Zima

The children were asleep. I waited for him to find his way home again, the hearth his beacon calling. The storm would come in the early hours of the morning; we wouldn’t hear the stars falling. I stoked the fire, the sound of a bull’s bellow drifting in and out of my consciousness. I poured a glass of red wine for my lover, my friend.

As I resigned my hope to receive him from the long hunt—it had been two weeks—the door cracked open. Its sound startled the silence.

No words filled the space between us, but we danced. When his blue eyes met mine, we sat at the old table with knit-lace on top. We sipped the wine and knew that the paucity of the hunt imperiled our subsistence.

Zima, Zima,

Your cloak of white reveals the truth.
What is true?

*the word 'zima' means winter in Slavic languages

health update

I had of my liver done in august. The radiologist saw a spot. Because of its shape, he and my doctors are not sure if it was contrast fluid that hadn’t spread out or the spreading of what was in my pancreas. My parents were nervous to tell me. But the contrast of who the Lord has made me compared to who I was when I got similar news in the summer of 2013 is so amazing. It is such a testament to the sovereignty and faithfulness of the Rock of my salvation. It was as if my mother was telling me the weather for the coming weekend. It didn’t shake me. Because I cannot be shaken. Not because I am mighty. But because my God is. After the phone call, I began worshiping the Lord (Kristene Dimarco’s new album=YES). As I declared the excellencies of him who called me out of the darkness into his marvelous light, I was overwhelmed with the image of my body being like the prison in which Paul and Silas stood as they sang praises to the Lord in their midnight hour. It often feels like I’m a prisoner to my dying body, the chemicals that need to be balanced by three medications daily, cancer. But, oh, awake, my soul, to praise the Lord. Inwardly, I am being renewed day by day. No bondage of this world could ever keep me from worshipping the Lord God Almighty.

As some believers laid hands on me to pray, I began to weep. Not because I was scared, or nervous, or doubting. But because, as I gazed upon the face of Jesus, I knew if was okay to be weak. Whether it is just contrast fluid or more cancer, I never walk alone. My brothers and sisters are here to lift my arms as the battle wages on in the valley. If the road I am to walk involves more pain, then amen. Let the glory of the Lord shine forth from my wounds. When I am weak, he is strong. Let his name be famous on the earth, for he is a good God. A mighty one who will save.