Category: Mystery

It Is Well…

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The past two years of my life have seen more change than the previous ten altogether. After a long waiting season, through an unexpected breaking process, God moved in both difficult and incredible ways. He asked me to release a teaching career that had been my passion and security in adulthood. He moved me back home and placed a man in my life to love and to marry. Then, the same month of our marriage, my husband’s mother was diagnosed with stage four ovarian cancer. Within four months, she passed away. We left everything to come to Puerto Rico, see her before she passed, and manage her estate. Months later, we remain here, searching for a solution for a disabled family member she cared for.

 

The more answers we seek, the more doors close. One slight move on the board changes the whole game, perhaps for the rest of our lives. We pray for guidance, but the heavens remain silent. I believe my Father is attentively at work in ways I can’t see or understand. I trust His hand, but sometimes, the weight of the unknown feels like enough to press me into the ground and bury me there. In the midst of it all, I feel ushered into the eye of the storm where one call is certain, “Surrender.”

 

The earth quakes and the storms come, and yet…it is well with my soul. I’ve thought often of the old hymn of that title, written by Horatio Spafford after he lost his family in an ocean storm. “When peace, like a river, attendeth my way, When sorrows like sea billows roll; Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say, It is well, it is well with my soul.” Bethel Music artist Kristene DiMarco recently rewrote the song with words that pierce my soul. “So let my soul go and trust in Him. The waves and wind still know His name.”

 

It Is Well
Bethel Music (Written by Kristen DiMarco) 


Grander earth has quaked before
Moved by the sound of His voice
Seas that are shaken and stirred
Can be calmed and broken for my regard
And through it all, through it all
My eyes are on You
And through it all, through it all
It is well
And through it all, through it all
My eyes are on You
And it is well with me
And far be it from me to not believe
Even when my eyes can’t see
And this mountain that’s in front of me
Will be thrown into the midst of the sea
And through it all, through it all
My eyes are on You
And through it all, through it all
It is well
And through it all, through it all
My eyes are on You
And it is well
It is well
So let go my soul and trust in Him
The waves and wind still know His name
So let go my soul and trust in Him
The waves and wind still know His name…

“The Room of Love…”

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As a new bride, I’ve thought a lot about the ways earthly love mirrors the love of our Heavenly Father. Without a doubt, marriage provides experience with the complicated mysteries and pressures of relationships, especially under high amounts of outside conflict and stress. It also allows us a window into the transcendent nature of love. Recently, I’ve reread a favorite novel that does a nice job of tackling both themes.

With an expert hand, Wendell Berry weaves the characteristics of a romance into his women’s fiction novel Hannah Coulter. Hannah remembers the pressures she and her husband Nathan were under within their marriage as they worked their farm, “The making of the place was the thing that ruled over everything else, for we were living from the place…. And as our work shaped our workplaces, our work and our workplaces shaped our days. Our work brought us together and drew us apart.” She articulates the tensions that came between them, “We had differences. There were the agreed-on differences of work. There were the accepted, mostly happy differences between a man and a woman. There were the differences of nature and character that were sometimes happy and sometimes not. Some of the things that most endeared Nathan to me—his quietness, his love of his work, his determination—were the things that could sometimes make me maddest at him.”

Most of all, however, Hannah focuses on the love that united them, “The room of love is another world. You go there wearing no watch, watching no clock. It is the world without end, so small that two people can hold it in their arms, and yet it is bigger than world on worlds, for it contains the longing of all things to be together, and to be at rest together. You come together to the day’s end, weary and sore, troubled and afraid. You take it all into your arms, it goes away, and there you are where giving and taking are the same, and you live a little while entirely in a gift. The worlds have all been said, all permissions given, and you are free in the place that is the two of you together. What could be more heavenly than to have desire and satisfaction in the same room? If you want to know why even in telling of trouble and sorrow I am giving thanks, this is why.”

I’m giving thanks too, for the room of love and the big mix that life and love are. I pray I can accept giving and taking as the same, embrace all in my arms and accept them for the gifts that they are.

