tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24974307258852928802024-03-14T06:18:05.932-04:00The Contents of My HeadFaith, Family, Musings, Struggles, Victories, Failures, and Longing.--Rebeccahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00634179030174821176noreply@blogger.comBlogger210125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2497430725885292880.post-52358206438593309912024-02-07T15:43:00.005-05:002024-02-07T17:45:14.739-05:00One Thing I Learned from Joel Belz<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHbGVMlcOwtWIu2ExGsqH0BfktvyTrOcOi3kYaAlkRtYL2CCy-MAg_N3FoJyLnSVbSDA1c2O1fXV5yxkur4qbC_V-n7-tc957kzhAD4zQgnPmu7PW9Na0vkfnBwg-An1VqLz7ET5VybEIJRM9AkxVTfx5fbLk0DAXYbTdxYWGo9d-xwAOWrt7lQOpAJ5H4/s8688/JOEL-2019%20formal%20but%20friendly.tiff" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="8688" data-original-width="5792" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHbGVMlcOwtWIu2ExGsqH0BfktvyTrOcOi3kYaAlkRtYL2CCy-MAg_N3FoJyLnSVbSDA1c2O1fXV5yxkur4qbC_V-n7-tc957kzhAD4zQgnPmu7PW9Na0vkfnBwg-An1VqLz7ET5VybEIJRM9AkxVTfx5fbLk0DAXYbTdxYWGo9d-xwAOWrt7lQOpAJ5H4/w426-h640/JOEL-2019%20formal%20but%20friendly.tiff" width="426" /></a></div><br /> <p></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Joel Belz</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">August 10, 1941 – February 4, 2024</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">I first met Joel in December of 1993 when I as a very young adult interviewed for a position in the God's World Book Club.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">It didn’t feel like an interview. It just felt like an introduction. Rather than grill me with questions about my experience and qualifications, he enthusiastically shared with me what God’s World Publications was about by quoting the verse </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="white-space: normal;"><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span><i>The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof,</i></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="white-space: normal;"><i><span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The world and they that dwell in it. (Psalm 24)</i></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Over the next few years, I discovered that Joel and I shared a personality trait: We are both idealists. He is more of a visionary idealist and I a metaphorical idealist, but we still found connection in the struggle that is living as idealists while being people who fall short of even our own ideals, in a world that has fallen also from the ideal. We both had the capacity to reach real emotional and anticipatory highs—and to fall low when our expectations weren’t realized.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">I remember one time when both of us were at a lower point, we had a conversation about the sanctification process for idealists, who can so readily turn our “shoulds” into idols. Letting go of those “shoulds,” those idols, is a painful part of spiritual growth. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">And through those types of conversations, I began to form a more right view of how to navigate this life, this work, this world, relationships with family, others, and God himself.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">We tend to think that the opposite of Idealism is Realism, but I no longer think that’s true, and I learned this because of living and working alongside Joel for three decades.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">The real opposite of Idealism is Cynicism. Both are incorrect—out of focus, but easy to slide into one or the other. We are either/or people. Either it’s all perfect or it’s all rotten. Either we worship utopian perfection, or we declare it all worthless nihilism, and essentially worship nothingness. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">But People of the Good News ought not see it that way. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Instead, if we turn the lens of scripture on our tendencies, we don’t see Either/Or. We see the Both/And of not Idealism and Cynicism, but of</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i>Optimism and Realism.</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">God is at the same time realistic and optimistic about us, because of WHO he is and what he is able to accomplish, and we have reason to be both realistic and optimistic as well.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">“He who began a good work in you WILL see it to completion,” he promises.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">I cling to that personally and optimistically—about myself and about each of you.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">“I know the plans I have for you,” DECLARES the Lord. “Plans to prosper and not harm you. Plans to give you a HOPE and a future.” </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">I cling to that for all of us, corporately. For the universal church. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Because of this hope that grounds all of life for believers—and did so for Joel—even the idealists can tuck away their “should bes” and open themselves up to live in the real: We each have a cross to bear, and under it, we will stumble. We will fail. We will harm ourselves and others, and circumstances beyond our control will also crush expectations, cause harm, weary us… but never rob us of the hope that is finished already in Christ’s entrance into our weary, broken world, the life he lived, his death, resurrection to overcome it all, and ascension as proof that all truly is settled and accepted as good. The Father knows our frame. He is realistic about us. He says that he will uphold us with HIS mighty right hand, so that when we fall—and you and I will—we will not be cast headlong. Realistic, and optimistic at the same time.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">A few years ago, after Joel had received his Parkinson’s diagnosis but he was still coming in to the office regularly, he and I met in the kitchen here at #12. If you’ve spent any time in the kitchen at #12, then you know that many good things happen there—that don’t have to do with food.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">We were having another rich talk, but both of us were feeling the weight of the realities of this life, and I asked him a rather naïve question—or a question that was seeking a naïve answer. The idealist was trying again to come to the surface.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">I asked, “Joel, when do we get to coast a bit? When does life become smooth sailing?” </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">The normal answer even believers give to that question is the idealist’s fuel and fodder: It's just over the next life hump. When the deadline is past; when that degree is complete; when the kids move out; etc. We’re always waiting for what comes next—and it never seems to come.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">But Joel didn’t give me that answer. He looked at me lovingly, like a father, and he said directly but gently, <b>“Rebecca, it’s uphill all the way.”</b></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">That statement didn’t immediately give me joy, but I will tell you that I think of it</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">every. single. day.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Every day, as I pray to take up my own cross for what’s ahead, I think with thanksgiving of the honestly of that statement. That’s reality.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">It is uphill all the way.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">So, Rebecca, lay aside your idealism, and pick up the reality of today’s requirements and challenges, but not without hope; with optimism—because Christ has taken my actual burden on himself, and he said, “It is finished.”</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">We labor on, uphill all the way, and that is true. But it is grounded in the optimistic reality that our future is secure. We have a living hope, born out of Christ’s resurrection, which is held for us even now, an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading! Joel knows that face to face now. It is not at all like my earthly ideals, and it will never disappoint.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">And because of Joel’s “brutal” honesty to tell me the truth that it is uphill all the way, I am compelled every morning to set my sights on that eternal hope, and take the next step that today holds, to press on toward the goal, as Joel did.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;">Joel has finished the race, and he now joins that great cloud of witnesses who surround us. So, let us take up our crosses but lay off the weights of both cynicism and idealism, and run with endurance that real uphill race that lies before us.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrd6FwmezcjBRQGeMh6fR3yAf4umUxCe1Mdh1YakLlLHcXcMLKwvSInIcQCTHesSCQs3JifVD40N8AfKmGM-gqw84HvNhcZaI-O7R2AoJVIsVzxG2ekraRdQCe3dqaumrdqOSi6SHKTpWKUfrFOPd6a-OAvkRznzLdQzamDeo7yAb7TfzX73GxFg89RZrZ/s960/Joel%20and%20CE%20Belz%202021%20in%20studio%20with%20RC.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="880" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrd6FwmezcjBRQGeMh6fR3yAf4umUxCe1Mdh1YakLlLHcXcMLKwvSInIcQCTHesSCQs3JifVD40N8AfKmGM-gqw84HvNhcZaI-O7R2AoJVIsVzxG2ekraRdQCe3dqaumrdqOSi6SHKTpWKUfrFOPd6a-OAvkRznzLdQzamDeo7yAb7TfzX73GxFg89RZrZ/w366-h400/Joel%20and%20CE%20Belz%202021%20in%20studio%20with%20RC.jpeg" width="366" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">In the studio in Asheville with Joel and Carol Esther Belz, August 2021.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div></div><p></p><p><br /><br /></p>--Rebeccahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00634179030174821176noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2497430725885292880.post-82318961684649706072021-04-03T21:19:00.006-04:002023-04-05T15:01:32.257-04:00The Untorn Robe<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-t7JHBq4INmw/YGkT6XmkyvI/AAAAAAAAQtM/8RBfOrIfcKEGtYN07Uo4sxmebqRUQWmlgCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/Let%2BEarth%2Breceive%2Bher%2Bking%2Bby%2BG.%2BCarol%2BBomer.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="400" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-t7JHBq4INmw/YGkT6XmkyvI/AAAAAAAAQtM/8RBfOrIfcKEGtYN07Uo4sxmebqRUQWmlgCLcBGAsYHQ/w300-h400/Let%2BEarth%2Breceive%2Bher%2Bking%2Bby%2BG.%2BCarol%2BBomer.jpeg" width="300" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: center;"> <span style="font-size: x-small;">Let Earth Receive Her King image of print by G. Carol Bomer</span></div><p></p><p style="text-align: left;"><b style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">John 19:23-24</b></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">When the soldiers had crucified Jesus, they took his garments and divided them into four parts, one part for each soldier; also his tunic. But the tunic was seamless, woven in one piece from top to bottom, so they said to one another, “Let us not tear it, but cast lots for it to see whose it shall be.” This was to fulfill the scripture which says,</span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"></p><div style="text-align: left;">“They divided my garments among them,</div><div style="text-align: left;"> and for my clothing they cast lots.”</div><p></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: left;">So the soldiers did these things.</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px; text-align: center;"><br /></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px; text-align: center;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: left;">This was what I was reading this morning when I was internally stopped to ask and wonder: What was the significance of the seamless, untorn tunic? It was the words “woven in one piece from top to bottom” followed by “Let us not tear it” that got my attention—because we’ve seen some of those words in other books of the Bible recounting this very same series of events, but used differently.</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px; text-align: left;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: left;">What was torn, almost immediately after this scene? The Temple curtain. How was it torn? From top to bottom. Surely John’s choice of language is not accidental. Is there a connection to be made?</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px; text-align: left;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: left;">In John’s account alone, this detail about the tunic is given. And from John’s account alone, the detail about the Temple curtain is omitted. So I ask, “Why, John? Why the maverick approach? Why the different focus but the similar language? What is it you want to show us by taking this very specific but alternate track?"</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px; text-align: center;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: left;">Matthew, Mark, and Luke all affirm that while Jesus is being crucified, his garments are divided near the foot of the cross. All three also tie his death to the curtain being torn in two. Both Matthew and Mark specifically say the curtain tore from top to bottom. (The word used actually means “from above.” Fascinatingly, it’s the same word that is used for Jesus who came “from above,” and for the power Pilate has, which would not be his if it were not granted him “from above.” The curtain tore “from above”—perhaps implying that the power that tore it was not earthly. This robe, then, woven in one piece “from above”. . . what might you make of that?)</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px; text-align: left;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: left;">But, Matthew, Mark, and Luke don’t mention the single-piece robe among the garments. Only the curtain and the garments in general.</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px; text-align: left;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: left;">Scholars all seem to be in agreement that the mention in all four gospels that the garments are divided is a reference meant to show that Jesus filled the prophecy of Psalm 22:18: “They divide my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots.” From this same Psalm come the words Jesus cries out from the cross: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” and also the imagery, “They have pierced my hands and feet.” These are all signposts: Evidences that the Christ who was prophesied to come is indeed this very Jesus now upon the cross. A thousand years passed from the time Psalm 22 was written until it was fulfilled.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px; text-align: left;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"></p><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; text-align: left;">But that answer, while good, doesn’t completely satisfy. They divided his clothing to fulfill the prophecy, to show us that he is that fulfilment. But why clothes? And why these particular clothes? What is the meaning of the single-piece tunic that was woven from top to bottom (or from above) and not torn? Who cares if it was torn or not? Does it matter? Indeed, I now think it does.</div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px;"><br /></span></div><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><div style="text-align: left;">First, I think, we need to address what this garment was to Jesus and to people of the day. The tunic was not an outer robe. It was an undergarment, worn close to the skin. (There was likely also a loin garment as well, but the point is that it covered nakedness. Its purpose was not to signify status or role, outwardly—like the purple cloak that the soldiers put on him at his scourging, when they mocked his kingship.) When did the need for these undergarments first come about in human history? Let’s go all the way back to Genesis chapter 3.</div></span><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><div style="text-align: left;">After the first six days of creation, when God had made it all and set it into motion, he rested. After all that creative activity, the next thing that we are told about God making is a pair of tunics. (Genesis 3:21) Adam and Eve initially enjoyed complete fellowship with one another and with God and all was very good—with nothing at all standing between them. Not even a thin layer of fabric. There was no shame in their nakedness because there was no reason for shame. There was no reason for them to be at all divided, disunified, from one another and from their Creator, whose image they bore. But it didn’t last, because they sinned. They broke that fellowship and created a division. Their nakedness was no longer a sign of unity, but of shame and guilt and rebellion. (Treason, one might even say.) They could not stand uncovered before him and live.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div></span><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: left;">So in his mercy, God created again. He made tunics for them, and he covered them.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px; text-align: left;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: left;">The need of a tunic was established at the beginning of our story.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px; text-align: center;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: left;">But that clothing that we now must wear that keeps us separate from one another and from God isn’t always maintained in its own unity. Most of our clothing is made with seams and we all know what happens with seams eventually: They give up. They tear. They rend. Rending clothes is symbolic too, not just a practical matter of use and age. In 1 Kings 11: 29-33, the prophet Ahijah tears his new garment as a symbol of coming disunity. God is going to divide the kingdom over sin. Separation is a reason for mourning. The garment is torn in grief as well as prophecy. When Job learned of the calamity that had befallen him, he tore his clothes in an act of both great mourning and worship—recognizing that he came naked into the world, that all he had was from God, and therefore God’s to take. (Job 1:20). The Bible is full of clothes-tearers: Reuben, Joshua and Caleb, David and his men, Athaliah, Mordecai, Hezekiah… the list goes on and on.</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px; text-align: left;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: left;">But there was one person of great biblical importance who was <b>not</b> to tear his clothes: Aaron, the high priest, and the high priests who would inherit their position after him, for generations. While the people mourned their separation from God, the high priest donned a tunic that could not be torn, and in it, he entered into God’s holy presence in the Holy of Holies, behind the curtain. With his unrent tunic against his own skin, covering his own shame, Aaron did not mourn. Instead, <b>he dealt with mourning.</b> He brought atonement for the people’s sin that was the reason for mourning. Exodus 28:32 tells us about this garment that went beneath the ephod. “You shall make the robe (or tunic) of the ephod all of blue. It shall have an opening for the head in the middle of it, with a woven binding around the opening, like the opening in a garment, <b><i>so that it may not tear</i></b>.”</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px; text-align: center;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: left;">That certainly sounds like a garment of all one piece, doesn’t it? No seams to reinforce but only the opening for the head. And it is emphasized: <i>so that it may not tear.</i></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px; text-align: left;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: left;">These garments were preserved and passed on to other generations of priests. Exodus 29:30 says “The holy garments of Aaron shall be for his sons after him; they shall be anointed in them and ordained in them. The son who succeeds him as priest, who comes into the tent of meeting to minister in the Holy Place, shall wear them seven days.” Each time the high priest entered into God’s presence, behind the curtain, he had to be clothed in these garments, “so that he does not die.” (Exodus 28:35) It’s not time yet for all the shame and sin to be exposed <i>in full</i>. The annual ritual atonement that Aaron and the next generations of priests will perform are always partial, and must be repeated and repeated.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px; text-align: left;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: left;">When Jesus went to the cross, he went in this very significant and noteworthy piece of clothing. He was dressed to make an atoning presentation to God. On the previous Thursday evening, he had received the burden he was taking on, for which to atone. He had become sin then, taking onto himself not just my sin and the sin of those men with him that night, but “the sins of the world.” Aaron declared the sins of the people imputed to an animal. Jesus knelt in Gethsemane, and called it <b><i>all</i></b> onto himself. Past, present, future. No wonder he sweat drops of blood. If we think he stumbled on that so-called Via Dolorosa under the weight of the wood he was carrying, perhaps we are not fully aware of the weight he had actually accepted, which set him on that path.