Growth Through Suffering

Photo from Pixabay

Outside my window, a tree is blooming. The flowers appeared suddenly, but the process began during the cold, dark days when the tree looked dead. Programmed to respond to an almost imperceptible increase in daylight, the tree’s “on switch” was flipped before change was visible. The same thing happens to us when we respond to light during periods of darkness.

My husband was diagnosed with cancer in 2011 and died a year later. After 34 years together, my fellow traveler finished his race triumphantly and exited the course, leaving me to run alone. Actually, I did not so much run as stagger. When I lost the relationship, I also lost my rhythm.

Suddenly, life was out of sync; “normal life” was obliterated. There was no point in searching for a way around sadness; I was stuck with it. A well-meaning friend gave me a book on grief’s stages, which was of no benefit; I already knew the labels. Telling someone their leg is broken without helping them repair it is not much help. But I didn’t blame her. I knew there would be no quick fix for what was broken–no resuscitation of, or replacement for the excised earthly relationship. The only hope I had was to cultivate an even deeper alliance with the Giver of life and light.

One can know God as creator and savior without knowing Him as friend, but, astonishingly, He invites us to this kind of relationship. Friendship is a serious thing though, requiring trust and energy investment. It also takes time to get to know someone–especially when that someone is infinite. Intimacy with God does not happen overnight.

When I consider it, I am amazed that God condescended to engage in a friendship with me that I initiated because I was lonely and desperate. After all, who in his right mind wants to be the consolation prize? I only know this: that God offers friendship to those who want it enough to pursue it. So Jesus’ question, “What do you seek?” becomes a matter of critical importance. In grief, we can either choose to remain dormant, or we can choose to grow. If we want to grow in winter time, it is essential that we, like the tree, respond to the Light.

A Glad Gospel

photo by Caroline Veronez on Unsplash

Sunday was the worst day of the week because it was the day conscientious villagers had to spend an hour in church getting yelled at for their sins. “Death comes unexpectedly!” boomed the preacher from his elevated pulpit. The congregation flinched and the chandelier shook as he weaponized his voice and blasted his sermon at them. Eleanor Porter’s book, Pollyanna, was fiction, but she likely wrote from life.

When I was a teenager, I attended a mainline denomination church where there was a lot of well-intentioned yelling from the pulpit. “Repent, repent, repent!” urged our pastor, a product of homiletics gone wrong. An immature believer, I interpreted his directive as “You’re not really saved. Keep feeling as guilty as you can, you rotten sinner, and maybe someday you will be.” I wore out the center aisle carpet answering altar calls, hoping that this time salvation would “take.” After a while, I gave up. I knew there was a God but, according to the expert, He didn’t seem to want me.

It is usually with the best of intentions that pastors sideline grace when they present the gospel. The motivation behind frenzied pulpit drama is to awaken awareness of sin in people who are far from God. Pastors (God bless them!) are aware of so much congregational sin that it is no wonder that they sound furious. My problem was that the pastor was “preaching to the choir” –I’d been saved since I was ten, and I really wanted to know God. But the weekly fire and brimstone act indicated that I was farther away from Him than ever. All that pulpit pounding was counter-productive and it set me back a decade, during which time I decided that church definitely was not for me. But God, gracious as He always is, eventually cleared up my confusion when I simply asked Him to: He does the saving and, by-the-way, He’d heard me the first time I asked.

Of course, this is only my experience, but it has led me to wonder whether fear or love is the greater motivator– which is the fitter frame for the truth? For Christians living in a post-Christian era, this is no trivial question. For John the Apostle, the answer is love:

“For God so loved the world, that He sent His only Son. . .”

Watchman Nee wrote:

” We may be weak, but looking at our weakness will never make us strong. No trying to feel bad and doing penance will help us to be even a little holier. There is no help there, so let us be bold in our approach because of the blood.”

The blood of Jesus has cleansed us who believe. There is no need to flay ourselves because of the past or to be afraid of the future. We’ve been regenerated. That is done. What remains is to be grateful and to learn to abide in Him–for as long as we live.

