of me in one time and place.

Today I’m watching the snowflakes dance and it occurs to me that God chose to make each one a little different from every other snowflake, just like he made each one of his children different from every other human being.  It amazes me how God causes each snowflake to work the other until a carpet of white covers the ground.  Maybe God was hoping for the same effect with human beings – that together we would cover the world for Christ.  Seems we’ve missed the plan somehow, dancing to the wrong piper, waiting for God to save us from the path he never told us to go down in the first place. 

I was struck by the peaceful falling of the snowflakes as they danced down to the carpet of white.  Each one so delicate. Each one so intricate. Each one so pristinely white. Each one so exquisitely beautiful.  Separately, and together, they create a breathtaking picture of God’s beauty and of the extraordinary care he took to create them.  How much more beautiful are the children he created in his own image.  Yet, there are so many who view themselves as less than beautiful.  I was always the smart one, my sister was always the pretty one.  From much of humanity’s viewpoint smart does not outweigh pretty and never has. 

I watch today’s supermodels and I wonder when we decided that looking anorexic equates with being beautiful.  I wonder when we decided that a size eight in women’s dresses was “plus size.”  I wonder when we decided that we needed to go on a starvation diet because we are a size ten and society says we have to be a size zero to be considered beautiful.  I watch diet plan commercials and wonder why men and women who don’t appear to be obese think they have to buy into such plans.   Not too long ago my general practitioner told me I was obese.  She defined obese as being above a size six dress size.  She recommended I go on a very strict diet before my obesity killed me. 

I thought about that conversation as I watched the snow fall.  Who was I trying to impress?  The fashion industry?  My family and friends?  Church members? Coworkers?  For most of my life it mattered a great deal what others thought of me.  I tried to fit in but it never really worked.  Folks made sure I knew I wasn’t beautiful.  People made fun of my proclivity for wearing Christmas sweaters from December 1^st to December 25^th in honor of the season.  I was plainly told I didn’t have any fashion sense when I wore white after Labor Day and refused to wear spiked heels with every outfit.

I watched as suddenly a male cardinal flew onto the front deck.  He was large and bright red.  He contrasted starkly with the white snow and forest evergreens.  I think the beauty of his bright red against the carpet of white and the softness of the evergreens pleased God.  It occurred to me that the only person I need to please is God.  So, maybe I’m not a size zero.  So maybe I don’t have the perfect figure.  So maybe I’m not going to win the Miss America contest.  I’m a child of the King, made in his image.  I’m beautiful because he says so. 

In a lot of ways I thought I had to be transformed into beautiful raiment according to the world's viewpoint in order to be used by God.   I can’t speak to a crowd of people without being outwardly beautiful according to societal demands, can I?  I can’t come alongside someone and help support them without wearing the latest fashions, can I?  I can’t teach someone how to live for Christ without being a scholar, can I?  I can’t be female and do things that don’t involve the nursery or the kitchen for the church, can I?  Excuses, excuses, you hear them every day …

I have a lot of excuses for not doing things.  I can be quite adept at dreaming them up.  Unfortunately, God’s not buying my excuses.  He doesn’t care how common my garments are.  He doesn’t care how non-exciting and boring my daily routine is.  He says he can still use me anyway.    I’m not very good at that.  As a matter of fact, I’m pretty awful at it.  I often go chasing after rabbits when I should be standing guard at home.

I keep forgetting that God will never give me more than I can bear.  I always assume he’s going to make me do something I’m terrible at doing – like cook for people. I keep forgetting that God knows my strengths better than I do, and that he knows where he needs to use me.  I’m bad to dream up fame and fortune as a great Christian leader when all God is asking of me is to be there to comfort someone who’s hurting.  I’m looking for neon lights when God says go where there is no light.

I’m busy carrying my great Christian torch around but I’ve forgotten the Match.  I’m running around spouting mounds of theology but I’ve forgotten the Writer.  I’m imagining great hordes being saved by my speeches but I’ve forgotten the Word.  It is painfully embarrassing to figure out, at last, that it’s not all about me. 

As John 1:1 says:  “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” It’s all about God; it always has been.