Longing for something more...

Last Friday my newly married daughter (two weeks) and her husband left for Belgium (his home country). It may be a whole year before I see them again. It will be a long year. I’m so thankful we have Skype and FaceBook and email, but it’s still not the same as seeing them and hugging them in person.

I hate good-byes. I especially hate good-byes when you’re not sure when you will see the person again. I’ve found that good-byes do serve a purpose, though, they create a longing in my heart, a longing for something more, for something better. Good-byes make me long for a place where there will be no more good-byes.

One of the things my illness has done for me, is it has given me more of a reason to long for heaven. I’m looking forward to being able to walk, run and dance again. I’ll be able to play my guitar again and don’t even get me started on the foods I can eat again. My husband thinks that the Wedding Feast of the Lamb is figurative. I told him, “It had better be real, because I’ve got my order ready.”

God wants us to long for heaven. He wants us to long for Him. When our sights are on heaven and on Him the things we have here become less important. When we are thinking of things eternal and have a “heaven bound” world view we see life differently, we see people differently. I hate the saying, “To heavenly minded to be any earthly good.” When we are heavenly minded, and not “holier then thou” minded, we depend on God for our next breath, we look to God for our every need, we see a lost world that needs to be loved, that needs hope, that needs a Savior.

This world is broken. Every longing we have here is meant to point us to Him. Every longing we have can only be fulfilled in Him. If we are longing for heaven then we are longing for Him. And, more then anything He wants us to long for Him, because He longs for us.

I love this song by Randy Stonehill because it speaks of the longing I’ve been talking about, a longing to be with Him.

Tell Me You’re Coming Back Soon – Randy Stonehill
Morning steals the night,
The sun breaks through the rain,
A little girl is sleeping,
While I pack to meet my plane.
Then I kneel down by her bed
And I kiss her sleepy head,
She hugs me tight,
She knows I'm going away.

CHORUS:
She says, "Tell me you're coming back soon,
Now don't forget me,
I want to be with you.
If you'll tell me you're coming back soon,
Then while you're gone,
The days won't seem so long."

I watch my little girl
And start to realize,
How God looks down from heaven,
And we're children in His eyes.
Even though we're far apart,
He left behind His heart,
Like a promise to return for us someday.

She says, "Tell me you're coming back soon,
Now don't forget me
I want to be with you.
If you'll tell me you're coming back soon,
Then while you're gone,
The days won't seem so long."

I know sometimes she feels so lost without me.
The world is such a big confusing place
And it's then I pray she'll do the things I taught her,
Remember right from wrong,
Remember daddy's face.

I know I'm going home
And hunger for that day,
Just like the Lord is waiting
And He longs to hear us say…

"Tell me you're coming back soon.
Now don't forget me,
I want to be with you.
If you'll tell me you're coming back soon,
Then while you're gone,
The days won't seem so long"

Gain and loss...

I belong to an Internet community call Board Game Geek (http://boardgamegeek.com/). A while back a member challenged us to write a 6-word memoir.

From his challenge:
Legend has it that Hemingway was once challenged to write a story in only six words. His response? “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” SMITH Magazine re-ignited the recountrer by asking their readers for their own six-word memoirs. They sent in short life stories in droves, from the bittersweet (“Cursed with cancer, blessed with friends”) and poignant (“I still make coffee for two”) to the inspirational (“Business school? Bah! Pop music? Hurrah”). I thought it would be fun to do the same thing here at BGG. The rules are very simple: Tell us your life story in ONLY SIX WORDS. It can be whatever you want. Make it funny. Make it poignant. Make it odd. Make it sweet. It's up to you. Can you do it?

I thought long and hard on this. I wanted my memoir to speak to people. I wanted something that really meant something. I finally came up with this, “In losing much, I’ve gained more.”

I have lost a lot battling the MS. I can’t drive a car anymore or take long trips. I can’t play my guitar or cello, do crafts, or cook up something wonderful in the kitchen. Being in a wheelchair means there are many places I can’t go, including many people’s homes. I know, with the progressive nature of my illness, there are more loses to come.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not sitting around bemoaning the things I’ve lost, though I do miss them at times, and I don’t mope around anticipating what will be next. I’m just being a realist and living in the now means I have to let go and move on from the past and yet be prepared, as much has I can be, for the future.

I’ve had people, yes Christians too, get mad at me for my outlook. They think that I’m not trusting God with my future or that I’ve given up hope. When what I’ve really done is to put my hope in the right place, where it should have been all along, with God.