Adopted in Love

1994

I have friends who have six children. When the wife expressed a desire to adopt more, her husband said (as mine would later say), “Have you lost your mind?” indicating that they were already child-poor and chaos-rich. The husband summed it up thusly, “Women just like babies.” Which is true. . .

My mother had two miscarriages, then she and my father offered to adopt a close relative of hers, but their offer was declined and the child had a tragic life. As for Mom, she delightedly held all the babies who came her way. With this example before me, it was natural that I would want a lot of kids. So, we had four biologically and one (the caboose) by adoption. Bless his heart, our adopted son turned out to be the sole extrovert in a household of introverts. Always jabbering, he filled our home with chatter, as our daughter had done fourteen years earlier. He invaded our private spaces; why read a book when you could converse? He sang continuously. As a toddler, his singing Nat King Cole songs in the grocery cart surprised many a shopper. Life with him was both fun and frustrating. The day we took him home was one of the happiest days of my life, but parenting him was not easy for me.

Usually, we enter the adoption process with little knowledge and unrealistic expectations, thinking that love will quickly fix all the problems. I was informed, but didn’t understand, how painful it would be for a toddler to leave the foster family with whom he had bonded. Neither did I comprehend the enormous disadvantage I was under not knowing anything about his biological family. There were hidden difficulties, both physical and mental that I didn’t have a clue how to address. We visited doctor after doctor seeking solutions, always praying that someone would have answers. Along the way, we occasionally met people who offered us snippets of wisdom which we snarfed up with gladness and relief. Then, with a little more hope under our belts, we’d keep going.

It’s taken almost thirty years for me to get a clue about how much God has blessed us through adoption because the journey didn’t look the way I thought it should. I was too critical of myself and too critical of him. About seventeen years in, I had an “aha!” moment when I witnessed, in the middle of a family imbroglio, the transformative power of love. In that instant, love and concern were offered and accepted. We both learned something important: that whatever came, we were connected. We were family.

In a much more profound way, we who believe, have been adopted by God. He sent His Son to be the Savior of the world; to create a new familial bond. The apostle John said He did it out of love:

“See how great a love the Father has bestowed on us, that we would be called children of God; and such we are.” 1John 3:1

God is with us for the long haul even if the journey doesn’t look the way we envisioned it; neither smooth nor scenic. But He will see us to maturity. We are, forever, His sons and daughters.

Hope in Small Places

photo by Nataliia Kvitovska

I have this dog; well, actually I have four now, but one is especially unhealthy. First, Poppy went blind when she was a puppy; nobody could figure out why. Then she got pneumonia. This was followed by urinary tract infections. Currently, she is in a dark place. Her tummy hurts; she is lethargic; she throws up and pees on the floor. While the rest of the pack galumphs around her, she lies inert, her unseeing eyes somehow expressing her discomfort. You might think this is to be expected at her age, but her age is four. It may be a small suffering compared to the tragedies all around us, but it is still hard to watch.

Where do we find hope in dark times? Obviously, our greatest hope is in Christ, but there are indirect sources of hope as well, Christ-followers being the foremost. Or at least, we should be. In fact, encouraging the church is one of our most critical functions. As mirrors reflect the light of a lamp, so we need to reflect hope to others, and we need to take the job seriously.

One way we can do this is by making it a priority to pay attention to the people around us. Somehow, just knowing we’re seen and heard can be magically energizing. And it doesn’t take a lot of time to say, “Hello, how are you?” and stop and listen to the reply. Acknowledging the value of another person is agreeing with God that they matter. We all matter.

Lately, observing encouragers has been a source of hope in itself; it is powerful evidence that God is working in the here and now. I have a friend who is in constant pain but still manages to teach and counsel and radiate the love of Christ. Just seeing her walk through the door makes me feel more hopeful. But even when her jolly laugh ceases and pain makes her cry, I know that her hope is in Christ and that strengthens me. There is camaraderie and comfort to be found in a shared hope. When the church does its job, we are reminded that hard times, even death, do not have the last word.

