In The Darkness of His Hand

This particular journal entry was written in my second year of teaching.  It was prediagnosis and really describes how life felt to me at this point.  Times were pretty tough before I was diagnosed with bipolar.  Anxiety and depression were constant and unwelcome companions.  Life is so much better now.   I can honestly say that, though the journey was difficult, the freedom I experience now is worth all the pain I endured then.   Hope this is helpful to any of you who may be going through "dark times."  Remember whose hand you're in and trust that he is taking you to a good place, a place of freedom.

Spring, 1999

Today, while I was walking out of school, , I saw a butterfly trapped in the building.  It was trying to escape by beating itself against a closed window.  Feeling sorry for the little guy, I decided to carry it to freedom.  As I took the butterfly in my hands, I felt pain for it.   I knew it was scared.  It couldn’t understand what I was doing.  But, once I got outside the building and let it go, it floated happily away.

Sometimes, I feel like that butterfly.  Beating myself against a closed window, I try in vain to find my way to freedom.  Then, a hand encloses me and carries me off.  Does the One who holds me in His hand feel pain for me, knowing that I don’t really understand what He’s doing; that I’m scared and confused in the darkness of His hand?  Does He feel for me even though his plan means the difference between life and death?

I’m sure that butterfly wasn’t asking for a trip outside that day.  But I also know that if I hadn’t carried it off, it would have been lying dead in the windowsill the next morning.  I also know that, were God to ask me, I would choose a different path to freedom. 

Tonight, when I went to unload my car, the exact same type of butterfly was sitting on my hood.  I just stared in silent disbelief.   In that moment I knew that it was trying to tell me something.  But whether it was saying, “Thank you,” or telling me that freedom is worth the price you pay to get to it, I don’t know.  Maybe it was saying both. 

Dancing Outside the Box

Been thinking about marriage lately.  It is hard.  Of course this is no news to anyone whose been married, or even in a long term relationship.  It's easy to get frustrated with your "significant other," placing blame on them when things don't work out or turn out the way you expected.  For instance, the other night my husband was laying on the couch taking a nap while I cleaned the kitchen.  As I worked, I felt a great temptation to stew over the fact that he was resting while I was cleaning up.  Then I took a step back and made myself (which is never easy) calm down and think "truth" about the situation.  The truth was that my husband had gotten up early with the kids, fed them breakfast, and taken care of them while I slept.  When I awoke, he didn't point fingers or blame me for not getting up with the kids.  He simply asked if I'd slept well.  Amnesia of the heart often happens in situations like these.  I'm tempted to remember only what my husband has not done rather than all that he does do.

Shortly before I was married I asked an older friend, who had been married for many years, if she had any advice for me before I "walked down the aisle."  Later on that week, she sent me a letter sharing her wisdom from over twenty years of experience.  While I don't remember all that she wrote, one thing in particular stuck out to me.  She told me that marriage is rarely 50/50 when it comes to shared responsibilities; sometimes it's 80/20 or even 100/0.  It's a give-and-take relationship, really, and one thing I've learned - it's the give that makes a relationship so difficult.  It's hard to keep it from being a what-am-I getting-out-of-this relationship rather than a what what-am-I-bringing-to-it.  It's about sacrificial love, really.  And making a sacrifice is never easy.

Another thing I've learned in my eight years of marriage is that I can not change my husband; shouldn't even try.  I could talk 'til I was blue in the face, and, believe me, it wouldn't work.  I've tried the nagging tactic too, though that's never produced good results.  A quarrelsome wife, as the proverb says, "Is like a constant dripping."  (Proverbs 19:13)  The subject of quarreling  reminds me of a book I once read.  Having read it before I got married, there's much I've forgotten, but there is one important phrase that sticks with me to this day; it's called "dancing the same dance."  The author was trying to equate fighting (the kind that is counterproductive) to a dance;  a knock-down-drag-out "dance" where careless words are spoken and no one ever wins.  In other words, we never learn that there is more than one way to dance. 

I've learned that, sometimes, to make a point, I need to keep my mouth shut and let God do the "talking".  I find that when I do step back for a moment and gather my thoughts, I approach the argument much more calmly.  Afterall, I don't want to dance the same dance over and over again.  It gets old.  Somewhere along the line, I want to learn to dance outside the box. 

The Ultimate Parent

Instill  -   to introduce by gradual instruction, to pour in slowly by drops.


Can I just say that my kids have been driving me crazy lately.  Maybe I've mentioned this before, but I didn't understood God half so much as I do now that I'm a parent.  Take, for instance, the "crazy" side of parenting.  Running to and for, wiping up this and that mess, picking up, cleaning up, comforting, fixing owies.  All of   these things remind me that I have a Father in heaven who feels the way about me that I do about my kids.  Sometimes they annoy me, sometimes they irritate me, sometimes they make me angry, but, they'll always be my kids, and, I'll always love them.