Let me be honest here, nothing has happened so far and nothing will happen in the future that God hasn’t already allowed in my life. Yes, even the bad stuff. Isn’t that what Romans 8:28 says -

“And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.” (Romans 8:28. NAS)

The bad and the good, all of it, God uses for our good, for my good, to help us obtain a better end.

But wait, there’s more – “For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brethren…” (Romans 8:29, NAS)

I really hate how we so easily quote Romans 8:28 without completing the thought that follows through in 8:29. Maybe it’s because we love the comfort of verse 28 and verse 29 is more of a challenge. It says that everything God allows, the good the bad and the ugly, He uses to conform use to the image of His Son. Being conformed into the image of Christ can be messy. Getting out our humanness can take work. Look what it cost Jesus.

Yes, I’ve lost a lot and I will probably continue to lose more, but in the process of losing I‘ve also gained. I'm being healed – healed in a different way – healed of selfishness, pride and perfectionism. I’m learning to find peace and stability in Christ. I’m being forced to look heavenward for what I need most, a closer walk with God. In letting go I’ve found that my hands are then empty enough to receive what He longs to give me and what He wants most for me is that I, “…be conformed to the image of His Son.”

When I was a small child, playing in the sand, one of my favorite things to do was to dig a hole and fill it with water. I enjoyed poking holes in the sandy bottom and watching the water fill them up. I’ve since realized that our lives are like that. We are a hole filled with water, God, and every time life pokes a hole in our sand, God rushes in to fill it up.

Life’s not done poking holes in my sand. It probably won’t be until I am remade in heaven, but at least I know who will fill the holes. I may not always remember that truth, but God is patient with me and I know He won’t give up.

“In losing much, I’ve gained more.” It’s only when I acknowledged what I’ve lost that I can then glory in what I have gained.

____________________________________________________________

Your turn: Think of your own 6 word memoir and post it here or email it to me. Here a few samples to get you going:

"Not quite what I was planning." - Summer Grimes
"Anything's possible with an extension cord." - Billy Sirr
"Danced in fields of infinite possibilities." - Deepak Chopra
"Objects were closer than they appeared." - Michael Grossman
"Brought it to a boil, often." - Mario Batali
"Revenge is living well. Without you." - Joyce Carol Oates
"Wasn't noticed, so I painted trains." - Mare 139
"Secret of Life: Marry an Italian." - Nora Ephron
"School geek marries a luscious cheerleader." - Christopher Clukey
"Near death experiences are my forte." - Anna Mauser-Martinez
"Never really finished anything, except cake." - Carletta Perkins

The pieces of life...

A friend of mine on FaceBook had someone tell him to stop, “…making everyone’s Facebook [his] own little scratch pad for useless comments and nonsense." Okay, wait, I thought that was what Facebook was about. It’s for sharing your life with other people: the heartache, the joy, the nonsense, and often the trivial of life. Let’s be honest, most of life IS pretty trivial, at least life on this planet.

Think about your life. How much of it is really meaningful? You sleep in the same bed. You wake to do the same basic routines you do every morning. You go through your day, with work, school, or family, and do the same thing you probably did the day before or close to it. You come home and do mostly what you do every night after work and before bed. You climb into the same bed and wake in the morning to start it all over again.

I don’t mean to depress you, and that is pretty depressing, but that is why we need to find meaning in the trivial. That’s why we need to find meaning in the monotonous and the mundane.

I once had a boss laugh at my ability to find joy in the little things. I told him, “You’ve got to find joy in the little things, because the big things don’t come along very often.” He thought that was funny, but he also died alone and an alcoholic.

God lives in the meaningful, for sure, but He really shines in the trivial. It is in the trivial where we can see Him best, because it is then that our lives are empty enough to be able to allow Him room.

Someone once said, God is a gentleman. He won’t force His way into your life, He waits to be asked. He knocks, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and will dine with him, and he with Me (Rev. 3:20, NAS),” and then waits to be invited in.

It is in the trivial, the monotonous and the mundane that we need to find purpose. It is in those times when our heart most cries out for meaning. It is then that we can best hear His knocking. We just need to open the door to find meaning.

In a talk I gave a few years ago, I compared our lives to a stained glass window. All the pieces of glass are meaningless, pretty, but meaningless and it is only when we allow those pieces to be used for the bigger picture that God's light can shine though and create a thing of beauty. God takes all the pieces of our lives, including the trivial, the mundane, and the monotonous, puts them together into a beautiful picture and then shines through so we will be a light in a dark world.

Broken bodies...

I got an email today that spoke of a man who is mentally challenged and how he will always see the world through the eyes of a child. I’ve read this particular email before, but it got me thinking about how the disabled, mentally or physically, see the world differently.