As we see the violence and the destructive philosophical nonsense in our world, it is tempting to assume we can’t make a difference. Darkness, which diffuses in all directions, is a paralyzing force. What can we do to combat it? I’ve come to a conclusion: hope happens when I believe what is good and true, and act upon it, regardless of the outcome. In Christ, I have the power to do this. While I am too small to change the whole world, I am not too small to make a difference to those nearby. A little lighted match makes a marvelous difference in a dark room.

A Different Kind of Peace

Photo by: SuadaPhoto

“Chestnuts roasting on an open fire,

Jack Frost nipping at your nose,

Yuletide carols being sung by a choir,

And folks dressed up like Eskimos.

Everybody knows a turkey and some mistletoe

Help to make the season bright.

Tiny tots with their eyes all aglow

Will find it hard to sleep tonight. . .”

“The Christmas Song” by Mel Torme and Bob Wells

It’s an American Christmas song, a peaceful, comfortable tune, and every year my husband, the Nat King Cole enthusiast, sang it from November through December. After a while, even our babies were singing it! But the first Christmas song (which may have been spoken) had a different message:

“Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace. . .”

Peace. After seeing the infant Jesus, the shepherds “went back to the fields, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen. . .” I wonder if they kept that sense of awe through the hard years of the rest of their lives? Through cold nights and hot days; through hunger and danger; through injury and loss? And was their peace shattered when the Prince of Peace was nailed to a Roman cross, proving that the world was still a dark and dangerous place?

Almost two thousand years later, we still crave peace — especially at Christmas (which sometimes doesn’t live up to our expectations). Absences, insufficiencies, partings and hardships mar what should be a joy-filled holy day, leaving us disheartened and dissatisfied. We think, “It shouldn’t be like this.” And, in a sense, we’re right. The picture perfect peace we cried out for never arrived, and we are left with a sad substitute, riddled with holes, hanging by a thread.

But, what if we’re mistaken in conflating worldly comfort and peace? What if God’s peace doesn’t necessarily produce loving family gatherings, home for the holidays, and gift exchange? Although these are good and lovely things, I think we have been programmed to believe they represent the peace angels announced so long ago— a peace that had to do with connection rather than comfort.

Jesus came! Then He left. And we remain in this sin-dark, peace-poor world, understandably mourning what is missing. It is to our detriment however, when we allow grief to obscure the gift— a gift meant to inject inextinguishable joy and hope into our darkness. With the advent of Immanuel, we acquired access to a different kind of peace. We may be stuck here, but He is with us. A change is coming and already is because:

Our Savior was born in the city of David. He is Christ the Lord!

photo by: Grayson Joralemon

Love, with a Side of Pain

 She was grabbing dirty laundry from her son’s room when she saw it, scrawled over and over at the bottom of a piece of notebook paper: “I hate Mom. I hate Mom. I hate Mom.  . .” Sitting on the side of his bed, she wondered, “Is this what I get for trying to be a good parent?” For a moment, she stayed there, attempting to combine this evidence of contempt with her understanding of the situation. He was mad because he was grounded, a consequence he’d incurred for not doing his homework, and he felt justified in retaliating with unreasonable and disproportionate vitriol. She knew this scribal outburst was part of the irrational fury of adolescence, of rampant hormones, of selfish inexperience, of, well—sin. She took a deep breath, gathered up the smelly clothes and moved on. Never mind the stab wound; just keep loving, just keep loving. . .

When a child puts his arms around your neck and rests his head on your shoulder, or when your preschooler interrupts his Christmas program to wave and yell, “Hi Mom!” you feel loved, trusted and needed —important, even. And this love is gratifyingly public, a splendid reward for the exhausting hours you’ve spent feeding, bathing, reading and putting to bed; for the tracks you’ve made in the carpet at night as you walked a sick kid, for toilet training, for homework checking, for doctor trips and school obligations. Child rearing is an overwhelming job, so expressions of love feel good when they come. Unfortunately, this sacrifice doesn’t always receive a timely reward.