***All quotes taken from: Berry, Wendell. Hannah Coulter: A Novel. Counterpoint, 2004.***

The Already, & The Not Yet…

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I swore I’d give up hoping for a husband at the age of thirty-five, and kept true to my word. Just before my thirty-sixth birthday, however, God allowed my path to cross with the man he intended for me. This wonderful guy exactly fit the bill for what I’d been praying for in the previous twenty years, and I continue to marvel at this. As it turned out, our paths had been crossing for almost seventeen, and we had even attended the same small college together without ever meeting. It’s obvious the Lord had has own plan and timing at work. We can both see ways He prepared us for one another, though the journeys we walked alone were lonely and long. What a wonder to have the opportunity to join my life to his this past December! I couldn’t ask for a better partner to share life with.

That same month, doctors in Puerto Rico diagnosed his mother with Stage Four Ovarian Cancer. The elopement we planned for New Year’s Eve took place three weeks earlier than planned, and I said goodbye to my new husband the next day. Though good friends made it possible for me to travel to spend the holidays with him and meet his family, I needed to return to work two weeks later. He remains with his mom and aunt, attempting to help and care for them. His mom is stable for now, but suffering. He hopes to return here soon, but so much of the future is unknown.
Despite being separated for these first months of marriage, I’m so thankful to have him as a part of my journey. Distance is a challenge, certainly, but he’s wonderful about prioritizing our relationship and times for us to talk. He adds so much to my life, and yet…I miss him desperately. In holding all of this, I’m struck by the reminder of the phrase, “the already, and the not yet” used to describe Kingdom of God. As believers, we have the opportunity to partake in the Kingdom here on earth, and yet, we must simultaneously wait for its full realization. As we choose to reflect Christ each day, we can help bring the realities of Christ’s Kingdom to those around us. It’s a beautiful mystery, and a great opportunity. We live in unity with Christ here and now, but an even greater unity awaits us. My Beloved is mine, and I am His. I am invited to give thanks for what is, and dwell here today. I am invited to eagerly anticipate the great day that is to come.

Whether “Down in the Valley” or Standing  “Upon the Mountain of God”…

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I’m in a really beautiful, beautiful season of my life right now. I have the opportunity to rest a little and chase a few dreams. I’ve fallen in love with the best man I’ve ever known, and even though there have been a few challenges for a Colorado girl pursuing a long-distance relationship with a Puerto-Rican (mostly three classes 4-5 hurricanes!), overall, I’m filled with gratitude every day for the sweetness of it all. As someone said long ago, it really is the greatest thing we’ll ever learn, just to love, and to be loved in return. This learning process is one that has given me the gift of getting to see the top of the tapestry the Lord is weaving in my life, when the previous thirty-five years have felt mostly like the underside view. In essence, my present in this present time is to stand upon the mountain of God with the one I love, looking back on the valleys we have separately crossed, as well as the deserts and hills we have independently wandered and climbed. We both look back on the last ten years of our lives, seasons that felt mysteriously dark and lonely to us both, and can now see so many ways God used them to prepare us for one another and the ministries to which we feel He is calling us. Our God is truly such a master architect and designer!

 

But, at the same time that my beloved and I are standing on top of the mountain of God, many others in my life are really hurting down in the valley. Good friends face the devastating betrayal and heartbreak of broken relationships. Another continues to desperately miss the husband she lost to illness. One is watching her uncle lose his battle against cancer, and her aunt face the prospect of losing a second husband to a terminal disease. I watch others suffer chronic pain or prolonged economic or relational difficulties. The people of Puerto Rico and México continue to suffer in the wake of shortages and hardships resulting from natural disasters. Many of the residents of Las Vegas grieve loved ones who tragically lost their lives to a mass shooting. As we all know, this world has no shortage of heartaches or joys. It is full of darkness, and it is full of light. And yet, even in the valley, we can hear the winds of promise blow, as a very old American folk song: “Down In the Valley” by Burl Ives says…

 

“Down in the valley, valley so low

Hang your head over, hear the wind blow

Hear the wind blow love, hear the wind blow

Hang your head over, hear the wind blow” (Lead Belly).

 

Whether this reaches you down in the valley today, standing upon the mountain of God,  or somewhere in between, may you hear in the wind the whisper of our Savior saying your name, and speaking of His unchanging and unfailing and unfathomably great love for you. May His voice fill your heart to overflowing; may He bring you peace. It’s funny, because all of this has been on my heart to write for so long, the title has been typed and awaiting me on my computer, and then this morning, I heard a song on the radio that was new to me, that perfectly expresses it all. I hope “Hills & Valleys”, by Tauren Wells, ministers to you, as it did to me. Wherever you are, may you know, without a doubt, you’re “safe inside [His] hand”.