</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px; text-align: left;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: left;">As we work our way through the Stations of the Cross during Holy Week, we note that “Jesus is stripped.” We are reminded to reflect on his humility, that God would be exposed, naked, before the world. But in reality, so great is our union with him in his purpose, that it is not just his nakedness on that tree. It’s all of mine. It’s yours. It’s the apostles, the soldiers, his mother Mary’s. We are bound to him and it is our shame and humility that he purposefully takes there—when his garment is removed. We are exposed with every bit of the ugliness that we brought to Gethsemane. We are naked on that cross, before God and the entire world, for both Jew and Gentile were present there.</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px; text-align: left;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"></p><div style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; text-align: left;">I believe two things happened there with the stripping: 1) All the burden of separating sin was laid bare for all the world; and 2) Jesus’ own covering was removed in preparation for his death: He is accepting the forthcoming death—as Aaron could not enter God’s presence uncovered and live.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></div><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><div style="text-align: left;">The atonement complete, <b><i>the separation is over</i></b>. This is what he came for. God’s presence is accessible again, without the need for covering and ritual. The curtain is torn completely, “from above,” opening his presence to all who accept the way. As it was in the beginning.</div></span><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><div style="text-align: left;">And now, the high priestly garment is . . . gone. There is no need for a next generation priest. Mourning is ended. Separation is ended. Atonement is secured.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div></span><p></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 15px; text-align: left;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: left;">It really is finished.</p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><br /></p><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><p></p>--Rebeccahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00634179030174821176noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2497430725885292880.post-85284669095124248662020-11-07T19:27:00.004-05:002020-11-11T13:26:06.405-05:00The Case for Odd-Numbered Place Settings<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-0dbG8cD0Wvg/X6c7PYBBUcI/AAAAAAAAPk0/iD6888gJTXUuY1dVYVQh0KhMH84opNZ1QCLcBGAsYHQ/s420/dinner%2Bplace.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="420" data-original-width="400" height="400" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-0dbG8cD0Wvg/X6c7PYBBUcI/AAAAAAAAPk0/iD6888gJTXUuY1dVYVQh0KhMH84opNZ1QCLcBGAsYHQ/w381-h400/dinner%2Bplace.jpg" width="381" /></a></div><p>Today, a young couple gathered with friends and family to receive gifts in anticipation of their upcoming wedding. Their gift registry was modest, by anyone’s standards. Only four plates. Four glasses. The most basic kitchen needs. </p><p>It was charming, really, the simplicity with which they are looking ahead to their union and housekeeping. I appreciate the minimalist approach. There are far more important things to think about and invest in than the maintenance of much STUFF.</p><p>But even as I pieced together my gift selection for them from their registry, to try to help in meeting their needs as well as their expectations, I did invest in one item that they might consider superfluous: a fifth dinner plate.</p><p>My daughter, through whom I know this couple, had already purchased for them the four plates they had registered for and requested. I added a fifth, and along with it, an explanatory note, which was inspired by my own long history of life at this point, and the knowledge that these young two truly desire to honor Christ in their marriage. </p><p>So I wrote a note, and it said something like this, or at least, this is what I intended to say in that dashed-off missive:</p><p>Blessings of grace and peace and mercy and joy to you in your new marriage! The gift you find here of the fifth and odd-numbered dinner plate is to serve a purpose as a reminder in your marriage as you gather with others to nourish bodies and friendships, to remember the sojourner, the widow, the orphan, the single person, the lonely elderly neighbor, and to set a place for one who might not be so embraced at the table as those who are bound in pairs. For this is true religion: to visit the widow and the orphan and remain unstained by the world.</p><p>I myself have recently married after six years of singleness. It was a long six years. In that time, I realized that while I have far more than four plates (I do enjoy inviting in), neither my “good” china nor my everyday stoneware inhabit the cabinet in even numbers. There are 13 of one and 15 of another—and that wasn’t intentional. Over time, a piece here or there was broken. But the odd number still serves as a reminder.</p><p>I don’t have an extra plate to be left off as I fill the table with pairs and couples. Even now that I’m married, I don’t have an extra plate to leave in the cabinet. I have an extra <i>opportunity</i>. An opportunity to bring in one more, someone who, like I was all those years, may be eating alone on the night of . . . whatever event we’re having, whether it’s our annual Friendsgiving—a gathering of mostly singles I have hosted for several years and intend to continue even though I am married again now—or just dinner, at home when someone single crosses my mind.</p><p>And this I would offer: If a single person crosses your mind, don’t dismiss it. That’s very likely a God-nudge to bring that person somehow into fellowship. Clearly, God wants to talk to you about that person, and maybe what he wants to say is “Reach out. Include. Visit. Invite.”</p><p>And if you too have an odd number of plates on your shelf, think of setting an odd number of places at your table, and find that lonely soul who needs you. </p>--Rebeccahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00634179030174821176noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2497430725885292880.post-74970487469468576592020-04-23T12:21:00.000-04:002020-04-23T12:24:07.023-04:00Thoughts on Day 40: Life in the Time of Corona<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Quarantine. The word literally means “a period of 40 days.”</div>
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40. A significant number. Today is day 40 in quarantine or
lockdown or “safe at home” for us. 40 days. Like Jesus in the wilderness. Like
the time it rained while Noah and his family and all those creatures were on
the ark.<o:p></o:p></div>
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I’ve been wondering about this number. It comes up so often
in the Bible, but why does our English language have a word for this particular
number of days? The word goes all the way back to Italy in the early 1400s. As
people attempted to manage and avoid plague, travelers were sometimes required
to spend a full 40 days, a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">quarantino</i>,
in isolation to allow for potential infections to incubate and run their course
before risking transmission via contact with others in an uninfected area.<br />
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Perhaps there’s some epidemiological science behind that. It seems reasonable
to think so. But I also think there’s some Creator-inspired psychology behind
it. I think of how we started out 40 days ago. Sure, we didn’t like this—didn’t
relish or enjoy it—but it felt like something of an adventure, and I for one
dive into adventure with vigor. At first. My intuition had told me as far back
as early February that something was likely to “go down,” and so I had made a
little game with the girls of selecting strategic items to add to our normal
weekly grocery shopping. Before there were even rumors of isolation, we had a
small surplus store of pasta, peanut butter, beans, rice, applesauce, pet food,
and acetominaphen. (Always ridiculed by my daughters about my personal dread of
running out of toilet paper, I failed this time to stock up on that precious
commodity in advance, however.)<br />
<br />
We made some plans about how to address a temporary isolation. Schools sent
home student laptops. We baked a little. We pulled out games and a puzzle. We
planned movie nights and took youth group to Zoom. We were so going to do this!
And we did, without much strain despite the uncertainty for the first two
weeks.<o:p></o:p></div>
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And then we felt the restlessness creeping in. We felt the
end of our own resolve and resources. Trips that kids were excited about got canceled.
That hurt. We got cranky. Moods have stayed pretty good overall, but it is
clear that our own bootstraps have grown much, much shorter as the days creep
on. There have been a few teary meltdowns (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">mea
culpa</i>—even more than the younger ones here in the household). We miss our
friends. We miss our families. We miss sports. We miss church. We miss
classrooms and offices and lunches out. We miss the movie theater and the
spontaneous errand. We miss… everything. <br />
<br />
We’re not hungry. We’re not cold. We’re not even alone. We have each other and
we connect with people by text and phone and social media and Zoom. But even
so, we know we need something else. It’s not enough. And I think this is where
the development of real patience and perseverance and healthy dependency upon
someone other than ourselves to sustain our whole-image health has opportunity
to get roots and grow… around the 40 day mark. It’s too long for us. We want it
to end, now—just as it has the potential to develop something lasting within
us. Endurance. Endurance doesn’t come easily. It isn’t born into us. It’s
nurtured into us. It doesn’t spring up like a weed but grows like an oak—from something
small but lasting, that takes a long time to become mighty.<o:p></o:p></div>
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I think its unlikely to be coincidence that Psalm 40 claims,
“I waited patiently for the Lord.” And then, the Psalmist goes on to ask God
to “make haste” to deliver him. We hold both truths simultaneously. That’s
simply honest.<br />
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We’re becoming more aware of our needs beyond the physical. We’re becoming
something. We’re becoming.<br />
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I don’t want to miss this. I want to welcome it. I want to receive it. Despite
all the hardship, I’m trying to open my hand to what this is working in us—individually,
as a family, as a community, as a nation, as a world. May there be fruit in the
future.<o:p></o:p></div>
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--Rebeccahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00634179030174821176noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2497430725885292880.post-3906438272997151432020-03-23T23:00:00.001-04:002020-03-23T23:01:11.771-04:00Life in the Age of Coronavirus, Day 9: The Tears Come<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Nine straight days of quarantine didn’t do it.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Moving a disappointed college freshman home without a chance
to say goodbye to the friends she made didn’t do it—even though she’s changing
colleges and really won’t see them again.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The lost eighth grade track season didn’t do it, nor the
lost running club for the youngest. The lost hostess job for the oldest didn’t
do it. Not even, NOT EVEN, the very real possibility that my own wedding might
be canceled later this summer—or at the least radically altered.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Hearing my 80-year-old dad say, “Becca, I reckon you better
not come visit” didn’t quite do it.<o:p></o:p></div>
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No, none of those things yet had brought tears. But this one
did.<o:p></o:p></div>
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This face. This gentle, smiling face of a stranger, which I
sat mesmerized with in Twitter’s feed, posted by a stranger.<o:p></o:p></div>
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I looked him up. I needed more. Who was this man?<o:p></o:p></div>
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Don Giuseppe Berardelli was a 72-year-old Catholic priest in
Bergamo, Italy. Though the account of his life I found online was awkwardly
translated from Italian to some assortment of English words and phrases, I
could pick out enough to grasp that he loved and was dearly loved by his
parishioners. So much so that when he contracted COVID-19 among the throngs of
others in his community, his parish knew: He won’t let himself be treated above
others.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The parishioners went in together and bought a ventilator.
Who of us has thought of that? They bought him his own, to be sure he wouldn’t
refuse one at the hospital.<o:p></o:p></div>
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And still, when there were not enough, he opted to give his
ventilator to someone else. I don’t know who. Someone younger. Maybe someone
not yet so secure in his eternal inheritance.<br />
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And there they were. The tears, for a stranger. For the man, yes. For his
parish, yes. For love, for sorrow, for anguish. For anger at this stupid virus
that is sweeping our planet. Taking away Don Giuseppe Berardellis abroad and at
home. <br />
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For something else too. For the sheer, perfect beauty of it. It’s a beauty that
can’t be grasped without tears. Self-sacrifice. Greater love has no man than
this, and we know it. We know it so much that we can’t experience this kind of
beauty with glee. It has to hurt. It’s too foreign to us. Too vast. Too other.
I recognize it but can’t take it in. The tears and sobs push it OUT, OUT! It
doesn’t belong in me. <o:p></o:p></div>
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After Moses saw God face to face, his face was too radiant.
No one could look at him. He had to veil it until it faded. That’s it. I can’t
look. I can’t take this in. It is too wonderful for me. <br />
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Mercy, mercy! God have mercy on us all.<br />
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And thank you for Don Giuseppe Berardelli. May his memory be eternal.<o:p></o:p></div>
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--Rebeccahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00634179030174821176noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2497430725885292880.post-26486962944170265172020-03-18T09:52:00.004-04:002020-03-18T09:56:10.989-04:00Life in the Age of Coronavirus, COVID-19: Tuesday, 3/17/20<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Tuesday, 3/17/20<o:p></o:p></div>
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My daughter who isn’t “supposed to be here” told me today
was St. Patrick’s Day. I hadn’t realized it. On a normal weekday in mid-March,
I would likely have been surprised to learn it was a holiday requiring specific
attire the morning of as we were rushing to get to school and work on time, and
WHERE IS IT? THAT GREEN SEQUINED HEADBAND I BOUGHT LAST YEAR TO WEAR TODAY!
would have been expressed in profound despair from behind a closed bedroom door
no more than four minutes before my own WE MUST GO NOW! declaration would add
to the desperation of the morning.<o:p></o:p></div>
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But that was then. This year, it was quiet. The children
were not even awake yet at 7:09 am, when all that would have been happening. No
one particularly cared about wearing green.<o:p></o:p></div>
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I was sitting in front of my computer when she passed by to
tell me and to give a sharp pinch. I felt its sting for minutes afterward. That
was good, actually. I was feeling numb there. Blank. Not at my office in the
Village, but at home at the dining room table. A bit disoriented. The house is
more full than normal. The pincher is one of my college girls, home, presumably
for the rest of the semester, as her college has closed dorms. She moved her
things out yesterday. All but one rug and one shelf that she couldn’t manage to
get. She might go back for them. She might abandon them.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Very exciting, planned-for-all-year, paid-on-all-year field
trips to Atlanta and Chattanooga for the younger girls have been canceled. Our
$550 so far investment may not be returned to us. No one knows how this is all
going to work.<o:p></o:p></div>
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All three girls are waiting for virtual school to start:
sixth grade, eight grade, and freshman university classes are all going online.
My oldest chose to stay in her city, where she rents a house and has a job. Or
had. She’s a senior, hoping to graduate in December—IF her summer internship,
which is needed for credit toward graduation, doesn’t get canceled. She too is
waiting for virtual classes to begin. Her university has already said that all
in-person gatherings on campus are suspended through the end of the semester.
No students will return to dorms or classes. Everything will be online.
On-campus residents were asked to move back home. She chose to stay in her
house with her roommates. I catch myself praying for her protection out loud as
I rinse my coffee cup or try to make the ice maker stop that grating sound it
makes or wipe the dog’s feet after she’s been out. Pray without ceasing. My
baby isn’t a baby any longer, I know. But right now the mother hen’s wings feel
her absence. I wish she was here with us.<o:p></o:p></div>
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We’re not going out beyond our yard right now. I needed
soap. I ordered from a local craft soap maker. Her prices are now completely
reasonable compared to the “market demand” prices for the supply available
online. She brought my order in person, in a brown paper bag, and left it at
the street. It feels like a treat even while it’s a necessity.<o:p></o:p></div>
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We have enough food to last us a few weeks, I’m sure, though
we won’t love what we’re eating. Fresh vegetables for probably another day,
maybe two. Fruits for three or four. And then it’s frozen, and then it’s canned
unless things restock. Pickup for orders isn’t available at Walmart. No clue
when it will be. Many of the things I would have ordered are not in stock
anyway. <o:p></o:p></div>
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While I’m trying to work from home, there are interruptions
frequently. We’re going to have to find a way to have a schedule, or a routine
at least. Maybe once virtual learning actually starts we can define dedicated
blocks of time. For now, it feels very fractured. I like order. I don’t like
this, though I’m not as anxious as I might have expected to be. We’re doing
what we can. We’re in. We’re supplied. We’re praying Psalm 91 daily at
dinnertime together, asking for provision, protection. Expecting it. That’s
comforting.<br />
<br />
This is Day 3 of home quarantine for me. It’s only Day 1 for my college girl
since she had to leave to go move out of her dorm. As the extrovert in the
family, I expect to struggle the most with the isolation. <o:p></o:p></div>
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My fiancé and I have chosen to honor the time apart. His job
still requires him to travel to various sites as needed. Yesterday and today,
different sites. Tomorrow already has one planned. It’s less contact than normal but he
is still more “out there” than I would like. So to protect my household, we are
staying separate.<o:p></o:p></div>
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We text throughout the day and talk on the phone at night when we can. It’s
something. Long ago, people wrote letters. They waited weeks for a reply. We
can do this.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Our wedding is planned for August. At first we thought, “Surely…”
Now we’re thinking, “Maybe not…” We may not have the wedding we’d planned—small
though it was to be. We agreed tonight that even if we can’t have the wedding,
we will still get married on schedule. “It will be,” he said. I love that.<o:p></o:p></div>
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At the end of the day we did the dishes—again. There are so
many with everyone home all day. We played Monopoly. We’ll continue that
tomorrow. And now we sleep. We’re really OK at home, without class and sports
practice and physical therapy. For now. It feels surreal. It feels like we can’t
see what’s happening outside, but we hear. We hear and we accept and we wait.
For now.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So this is life. What a rapid, sharp turn it took. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
</div>
--Rebeccahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00634179030174821176noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2497430725885292880.post-38422284150933753532019-12-19T09:49:00.001-05:002019-12-19T09:49:51.426-05:00This Is the World We Live In: Reflections of a Reluctant Adult in the World<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
I had hoped to have my kitchen counter clear of clutter,
polished to a shine, and ready for making holiday treats and feasts by now. But
instead, it is completely covered in gallon zipper bags, a case of water
bottles, fleece blankets, multi-packs of lip balm, peanut butter pods, sanitizing
hand wipes, breakfast cookies, tuna packets, potted meat pop-tops, squeeze
packs of applesauce, plastic spoons, tissues, Tide pods, and feminine hygiene supplies.