The mature and proper response to every situation—love— rarely reaps warm fuzzy dividends, and exercising tough love often gets us kicked in the teeth. There is a great temptation to give up and go away when love isn’t returned, and in abusive situations, it is the best thing to do. But, apart from dangerous cases, how do we deal with unreturned love? While I’m definitely not an expert on the subject,  I have lived long enough to learn a few things, and those mostly through failure.

Love is an unnatural, determined response initiated and empowered by the Holy Spirit. It is an acquired skill, honed by listening to and depending on Him. I rarely, and I mean, rarely get it totally right; portraying perfect love is impossible for us humans. But, and this is a big “but,” it is possible to improve. And that is what we are commanded to do: we are enjoined to “put on love,” to “walk in love,” to “abound and increase in love.”

 Love is a gateway to a new kind of life; enlarging our hearts, expanding our vision, and enriching others. The process may not be painless, but it is encouraging: it is evidence that we are becoming more like Christ.

“Therefore, be imitators of God as dearly loved childrenand live in love, just as Christ also loved us and gave himself for us, a sacrificial and fragrant offering to God.”

Ephesians 5: 1-2

Timeless Hope

Last summer, when I visited the beach, I decided to venture into the ocean and experience the waves after years of wading along the shore. It was a mental aberration, a failure to acknowledge my current physical status: bad feet, hips and knees, poor balance and atrophied muscles. Instead, deceptive memory took me back to a more youthful, capable self. A self who didn’t make grunting noises when she got out of bed. “How hard can it be,” I thought, “I can swim.”

Getting in was fine. I walked in on a gentle incline and enjoyed the warm water. Getting out was another matter. What I hadn’t anticipated was the shelf I encountered while trying to exit the ocean. Obviously, I’d drifted away from that lovely gradual incline. Minus the water smacking me about, I might have climbed out fairly easily after I fell, although it wouldn’t have been pretty; with age, I’ve perfected the three point stance approach to getting off the floor. But the waves interfered with my plan, walloping me fore and aft, turning me into a human tumbleweed. Eventually, I clawed and climbed my way onto the shelly shelf and crawled to shallow water where I clumsily stood up. I shudder to think what this undignified process, both funny and irritating, looked like from behind. At that moment, it became apparent that age had caught up with me, and irrationally, I got mad at Dylan Thomas.

“Do not go gentle into that good night,” he urged, “Old age should burn and rave at close of day. . .” Well, that seemed useless; what I needed wasn’t rage, but handrails! Of course, Thomas wasn’t writing about ageing per se’; he was writing about dying: “Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” His words ring with passion- and hopelessness.

Despair, the response to the lie that life ends at death is an avoidable landing place. The prophetess, Anna, was old, yet full of hope. She had lived as a wife for seven years and a widow to age eighty-four. Considering her long and, in some sense, lonely life, she would seem a likely candidate for both bitterness and rage, yet Luke wrote, “She never left the temple, serving night and day with fastings and prayers.” Anna kept praying, knowing that something good was coming; she lived in anticipation. When she met Mary, Joseph and infant Jesus at the temple, she “began giving thanks to God. . . .” Her moment had come: God had saved the best for last.

If we must find something to rage against, let it be against a destructive hopelessness which denies the truth that “God so loved the world that He sent His only Son. . .”. In spite of the beauty of his words, I think I’ll pass on Thomas’ advice. I’d much rather leave this world the way Anna did- lifting up praise rather than a fist, for, “In hope, we were saved.” Romans 8: 24

The Chilling Effect of Envy

photo by Tony Ross

The last thing I wanted to write about on the anniversary of my husband’s death was the subject of “envy.” Thinking about it took me back, and I didn’t want to go back. I lived through it once and learned from it once; now I wanted to leave it. More than that, I wanted to escape from those memories — leave them on one side of a chasm and leap to freedom on the other. However, in this life there is no “envy free” zone to jump to.