I told you in my last post that I went to a Christian camp, for disabled adults, at the end of June. This was my fifth year attending. I have learned so much from the people I have met at these camps.

I haven't always been in this wheelchair. I've married and had children, but many of these people have been disabled from birth and have not been able to marry or have children. One man, a good friend of mine, was a healthy, normal teenager, until some boys beat him up bad enough that there was permanent brain damage. This man is a great example to me. He has every reason to be bitter, angry, and disappointed with God and with life, but I see such determination, acceptance, and joy in him. He is such an encouragement to me, at camp and daily through the Internet.

These disabled adults have taught me many things. They have taught me to be thankful for what I have and not to dwell on what I have lost. They have taught me to not feel so self-conscious about my disability and the strange things I have to use and wear (support hose, special ankle wraps, wheelchair, catheter bottle, etc.). They have shown me acceptance, love and understanding. When I am at camp, I never feel ignored or different. They understand.

Many of the adults at camp have Cerebral Palsy. They have problems speaking and sometimes I don’t get what they are saying the first time or even the second, but they never get angry with me, they just calmly say it again until I understand. They have taught me patience and how to slow down.

I need to tell you about George. He is one of my special camp friends. I have known George since my days of working at the residence at Inspiration Ministries (then Christian League for the Handicapped) 30 years ago. George has Cerebral Palsy. He is very hard to understand, which means you really have to take the time to listen to him. He pushes himself around in his wheelchair using his feet. His movements are spastic and hard to control. And, I have never met a man so full of God’s love and so willing to share what he has with others.

George informed this year that he is 73. Imagine 73 years trapped in that body. 73 years of thoughts and feelings and insights that can’t be expressed, but George is an amazing, joyful, patient man. He gives what he can and never bemoans not being able to do more. For years, he pushed a lady around the residence. Yes, him, in his wheelchair, pushing a lady friend, in her wheelchair, because it was hard for her to do it herself.

George can no longer live at the residence. He has to be tube fed now and they can’t do that, so he had to go to a nursing home. He still comes to the residence and camp though, and he is still the amazing, joyful, patient man I have known all these years.

When George asked me to guess his age, I said 62. He got this sweet, amazed look in his eyes and laughing said, “Thank you!” (In that groaning way he has of talking). He found humor in my guessing so young. When he did that he reminded me that inside that body, that looks broken and disabled, lives a wonderful, caring, brilliant, and funny man. I can’t wait to see George in heaven, healthy and whole.

I can’t wait to see all my camp friends in heaven. We’ll laugh and dance and rejoice before the throne of God. We will praise the One who died to make us whole. Until then, we will live whole, spiritually, even as we live the present in broken bodies.

The "why" of my blogging.

Blogging. For someone my age blogging seems a little intimidating. (By the way, I’ll just let you guess my age, but here’s a hint, I unfortunately spent many a high school dance dancing to disco music.) So, the burning question is (or maybe it is just a smoldering question), what am I doing writing a blog?

I was sharing some experiences I had this summer, while attending a camp for disabled adults, with a friend. He commented that my experiences at camp, as well as living daily with degenerative Multiple Sclerosis might be something interesting and encouraging to others. I’ve thought about what he said and decided I’d give it a try.

Here is a spoiler alert - I am a Christian. I will talk about God. So, don’t ever say I didn’t warn you. The only way I could ever have made it though the last 12 years is with God’s loving arms to carry me. He has made beauty from the ashes of this illness. This Monster, a common nickname for MS, has stolen so much from me, but for everything I have lost, God has given me back so much more. Twila Paris says it so well in her song, “This Thorn” –

Thank you for this thorn embedded in my flesh,
I can feel the mystery, my spirit is made fresh.
You are sovereign still and forever wise,
I can see the miracle opening my eyes…

(Refrain)
…To a proud heart so quick to judge,
Laying down crosses and carrying grudges.
The veil has been torn
And I thank you for this thorn.

Thank you for this thorn, fellowship of pain,
Teaching me to know you more never to complain.
Thank You for this love planted in my side,
Faithful, patient, miracle opening my eyes…(refrain)

I never thought I'd say it without reservation,
But I am truly grateful for this piercing revelation,
Of a proud heart so quick to judge,
Laying down crosses and carrying grudges.
The veil has been torn,
And I thank you for this thorn.

And if You chose to take it, I will praise You,
And thank You for the healing in Your name,
But if it must remain, I thank You for Your rod,
Evidence of Father-love for a child of God.

I join You in sorrow,
So much less than You have borne,
And I thank you, really I thank You,
Lord I thank You, I thank You for this thorn.