Why?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Because there are just too many people standing at street
corners, cold, hungry, lonely, and hopeless right now. So my second daughter
and I began building these bags of goods. Her friend Mia keeps several in her
car, so when she comes upon someone asking for help, she has something to
offer. The gift bags equip her with a kind of freedom we rarely think about.
With one of these in her car, she is free to make eye contact, to share a word,
to offer something more than a blank stare as she hits the accelerator. And if
it has to be this way, then I want to be like her. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
At first, I thought I would just make four bags. But
researching protein sources led me to buy in bulk for dramatic per piece
savings and now the kitchen counter is swamped and I don’t know when or how I
will find that surface underneath again. Except that I know all these will be gone
too soon—because there are that many people out there, without their own tribe
picking up the pieces after it all fell apart.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
None of them have the same stories—how they got there. In my
young adulthood, I always heard really simple summaries, assumptions really: It
was drugs. They get on drugs and they spend all their money and lose their jobs
and end up on the street. I have heard that story. It is the story for some, but
it’s not everyone’s story. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Some trusted the wrong person without a safety net of their
own. Some were scraping by, already on the margin working low-wage jobs in our
high-rent area, when >insert random trauma< happened, there was nothing to
cover the gap. For more than one, grief landed them here. Grief. Did you ever
think about that? “I was taking care of my mama,” says M as we stand shivering
on the pavement on a cold Saturday morning, “and then she died. I didn’t have
anyone left in the world after Mama died. I couldn’t live in that house without
her, so I came here. I had a job for awhile, but I lost it. I didn’t know how
to fill out the paperwork so I got that wrong. I think I got it right now, so
there’s some money coming, but until it gets here, I’m sleeping in the post
office or the bus station most nights. The shelters are full on cold nights.
Someone stole my backpack the other night. I lost my clothes.” He’s holding a
black trash bag now with a few “new” things in it. He picked them up here,
where donations are spread on a tarp.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
He’s young. He looks strong and fit enough, but his teeth
are missing and he speaks with a strong local dialect. He’s not dirty, though
it’s surprising to me how it is that he’s stayed so clean on the streets for
the last week. He asks if there are any gloves. They’re all gone, the few that
were available taken already. The woman beside me whips off her own and gives
them to him without a thought. There’s another one. If it has to be this way,
then I want to be like her.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I think about my own company’s hiring processes—how much
alike everyone is. I wonder… if an accident took my two front teeth and I
couldn’t afford to get them repaired, would I be safe here? Would I ever be
hireable commensurate with my education, ability, experience, and aptitude if
my front teeth were gone—in this culture? Appearance matters so much. There’s
an assumption about where a person belongs based on how well they’ve been able
to care for their physical shell.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
All the gift bags we assemble at home contain soft foods.
Nothing with seeds or grains. Not even soft oatmeal bars with their flaky,
grainy topping. Dental issues are rampant and many of these people are living
in pain, unable even to chew an apple. My former boss’s wife had an abscessed
tooth once. It went on for a long time, as they first tried homeopathic
treatment over the standard (and very expensive) root canal option. I had one
long ago too. I remember the intensity of the pain—and I lived with it only a
few days before getting it resolved. There was pretty good insurance back then.
My boss’s wife was in agony much longer. I remember talking with her about the
sense of being “shaken” that one has to work through after suffering tremendous
pain over time. There is a kind of trauma that you’re left with even when the
physical pain is over. And for many of these, it doesn’t get to be over. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I don’t have solutions. Something’s not working the way it’s
supposed to. The problem seems to be growing. Shelter is just not reachable for
far too many people—even the “working poor.” Just simple shelter. That doesn’t
even begin to address something like restorative health care. I can’t see where
I have much of anything to give into the problem, to make a real difference. I’m
thankful for those who do have resources and will use them—will use real estate
in this high-demand area to provide walls and a roof sometimes. I’m sure those
properties could be sold at enough profit to make some individual more than
safe, more than comfortable, but lavished in luxury. Somewhere, someone is
making a sacrifice, setting aside his or her own potential gain to serve those
who can give them nothing in return. I know there’s beauty in that. But I can’t
help but wish it didn’t have to be this way.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br /><br />
<br /></div>
--Rebeccahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00634179030174821176noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2497430725885292880.post-65900436248288667602019-05-27T12:46:00.000-04:002019-05-27T20:48:16.836-04:00For the Kid Who DIDN’T Get Acknowledged This Awards Season<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-zJV4OQIe5qg/XOwWFCYWqPI/AAAAAAAAKqk/NSXWfjzq9Bg_ZzwVjXSidHjqGHWeUezyQCLcBGAs/s1600/2019%2Btassel.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="1000" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-zJV4OQIe5qg/XOwWFCYWqPI/AAAAAAAAKqk/NSXWfjzq9Bg_ZzwVjXSidHjqGHWeUezyQCLcBGAs/s320/2019%2Btassel.png" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
It’s that time of year. End of the school year. Time to
acknowledge all the “mosts” and “bests.<o:p></o:p>”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Most valuable. Most improved. Highest average. Best in
sports, math, second languages, music, debate, character, virtue, integrity,
helpfulness, setting an example… best in being the best of the best.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Superlatives abound, and at every gathering, exemplary
versions of today’s youth are carrying away certificates, plaques, trophies, ribbons,
medals, cords, and tassels.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And exemplary versions of today’s youth are not. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I know one of those exemplary overlooked youths very personally.
I can’t understand how others don’t see what I see, but I know it to be a fact
in her case. Therefore, I know it to be a fact in the cases of many, many
others as well.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I suppose it’s simply impossible for finite humans to
acknowledge every aspect of what borders upon infinite uniqueness in the
variety of traits, attributes, gifts, talents, skills, and efforts imbued in an
entire generation. I’ll acknowledge that to be true. Still, we do enough of the
pointing out and awarding that at this time of year in particular, those who
walk away empty handed can’t help but feel as if their absolutely adequate (and
ultimately essential) existence just… isn’t.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This isn’t a post to oppose honoring effort or achievement. Believe me,
it isn’t. Nor is it a post to support the now-ubiquitous “participation trophy.”
Maybe that means something to a four-year-old just starting out in this world
of competition, but to the more experienced, it quickly loses any luster and even rubs worse at the wound: Here, have a prize just for existing because
there’s nothing else nameable about your worth.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
What is this wound that comes with being overlooked? I think
most of us at some point experience it—a longing to be seen, known, accepted,
affirmed. And when we aren’t, the wound deepens. And when we try harder—serving
a favorite mentor, teacher, parent, coach, friend—even joining our goals to his
or hers—and then get skipped in the ceremony, it can feel like a blow of an
existential nature. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
Have you ever had one of those days in traffic when your car seems to be the
invisible one? Someone changes lanes and almost side-swipes you. Moments later,
another person turns in front of you and in a screech of rubber-on-asphalt, you
barely prevent the inevitable T-bone. While you wait patiently at a red light, the
car behind you almost rear-ends you as if there really was an extra car’s
length before that painted white line signaling the boundary of safe existence
before the intersection. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
Does it make you want to scream at the universe, “I exist!”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
Stephen Crane, an American poet who is considered part of the “Realism”
movement, wrote as much:<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A man said to the universe:<br />
“Sir, I exist!”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“However,” the universe replied,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“The fact has not created in me<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A sense of obligation.”<br />
<br />
Does the overlooked athlete who showed up at every practice unless (s)he was
too sick or injured, who ran coach’s errands and refused to be unsportsmanlike
to the teammates carrying a sickening sense of entitlement for fear of damaging
the overall esprit de corps want to say the same thing? <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or the plugger of a student who took the hard
classes and studied late and managed a solid GPA along with extra-curricular
activities but not only didn’t receive a single scholarship applied for but
also didn’t get accepted to more than one of the schools applied to? Or the kid
who not only managed to pass everything with effort, but also worked a job
outside of school to help pay for his/her basic necessities and managed never
to be tardy—not even once—but no one noticed that. No one noticed the kid who
stayed off drugs all through high school though the parent in the home didn’t
set the same bar of expectation for him or herself. The quiet one who never ran
for student government but held the door without fail for the kid on crutches,
picked up the paper towel on the bathroom floor instead of adding another to
it, whispered, “I understand” far more often than spoke, “Why didn’t you…?” The
faithful, persistent, diligent background people of all levels of performance
and participation—but unseen. Unacknowledged.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As a youth in my own life, I had a foot in the camp of each
of those. I made good grades and got acknowledged for that, but there was so
very much more to me that no one saw way back then. As I have now reconnected
with several from my childhood and teen years, I feel pretty confident in saying
that we were all that way: known for one or two characteristics but nothing at
all of the great width and depth to each of us. It’s far too easy to just
attach a label to a person and think that’s enough. It isn’t.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
When I look back, I see myself as just an embryo then, but full of potentials unseen, and longing to be known
for all of me. I was not particularly athletic—and still am not, though I would
love to be—but I was exuberant and positive about others’ performance and efforts, and so, in
keeping with my personality, I tried out for and was voted onto one of the
cheerleading squads at my school for most of my teen years. It was far too
important to me—all out of proportion for its actual value—but it was an area
that I felt equipped for and wanted to be integrally important to. There was
one year in which I did not make the team and I felt crushed for it. I remember
an older girl turning in her seat in math class to ask me about tryouts the day
after decisions were made. “T,” I said as bravely as I could, “I didn’t make
it.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
“What?” she responded, with genuine surprise. “Something is WRONG,” she said.
And that’s all she said, but it helped. I had not been seen, but T, right then,
saw me. No one else ever said a thing about it, and I suffered, at the time,
through that year of being cut off from the activity that I loved, and tried
again.<br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
At the end of the next year’s season, at this time of year we're in right now, awards were being
given, and for the first time ever, that year, I did receive an award for my part
on the squad. The trophy still stands on the dresser in my childhood bedroom in
my father’s house. <br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Most Dedicated,” the plaque at the bottom reads.<br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I don’t recall exactly how that award was chosen. I don’t recall if it was just
my squad-mates voting, or if voting included team members from the sport we
supported, teachers, coaches, etc. I do recall that when I returned to my seat
with the trophy, my hands shaking a bit, my sweet squad-mate J turned to me and
said, “I never even thought of you!” She didn’t mean it in a negative way. In
fact, she went on to affirm that OF COURSE I was the one who deserved that
honor—“OF COURSE YOU DID,” she said, but again she emphasized, “I never thought
of you for it though.”<br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And that was so honest that it stuck with me. I really was there. I really did
exist. I was showing up to practice and games, staying on, doing my part, doing
the extras, putting notes of encouragement into cubbies on game days, painting
banners, putting myself out there in every way I knew how to do—and not being
seen for it. “I never even thought of you.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
But the fact that she, a friend, a good person who cared for me, didn’t notice
my consistency in that area did not in any way take away from the reality of
the fact that I was there and doing my part and that it mattered. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
Nor does the absence of an award in this season for any of the non-acknowledged
youth who have been showing up and doing their thing faithfully for the last
four years in any way take away from the reality that they matter. And it most
certainly doesn’t mean that their existence and value and uniqueness will never
be seen and acknowledged either.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
In fact, it already is. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
Oh, to believe that high school is just going to be a dusty memory one day, and
that all the shining you’re going to do is still ahead. The opportunities to be
the “you-est you” are still coming and you’ll rise to meet them—maybe even
surprising yourself.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
But even now, today, this moment, I wish I could make you know that you’re
seen. Seen, loved, accepted, sung over loudly—and being used. Even when the
limited humans surrounding you aren’t seeing clearly, loving well, accepting fully,
acknowledging joyfully, or opening doors for you they might have authority to
open—<br />
There’s one who does, who knows exactly what he made you for, who is guiding,
developing, directing, and providing. He’s not a cold, distant, clockwork
universe without a sense of obligation to you. He’s a personal Creator and a
Good Sovereign who refused to move into the very future he rules over without
his beloved individual human children in it. He was called “the God who sees me”
by an outcast who had received no favor at all from mankind. He saw her truly.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
He sees. He knows. He has plans for you, now and in the days ahead. He made you
for good works that he prepared also for you to do and his eye is never off you.