I never considered myself to be a particularly envious person. I had what I had and was pretty much satisfied with it. Like everyone else, I could do some things pretty well and stank at others. When I was young, I figured it was the luck of the draw. As I got older and was busy raising children, I hadn’t the time to take more than a cursory peek at other people’s accomplishments and possessions. When you have to wash urine-soaked bedding every day, you don’t covet someone else’s designer duvets.

I don’t know whether widowhood brought my human failings into sharper relief, or if I became a more envious person after my husband’s passing. Probably, it was a bit of both, but however it happened, I began to envy with a vengeance. I envied friends who showed me photographs of their happy anniversary trips; couples who strolled through Home Depot; spouses who sat together, shoulders touching, at church. I have no idea whether my Grinch-like attitude was obvious to others, but it was freezing me out. Every time I envied, I felt the darkness descending, cold and isolating. What was happening?

After a while, the answer came to me: envy occurred when I thought (even for a split second) that God loved others more than me. Whether I angrily positioned myself at the center of the universe and demanded answers, or miserably sunk into deep resentment, the effect was the same: I became a frozen, dormant being, unable to enter into the joy of the people surrounding me. Yet, didn’t scripture urge me to “rejoice always”? Wasn’t I supposed to “rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep”? The sin of envy kept me from interacting with others while it sent my spirit to sleep. The only cure for that kind of sleep was to wake up, and the only way to do that was to move away from envy toward the ultimate source of warmth and light.

After a while, I stopped wondering whether God loved others more than me. For all I knew, He might, but He loved me so much that the question became irrelevant, even when situations looked unfair. The critical choice I had to make each time envy reared its head, was whether or not to trust His love. In the end, trusting Him has made all the difference.

Standing in a Sandstorm

photo by Kyle Broad

Pregnant, barefoot and running late, she piled her four children into the car and hustled them to school. On the way, one of her sons tossed a flour bomb back and forth in the back seat. Catching sight of this in the rearview mirror, she warned, “Stop that! You’ll mess up your clothes; we’re late as it is.” He heard and disregarded her imperative, casting it off with the nonchalance of a born mischief-maker, and the inevitable happened. The bomb exploded and coated the regulation dress attire of the siblings just as they reached their destination. Mom held the younger son back so that she could wipe off his outfit, allowing her older son to cross the street alone so that he wouldn’t be tardy. At this point, the mother received a sharp reprimand from a crossing guard for putting a child at risk. She was humiliated and demoralized. She’d strained every nerve to be a good mother, but by 8:00 a.m. she felt like a failure. It’s a very common tale.

Discouragement is isolating. At the moment of failure, we feel: stupid, naïve, inept, hopeless, embarrassed, unworthy— the negative adjectives strike our souls like grit in a windstorm, pricking umpteen places at once. We can hole up, lick our wounds and wait for the storm to pass, but the subterranean sting of discouragement remains until we feel loved again.

Although some people are naturally loving; others, like me, have a hard time learning it. A cherished friend told me once that I “was truthful but not kind,” and I’ve meditated on that comment for over thirty years. It’s not that I want to inflict pain, it’s just that my tendency is to be in a hurry, to rush toward my goals without noticing the needs of others. And there’s the rub— my goals often conflict with the goals God has for me. While I want to change my circumstances, He wants to change my character. He wants me to learn to love.

All of us are, in one way or another, slow learners on the subject of love. Opportunities to love rush at us when we aren’t paying attention. In the moment, we don’t think fast enough to say, “Oh, my goodness, you’re having quite a morning! Allow me help you. By-the-way, this street can be very busy, so. . .” That type of response does not come naturally. So, seeing that we are “love disabled,” what do we do?