At times, though, it's so hard to be patient with them.  I find myself yelling when I want to remain calm, chastising when I should be comforting, and holding grudges when I should be forgiving.  Yesterday, my daughter had another in a series of "accidents" in her underwear.  It was not pretty.  While washing dishes I began to pour my heart out to God about my stubborn little girl.   I thought about how many times I've had to deal with these same messes over and over again.  After awhile, it just gets old.  Why isn't she learning?  Why is she so stubborn?  Why so unwilling to change?  Then, I thought, 'Wow, all those things I asked - God could be asking the same about me. 'Why isn't she learning?  Why so stubborn?  Why so unwilling to change?' 

God is the ultimate parent.  Finding good in someone and persevering to bring that good out;  much like a potter molds and shapes clay.  What I've noticed about my growth as a believer is that, sometimes, God deals with the same issues over and over again.  It's not like he waves a magic wand, and, poof, all my ickiness is gone.  Quite the contrary, the wrong thing I did yesterday, yes, I'm still doing it today.  What's more, I'll probably be doing it again tomorrow.  But slowly, surely, unerringly, God is remolding me - shaping me into the person I was meant to be. The way God parents me is the way I want to parent my kids.  I want to instill lessons in them that won't be learned for the moment, but, rather, for a lifetime.

Faith of My Mother

October 16, 1999

I remember watching the movie, Shadowlands, at a particularly low point in my life.  The main character who was playing Joy Gresham, C.S. Lewis's wife, said something to the effect, "The joy we're experiencing now is part of the pain we'll endure later.  It's part of the deal."  Those words haunted me that day because I didn't want to believe them.  How can joy be part of suffering?   Why should that be “part of the deal?”  It just doesn't seem fair.  And who made this deal anyway?  I think maybe she had gained knowledge about suffering that I have yet to at this point in my life.  She had made peace with it.

           

It reminds me a lot of my mom.  Watching her endure so much suffering over the years, one thing I've observed is that she also seems to have made peace with it.  She accepts it as “part of the deal.”  If there were such a thing as a doctorate of suffering, she most certainly would have earned hers.  From childhood on, she has experienced serious health problems; from kidney failure, to cancer, to strokes.  She's been through multiple surgeries, endured treatments at the hands of many doctors, and, at the height of one of her more serious health conditions, her husband of thirty plus years left her. 

She's been a model of suffering for me, not really because of what she's endured, but because of how she's endured it.  It's not that she hasn't questioned it, or shown grief, or been real about her struggles.  The thing that's impacted me the most is the faith she still clings to after all of these trials; the faith that she maintains in spite of, or maybe because of, the obstacles she's faced.  Faith that believes that the God who made her will never fail or forsake her.  She is, in my eyes, a champion of faith and always will be.  No, she hasn’t overcome her suffering.  In reality, she deals with it everyday.  But she has persevered through it, through all of it.  Maybe, when all is said and done, this is the essential and only thing that matters about trials.  It is not about what happens to us when we suffer, it is about what becomes of us. 

April 19, 2011

 It has been twelve years since I started this, and things have come full circle.  In the introduction, I wrote that I had yet to gain insight into the comment that pain, is “part of the deal.”   After years of struggling with my own personal demons, I’ve come to understand it better.  I was diagnosed bipolar when I was 31 years old.  It’s been six years since the diagnosis, and I’m glad to say that life is so much better than it used to be.  But there are still days when I wonder, 'Lord, why me?'  It’s on those days that the faith of my mother lives on.   What I’ve seen in her life, I now cling to in my own.  If it were not for her model, I would never have learned to be content in all things and to persevere no matter how badly I want to give up.  I love the way these lessons have been instilled in me, not so much by what my mom has said, but by how she has lived.  

Pain in the Heart

There are two verses in the bible that I absolutely hate.  Shocking, I know.  But, I think you'll understand why when I share what they are.  They're found in Genesis 6:5-6;

The Lord saw how great man's wickedness on the earth had become and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time.  The Lord was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain. (NIV)

My NLT translation reads this way:

Now the Lord observed the extent of the people's wickedness, and he saw that all their thoughts were consistently and totally evil.  So the Lord was sorry he had ever made them.  It broke his heart.

The last translation I shared especially upsets me.  To know that God was sorry he ever made man, that it broke his heart to watch all the evil unfold and engulf his beautiful creation.  Gets me every time.  I guess I shouldn't be surprised that it is possible for God's heart to break too.  But, I kinda am.  I never think about a holy, omnipotent God having feelings.  But, when I stumbled across this verse, it almost broke my heart to read that God's heart "was filled with pain."  And, I dare say, it has been that way on more than one occassion. 

I think of days like 9/11, or Hurricane Katrina, or the recent storms that have devastated the south, and I wonder what God thinks on days like that.  I wonder if God's heart breaks nearly every day when, time after time, pain and destruction wreak havoc on a world that was meant for so much more. 

But nothing gets me like the day he had to watch his Son die; a day when God's heart was filled with more pain than you and I can ever imagine. The worst part of it all?  He couldn't do a single thing to stop it.  No, let me rephrase that; he wouldn't do a single thing to stop it.  Why?  Because, if he did, you and I would be lost for eternity.  We would be permanently separated from God - unable to feel his love, protection, commitment to us.  We were lost.  God wanted to bring us home.  So, he did the unthinkable and set himself up for a heartbreak like no other.  Turning  his back on the Son he loved so much, he placed the blame and punishment we deserve on the only one who had never broken his heart.  Jesus.  