Your story is not the same as anyone else’s, but it is yours and that is
enough, because it is being written by one who knows you intimately and cares
about every detail, who created you and equips you for every chapter. So be
strong and courageous and in all your ways acknowledge him and he will direct
your path—and say to you, “Well done,” and rejoice over you, no, even EXULT
over you. This is the greater reality—greater than anything thought of in our
modern philosophies.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
You do exist. You are seen. You matter.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br /></div>
--Rebeccahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00634179030174821176noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2497430725885292880.post-68986736399647200152019-05-09T10:41:00.000-04:002019-05-09T10:41:34.832-04:00On Waiting for God<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Life Lesson</div>
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Our homeschool Bible lessons have led us now to John’s gospel. The girls and I are taking this beautiful book in small, savory bits. We’re listening carefully to the Spirit-inspired voice of an insider, a bosom buddy of our Lord. And we’re hearing reminders and encouragements that address deep issues of aching human hearts.</div>
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We’ve imagined the reality of walking with the Lord, eating with the Lord, wiping his feet with our own hair. We’ve re-enacted reclining against God incarnate and sharing a whispered exchange. John makes Christ’s physical presence so prominent, personal, and appealing. Oh, how we long to see him face to face! </div>
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And yet, John makes sure we hear how the physical presence is not always as important as physical distance. He is careful to prime us first, in Chapter 11, for what is coming, knowing we’ll need the reassurance. “Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. <i>So</i>…”<br /><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Don’t miss that preface: Jesus LOVED the sisters and Lazarus. SO. Believe he loved them before you read on.</div>
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The one Jesus loves is sick. The sisters have sent for him. Their confidence is in his presence. After all, he told Martha—in gentle rebuke—that Mary had it right when she planted herself at his feet for his earlier visit. Now they need him. And he loves them.</div>
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But he doesn’t go. And they can't see it. They can't see that the reason he doesn't go is actually <i>because </i>he loves them.</div>
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Can’t you taste Mary’s shock and sense of rejection as she sits in the house, four days past her brother’s death? The Lord has let her down. She called, she expected, and he didn’t come. And when he did finally come, she is too numb, paralyzed by disappointment, to go at first to meet him. </div>
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The Lord doesn’t take this lightly. There is no patronizing pat on the head, no smug “watch and see.” No. He knows full well that his delay, though for everyone’s greater good, has been deeply painful. It causes him great anguish in his own spirit to see Mary and the others weeping. I believe he also knows her grief is not just over the death of her brother, but the death of her expectations as well.</div>
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While the sisters wait and Lazarus dies, Jesus tells his disciples “For your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe.” His absence will be more valuable than his presence. In hindsight, we can see why. It is good for all who wait on the Lord to have this example before us.</div>
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Fast-forward to Chapter 16, where we hear something like this again. Jesus tells his friends that he is going back to the Father. The disciples grieve. (Whisper it in our ears again, John, as we get the bad news. Remind us that he loved them. So...)</div>
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“I tell you the truth,” he says. “It is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the Counselor will not come to you.”</div>
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How is it, I ask the girls, that the presence of the Holy Spirit can be better for the disciples—and by extension, better for us—than the bodily presence of Christ himself? To my small mind, it is difficult to grasp—and grasp is exactly what I want to do!</div>
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Oh, how I long for a God with skin on! I want to cling to him in the garden. I want to crawl into my Abba’s lap. I don’t immediately care so much about the omnipresence of the Spirit.</div>
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I long for the tangible in part because I am still immature. But to walk by sight and touch alone is to stay little. My heavenly Father who loves me does not want me to stay little. It is for my progress toward maturity that I live now outside Christ’s physical presence. It is for greater things—greater glory, greater knowledge of the fullness of his power—that he left in body. But he did not leave us alone. He loves us and so . . . he left us—left us indwelt with the one who will guide us into all truth. Believe it! And yet his physical absence is only for a time. He will return, in bodily form.</div>
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Remember, John says: He loves us. And so it is for our greater good that we learn to walk by faith, and for his greater glory that our maturity comes to completion.</div>
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<span style="mso-tab-count: 8;"> </span><i>--Rebecca Cochrane</i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">From November 2010.</i></div>
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--Rebeccahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00634179030174821176noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2497430725885292880.post-36930780743716465242019-04-08T11:19:00.000-04:002019-04-08T11:19:12.064-04:00Update: Improving and Adapting<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-DSQk6coTuJc/XKthBcq0_mI/AAAAAAAAKcw/m7BKIhsqvKsyNc7FbR7vG7NH1khGK-BVgCLcBGAs/s1600/sunrise%2Bin%2BApril%2B2019.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="640" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-DSQk6coTuJc/XKthBcq0_mI/AAAAAAAAKcw/m7BKIhsqvKsyNc7FbR7vG7NH1khGK-BVgCLcBGAs/s640/sunrise%2Bin%2BApril%2B2019.jpeg" width="480" /></a></div>
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The sun comes up, it's a new day dawning, it's time to sing your song again. Whatever may pass and whatever lies before me, let me be singing when the evening comes. -- 10,000 Reasons, Matt Redman<br />
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I suppose it's also time to give you good people an update about me. I want to start off by saying that I am SO MUCH BETTER, and while not fully restored to physical abilities, I have seen progress. Not everyone does. I'm still hoping for more progress, but if it comes, it will come slowly, and so every day, I have to consider: What if this is the most improvement I will get? Can I live and work with this? The answer is "Yes." So each day that I get to see even a tiny tick of betterment--slightly less tingling pain, slightly more sensation, more stamina on stairs or during a longish walk or while standing to deliver a presentation--each day something like that presents itself is a bonus to me.<br /><br />I would not qualify my physical condition as a result of the transverse myelitis attack on my spinal cord as debilitating.<br />
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For that, I am so very thankful. Many people who are hit with this and similar rare spinal cord diseases suffer with paralysis, long-term pain, and loss of use of limbs and/or digits. My residual effects are minor in comparison to what I have learned about many others.</div>
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My condition is not debilitating, but it is still challenging. Pain is mostly under control with medication, but the medication does not help with the numbness that I still have in my lower left leg and foot. I have recently regained sensation in my left heel, though, and that has been super-encouraging. That numbness is a matter of the nerve damage in my spine, and there is no drug that can repair the damage. Only time, good nutrition, and the power of God can address that. </div>
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In my case, I have insecure footing that comes from that numbness, pain in the form of tingling that is generally manageable with gabapentin, taken three times daily. The perception of movable bands of weakness and fatigue in both right and left legs--which is a phantom weakness--is getting less and less. I'm hoping that continues. My muscles are actually fine, but the damaged nerves in my spine are firing off desperate and inaccurate signals to my brain telling me my legs are shaky, weak, about to buckle under me. I keep climbing those stairs to prove to my brain that it just isn't so. </div>
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So, I'm continuing in hope that I might see more improvement, but at the same time making some smallish changes around the house and office to accommodate my particular challenges and make regular, daily life as manageable as possible.</div>
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Most of these are taking actual physical form, but some are activity oriented. Eventually, I'm told, I will need some physical therapy, but in the meantime I try to get as much normal movement in as my legs and heart (cardio was a mess while on prednisone--heart rate and blood pressure stayed elevated no matter what I did; I am now off the steroid and already see a slight decrease in resting heart rate; hoping blood pressure will follow suit and drop back down near my previous normal range). My brothers and friends help me with this by constantly challenging me to FitBit steps competitions and I'm keeping up with them as best as I can right now. It takes a team and I'm grateful for mine!<br />
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As the weather warms, I plan to tackle some altitude in the real world.</div>
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I shared in another place that the wonderful man in my life (his name is Chris) and my good friend Jordan, with other friends Cathy and Jack and Ashley and Woody stopping in to see if they could help too, tore out and replaced my stepping stone walkway to my back door. They did a wonderful job of removing a path that was gappy, uneven, and treacherous for not-so-nimble feet, and now I walk safely and as smoothly as possible to and from my car and home. I am so thankful.<br />
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But I'm not going to be able to easily mow the steeper parts of my yard this spring and summer, and already, the grass back there is beginning to rise up in scattered clumps that demanded attention. (Chris did the initial mowing for this year for me.) The sloped area is not large, but it was already difficult for me to manage on my own with my small but hardy Murray lawnmower that I depend on to partner with me in that job. Murray and I struggled even when my legs and feet were fully in this game. So some landscaping is on the horizon, and soon.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-QugWfKsglTs/XKtlubF4VBI/AAAAAAAAKc8/xY1zDL3qhRYt_ro55YxBM0t5Y9OcWR3owCLcBGAs/s1600/slope%2Bto%2Blanscape%2Bfront.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-QugWfKsglTs/XKtlubF4VBI/AAAAAAAAKc8/xY1zDL3qhRYt_ro55YxBM0t5Y9OcWR3owCLcBGAs/s320/slope%2Bto%2Blanscape%2Bfront.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Front slope</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/--0hYsBdYS34/XKtlvF-jRCI/AAAAAAAAKdA/vRfLkN4J61kj_fSkfqmbsYUOTYAxeAKcQCLcBGAs/s1600/slope%2Bto%2Blandscape%2Bback.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/--0hYsBdYS34/XKtlvF-jRCI/AAAAAAAAKdA/vRfLkN4J61kj_fSkfqmbsYUOTYAxeAKcQCLcBGAs/s320/slope%2Bto%2Blandscape%2Bback.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Back slope, where the rainwater also collects. <br />We've had actual algae growing on the mud at the base of this one.</td></tr>
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A small portion of my tax refund is going to some more mulch, gravel, dogwoods, azaleas, and groundcovers. I'll have to stage the landscaping plants because they are so expensive, but the plan is to put in a few feature items, groundcovers, and then mulch the slope and use gravel at the base to turn the muddy areas (one even has ALGAE growing on top of the clay mud after all this rain) to make them as maintenance free as possible. I will still be able to mow the flat grassy strip above and below each area, but the slopes will hopefully be mostly hands-off after this project is done. A married couple who are also outward-thinking, sweet and supportive friends, have offered to come over on "planting day" once I set the date, to help dig and plant and mulch. That will make it so much more fun and help the project move along quickly as well. It makes me look forward to it. So I told Dave and Christine I would let them know after I "call before I dig" to have utilities marked, and then purchase the plants that I'm able to do in phase 1.<br />
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Dinnertime prep and aftermeal cleanup have gone fairly well with the exception of one hard day last week. I am giving myself a little bit of grace in this area while I learn how to do the same things I used to do when they do contribute to a building of late-day fatigue or pain. I am allowing paper plates at the dinner table at least once per week. But I decided that it might help me to invest in an anti-fatigue kitchen mat to remove some of the standing pressure that increases the tingling pain. Just as I was researching those, and finding them MUCH more expensive than I expected, I got a promotional email from Brad's Deals with a deep discount on a selection of cute mats. I couldn't believe it. I was looking at 1/2" mats on Amazon with mediocre reviews for $50 each, and here on Brad's Deals was a 1" mat with a number of cute, kitcheny decor patterns, for $16.00. I snapped one up and it arrived earlier this week. After using it in my sock feet for a couple of days, I must say it really does help relieve a bit of pressure. So I went back to the site to see if there were any left and whether the promotion still worked. It did, so I ordered a second one. My plan is to have one permanently between the sink and stove, so that whether I am washing or cooking, I can have a mat always there. Then the other will go at the end of the kitchen bar--the "prep" area, so that if I am chopping veggies or making lunches, I can always have one to stand on there. An easy, inexpensive bit of assistance!</div>
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I traded out my desk chair at work for one made for a shorter person and put a lumbar support pillow in the seat of it. Now there is no chance of my legs "dangling" from the seat and possibly putting pressure on any blood vessels to reduce circulation. In the past, if that happened, I would just adjust position and restore circulation. But today, if that happens, it is almost immediate pain. Let's just try to avoid that entirely.<br />
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This is adaptation. These are small adjustments. No matter how long this condition lasts--whether it is months or years or the rest of my life--there are things to do to adjust and to keep moving forward in the tasks we're called to keep doing. Life is still worth the effort.<br />
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And I can stand and walk to do almost anything I need or want to do. Running--such as in playing backyard baseball--is still really not an option. I'm sure to stumble and fall. I hope this improves. But if it doesn't, I'm still gratefull.<br />
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My perseverance is so small in comparison to others and what they are working through. I think of the Wounded Warriors. I think of those paralyzed in accidents or illnesses. I think of children born with harder hardships than mine.<br />
<br />
But on some days, if I'm honest, I still ask: Wasn't it enough already? It seemed like enough already. I'm not whining, but I think it's realistic and a cause for me to look at others with more compassion, no matter what level of challenge each faces: No one really has it easy. To diminish one's burden with a "could be worse" response doesn't actually help encourage them. It may be true that it could be worse, but that doesn't in any way mean it isn't what it is. Lord, help me see them too. Help me see what they're carrying and say, "I know; me too; soldier on--it's worth it." And maybe, if enough knowledge and insight is afforded, also lend a hand. At least my hands and arms are strong and working. There is that.<br />
<br />
Let me be singing when the evening comes.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br /></div>
</div>
--Rebeccahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00634179030174821176noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2497430725885292880.post-36352865742056990032019-03-15T18:09:00.000-04:002019-03-15T18:09:51.616-04:00Transverse Myelitis: The Culprit Was Coxsackie<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Quick update following a neurologist appointment again today.<br />
<br />
Earlier in the week, I experienced some new sypmtoms related to the myelitis and/or the medications I've been taking, so I had another appointment today to get those checked out and try to determine whether there was new lesion activity going on.<br />
<br />
The symptoms that showed up were some fuzzy issues with my vision, a burning sensation up and down the thoracic segment of my spine, radiating small spasms coming at close intervals on both sides of my upper back, mild numbness in both hands plus my tongue and cheeks, and a slight tremor in both hands resulting in very poor dexterity and fine motor skills.<br />
<br />
So I called, and went back in today.<br />
<br />
While there, I learned that results of the last two tests were in and I do not have neuromyelitis optica, when the myelitis is present on the optic nerve. This is VERY good news. My neurologist says the vision issues as well as the tremors and hand numbness/dexterity issues are almost certainly related to the high dose of prednisone I am on and should resolve as that amount is able to come down over time. She wants to get me down to 40mg as soon as possible, as long as the inflammation in my spine can afford lowering the dose. We'll start on that again soon.<br />
<br />
She also prescribed me more sleep, and I am required--if I am to get well--to say no to some of the household and personal responsibilities I am trying to always accomplish. I must get more sleep, as well as 30 minutes horizontal with eyes closed at the end of every work day for a bit.<br />
<br />
Now, the cause:<br />
We learned that I have active antibodies operating right now in my body, looking for a coxsackie virus to attack. These antibodies have been known to attack the brain and spinal cord in the past, causing types of meningitis and myelitis. The neurologist is quite confident that it was exposure to the coxsackie virus, followed by an immune response that turned autoimmune, that caused my transverse myelitis.<br />
<br />
I had coxsackie--commonly known as the generally mild and reserved-for-childhood disease hand, foot, and mouth--when my oldest daughter was about 18-20 months old. I thought I was immune to it, but apparently there are two strains (A and B) and numerous varieties under each of those strains. We do know that my two younger daughers had the disease this past late fall/early winter. It was almost epidemic in both their schools. So it was also in my house. It is likely this exposure that my body responded to. I did not have sympoms of the illness, but it must have been in there somehow. Perhaps my earlier exposure had something to do with how it failed to present this time.<br />
<br />
So, there are some answers. The good news about the coxsackie response is that, while it does do serious damage, it has never been documented to be multi-phasice. That means I do not have to worry about a recurrence of lesions. Unlike multiple sclerosis, which can produce new lesions over time for a person's entire life, this should be a one-time thing.<br />
<br />
The other really good news is that myelitis from coxsackie is more likely to affect people much younger than I am, and I nearly was brought to my knees thinking of how close it might have been to harming my young and active girls, with all their years of life ahead of them. I am thanking God that it came to me instead of to them.<br />
<br />
I do not know if the scene in Job, in which our enemy comes to the Father asking for permission to afflict others, still occurs. But it occurred in my imagination today. I could see him coming and asking to give this disease to my track-running and hurdling Miriam, or to my always tumbling or unicycle-riding Jill, and seeing my Father flare up in absolute resistance, responding, "By no means may you touch one of those children," but then, perhaps, knowing how much I would prefer it, and knowing how I have asked him before to let me know what it is to carry a cross, and how I have gone to the mat with him in the past and asked for him to transfer Jane's illnesses to me, that he might have answered, knowing he was going to give me more of himself, "But have you considered my servant, Rebecca?"<br />
<br />
If a parent can carry an affliction for her child, she will. Every single time. Like I said, I do not know if such a conversation happened, but if it did, so be it. I say it again: SO BE IT. Let it be me and not one of them. I will stand or sit or crawl in that gap.<br />
<br />
As to healing: The prognosis is still the same at this early point. Roughly 33% of people's bodies can heal from demyelinization. Roughly 33% will attain partial healing. Roughly 33% will not heal. Only time will tell. The doctor today said again, at least two more months before we should even try looking with a new MRI. At least a year and possibly two before full healing will occur.<br />
<br />
So, rest, eat well, adjust medicines, exercise and stretch as much as possible to keep muscles healthy, pray, rest some more, and keep putting one clumsy foot in front of the other.<br />
<br />
Right now, I'm encouraged, and thankful, and I can do what's next.<br />
<br />
Love you all. Thank you for reading.<br />
<br />
Past posts:<br />
<br />
1.<a href="http://cochranelittlewomen.blogspot.com/2019/02/the-surprise-diagnosis-transverse.html" target="_blank"> The Surprise Diagnosis: Transverse Myelitis</a><br />
2. <a href="http://cochranelittlewomen.blogspot.com/2019/02/high-hopes-and-high-places.html" target="_blank">High Hopes and High Places</a><br />
3. <a href="http://cochranelittlewomen.blogspot.com/2019/03/whats-on-your-nerves.html" target="_blank">What's on Your Nerves? An Update</a><br />
4. <a href="https://www.mealtrain.com/trains/q3yv01" target="_blank">Meal Train for Our Family--service opportunity we won't turn away yet</a><br />
