winter and babies

Sometimes, I’m taken back to memories of hospitals. The weirdest things bring my mind back. Often it’s the smell of certain types of handsoaps. I have most of my classes in Mcbryde(VT) and the hand soap there smells like hospital disinfectant. It is oddly comforting because it always reminded me of the why. Why I should give everything to Jesus. Something that period of my life taught me but I often forget. Other times, I hear a loud noise and I weep. I can’t help but cry as I type this. Motorcycles do it to me a lot.  My friends don’t really know what to do when I start crying randomly. I wouldn’t either. I’m instantly back in a waiting room or in a hospital bed, bruises up my hands and arms from IVs. And I can feel the ghost of pain. I’m not scared of it. It just halts me for a moment. I have to feel it. The other night, it was the scattegories buzzer that reminded me of all the noises a hospital room makes. People tell me that I stare vacantly a lot. I do. I’m just remembering. But sometimes, I can’t stop crying. Because I think of all the children whose life this actually is. Year in and year out. Pain, noise, fluorescent lights, uncertainty. I remember the day we found the tumor at chkd, we were waiting in a small room when a mom brought her two, twin babies in. They weren’t more than three years old. In wheel chairs. And one of the brothers started screaming and crying. It was horrible. Horrible. I couldn’t do anything because I was whisked away to the big hospital. I have never forgotten that boy. I never want a child to feel that way. I would do it for them if I could. I cant.

I know I’m supposed to say something that turns this post around. Something about Jesus. I know God is still good. Suffering, pain, these are not God’s will. But sometimes I don’t think we need to promote sweet-sounding Christian platitudes when we’re sad. We can acknowledge the pain without excusing it.

Winter is my favorite season. People look at me funny when I say that. I just spent my first winter in the mountains. I love the bitter cold, the long nights. To me, all the hope is in winter. Once December 21 rolls around, we know the days get longer and longer. We anticipate what the glory of spring will hold. I like the barrenness of winter because we get to really see. What is worth it. What do we need. And what is the actual longing of our hearts. I can’t take the pain for every child in this world. But Jesus did do something profoundly more impactful and loving. He took the eternal pain. The Dayspring is coming. There is an eternal dawn. Praise him.

mental health and christianity

I don’t know. I don’t know a lot about a lot. I’ve been thinking about how we think we know a lot about a lot. But I think even the wisest people… still don’t know. The rich, deep mystery into which we were born—a fallen cosmos—well… there are a lot of things we just don’t know. We can explain some mechanical functions of the universe—social laws, natural laws… but we can’t fully understand the implications, the why, the how, of original sin and redemption and the working out of our salvation. It is sometimes more “great, availing mystery” than we’d like it to be.

C.S. Lewis had some thoughts on this. In The Great Divorce, he writes:

“Ye cannot in your present state understand eternity… That is what mortals misunderstand. They say of some temporal suffering, ‘No future bliss can make up for this,’ not knowing that Heaven, once attained, will work backward and turn even that agony into a glory... The good man’s past begins to change so that his forgiven sins and remembered sorrows take on the quality of heaven… And that is why the Blessed will say, ‘We have never lived anywhere except in Heaven.’”

One thing I long to ask God about is the sometimes inexplicable madness of our minds. Mental health. I think you could read every secular source on the topic, sit under the most spiritually adept theologian, and still not come close to comprehending the complexities of sin and nature and truth and forgiveness. 42¹ just doesn’t cut it. And that’s okay. This is meant to be no polemic against the noble pursuit of understanding, healing, loving… The compelling to attain to the full stature of Christ Jesus must go on! We must forge ahead into the deepest, darkest questions of the universe in Spirit and in truth. But this is to you who feel like you are going insane. Do not lose the hope and joy of your salvation because you do not fit into the scholar’s boxes or the theologian’s parapets. And if you have not accepted Christ Jesus as your Lord, your Love, do not let this keep you from him.

Mental health, the physical and the soulish, we will never fully understand while we labor in the pangs of childbirth. That’s okay. Pray. Seek medical attention. Lean not on your own understanding. It’s okay if you still don’t understand. I don’t. But I still believe in the goodness, the goodness, of the Lord. And one day, in the near and coming future, we will see his face and have the answer to all we never knew.

¹ In The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything

The Waiting Song

Come, let us tend the garden of my heart, You, to whom it belongs.

Though it tarries yet, Your word remains

‘neath the soil of my inmost being.

The early rains and the late rains shall be pleased to make their way from heaven;

my harvest shall yield its increase

to You, my Beloved, You to whom it belongs.

  


I do not wane in the waiting, but set my face upon Jerusalem.

Come, let us tend the garden of my heart, You, to whom it belongs.

 Hebrews 6:7; James 5:7-11; Psalm 85:12; Habakkuk 2:3-4

Spirit of Adoption

I was anxious and heartbroken over my failure to steward well the much that I’ve been given. I always seem to fail. ‘I should be here,’ I think. I began to succumb to the dark waters of guilt.

I sat down at my piano, desperate for an answer. Playing a C chord and singing in the Spirit, I was lost in the Father’s heart. To whom much is given, much will be required, yes. But instead of showing me a picture of the unfaithful servant getting cut to pieces or even of the wise and faithful servant being blessed, I saw a child, before forgotten and hungry, now adopted in the arms of a father. Secure. Loved. The smile on his face contained no ounce of fear. Not one. But a knowing that he was approved of by unconditional love.

Lord, grant us the grace to know this Spirit of adoption in all we do.

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.