The apostle Paul’s advice to the Galatians was “walk by the Spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh” (Gal 5:16). Or, as Eugene Peterson put it, “live freely, animated and motivated by God’s Spirit.” I see this as a lifetime endeavor: acknowledging my need to change, becoming teachable, and practicing love until it becomes the “default” impulse. Paul’s instruction to the Philippians to “look out for the interests of others” (Phil 2:4) is only possible because we have the indwelling Spirit, who is eager to show us how.

Thirty years ago, I had an idea that love somehow included triumph; if I did it right, I’d look like Jesus. It was really about me checking off boxes. Eventually, I gave up on becoming biblically picturesque, realizing that I just plain couldn’t do it. When I comprehended that neither love nor kindness resided in my “flesh,” I began sincerely asking for help, and help was given. I’m still not great at selfless love— no one would mistake me for Jesus— but, by God’s grace, I am improving at it.

Wind Dance

My four year old granddaughter pointed them out, “Them are mean ducks,” she warned. She was remembering when she got too close to a Canada goose in the park and it came after her, hissing and flapping its huge wings. Such scary behavior might nominate the wild goose as a symbol for aggression, but the crazy Celts chose it to represent the Holy Spirit. What were they thinking?

Aside from their reputation for belligerence during nesting season, wild geese have excellent qualities: they mate for life; carefully attend their young; distribute seeds and reduce pests. But these beautiful birds are primarily known for their cooperation with each other during migration. Look up during spring or fall and you’re likely to see geese traveling in a “V”, honking as they go.

As a matter of fact, geese make more noise in the sky than on land. This seems like an odd expenditure of energy when one considers the amount of power they need to generate 30 mph flapping, but they do it to keep the flock together until they reach their destination. Like feathered drill sergeants, they “honk out” position changes, letting the weary leader rest as he yields the position of highest wind resistance to another. In a carefully choreographed wind dance, geese work together so they can all move forward.

What geese do instinctively, Christians find difficult. While we find relief in the risen Son, we flinch at following the Spirit, and because it’s hard to pursue an invisible leader, we simply stop trying. We neither follow the Leader God provided nor encourage others along the way. Basically, we quit before we reach our destination.

The disciples had certainly lost their motivation; they were battered, scattered and bewildered. Their beloved leader was gone, and the light in their lives was extinguished. In the crucifixion horror, they temporarily forgot what Jesus had promised before He died:

” I will ask the Father, and He will give you another helper, that He may be with you forever. . . “ (John 14:16)

Then Pentecost came, and the pouring out of the Holy Spirit was miraculously manifest to those who were watching for it. Luke records that “Everyone kept feeling a sense of awe; and many wonders and signs were taking place through the apostles” (Luke 2:43). So, what happened to the awe? Where did the Holy Spirit go?

The good news is this: the strong leader who Jesus promised, and the Father sent is here within us. To our discredit and detriment, we don’t recognize the significance of this. If we think of Him at all, we think of the Holy Spirit as a quiet traveler in the passenger’s seat. Watchman Nee wrote:

“To many Christians, the Holy Spirit is quite unreal. They regard Him as a mere influence, an influence for good, no doubt, but just an influence for all that. In their thinking, conscience and the Spirit are more or less identified as ‘some thing’ within them that brings them to book when they are bad and tries to show them how to be good. The trouble with the Corinthian Christians was not that they lacked the indwelling Spirit, but that they lacked the knowledge of His presence. They failed to realize the greatness of the One who had come to make his abode in their hearts. . .”

The tragedy of our situation is that while we have unlimited access to an untiring, unerring leader, Himself, very God, we forget about Him because He is quiet. For most Christians, He exists as part of the creed and nothing more.

We are not called to passively cool our earthly heels until the heavenly party begins, or to slog through life the best we can. Christians are commanded to walk “in” or “by” the Spirit with the understanding that heavenly life begins here. Too many of us have accepted the lie that walking with the Spirit is a ball and chain kind of life, but the amazing truth is that it is unimaginable liberation. Like dancing in the wind.