5. <a href="http://cochranelittlewomen.blogspot.com/2019/03/more-changes-in-wrong-direction.html" target="_blank">More Changes--in the Wrong Direction</a><br />
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<br />
<br />
<br /></div>
--Rebeccahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00634179030174821176noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2497430725885292880.post-48216237553618105822019-03-13T15:31:00.001-04:002019-03-13T15:31:17.643-04:00More Changes... in the Wrong Direction<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Today has not been a good day, illness-wise.<br />
<br />
Yesterday, I began experiencing some spasm-like sensations in the thoracic area of my back. They radiated out around my ribs in both directions. I had trouble sleeping due to the spasms.<br />
<br />
Today the spasms are gone but the intensity of tingling in my left foot is steadily increasing again. Additionally, I am experiencing some numbness in new areas: both hands and my face, particularly my mouth, tongue, cheeks, and jaws.<br />
<br />
I have a call in to the neurologist about the changes. They might be related to changes in the prescriptions that I am on. The NP reduced my dosage of prednisone from 60mg daily to 50mg daily, beginning yesterday, and increased the gabapentin from 500mg daily to 700mg daily at the same time. I am not sure what effects those changes could be having.<br />
<br />
I'm a little scared, to be honest. I wrote out a notecard today and found handwriting to be very difficult. I learned to letter in college and have had good handwriting that pleases me to look at. Today, my handwriting resembles that of my grandmother's when she reached her 80s. Dexterity for fine motor is just not there.<br />
<br />
Does this mean new lesions are forming in the myelin somewhere? Or is the a side effect of the medication? I have left a detailed message with the NP and am waiting for her response. In the meantime, perhaps providentially, the imaging center called to set up my next MRI. Upon talking to the scheduler, she chose to secure the next available spot for me, which is less than two weeks away, rather than wait for a May/June option that was in the original instructions. She told me I could change it to a later date after talking with someone in neurology today, given my current situation. I can see that only as an act of providence--God's provision for me in advance, before I even asked him--and take encouragement from it. He sees. He knows.<br /><br />Please pray for improvement and no new attack. Please pray for prompt care. Please pray for my eyes to be set on things above, because I admit it: I'm scared. I want to get better and worse was not on my agenda for today, or any day. Please pray for peace.<br /><br /></div>
--Rebeccahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00634179030174821176noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2497430725885292880.post-82239926514986443332019-03-12T09:22:00.001-04:002019-03-12T10:29:35.454-04:00What's on Your Nerves? An Update<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-A27nsKwc2dA/XIenfyQt6eI/AAAAAAAAKPc/UXhOJ5kYNaA5BSZetvwPUk-ZWVXzTlfrQCLcBGAs/s1600/myelin%2Bsheath%2Bmem.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="620" height="640" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-A27nsKwc2dA/XIenfyQt6eI/AAAAAAAAKPc/UXhOJ5kYNaA5BSZetvwPUk-ZWVXzTlfrQCLcBGAs/s640/myelin%2Bsheath%2Bmem.jpg" width="620" /></a></div>
<br />
Thanks to my friend Renee for this meme and the chuckle that came with it. We have to keep a sense of humor, no matter how hard it gets or how long we're asked to wait. Wait on responses. Wait on answers--even those that might not ever come. Wait for healing.<br />
<br />
And that's basically what yesterday's one-month post-hospital followup with the Outpatient Neurology office was. An appointment to help me know how to wait some more.<br />
<br />
I promised an update, so here it is:<br />
<br />
It's been two months since the mysterious bite or wound that may or may not have started this strange process rolling, and 49 days since I woke up with a tingling, painful, numb left foot. It has never "woken up."<br />
<br />
My appointment didn't go exactly as I expected. I had been told in the hospital upon release that I would get another MRI yesterday to see if the spinal cord lesions were settling down (less inflamed), disappearing, or (hopefully NOT) multiplying. But upon meeting with the NP there, and reviewing my situation, she decided an MRI would not provide any valuable information.<br />
<br />
That's because my symptoms aren't showing up in new places--except very possibly in my vision. It does seem softer in focus than it was before all this started. The NP decided we should check for <a href="https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/neuromyelitis-optica/symptoms-causes/syc-20375652" target="_blank">neuromyelitis optica</a> just in case. But the numbness and tingling and pain are all still in the same area: primarily left foot and leg; secondarily right foot and lower calf. Though the presentation varies--some days there's overall numbness; some days localized bands of tightness with weakness; some days intense tingling; some days a buzzing sensation that comes and goes intermittently, as if my cell phone is set on vibrate and stored under my skin. But though the sensations vary, they present in the same areas, and that, she says, means there are no new lesions at this point.<br />
<br />
So yesterday, I had my reflexes checked again and reflexes are still working. This is still good news. She checked muscle strength and that is decreasing. I can tell and was confident she would discover that. My legs do feel weaker. I stood a longer than normal time at church on Sunday because I had opportunity to teach, and by the time I got to the main worship service, I really could not stand comfortably through all the worship songs. I could feel a little shakiness that suggested I should sit down before doing so became embarrassingly automatic and unavoidable. Physical therapy was discussed briefly. No appointments were set up for that yet, but that will be in my future and probably soon.<br />
<br />
My medications have been adjusted some more and this is good. I am down now to 50mg of prednisone daily (from 100mg intravenously in the hospital, to 80mg and then 60mg orally at home) and that will continue to taper down over the next month or two. But she took me up on the gabapentin for nerve pain, in hopes that some more of this tingly and tight-bandedness that I feel all the time might decrease. It will take several days to ramp that dosage up gradually but I might find some relief from it by the end of the weekend.<br />
<br />
I'm to continue with the nutritional cautions of before to provide the nutrients needed to restore myelin and to avoid the foods that would affect blood sugar levels negatively--a side effect that prednisone can cause and really exacerbate. So I'm low, low carb, no sugar, high on proteins and good fats, omega-3s, with some vitamin and other supplements. I am trying the Lion's Mane mycelium along with the purified fish oil, B12, D3, collagen, folate, etc. that I have been using for the last month. I've added beta carotene now that eyesight seems to be doing something weird.<br />
<br />
I gave another hearty donation of my blood for testing yesterday. There are a few different things the NP wanted to look at that would show up in blood. One is the presence of ANA antibodies--the markers for autoimmune issues. I had elevated ANA levels a month ago, suggesting strongly that the demyelination was the result of an autoimmune attack. Usually, that's a one-time thing and if so, ANA should be going down. If it is not decreasing or if it is even increasing, then there could be concern for a future attack and different therapies--such as a blood plasma replacement--would be considered. The second test has to do with my eyesight. Apparently it is possible for something like this to hit the optic nerve, and some marker for it would show up in a blood test, so she wanted to check for that. I do not know at this time what kind of treatment would follow if my eyes are being affected by this whole thing, but would ask for prayer now for not just legs but eyes too. As an editor, my vision is critical to my job, and my job is critical to my (and my children's) survival. (And that's not to mention that at this point, my job is also my ministry, and I would hate to consider that I might not be able to do it well enough to continue on in it.)<br />
<br />
In all of this, the NP kept reminding me that we are talking about months and maybe even years--and not days and weeks--in managing and watching and tracking and treating this. I need to be realistic about that. This is reality. This won't be over by summer time, most likely. I need to set appropriate goals and expectations and not get discouraged when it does take the actual time it's going to take.<br />
<br />
In the meantime, I am truly thankful for the love, support, prayers, encouragement, and practical help that so many have literally lavished on me and the girls. Meals! And a new sidewalk that isn't treacherous to walk on with numb and uncertain feet! I am truly thankful that my condition isn't worse. I have heard from others who were attacked just as shockingly by transverse myelitis and Guillain-Barre syndrome and similar spinal cord diseases who lost much more mobility and experienced much more pain for a longer time than I have. I recognize the mercies I have received and do not take them for granted. And whatever this turns out to be, it is, eternally speaking, temporary. I know that. I'm still asking for healing here and soon, but I know this isn't all there is.<br />
<br />
His grace is sufficient. What does that exactly mean when you're suffering and wondering about the now and the next and the effect it will have on the life you are trying to live? I'm asking him to make that clear to me. What does it mean that his grace is sufficient when my body is not doing everything it used to do well? Right now, I would say that it means that my focus on the "necessary tasks" of my life might not be as eternally significant as I think they are. If I can't do what I thought I would do with these legs and these eyes, my place in his eternal fellowship is still secure, because I don't earn it, and my purpose isn't lessened. I'm still his. I'll still be in the throngs, with a role. I've lost nothing, really, in that big picture. So here and now, I'll love him still.<br />
<br />
<div class="poetry top-1" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; margin-top: 1em; padding-left: 2.6em; position: relative;">
<div class="line" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Verdana, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
<span class="text Isa-35-3" id="en-ESV-18324" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; position: relative;"><b>Strengthen </b>the <b>weak </b>hands,</span><br />
<span class="indent-1" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box;"><span class="indent-1-breaks" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: monospace; font-size: 0.42em; line-height: 0;"> </span><span class="text Isa-35-3" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; position: relative;">and <b>make firm the feeble knees</b>.</span></span><br />
<span class="text Isa-35-4" id="en-ESV-18325" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; position: relative;"><span class="versenum" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: block; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12px; font-weight: bold; left: -4.4em; line-height: 22px; position: absolute; top: 0px; vertical-align: top;"><br /></span>Say to those who have an <b>anxious </b>heart,</span><br />
<span class="indent-1" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box;"><span class="indent-1-breaks" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: monospace; font-size: 0.42em; line-height: 0;"> </span><span class="text Isa-35-4" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; position: relative;">“Be strong; fear not!</span></span><br />
<span class="text Isa-35-4" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; position: relative;"><span class="crossreference" data-cr="#cen-ESV-18325H" data-link="(<a href="#cen-ESV-18325H" title="See cross-reference H">H</a>)" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 0.625em; line-height: 22px; position: relative; top: 0px; vertical-align: top;"></span>Behold, <b>your God</b></span><br />
<span class="indent-1" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box;"><span class="indent-1-breaks" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: monospace; font-size: 0.42em; line-height: 0;"> </span><span class="text Isa-35-4" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; position: relative;">will come with vengeance,</span></span><br />
<span class="text Isa-35-4" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; position: relative;">with the recompense of God.</span><br />
<span class="indent-1" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box;"><span class="indent-1-breaks" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: monospace; font-size: 0.42em; line-height: 0;"> </span><span class="text Isa-35-4" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; position: relative;">He will come and save you.”</span></span></div>
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<div class="poetry top-1" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; margin-top: 1em; padding-left: 2.6em; position: relative;">
<div class="line" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Verdana, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
<span class="text Isa-35-5" id="en-ESV-18326" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; position: relative;"><span class="versenum" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: block; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12px; font-weight: bold; left: -4.4em; line-height: 22px; position: absolute; top: 0px; vertical-align: top;"><br /></span><span class="crossreference" data-cr="#cen-ESV-18326I" data-link="(<a href="#cen-ESV-18326I" title="See cross-reference I">I</a>)" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 0.625em; line-height: 22px; position: relative; top: 0px; vertical-align: top;"></span>Then the eyes of the <b>blind </b>shall be opened,</span><br />
<span class="indent-1" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box;"><span class="indent-1-breaks" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: monospace; font-size: 0.42em; line-height: 0;"> </span><span class="text Isa-35-5" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; position: relative;">and the ears of the deaf unstopped;</span></span><br />
<span class="text Isa-35-6" id="en-ESV-18327" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; position: relative;"><span class="versenum" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: block; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12px; font-weight: bold; left: -4.4em; line-height: 22px; position: absolute; top: 0px; vertical-align: top;"><br /></span><span class="crossreference" data-cr="#cen-ESV-18327J" data-link="(<a href="#cen-ESV-18327J" title="See cross-reference J">J</a>)" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 0.625em; line-height: 22px; position: relative; top: 0px; vertical-align: top;"></span>then shall the <b>lame </b>man leap like a deer,</span><br />
<span class="indent-1" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box;"><span class="indent-1-breaks" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: monospace; font-size: 0.42em; line-height: 0;"> </span><span class="text Isa-35-6" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; position: relative;">and the tongue of the mute <b>sing for joy</b>.</span></span></div>
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<span class="indent-1" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box;"><span class="text Isa-35-6" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; position: relative;"> --Isaiah 35:3-6<br /><br /><br /><a href="http://cochranelittlewomen.blogspot.com/2019/02/the-surprise-diagnosis-transverse.html" target="_blank">The Surprise Diagnosis: Transverse Myelitis</a></span></span></div>
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<a href="https://www.mealtrain.com/trains/q3yv01" target="_blank">Meal Train for the Cochrane Women</a></div>
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<a href="https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/transverse-myelitis/symptoms-causes/syc-20354726" target="_blank">What Is Transverse Myelitis? (Mayo Clinic)</a></div>
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<span class="indent-1" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box;"><span class="text Isa-35-6" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; position: relative;"><br /></span></span></div>
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--Rebeccahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00634179030174821176noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2497430725885292880.post-86610418892929830612019-02-25T16:17:00.001-05:002019-02-26T11:09:05.952-05:00High Hopes and High Places<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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I suppose I can point back to my belief in "no coincidences."<br />
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For more than a year, I've been looking out my kitchen window at the view of Little Pisgah and Bearwallow Mountain and telling myself I will get new hiking shoes, so that climbing those and the other high vistas in this area will be easier to do. I haven't owned hiking shoes in many years, and my sneakers and duck boots don't give too firm a footing for those kinds of inclines, even when my feet are healthy. But I have a love of high places, and I have meant for some time to keep returning to them.<br />
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<a href="http://cochranelittlewomen.blogspot.com/2019/02/the-surprise-diagnosis-transverse.html" target="_blank">Then this happened. This attack on my spinal cord. This numbness and nerve pain.</a> This lack of coordination. I stumble in the uneven block and gravel walkway from the drive to the house steps. I have to look at my dead feet when I use the stairs to be sure I'm actually stepping onto a tread, up or down. Slippery wood planks after all this rain make me gasp in public--am I on solid ground? I can't actually tell.<br />
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The high places seem farther away because of the new situation. But farther away does not mean unreachable.<br />
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Last week was the most painful I've had in this experience with <a href="https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/transverse-myelitis/symptoms-causes/syc-20354726" target="_blank">transverse myelitis</a>. At times, pain was excruciating. As I passed the four-week mark, I admit, my spirits were not in high places. I had some moments in the pit. Worried. Wondering. Am I strong enough for this kind of chronic pain? What if it never leaves? What if this is what I have to face daily from this point forward? How can I function? I need to provide for my children. I need to be present for my children. I want to keep serving in my church, job, and community. I have a new relationship with a kind and caring man that I would like to progress in. But this pain was all-encompassing, consuming. I would say it "bore into my brain." Maybe that helps you understand what it was like in its relentlessness.<br />
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I am hoping that I have turned a corner in the pain department now. It's early. I don't want to be unrealistic. The future in that regard is still uncertain. I have had some better days since that low, however. I am now approaching five weeks in and the broad window for when most transverse myelitis sufferers begin to see relief from pain is between two and 12 weeks--if they are going to have a recovery (and 33%-67% do experience some healing). I'm solidly in the middle of that window, then.<br />
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But in the midst of that excruciating pain last week, something popped up that I chose to see as a sign. A sign that I am to work toward reaching those high places again and not let this issue stop me in my tracks, or keep me below the horizon forever.<br />
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There was one pair of Merrell women's hiking shoes that I've wanted for this whole last year, to use to reach those high places more readily than I would have in my other options. But hiking shoes are very expensive, and I'm a single mom with a lot of kids and someone always needs shoes or jeans or braces or field trip or retreat fees or something else. So the full retail price tag was just a 100% deterrent, and even though they would pop up as an ad from time to time, I never even clicked on them after the first exploration. I just scrolled past. Until last week.<br />
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At the darkest point, the hardest pain, the time when I was watching the clock for the next opportunity to take a prescription opiod painkiller and anti-nausea medicine to get through the hours, those Merrell hiking shoes, in my size, went on sale at REI. Good old REI. I love the store but haven't actually spent money there since I was a single adult with no kids more than two decades ago. But once a member at REI--even if it was two states away and a lifetime ago--always a member at REI. And there were my shoes. On sale. And no small sale either. 70% off retail. My Merrell hikers that I'd been wanting had dropped down into the range I might find for my young teen's shoes at Target.<br />
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I really didn't think much about this purchasing decision. I know. I'm an intuitive, not a senser. Everything MEANS something. So I just acted on it. I ordered them. I took it as a sign and a motivator, something to work toward: You WILL reach those high places. You will walk with sure feet again. This is going to be the reminder of that goal, and it's being offered to you at bargain basement prices! If that's not testing of the spirits for a money-saving-mom with dreams, I don't know what is.<br />
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The shoes were a tangible representation of my goal to get better, to heal, to regain solid mobility and enough freedom from pain to function in places of joy after challenge.<br />
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I bought the shoes. They came today. I will put them out in view instead of in the closet to wait, and I will think about reaching those high places.<br />
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Habakkuk 3:19 is on my mind as I do this. For a very long time, it has been one of my favorite verses to cling to, to return to, to hold on to, to let change me.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>God, the Lord, is my strength;</i></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><i>He makes my feet like the deer's;</i></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><i>He makes me tread on my high places.</i></span><br />