 
“I’ve walked among the shadows
You wiped my tears away
And I’ve felt the pain of heartbreak
And I’ve seen the brighter days
And I’ve prayed prayers to heaven from my lowest place
And I have held the blessings
God, you give and take away
No matter what I have, Your grace is enough
No matter where I am, I’m standing in Your love
On the mountains, I will bow my life
To the one who set me there
In the valley, I will lift my eyes to the one who sees me there
When I’m standing on the mountain aft, didn’t get there on my own
When I’m walking through the valley end, no I am not alone!
You’re God of the hills and valleys!
Hills and Valleys!
God of the hills and valleys
And I am not alone!
I’ve watched my dreams get broken
In you I hope again!
No matter what I know
Know I’m safe inside Your hand.”

 

***Photo Credits: Lovedoes.org

Woven…

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I think I’ve mentioned before that one of my favorite poems is called The Tapestry, by Corrie Ten Boom. One stanza reads: “My life is but a weaving, between my God and me. I cannot choose the colors, He weaveth steadily. Ofttimes He weaveth sorrow, and I in foolish pride, forget He sees the upper, and I the under side.” This is such a profound poem and life insight to me, especially as written by a woman who survived the horrors of Auschwitz, but saw her family perish there. Though, they weren’t Jews themselves, they were imprisoned for providing “a hiding place”, as her memoir is entitled, to the Jews within Holland.

 

In my own relatively peaceful and unscathed life, still I find that the majority of life is lived as this beloved author painted it, looking at the messy underside of a weaving. The tapestry may indeed be masterful, but from the limited vantagepoint of earth, the larger picture is hard to see or understand. I cry out when a pattern I’ve begun to be able to see or become attached to is suddenly disrupted, or when one color is torn to make room for another that doesn’t seem to belong. I question why so many messy threads hang down and why it’s all such mayhem. I’m ever striving for a tidier picture than the one I have, and a semblance of control. It rarely makes any sense what is happening through my lens. Believing that it’s all a part of “a grand design” takes a giant “leap of faith” most days.

 
But then, there are those moments, when the master weaver beckons to me from the other side of the tapestry, and allows me to come and take a peek at His view. Just for a moment, I see the smile on His face and the twinkle in His eye. I get to take a seat with Him as He points and gestures to the pattern He’s designed and woven. And oh my, how it takes my breath away. A chill crawls down my spine and tears fill my eyes, for I can see that all along, there really has been a plan, and He really is an artist, and every stitch has been joined with the utmost care for its ultimate great beauty and purpose. It’s all sooo beautiful, and He’s been arranging and composing it all along. He looks into my eyes with joy, and I can only look back into His with regret. I’m filled with sorrow for the many moments, or if we’re really being honest here, the lifetime of moments, I’ve filled with distrust. He knows them all, and knew them all when He designed this glorious pattern for me, and yet still, He counted me worthy to be woven into the fabric of His plan. This inclusion, this composition, this revelation…these are His gifts to me. These are the manifestations of His love for me.

Divine Interruptions…

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Sometime in college, a friend and mentor introduced me to the concept of “Divine interruptions”. She noticed that I struggled with unpredictable interruptions into my very well-planned and predictable routine schedule, but counseled that I had to stay open to the idea that God was allowing these interruptions in my day and plans. They could, in fact, be what has been termed in “Christianese”, “Divine appointments.”  If I could learn to consider them Divine, I could remain inviting and open to what God wanted to show me, and how He wanted to use me.

 

This transformed my approach to life. It’s still a struggle, but over the years, space has often been created to see God do something that only He could do. Life would be a small fraction of the gift it has been if my heart had been closed. I’m so grateful for this lesson early in my adulthood. Life, indeed, is a series of interruptions that can affect and change our courses. I want to continue to see these as invitations into His space…as a surrender of the plans I cling to into His capable hands.
Henri Nouwen has invited, “Let us try to see the pain of our human and spiritual journey “from above.” The great art is to gradually trust that life’s interruptions are the places where God is molding you into the person you are called to be. Interruptions are not disruptions of your way to holiness, but rather are places where you are being formed into the unique person God calls you to be. You know you are living a grateful life when whatever happens is received as an invitation to deepen your heart, to strengthen your love, and to broaden your hope. You are living a grateful life when something is taken away from you that you thought was so important and you find yourself willing to say, ‘Maybe I’m being invited to a deeper way of living.’ ” I want to live in such gratefulness.