So, the next time you're tempted to think 'God just doesn't understand what I'm going through,' take a look back at Genesis.  God understands pain; he understands heartbreak.  It's simply a lie that God doesn't know or care what we're going through.  Remember the pain that he's endured.  Bring him your own.  Maybe, together, you can find a way to heal a broken heart.

Hope and a Future

Change is hard, isn't it?  Moving from the familiar into the unfamiliar can be a bit overwhelming at times.   A couple of days ago, I was thinking about a move my husband and I made over a year ago.  What's funny about the whole move, is how opposed I was to it at first.  I liked where we were living; I was comfortable there.  The idea of going somewhere new?  Well, not so appealing.  I am a girl who hates change.  If I'm in my comfort zone, let me be.  So, not long before we moved, I wrote this entry in my journal;

Well, this is it.  It's our last week in our house.  I am so sad.  My husband doesn't know this, but I really want to stay where we are.  It's so hard to let go of the familiar and move into new "territory."  I feel like Abraham being called to go to a different land.  Not sure I want to, but need to trust God's leading in our lives.

That was written on February 2nd, 2010.  Exactly ten days later, on February 12, 2010, I wrote this;

Okay, I just read my last entry, and I have to laugh.  I LOVE our new house.  It just really feels like home already.  It's funny how I just dreaded this move and didn't want the change.  But, now that it's here, well, I'm lovin' it.  Maybe that's an analogy for life.  God has so many good things for us, if we just let go of the past and step into the future.  He'll provide in ways too incredible to imagine. 

Not only am I still loving our house, but I'm also loving what God's given us in our "new" life.  Friends!  I had prayed for some good friendships.  Looking back, I would never have made them where I was.  I needed to move.  Scratch that.  We needed to move.  It was the best thing that happened to us, as a family. 

So, here I sit one year later, so thankful that I didn't get my way.  God's way was so much better.  What's more, his future is so much better.  Don't be like me.  Don't resist change.  If God is calling you in a new direction, trust him.  He has good plans for you; plans to give you hope and a future.  (Jeremiah 29:11).

Easter Miracles

What I wanted to do yesterday was to write something inspiring or thought-provoking about Good Friday. 
But, alas, my children had other plans for me.  Then, miracle of miracles, when we got home today, they, of their own volition, took themselves to their rooms and fell asleep.   It is an Easter miracle; one day early, mind you, but I'll take it!

Which leads me to today's topic; miracles.  I have to confess something right here and now.  The fact that I am still a Christian, that I have faith in Christ's saving work is a true miracle.  Here's why.  A few days ago, I wrote about the nature of my fickle heart, how easily I can be tempted, even moved to follow the wrong path.  But, after all these years, I still believe something that I believed as a child.  Namely, that Christ died on the cross for me and rose again to give me new life.  Now, I know myself well enough to say I don't believe many things for my entire life.  For example, when I was a child, I used to eat spaghetti without sauce.  I believed the sauce was "icky."  Now, if you gave me noodles with no sauce, I'd turn my nose up at it.  These days, I think broccoli is the best vegetable.  A few years from now I may have moved on to brussel sprouts (highly unlikely, but I'm trying to make a point here).  Or take, for example, when I was in college; I believed Christian music was annoying.  Now, it's about all I listen to. 

My tastes, beliefs, perceptions about the world, about life, are always changing.  But not my belief in Christ.  This belief, this story has stayed the same in my heart all these years.  It's never changed, it's never wavered.  It's been a beacon of hope guiding me along life's paths.  So, how is it that I have come to believe the same thing that millions of other Christians around the world have believed for centuries.  How can my  fickle heart be so faithful to this creed?   I've two words for you - well, three actually; The Holy Spirit.  If nothing else is proof of God's being real, the fact that Christians, for centuries upon centuries, have believed exactly the same thing, is enough for me.  We didn't make this stuff up.  Who would?  A man dying on a cross to save the world from its own self-detruction?  But, we do believe.  And that, to me, is the biggest sign that all of this is true. 

If God had not been at work in my life, I wouldn't have kept the faith through all life's ups and downs.  Trust me.  There have been times when I have wanted, like crazy, to stop believing.  But, somehow, I haven't.  And it isn't because I'm such a dedicated follower.  I would have stopped following a long time ago when the going got rough.  That, to me, is the greatest testimony to the truth of scripture - the truth of God. We believe because he's revealed himself to us.  We keep on believing because he keeps us in the faith.  And should we ever turn our backs on him, he will never turn his back on us. He believes that the sacrifices he made to buy us back were worth it.  His heart isn't fickle.  So somehow, when it comes to faith, he's kept mine from being fickle too.  A true Easter miracle.  Oh yes, and the kids are still asleep; I'd say I experienced a double Easter miracle today.