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I see double meanings in this verse, especially as it comes out of the Prophets and to our ears, our lives. My ears. My life.<br />
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I live in the mountains. High places here are good things. Long-range vistas. Breathtaking imagery. Wide open spaces. Lush vegetation. Freeing, return-to-Eden-like stuff. I have no doubt that to the deer, and to Habakkuk, there are similar parallels of beauty, freedom, GLORY associated with high places.<br />
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But not all high places are set apart by us for God's glory. In the Old Testament, the high places were often sites of idol worship. And oh, don't I have my own idols set in high places? Isn't even my own self-sufficiency one of those idols I set in a high place? Do I like to admit I am down, in need, injured, removed or limited in service? I do not. I admit it. Pride, my own superficial definition of myself, the health and active life and "It's REBECCA; she's always on the go" labels are things I thrive on. I put these images on altars in the high places of my life.<br />
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But look. Look at what God, the Lord is: HE is my strength. Not my shrines to my mobility and activity and service and efficiency. HE is my strength. And what does he do with those places of idolatry for me? He MAKES ME TREAD ON THEM.<br />
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I love this idea that he causes me to stamp out, crush (like he will do, has done, to our ultimate enemy) these fixations of my own. Anything that will take from him his glory in my life, he will remove from me, because he loves me. Because I am his. I can have no other master; no other lover of my soul. So he will cause me to tread on my high places of idolatry that put any semblance of my own strength in view of his work in me, for me. So he and I can have the closeness we're supposed to have, with none of my idols in the way.<br />
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Because he loves me.<br />
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But because he loves, because HE LOVES ME, he will give me back even higher places, and because he is my strength, he will strengthen my feet. LIKE THE DEER, who traipses cliff and cleft with tiny, sure feet to reach those upper limits. Sure-footedness feels far from me right now. But HE is my strength. It is not out of reach. And when I do reach it again, it won't be the Merrell shoes, but the healing of my Creator and my Savior who gets me there.<br />
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I believe it.<br />
I believe he will make me tread (as in trample) the wrong high places and then set me surely to tread (as in walk securely and confidently) the ultimate, glorious, triumphant high places too. And I believe it will be both spiritual and physical. I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living--and that land may just include Bearwallow Mountain and Mt. Pisgah and Little Pisgah and Mitchell and Craggy Pinnacle again. So be it. I'm all for it.<br />
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In the meantime, I am seeing some improvement, as I mentioned above. Pain is far less severe. This morning, I took my last of the largest doses of prednisone. I do think it is helping, and I will continue on a 25% smaller dose for the next several weeks. I'm glad to take the dosage down. Prednisone has side effects and I've had several, with nausea and vomiting being the worst, but also bloating, facial swelling, some hair loss, and 2:00am sleeplessness with the munchies involved. It can also cause an increase in blood sugar, so my diet has to be low-carb and carefully monitored. But as long as it is working, I will follow my instructions. The last two days, I have had discomfort but not what I would call intense nerve pain, like it has been. This is a tremendous blessing and makes me hope with some reason behind it that perhaps there is actual healing and not just pain management at play here. (Feel free to pray for my Schwann cells by name. Those guys are on call to make a big difference in my healing, and as my brother says, "Demo day is over. Time to start the rebuilding." Schwann cells are fascinating. They do different duties and miraculously, by their Creator's hand, know when to change jobs. I literally do pray for my Schwann cells.) I can only trust in the dark right now that something good is happening. My feet remain numb, prickly, unstable, but less painful. I think my left leg is less numb. A repeat MRI on or about March 11 should show whether the lesions are less inflamed and stable. We hope to see no new lesions in that scan, and less inflammation than there was in the first one.<br />
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But also in the meantime, I am beginning to learn to come down from my pride's high place and ask for the help I need. I need a more stable walkway into my house. This is the current walkway to the back door. It is a single-file line of pavers spaced far apart and uneven with large, loose gravel scattered between. The gravel easily gets kicked up onto the pavers, making even the flat parts rocky soil. I have ordered enough flat pavers and some sand to redo the walk so that it is two pavers wide with no spaces between. A flat surface will make a huge difference for a person who can't feel the bottoms of her feet! As it is, I have stumbled too many times to count--and it's worse if I am carrying something that blocks a clear view of my feet while I'm walking. It's a humbling feeling--always looking down and not up and out into the world, and still being unstable! My good man has offered to help replace the walk on Saturday morning. My good friend Jordan says he thinks it's highly possibly he can come around to help as well. I plan to ask my church if maybe one or two other men with shovels, a level, GLOVES (by all means, GLOVES), and a servant's heart would help as well. It's a little under 60 square feet, when all is done (2' wide by about 27 feet long), and I think 3-4 guys could probably make quick work of the walk--which would be a relief.<br />
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Finally, in that area of humility, I will say that I have been blessed, relieved, helped, and delighted with the <a href="https://www.mealtrain.com/trains/q3yv01" target="_blank">meal train that my dear Ashley set up</a> for us, and for every person who has so lovingly created these beautiful, nourishing, and satisfying meals. I really didn't know how much a meal train could benefit, but under these circumstances it has been a life saver. It is still going on at a rate of 2-3 meals per week, and I am humbly asking that if it is possible to keep it going until right after my 3/11 checkup and MRI, it would bless us still. Self-sufficiency can take its rightful place for a time. Standing on my feet at dinner time HURTS, and I really can't even yet imagine navigating a grocery store for a big shopping trip yet. I can get in and out for fill-ins for breakfasts and lunches, but I just don't think I can yet put in the time for a full, family-sized grocery trip yet. Soon, though. Soon.<br />
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So that is my humble but hopefilled update.<br />
And these are my new hiking shoes.<br />
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I wish I could tell you how they feel. I can't, because I can't feel my feet. But maybe that too will come one day soon. They'll still serve as an inspiration to keep hope and work hard and obey instructions and BE STILL ENOUGH AT TIMES TO KNOW THAT HE IS GOD AND I AM NOT. And I'll post pics again when I wear them to tread on some more high places. Or maybe you'll come along.<br />
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--Rebeccahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00634179030174821176noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2497430725885292880.post-80879004175111653052019-02-18T14:23:00.001-05:002019-02-26T12:28:25.067-05:00The Surprise Diagnosis: Transverse Myelitis<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
This is going to be an informational blog post, just to help get an update out there in one attempt, rather than rehashing the story over and over.<br />
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This won't be much of a reflective post. I'm not far enough along in this journey yet to even begin to process what it might mean, how it might work for good. This is a "just the facts" post for those of you who have been so kind and thoughtful to ask into my life over the incidents of the last few weeks. (Update: I've begun a bit of that reflection plus seeking and accepting inspiration to focus on healing since writing this. <a href="http://cochranelittlewomen.blogspot.com/2019/02/high-hopes-and-high-places.html" target="_blank">You can find that post here. </a>)<br />
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So here goes. <b>PLEASE NOTE: I am going to talk specifically about physical symptoms. Some of those reach into the pelvic area.</b> If these kinds of details make you uncomfortable, you might want to skim lightly and/or skip bits of this post. But I am not going to edit out important details because others suffering similar rare conditions might need to know everything that is going on, to compare for their own health.<br />
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Absolutely out of nowhere, in January, I went from being active and healthy to exhibiting a series of strange and disruptive health symptoms. I am going to start at what seems to me to be the beginning, though I am also compelled to remember that "correlation does not equal causation." What I note as the starting point may simply be coincidence, and we may never actually know with certainty what caused my condition.<br />
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I have been diagnosed with transverse myelitis, a rare and incurable (but highly variable) condition that attacks the nerve cell covering called myelin in the spinal cord. There are other forms of myelitis or demylineating diseases, some with known causes. Polio, for instance, is a type of myelitis. I do not have polio. Multiple sclerosis is a type of myelitis. Due to the acute nature of the onset of my lesions, my condition is not thought to be multiple sclerosis at this time, but it is not 100% ruled out. Only the passing of much time will be able to unequivocably rule out MS, but it looks unlikely.<br />
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The first health condition of note occurred on Sunday, January 13, 2019. It gets noted in this story because it was an unusual event and the doctors I have seen at the hospital (both neurologists and infectious disease doctors) took careful note of this event, documented it, but could not say that it was the initial cause.<br />
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On that cold evening, I had just assembled a decorative firewood rack for my mud room. I was filling it with firewood from outside, planning to have wood dry and available inside for numerous cozy fires over the next few winter days. I failed to put on gloves, which, in hindsight, was quite foolish and careless of me. I would do that differently if it was possible to turn back the clock. But here we are now...<br />
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After a few armloads, I remember reaching down for a log with my right hand. My hand went under the log and I did not see what it came in contact with, but I felt a single brief, sharp sting on the first joint of my middle finger--the spot where your pencil rests when you're handwriting something. It wasn't even severe enough to make me put down the log right away. I brought it inside, set it in the rack, and then examined my finger. The pain had already stopped. I thought I had gotten a splinter, but nothing was visible except a single, tiny, barely pink dot. It didn't hurt immediately, and I thought no more about it that night.<br />
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But the next morning, Monday, January 14, upon waking, the spot had turned into a prominent, raised, thick-skinned, hard blister. It was about 2 mm in diameter. The top of the blister was white but it wasn't filled with pus. The white was simply the thick, raised skin with clear fluid under it. It was quite sore at this point. The white blister had a small dark red ring around it. The ring was at most about 2mm additional encircling the blister. It was not yet raised or puffy. Over the course of the day, that ring spread wider and began to swell and thicken, like a raised pad of flesh surrounding the blister. It turned darker red--not quite purple but burgundy. The radius of the swollen pad reached about 5mm in any direction around the blister and a thickness of about 3mm elevation above typical skin level. The blister opened. Clear fluid, like water, drained immediately. It did not continue to ooze. There was no pus. The skin seemed to close back up and stayed white for a time. The interior of the blister was quite sore--too sore to touch. Pressure of any kind drew an immediate reaction to make it stop.<br />
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On Tuesday at work, I found I was very uncomfortable. My chair was uncomfortable. My back was uncomfortable. I was fidgety. My neck gradually grew slightly stiff. I began to get chills. I recognized this as a fever coming on, causing chills, body aches, general malaise and discomfort. I took my temperature after work and it was close to 100 degrees. It continued to rise gradually, reaching 103 by Wednesday, January 16. I made an appointment to see my general practitioner, suspecting influenza, even though I did have a flu shot last fall. But I also wondered if the sting/bite/splinter could be related. I showed a picture to my boyfriend, who suggested it could be some type of spider bite and perhaps it was causing the reaction. I am mildly allergic to wasp stings, but I've been stung only once in my life. The reaction was extensive skin-surface level swelling that created a raised pad of flesh almost 7 inches long and 4 inches wide around my upper arm and to the elbow that lasted six weeks. I had no nerve issues or breathing issues from that wasp sting then, but was told it was possible that reactions could get worse or change with repeated exposure to insect toxins.<br />
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The doctor looked at both the wound on my finger and my other symptoms. He felt they were unrelated. He suspected I had pricked my finger on the wood and introduced some earthborn infection that was limited to a skin infection, but wanted to treat it with an antibiotic. He did an influenza test for the fever and body aches, which now had added headache to the list of symptoms. The flu test came back negative. He still presumed that I had some type of virus that was flu-like and that I would develop a respiratory illness over the next day or two. He prescribed rest and fluids and over the counter medication for that illness when it did show up. But it didn't.<br />
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I started the antibiotic (a sulfameth something or other) on the evening of January 16. By the end of the day on January 17, I began to detect the symptoms women often get when on a strong antibiotic, suggesting that a candida yeast imbalance was beginning. I ate whole yogurt and took a probiotic supplement but by Friday the 18th, I was in true pain that felt like a yeast infection. I emailed my doctor again, and he wired in a prescription for two doses (a week apart) of fluconazole antifungal. I took the first dose that day.<br />
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On Friday evening, another new symptom emerged: urinary retention. Late in the evening, I had the strong urge to urinate but was unable to get the urine to let down for almost 20 minutes of frustrated trying. I thought it was probably just a condition of swelling and irritation from the fungal infection, and was relieved when it finally did happen. But that wasn't the end of it. Even as the pain and irritation from the yeast subsided, urine release continued to be difficult for the next several days. Sometimes it would take minutes--5 to 7 minutes was normal--to concentrate, relax, run water, breathe deeply, and eventually be able to go. But on Monday morning, it got worse. It took a full 30 minutes and involved getting into the shower to let hot water provide a muscle-relaxing massage before I could go. I was getting scared now.<br />
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Additionally, over the weekend, I developed another short-term symptom. My wrists, palms, fingers, ankles, arches, and toes all suddenly took on elements of what I think arthritis must be like. I've never had arthritis, so I am speculating, but hands and feet both became stiff, tight, sore, and painful. It was difficult to stretch or bend digits. I wanted to rub and rub and rub my hands and feet to try to relieve the discomfort. It lasted 36 hours and then disappeared as suddenly as it had come on. All day Saturday the 19th and half of Sunday the 20th, and then I was back to normal in that regard.<br />
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Still, no respiratory illness had shown up from the suspected virus of the days before.<br />
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The wound on my finger began to show minimal signs of tissue necrosis, but no more than one gets from a normal blister achieved from hard work. The top layer of white skin simply died and peeled off, leaving a small crater in the still-raised fleshy pad. It was too sore to touch, like raw new skin. The peeled spot was about 5mm in diameter and its center had a dark red spot about 2mm in diameter, darker than the surrounding swelling. It remained open for more than a week and then gradually began to scab over. Today, February 18, there is still a red tone to the skin there but there is no raised matter. The scab had dried and come off and the skin is healed. Pressure on the spot does give a slight sensation of a pain center still but it is not disruptive.<br />
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I continued to monitor (and worry a bit) the urinary retention issue from Monday to Wednesday but it did get gradually better. Urination still took effort and concentration but I was able to go and didn't need to catheterize, so I didn't seek any medical help at that time. But on Wednesday, January 23, another new symptom arose. When I woke that morning, the first three toes and the ball of my left foot were asleep--in pins and needles. Very obvious, pronounced, prickly pins and needles.<br />
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I got out of bed and tried putting pressure on the foot. That segment shot pain through it. I waited for it to wake up, expecting circulation to flow with gravity and pressure and for it to right itself, but it never did. To this day, that foot has not yet "woken up." Over the course of the day, the prickles spread to all my toes and the full underside of my foot including arch and heel. The prickles spread to the top of the foot that evening. On Thursday, a general numbness began creeping up my left leg. By Friday, it had reached my pelvic area, left side.<br />
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Friday was the wedding of a couple of dear friends. I was determined to dance at their wedding and did so. I'm proud to say I did not fall down, and there was really no shame at my clunky dancing either because I never made any suggestions to be good at dancing--just that I would do it. But I was aware the entire time that only one foot/leg was in that game. I had no idea why I was experiencing this, but my left leg simply felt numb and dead. I could move it. I could put pressure on it. It would stay in place and hold me up. But the bottom of my foot was in intense pins and needles pain and the rest of the leg felt heavy and numb to the touch--as if I'd had a too-strong epidural that took on only one side of my body. I faked my way through the evening and had a great time, but I was worried.<br />
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I told my boyfriend about the growing numbness and we speculated that I had pinched a nerve. Maybe it was sciatica. I didn't have back pain though, so it wasn't a spot-on fit. But I made an appointment with my chiropractor for Monday, January 28. My chiropractor is very practical about joint adjustments. For the last 18 years, I have been to see him a few times a year just to keep my spine in good alignment. If something is pinching a nerve, he can almost always relieve that in one session and send me on my way.<br />
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The chiropractor found a slight misalignment in my pelvis (just a slight rotation; it's common in active women) and made an adjustment to that. We both hoped that would solve the problem, and that evening, I did think that I could feel more sensation in my upper thigh and one segment of my foot. It didn't last, though, and now I am not sure if that was just a fluctuation in symptoms or a "wishful thinking response."<br />
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I emailed my doctor on Tuesday to tell him about the growing numbness. He suggested I give it a day or two and come in if it didn't resolve. It didn't. I made a second appointment with the chiropractor for Wednesday, January 30. He did not find misalignments and was puzzled by the symptoms. The lack of back pain suggested to him that my situation was not likely to be a pinched nerve or herniated disc. He saw no signs of sciatica. He said he believed my condition was something medical beyond frame alignment and that I should return to my doctor for more advice.<br />
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I made an appointment with my doctor for Friday, February 1.<br />
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After recounting all the details about urine retention and the extent of the pain from the jangling nerves (which by this time had moved far beyond discomfort and into real disruptive pain, alternating between sharp stabbing pins and a sensation of debilitating frostbite in my foot), my doctor truly paid attention. He told me me feared a herniated disc and wanted me to go immediately, nonstop, to the Emergency Department at the hospital. He said he would call ahead to tell them I was coming and he wanted me to get an MRI on my spine right away. He told me to expect to be admitted and to keep all options open. Surgery might not be out of the question.<br />
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I reported to the ER at about 11:15am on Friday, February 1st and spent the entire day there. It took hours to get in for the MRI, and the initial MRI that was ordered was not actually for the needed area. The ER doctor orderd a lumbar spine MRI, basic, without contrast dye. It came back clear--and there was some good news in that if even not a solution. I had no herniated disc, no spinal stenosis, no misalignment, no tumor.<br />