 There is None Like You:

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One of my favorite worship songs has long been Hillsong United’s  There is None Like You.  I love to sing to the LORD:

 

There is none like You.

No one else can touch my heart like You do,

I can search for all eternity Lord

And find, there is none like You.

 

Your mercy flows like a river wide,

And healing comes from Your hand.

Suffering children are safe in Your arms,

There is none like You.

 

There is none like You, ( There is none like You, Lord)

There is none like You.

 

Once, as I was struggling deeply over the rejection of others, & sensing my own absolute worthiness to even sing this praise to my Holy God, He whispered to my heart: “Beloved, don’t you know I feel just the same way about you? I died so that would you know…so let me now sing this over you.” Desperately humbled & healed in the undeserved revelation of His grace., tears streamed down my face as He sang His song…this song… over me. For Him, there is no one else like me.  He made us all with special purposes, & fitted us all to sing His praises as only we can.  
Though the world rejects you, He never will. As He promised through His prophet Isaiah: “Can a mother forget the baby at her breast, & have no compassion on the child she has born? I tell you, though she may forget, I WILL NOT FORGET YOU.  See, I have ENGRAVED YOU on the PALMS OF MY HANDS. Your walls are ever before me” (Isaiah 49:15-16). He waits to sing over YOU: “My beloved, ‘there is none like you.  NO ONE ELSE can touch MY heart like you do.  I could search for all eternity long, & find, there is none like you.’ ”  This is just as God spoke through Isaiah in chapter 43, verse 4: “Since YOU are precious & honored in my sight, & because I love you, I will give men in exchange for you, & people in exchange for your life.”

 

***Photo Credits: Ann Voskamp***

Accepting Joy…

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Part of my very part-time employment at present is working with a woman who also has a severe neurological condition, though hers is far more severe. I model a few exercises and provide a little massage and stretching; she models so much more for me. She’s been sick for most of thirty years, and has spent thirteen of those paralyzed from the waist down and regulated to a wheelchair. And yet, she always has a smile on her face. When I asked her how she was able to be so upbeat and positive, she said that she wouldn’t want the husband who’s been her caretaker all those years to have to live with a grump. This made me smile; it almost seems like a casual and lighthearted approach to coping with illness, but it is most definitely far more. Long ago, she made a very intentional choice to live in acceptance, gratitude and joy, one I’m sure she has had to make that choice over and over again, but she has. Hers is a very cultivated positivity held perfectly in tension with practical surrender, and they end result is joy.

 

She calls it grace. It reminds me of what Ann Voskamp once wrote: “Grace is like the wind. It finds us as we are, but it does not leave us as we have been. All is grace.” Grace has met her anew each day in exactly the place she is; it continually shapes and molds her into the image of God. She’s a willing vessel in the hands of a skillful potter; anyone has only to look at my friend’s radiant countenance to be awestruck by its fragile strength. She’s a former elementary teacher, a mom and wife and daughter and sister and aunt and friend. She’s a quilter and a prayer warrior and a blessing to all who know her. I’m so very thankful: in a season of struggling to accept my own challenging circumstances, or perhaps simply arriving in the place where I actually have accepted them, God has given me this beautiful example. I want to accept the joy that fills and surrounds me and say with my friend and the saints of old, as voiced by the prophet Isaiah: “And yet LORD, you are our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter” (Isaiah 64:8).

 

*Photo by Ann Voskamp. 

An Iron Will: A Tribute to Georgine…

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Tomorrow is Independence Day, a celebration of what it means to know free life. The Fourth of July marks not only that for me: it is both the anniversary of a friend’s spiritual birthday in 1950, as well as that of her “home-going” sixty-four years later. She’s been gone for three years now, and it still doesn’t seem possible that’s a reality; I can hear her voice as if it were yesterday. From the day I met her when I moved to this area in 2008, she said I was a kindred spirit and adopted me as a granddaughter. She called me her “Sweet Pea”; I called her my “Mama G”. She reminded me of the grandmother I lost when I was nine years old: Mama G’s quiet strength, obdurate determination, compassionate presence and vocal faith mirrored those of my Grandma Thelma. I was instantly at home with her.