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The ER doctors changed shifts. A new one had me retell the entire history. He repeated the reflexes tests on my legs and feet (tickles, taps, muscle resistance, pricks) that were done earlier. Everything was responding even though it felt painful and weird. I told him on Friday evening that I thought I might be feeling some prickling in the toes of my right foot now but I was unsure. It wasn't obvious, and it could have just been my head playing tricks on me out of fear. He listened and agreed that I was probably imagining it, but he wasn't condescending either. He was thankful to have the information, even if it wasn't scientific yet. But it would become that way very soon. The new doctor said he wanted to confer with the on-call neurologist to ask about a lumbar puncture to test spinal fluid. He was considering multiple sclerosis and Guillain-Barre syndrome--though he felt my reflexes were too good to be Guillian-Barre. He talked to the neurologist who did not want to do the spinal tap yet, however.<br />
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The next step, then, was to order a CT of my brain. There was suspicion that perhaps I had had a minor stroke, causing some level of neurological damage to my left side--or perhaps that there might be a brain tumor affecting the nerves on that side.<br />
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The CT likewise came back clear. No evidence of stroke, brain tumor, or tangled blood vessels. Blood tests were next. Basic tests showed no sign of heart attack or any obvious active infection. The ER doctor and neurologist (whom I did not meet but got reports from through the ER doctor) said infectious disease was also being looped in. More indepth blood tests were ordered. Results would take hours to weeks to compile, I was told. No lumbar puncture was ordered.<br />
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I was released from the ER around 9:30 or 10 that night without a diagnosis. I was told that the outpatient neurology would set up an appointment with me on Monday morning for more study, and that if I had not heard from them by 10:00am, I was to call to set the appointment myself.<br />
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On Saturday, the prickles began in my right foot in earnest. By Sunday, the right foot was tingly with pain almost as severely as the left foot, but the numbness did not progress up my right leg. It remained in the sole and toes of the foot, with the sharp sensation and not the dull, numbness.<br />
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I contacted my doctor again on Monday and told him it was still progressing. I made another appointment to go in to see him on Tuesday, February 5. I did not hear from outpatient neurology, and so I called them to get my next appointment. The scheduler was coarse and difficult. He told me I needed a referral to get in with the practice. I told him I thought that was what their neurologist and the ER doctors were talking about on Friday. I told him I had paperwork they had printed for me with instructions, that phone number, a plan. He seemed exceedingly annoyed and put me on hold while he "went to try to figure this out." When he returned, he told me they had a very busy practice and could not just take on new patients with a phone call, but that he could find one neurologist that he could work me in with in late April. I took the appointment with great discouragement.<br />
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At my doctor's appointment on Tuesday, my general practitioner said he was not happy with the April delay. He called the neurology office and left a message. He asked me to wait in the office there for a response because he thought my situation required some urgency. It took about an hour for a doctor from the neurology practice to call back, but she suggested that he set up a direct admission to the hospital for me for that same day, so that I could get back in for full analysis there without having to come to the practice. So I went home, got my kids home from school and fed, packed a bag for two nights in the hospital (I was thinking optimistically) and went to check myself in.<br />
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I was told to expect another MRI of a different section of my spine and a lumbar puncture over the next 18 hours, and I received both, plus an additional MRI of my brain. Both MRIs were done using contrast dye to "light up" any areas of lesions or inflammation. The MRIs were easy. The lumbar puncture was hard. Every single staff member at the hospital, from nurses to aids to transport staff to lab techs to whomever it was that put that spike in my spine were wonderful: communicative, compassionate, concerned. I cannot complain about the care I received while going through this. But answers are still hard to come by.<br />
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The thoracic MRI with contrast dye showed the problem. 5-6 new lesions, all about equally inflamed, suggesting they are the same age, on a section of my spinal cord. The lesions reveal that something has caused the fatty, protective myelin sheath on the nerves to deteriorate. An uncovered nerve goes haywire, sending false signals of discomfort, pain, sensation. The lesions on my spinal cord occur on both sides--the transmitting and the receiving side of the nerve fibers. Hence the name "transverse" myelitis. (<a href="https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/transverse-myelitis/symptoms-causes/syc-20354726" target="_blank">Mayo Clinic: Transverse Myelitis</a>) The brain MRI was presumed to be clear, however the neurologist reporting back to me said there was one tiny spot on it that could be a lesion or "could be a bit of fluff on the image," she said. It was too small to be taken seriously enough to re-run the MRI but will be checked in the next followup MRI in March.<br />
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Both the neurologist and the infectious disease doctors said they would keep looking for an actual cause of the lesions, but both agreed that such a cause may never be found. In many cases, transverse myelitis is an autoimmune response that hangs on and attacks the body AFTER the body has fought off some real threat. It seems to happen randomly.<br />
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I was put on intravenous steroids daily while in the hospital to try to reduce the inflammation and calm the activity around the lesions so that hopefully they will begin to heal on their own. While there is no cure for myelitis like this, about 1/3 of patients with it will see healing and restoration of the myelin covering of their nerve cells. Another third will receive partial healing but may be left with some odd pains or sensations or limitation in function. Yet another third see no improvement at all. I am told that improvement usually takes place between 2 and 12 weeks of onset of symtoms. I am on day 26 right now since the first sign of pins and needles. I do not yet have improvement that I can point to as progressive or obvious. Pain comes and goes but is present every day. It is worse in the afternoon and evening.<br />
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I stayed in the hospital for a week and was released to home on Monday, February 11 with prescriptions to continue the high-dose steroid orally, and some other medications for nerve control and pain management. Out of fear of becoming dependent, I don't think I have been taking enough of the pain management medication. Last night, I hit a real low with intense pain and a sense of emotional fatigue that I may not be able to endure under it. I took more medication and got some rest. Today, I think I can make it through today.<br />
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I've been advised to follow a nutrient dense diet to give my body what it needs to rebuild the myelin if it becomes ready to do so. I've been advised to keep my diet very low carb too because the high dose prednisone can prevent the body from processing blood sugar correctly, and a carb-centric diet while on the steroid can mimic diabetes. We definitely don't want that. I was told to supplement my diet with high quality Omega 3 fish oil, vitamin D3, vitamin B12, good quality collagen, green tea, turmeric, folate, avocado, spinach, kale, olives, blueberries (low on the glycemic chart but loaded with antioxidants), salmon, tuna, whole eggs, nuts. I am following all the instructions. I want to get well.<br />
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Today I have a slight burning sensation in my spine in the thoracic region. I do not know what this means. It could be simply muscle fatigue from compensating differently for a "dead" leg and foot. The body will adjust to still do what it needs to do, even if that means moving in new ways that aren't exactly natural or ideal.<br />
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There's a whole lot of "hurry up and wait" in this scenario. Wait for the steroids to help the inflammation. Wait for the next MRI (which will be on March 11) to see if inflammation is down and hopefully--NO NEW LESIONS ARE FORMING.<br />
<br />
If the steroid therapy does not help--or doesn't help enough--there is a possibility of doing a blood plasma replacement. In this case, my blood plasma would be removed and replaced with much donor plasma. The idea behind this is to remove the aggressive autoimmune antibodies my body made--and which might still be attacking me--with antibody-free plasma, and hope for a reset. I am open to that therapy and will welcome it if that is what needs to be done.<br />
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I have beautiful friends in the Body of Christ who are taking care of me. Meals are coming about every 3 days--generous meals--and this helps so much as being on my feet to cook in the evening is the most painful time of day. Prayers are being poured out. Offers to help with groceries and visits and anything needed are constantly on the table. I am thankful. I need my Tribe.<br />
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I don't yet know how I actually FEEL about all of this. I'm not asking "Why?" right now. I'm just seeing this truth: "This happened." I want very much to get well and not hurt like this. I want to return to service and I want to enjoy my life, of course, but I can't do much in the way of processing until some more information comes in. So I desire your prayers over me as much as you are willing to give them, and I will update on this blog to reach as many people as possible whenever I have anything relevant to share.<br />
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Thank you to all who took the time to read this.<br />
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--Rebecca<br />
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--Rebeccahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00634179030174821176noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2497430725885292880.post-80912122299006029172018-12-04T09:55:00.001-05:002018-12-05T10:20:00.329-05:00"How Is Your Heart?" this Advent Season<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-al9FkE50I4s/XAaT1owiJ1I/AAAAAAAAIaM/EYnezKZDv3MM0IwBsgnPCzX0cGjq4jWeQCLcBGAs/s1600/let%2Bevery%2Bheart%2Bprepare.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1120" data-original-width="1500" height="297" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-al9FkE50I4s/XAaT1owiJ1I/AAAAAAAAIaM/EYnezKZDv3MM0IwBsgnPCzX0cGjq4jWeQCLcBGAs/s400/let%2Bevery%2Bheart%2Bprepare.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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“I trust your finger has continued to heal,” he opened with.
“How is your heart?”<o:p></o:p></div>
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It’s so easy to ask and answer about the physical—even when
the physical is not good. Why is it so hard to ask and answer about the heart?<o:p></o:p></div>
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But when asked, directly, gently, authentically like that—it
stopped me in my tracks. This was not a question meant to incite the polite,
passing closure of a “Fine. And you?” <o:p></o:p></div>
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I was, naturally, busy. Busy with the things of the day that
happen everywhere—food and dishes and Christmas tree decorating. Pet care,
paying bills, shopping, answering texts and phone messages, encouraging a
stressed college student facing exams, an overwhelmed high schooler doing the
same PLUS trying to figure out her future college choices, an angsty, cranky
young teen whose middle school social life is less than satisfying and whose
family members’ choices couldn’t possibly seem rational to her, and a spunky,
idealistic, energetic elementary schooler who just really wants to soak up all
the last moments of her rapidly fleeting childhood.<o:p></o:p></div>
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“How IS my heart?” I stopped to ask myself.<o:p></o:p></div>
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I told him I wasn’t sure. I told him I wanted to answer him,
because it’s so rare we get to the real HEART of the matter anyway, and I didn’t
miss the significance of having a friend—even one so far away—who truly cared
to know. <o:p></o:p></div>
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I don’t think I quite got to plumb the depths but I ventured
out to give him snippets, in writing, across a thousand or more miles. Slowly
externally processing. Poking around in that strong muscle with all its hidden
bruises, scars, wounds, and yet still—functioning sinews and chambers. This
hurts. This helps numb it. Evasion. A little anger. Desire for finding some
good to embrace in the mundane. Pain of loss. Pain for others whose loss seems
too great to bear. But doing the next thing. Thankful for that. And he
understands. God, has he been there. Still is there. I ask after him. I tell
him, from my far-distant perch, that I observe a movement between grief,
playful mischief, and “both usages of ‘hosanna’—praise mingled with crying out
for aid.” He calls it a pretty accurate perception. <o:p></o:p></div>
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It’s really not a bad place to be—given the place we live
in. The place where any one viewpoint lends glory and joy and wonder and awe
and delight. But turn a few degrees and there’s shock and horror and
blindsiding injury. Joy and sorrow. Beauty and gore. <o:p></o:p></div>
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But God, isn’t this Advent? Isn’t this IT? <o:p></o:p></div>
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I said to myself and to others as far back as October that I
really wanted to FEEL Advent this year. I started thinking about things to do
to make that happen. What should I read? Should I make my own Advent card deck?
Buy a calendar? A devotional? Force myself to do crafts with the kids?<o:p></o:p></div>
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I asked my Anglican priest friend. He had some Lent
suggestions before. He gave a few worthwhile suggestions. I talked to a young woman in the office, who listened and nodded a
lot and pondered with me. I wrote it in a journal, a handwritten prayer: Give
me Advent, please, Jesus. I need to FEEL your coming. <br />
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And where did I feel it? <o:p></o:p></div>
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My youngest and I had just finished decorating the Christmas
tree last night—an event she threw herself into with great vigor and
determination, and I went into with some reluctance because of the mess it
always leaves for me to clean up. But I loved watching her, on her tiptoes on
the stepstool stringing up the lights, and surveying the entire work as it
evolved under her careful placement of globe and toy and icicle. Making beauty.
Banishing the dark spots one by one till nothing but glorious sparkle remained.<br />
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The tree gave me some pleasure, indeed. The child gave me more. But was it
Advent? For all that brilliantly baubled and bangled spectacle represents, and
which I know, in my head, it still didn’t penetrate. Until the question: “How’s
your heart?”<o:p></o:p></div>
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My heart HURTS. It hurts because there is too much pain for
too long and too many questions unanswered and too many young people lost this
year and too much aloneness and distance and failure. I want so badly to gather
my chicks under my wings—not just the ones that I gave birth to but ALL of
those I love, younger, older, in between—and feel safety, security, comfort,
belonging. I want someone to wrap those kinds of wings around me, while I have
mine around them, and another layer on top of that one, and another, and
another, until we are one indivisibly knit community of inseparable safety,
solace, and inclusion. That would give hope. <o:p></o:p></div>
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I had to begin to peel the layers off my heart to find what
it was I needed most, layered back onto it. And that’s where I felt it: Advent.<o:p></o:p></div>
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He comes to do that. To peel hearts and to clothe again. He
comes to make HIS blessings known, far as the curse is found. Have we not found
the curse all around us by this point in life? This middle is simply mired in
the effects of the curse we all know—whether we name it or not. And that is why
he wouldn’t—no, couldn’t—stay away. He could not stay away and be who he is:
good. In him there is no darkness at all, and so he came into the world, the
light of the world, to banish the darkness. And the darkness did not overcome
him.<o:p></o:p></div>
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I’ve felt overcome. I think, honestly, that’s part of the
result of binding our hearts with busyness and its numbing power. It’s not
possible to feel his Advent when you’ve longed for numbness from the other. It
goes both ways. Numb me from the pain and you’ll numb me from the ecstasy too.
We have to keep peeling. It’s part of staying alive. And I do want to live. <o:p></o:p></div>
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I’m grateful for the friend who helps to peel my heart—though
I know, at times, I’ve been its rabid protector. That protectiveness may be
necessary for a time, when the wounds are just too deep and raw, but let it be
temporary for the greater good of the soul. Stitches dissolve. We knit. We heal—at
least enough to feel the pain and see it for what it is: a pointer to the need.
The need of his Advent.<o:p></o:p></div>
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So, friend: How is your heart?<o:p></o:p></div>
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--Rebeccahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00634179030174821176noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2497430725885292880.post-53967791366384620912018-04-30T22:18:00.000-04:002018-05-01T12:14:55.337-04:00Mission to Taulabe, Honduras: July 2018<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-qW1UTrO7bgI/WufNXHageSI/AAAAAAAAGr8/rXm79wsWRykZlMtnkodf2Wpk4a9TxvZ8ACLcBGAs/s1600/Jane%2Bin%2BHonduras%2B2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="960" height="300" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-qW1UTrO7bgI/WufNXHageSI/AAAAAAAAGr8/rXm79wsWRykZlMtnkodf2Wpk4a9TxvZ8ACLcBGAs/s400/Jane%2Bin%2BHonduras%2B2.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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Dear friends, family, and followers,</div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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A year ago, I was wrapping my mind
and heart around the fact that my 15-year-old daughter Jane was preparing to leave
the country without me for a week-long mission trip to Honduras. While I had
been with her older sister on consecutive domestic mission trips, sending this
one on her own to such a faraway place was a new challenge for me in
surrendering my loves to the One who loves them even more than I do. Despite
parental trepidation, I opened my grip and she went with the youth group she
attends, and with which I volunteer, through our church, Grace Mills River.<o:p></o:p></div>
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I’ve not regretted that decision.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Neither has she. She is planning to
return this summer to the same girls’ home and the same community to serve there
again. And this year, she has persuaded me to trust God, our perfect Father,
with my own fears and reservations about going and join her there.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Last year, I wrestled hard with the
idea of going, and decided my heart was not in the right place to participate.
The girls living at the Hogar de Niñas in Taulabe, Honduras, are there because
their home situations would not allow them safety or basic necessities. Most
have known serious neglect or abuse. At the Hogar (home), they are fed,
clothed, educated, loved, taught about the God who entered into poverty to live
and die for them. They are protected, provided for, and given a chance at an
adult life they might not have lived to see otherwise. But they are not
adoptable, and I was sure a year ago that investing a week with them and then
leaving them behind would be more than I could bear at the time.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-rdslLbQw3IM/WufNg_CfNUI/AAAAAAAAGsA/DpgyLYIyOJ0R1XydP86kXHz36LF9WmVEQCLcBGAs/s1600/Jane%2Bin%2BHonduras%2B1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="720" height="640" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-rdslLbQw3IM/WufNg_CfNUI/AAAAAAAAGsA/DpgyLYIyOJ0R1XydP86kXHz36LF9WmVEQCLcBGAs/s640/Jane%2Bin%2BHonduras%2B1.jpg" width="480" /></a></div>
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<i>Jane with one of the girls she particularly bonded with, and longs to see again this year.</i></div>
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Over the last year, however, I have
heard the memories shared by Jane, the other Watershed Youth leaders who went,
and the other teens who were on the team with Jane. I have combed their
pictures, seen their tears, and have felt the calling on my heart. It is God
himself who is the Spirit of Adoption, and though I may not be able to bring these
children into my home after this trip, I can certainly share in his love for
them, share in his love for me as his adopted daughter, and worship him with
this team and these children and the staff of the Hogar who know the same
Spirit.<o:p></o:p></div>
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And so, after a year of
sanctification and revelation, I have agreed to join the leader team for the
return youth mission trip to Taulabe, Honduras. We will be leaving on July 11
and returning on July 18. At present count, there are just short of 20 of us
going, youth and adult leaders. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><i>Worship, Honduran style. Jane tells me the joy they have in the Lord surpasses </i></span></div>
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<span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><i>all we know, </i></span><i style="text-indent: 0.5in;">because it is pure, unattached to worldly goals and possessions. </i></div>
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<i style="text-indent: 0.5in;">She wants me to know </i><i style="text-indent: 0.5in;">that freedom in worship too. </i></div>
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I have shared here with you the
deep longing of my heart, which God is gently and lovingly dealing with in me.