 

Mama G was an example of the faith and perseverance of the saints to all who knew her. She modeled for me how one could live well with serious illness, something she coped with admirably for almost half her life: the chronic and inflammatory autoimmune disease Lupus targeted her as a young mother. Everything she did over the next decades came at a cost, but she counted it all worthy of the price she paid. She told me often with great sincerity that she counted it a true joy to share even a small bit of the suffering that was our Lord’s, and she lived out its truth. Her best friend says she had an “iron will”. As Proverbs 27:17 says, “As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.” She helped all her loved ones (in other words, everyone she knew) to be shaped into the mold of our Savior. In the spring of 2014, she contracted pancreatic cancer, the same disease took my Grandma Thelma’s life. They say it’s the most painful way to die: since the pancreas sits on a bundle of nerves that travel throughout the whole body, its sensations are akin to those of crucifixion. Though a nerve block relieved that pain for a while, in the end she suffered its fullness. Again, she counted it all joy and faced it with that iron will, her eyes on Jesus. A few short months later, she went Home to be with God. In life and in death, she celebrated free life that did not come without a cost; her soul at last found its final rest. 

 

I am only one who loved this precious woman of God, she was precious to many, but I remember and miss her every single day. As I face each new dawn and dusk, I hear the words to one of her favorite hymns Carolina Sandell Berg, modeling the acceptant trust with which she lived all the days of her life, Day by Day:

 

Help me then, in every tribulation,

So to trust Thy promises, O Lord,

That I lose not faith’s sweet consolation,

Offered me within Thy holy Word.

Help me, Lord, when toil and trouble meeting,

E’er to take, as from a father’s hand,

One by one, the days, the moments fleeting,

Till with Christ the Lord I stand.

Feeding on Mystery…

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In 1,000 Gifts, Ann Voskamp explains that the Hebrew word “manna” means mystery. In their wandering in the wilderness on the way to the Promised Land, the food the God of heaven and earth rained down on the Israelites was literally mystery. The sweet manna bread was given purposefully to be only sufficient for one day at a time, keeping the children of Israel continuously dependent on God to supply their each and every need day by day. No matter how many days God provided faithfully for them, they wondered with each new one if He could do it again. So it is for His children today: we are dependent on His provision each and every day. He faithfully provides for our needs, yet we are often filled with doubt that He will do it again. Our lives are full of paradoxes: glories and suffering fall on us all; rain falls on both the just and the unjust. So much is unexplained; our walk with the Lord can be nothing besides a walk of faith. We feed on mystery too.

 

In A Chance to Die, Elisabeth Elliott’s captivating biography of missionary Amy Carmichael, a letter is quoted that was sent to her by her mother. Amy had suffered a fall that caused an abnormal nerve response throughout her whole body. It left her bedridden for the rest of her life. These words encouraged Amy’s remarkable faith and  trust in the Lord that would be an example to many around the world in the coming years:

“He who hath led will lead, all through the wilderness.

He who hath fed will feed.

He who hath heard thy cry, will never close His ear.

He who hath marked Thy faintest sigh, will not forget thy tear.

He loveth always, faileth never, so rest in Him today, forever.”

 

I too, am currently in what could be called a wilderness season; I seem to have lost the path to the Promised Land. Trials of health and loss of career have led me out of Egypt and into a new place of dependence; the path is unknown and seems illuminated only one step at a time. I feed on mystery meted out in doses sufficient for each day. But if I’m wandering in circles through desert, I’m not wandering there alone. God has provided sweet sustenance through His presence and the companionship of true friends. He has fed my soul with beauty and peace; even the prickly cacti bloom in the barren land. I’m reminded of the prayer of George VI at the dawning of a new year:

“I said to the man at the gate of the year: ‘Give me a light, that I may walk safely into the unknown.’ He said to me, ‘Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the hand of God. It shall be to you better than the light and safer than the known.”

 

And so it is, and so shall it be. We put our hands into the hands of God and feed on the manna of His mysteries. We give thanks for it, break it, share it, and we call it…grace.