Would you please pray for me in this regard? Pray that I will be enabled by him
to pour out every bit of love and care that he gives me without concern for my
own vulnerability—the anticipated broken heart—and trust him to fill me again
after he lets me be emptied for the sake of loving the children and the youth
on our team (as well as other leaders) for this trip’s duration. Pray he rids
me of myself for the week, and in the weeks ahead, so that I can be truly like
Jesus in compassion and presence and selflessness while we go.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Additionally, would you pray for
the safety of our team in travel, from sickness, and protection from any chaos
or political turbulence, which has been a factor in Honduras in recent months?<o:p></o:p></div>
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Finally, both Jane and I are in
need of financial assistance to reach our goals by July 1, 2018, to make this
trip possible. The cost to go is approximately $1300 for me this year, and
about $1050 for Jane. (She already has her passport, immunizations, and travel
gear from last year.) The money covers our air fare, food, required
vaccinations, passports, a duffle bag for taking needed supplies, and those
supplies we are each asked to donate for the home (sheets, towels, basic
clothing needs for the girls, etc.).<o:p></o:p></div>
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Would you prayerfully consider
making a financial donation as well as a prayer support donation for either or
both of us? No amount is too small, and it is the joining of many individual
gifts that gives the Church its strength in the kingdom. If you are able to
donate, you may do so tax deductibly in one of two ways:<o:p></o:p></div>
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1) Donate online. Visit <a href="https://www.hondurasfountainoflife.org/">https://www.hondurasfountainoflife.org/</a>.
Select the yellow “DONATE” tab at the top right of the browser. Make a donation
with PayPal or credit card. <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">IMPORTANT:
make sure to enter “Rebecca Cochrane—July 2018 team” in the small space just
below your monetary amount </b>before completing your donation. Click the line
that says “Project or Mission Team Name here” to enter that information.
Without this designation, the funds will go to a general account and not to my
expenses.<o:p></o:p></div>
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2) Donate by mail: Send a check made out to Honduras
Fountain of Life to<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #333333;">Honduras Fountain of Life</span><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Po Box 223<br />
Fletcher, NC 28732<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">IMPORTANT: write “Rebecca
Cochrane—July 2018 team” in the memo line.</b> Without this designation, the
funds will go to a general account and not to my expenses.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Thank you so much for considering
how you can prayerfully and financially support me, our team, God’s work in
Honduras and in the hearts and lives of our group as we prepare. We are already
well underway with informational and team building meetings as well as a few
group fundraisers. God is already at work, preparing us now for what he has
prepared for us in Honduras. Will you join us along the way? <o:p></o:p></div>
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If we may likewise pray for you
while you support us similarly, please send me a note to that effect at my
email: <a href="mailto:rhemagift@gmail.com">rhemagift@gmail.com</a>.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Blessed be the tie that binds our
hearts in Christian love!<o:p></o:p></div>
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Sincerely,<o:p></o:p></div>
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Rebecca Cochrane<br />
<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
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<!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></div>
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--Rebeccahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00634179030174821176noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2497430725885292880.post-87650336891678473042018-01-23T21:02:00.001-05:002023-11-02T23:25:43.535-04:00The View from Here: A Winter's View<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<br />
The girls and I have been 10 days in our new home now. This is the view from my big kitchen window. This window, this view, was one of the selling points for this house. I stood at the counter looking out over the Cane Creek valley and thought, "I could be happy here."<br />
<br />
We hang so much on that idea, happiness. But take any long-range view of a life and you'll find a much more textured emotional palate than the bland monotony of any single state--even happiness. But we chase it, and we wait for it, sometimes with such desperation that we miss the simple, steady, constant opportunities for joy in the less-than-perfect present.<br />
<br />
I find myself lately wanting more than anything to be present. To be NOW. Not then. Not later. But NOW.<br />
<br />
Just two days before this radiant blue sky, everything was covered in snow. Even Winter is beautiful when it snows.<br />
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Today as I look at these mountains, I still think the view is beautiful. The way the shadows fall on the ripples of the mountain giving them a full three-dimensional effect. Is that what light and darkness do to our lives--flesh them out in fullness where otherwise they might be flat, monochromatic? Even the dark valleys reveal the high lighted areas, don't they?<br />
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<br />
But right now, in Winter, the leafless branches of the trees seem like bones to me. There is a reason we think to equate Winter with Death. And as I stand here looking, I remember how just two days before, it was so beautiful it took my breath away. Bones covered in still, even, gentle, unmarred whiteness.<br />
<br />
Today, I am still thankful for the view, because it reminds me that this season as well will change. Winter isn't forever. As C.S. Lewis told us in <i>The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe</i>, "We shall have Spring again." The leaves will bud. They won't be held back. The bones of the trees will be covered again, covered with new life. As will you and I. As we already are, even if a Winter in our lives suggests to that emotional blanket we use as our counterfeit covering that we are threadbare. Those are feelings talking their persuasion to my divided mind. Speaking of cold doubt.<br />
<br />
No, the trees know. They are rooted in facts that I can't experience--only trust in. Things unseen. They will once again drop seed and reproduce. They will bring forth new life without anxiety about the process. They will embrace other life again--neighbors in the form of animal life in their branches and in their shade. And I will see it from this window.<br />
<br />
I will see the seasons change. I will see the new Spring burst forth. I will see it mature into a robust Summer, and I will see it gently age into that most golden and lovely and longingly beautiful of seasons, Autumn.<br />
<br />
I am in the Summer of my life. There have been many times in my own Spring and Summer that have felt like Winters. But chronologically, this is Summer. The bold, flourishing years. A season of produce and powerful growth. That's the reality. Today is my Summer. Not on the calendar, of course, but I think you know what I mean.<br />
<br />
There's a lot that's new in my life right now. More than just the house, but that too, definitely. There's much that sounds and looks like the things of Spring. I have been hanging for a long time it seems on the promise that years with far too much Winter in them will be restored--years that the locusts have eaten. When does the locust eat? They devour shoots and leaves--the life-filled greens of Summer. It is often the Summers of our lives that come under attack when we should be in full-production mode. If our enemy is real, then this only follows logic. A life in Summer may be too dangerous to be allowed to progress organically. Send on the pestilence, the fearfilled destroyer commands.<br />
<br />
But God has promised restoration. I don't know what that looks like but I am living for it, and I am looking for it. I am waiting for it. I am hoping for it. I am expecting it.<br />
<br />
Seasons will change. The view from my window will change. There's more to come. The story isn't over, and even though<br />
"youths (in the Spring of their lives) shall faint and be weary,<br />
and young men shall fall exhausted;<br />
but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength;<br />
they shall mount up with wings like eagles;<br />
they shall run and not be weary;<br />
they shall walk and not faint."<br />
<br />
He promises renewal. Where does my help come from?<br />
<br />
Oh, that view reminds me.<br />
"I lift up my eyes to the hills.<br />
My help comes from the Lord,<br />
Maker of heaven and earth."<br />
<br />
And Maker of me, and of seasons, Summers and Winters. Seedtimes and Harvests.<br />
<br />
That's the view from here.<br />
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--Rebeccahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00634179030174821176noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2497430725885292880.post-41276000904985549062018-01-06T22:04:00.000-05:002018-01-06T22:11:48.543-05:00Unbinding Happens Fully Only in Community<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Almost four years ago exactly (in just a few weeks), I began
a journey of healing. Part of that healing process for me involved some
earth-shattering changes and the regular input of pastoral staff and a
professional counselor. I was finally facing the need to deal with
post-traumatic stress disorder.</div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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After about a year and a half, my counselor shared with me
some thoughts on my process. He told me that I was experiencing marvelous
progress, and I knew that to be true. But it wasn’t finished. It was still very
much underway, and he said something I have found to be absolutely true. He
said, “Making changes for yourself, taking control of the aspects of your life
that you do have an impact on, and participating in counseling are all
effective means for your healing. But there is only so far that those can take
you. You will reach a plateau in healing outside of relationship in community.
The fullness of healing will only come in community with others.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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At the time, those words were only partially encouraging to
me. I was terrified of having to depend on others to participate in my growth
and healing. I wanted to be well, to live boldly again—but who was going to
step in to fill that void I needed to get there? Didn’t I need to be “fixed”
before I could be relationally close to anyone? Wasn’t it my job to fix me
before putting myself as a burden on others?<o:p></o:p></div>
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Whose responsibility was I, anyway?<o:p></o:p></div>
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In my experience—which of course shaped my expectations—very
few people were consistently willing and available to really enter into
relationships outside their own immediate families—at least not deeply,
meaningfully, regularly, practically, and with their own vulnerability exposed
enough to become emotionally engaged beyond the superficial. Very few. <o:p></o:p></div>
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We’re a culture of emotional anorexics, aren’t we? Valuing
privacy and personal protection over relational investment. Playing it cool,
but keeping our lives cold as a result. <span style="font-size: 10.0pt;">(Hat tip
to John Lennon for “Hey, Jude.”)</span><o:p></o:p></div>
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But my God knew what I needed, and over the last two and a
half years, he has crafted it expertly. I am so thankful.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Remember the account in John 11 of Lazarus, the friend of
Jesus, brother of Mary and Martha, who grew ill and died?<o:p></o:p></div>
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Most of the time, we think of that story as one about the
power Jesus has to resurrect from the dead—and it is, indeed, about that. I
feel as if I have been resurrected myself, and I know it wasn’t I or my
counselor or any human who can claim responsibility for changing the course,
bringing me out of despair and back into the light. It was Jesus, his Holy
Spirit, the Father’s sovereignty—it was the Lord who said, “Rebecca, come out!”
in his timing.<o:p></o:p></div>
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But there’s a detail there in that story that I think we
often overlook, and when we see it—really see it—it makes it harder for us to
keep our distance from others in need—at least not in good conscience. Maybe
not if we believe we are called to be involved in God’s merciful will. He essentially
calls us to draw closer than we are comfortable doing—and it certainly can
apply to how we engage others near us in our communities.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Look at verses 43 and 44. Jesus has just prayed to the
Father, clearly giving the Father credit for what is about to happen—the supernatural
part. And then it goes like this:<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span class="text"><b><sup><span style="background: white;">43 </span></sup></b><span style="background: white;">When he had said these things, he cried
out with a loud voice, <span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box;"></span></span><span class="woj"><span style="background: white;">“Lazarus, come out.”</span></span></span><span style="background: white;"> <span class="text"><b><sup style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span id="en-ESV-26556" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box;">44 </span></sup></b>The man who had died came out, his
hands and feet bound with linen strips, and his face wrapped with a cloth.
<b><i>Jesus
said to them, </i></b><span style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box;"></span><span class="woj"><b><i>“Unbind him, and let him go.”</i></b></span></span></span><o:p></o:p></div>
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Do you see that? Jesus uses divine power to bring life back
to the dead man, but then he hands off the remaining task to the friends
gathered there, moments ago mourning his loss.<br />
<br />
Unbind him, friends. Community—pick up the task of healing this man who was
dead, of freeing him, of letting him go, returning him to life. Circle ’round,
community. You’re a part of this too. Uncover his face so he may see and be
seen. Look into his eyes again. Free him to walk the path God has for him.
Loose his hands to do God’s work. Touch him to make him whole again.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Do you think they rushed to do it? Do you think they stood
at a distance, hesitant? The sisters have just told us that he had begun to
decay in the tomb. It’s likely they expected a gruesome discovery beneath the
grave clothes. We don’t know exactly what they found. Was his resurrection so
complete that no sign of death remained in his physical form? Or was there a
time-lapse for the fulfilment of his earthly resurrection—which might be
different from the glorious transformation all believers expect to undergo at
the last day? We don’t know. <o:p></o:p></div>
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All we know is that by Christ’s own choice and
determination, Lazarus’ full release would come through the involvement—close up
and personal—of his friends, joining together to set him free finally, in the
end.<o:p></o:p></div>
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I know what this means.<o:p></o:p></div>
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I am a new person today. Different than I was two years ago.
Even very different than I was a year ago. Yes, my God is working in me. Yes, I
am working on myself. But that is not all—and if I can claim a parallel to
Lazarus’ story, I think there’s evidence to say that it was never God’s
intention to heal me all on his own, but to provide for my healing through his
people. Through you.<o:p></o:p></div>
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You are participating in resurrection power, friends! You
who let me into your home when I was without my children at a time when I
needed to be embraced into family. You who invite me to go with you to movies
and live music and game nights and plays. You who come when I am the one doing
the asking. You who work your tails off negotiating complicated deals for my
family’s good that at the onset I never could have imagined would work to the
end they did. You who surprised me with a birthday gathering—and all who came.
You who lifted heavy things, gave up time to carry and organize and pack and
spread mulch. You who come when I say, “Be with me.” You who just text to say “thinking
of you,” or to ask into my day. You who have picked up my kids when I couldn’t
be there right then. You who pray for me and my children—in health and in
sickness and in times of anxiety. You who give boxes, who haul away trash. You
who text me “a verse for the day,” and you who bring way too much ice cream.
You who walk in my front door like you live here too—because that tells me that
you accept my desire to love you like family and declare my desire legitimate
and good. You who will look at the same moon at the same time and say so to me.
You who encouraged me to keep on doing the next right thing, just one more day.
You who listen to my story, and offer to tell your own—wounds and warts and
all. You who share music with me because it touches your soul and you’re
willing to reach out and touch mine too. You who let me in close enough to you
to know how to pray for you, to offer assistance. You who hug long and
fearlessly, even in public, unashamed.<br />
<br />
<i>“Unbind her, and let her go.”<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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Listen. Did you hear him?<o:p></o:p></div>
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I’m blessed right now to be a part of a study of the book of
Jonah. The study is dubbed “Man on the Run.” Every one of you who can relate to
something listed in that paragraph three hard returns up: May God bless you,
sons and daughters of faithfulness. He has given you opportunity to take part
in a work he’s doing that will have eternal impact. And you did not run from
him and his presence, but accepted your participation joyfully. We all have “Jonah
times” in our lives, but you chose not to be Jonahs in these areas. <o:p></o:p></div>
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“The rest of your healing will come in community,” my
counselor said. My response at the time was much like that of Ezekiel to the
Lord when looking over the valley of the dry bones. “Can I make these dry bones
live?” asked the Lord. Ezekiel, I expect not wanting to seem hopeless, and yet
completely helpless to know how it might happen, surrenders, “O Lord God, you
know.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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That’s all I had. An open palm turned toward heaven. Would
these dry bones live? “O Lord God, you know.” <o:p></o:p></div>
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And while I stood waiting, he breathed on me, called me out,
and then turned to you. Maybe he whispered it softly into your heart. I don’t
know how you heard him. All I know is that you did.<br />
<br />
“Unbind her,” he said, and whether you knew it or not, you replied, “Yes, we
will!”<o:p></o:p></div>
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To God be the glory. Great things he has done. To God be the
glory that he chooses to work through his people. Thank you for being my
kindred. Thank you for reaching out and laying hold of the grave clothes and
helping me be set free.<o:p></o:p></div>
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--Rebeccahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00634179030174821176noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2497430725885292880.post-36469230930922552132017-06-14T09:13:00.003-04:002017-06-14T09:53:37.401-04:00Same Changes<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The dress in the window at 2 on Crescent is gone now.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">After months of walking past that window display on work breaks, the iconic dress I always admired is gone.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I never made it mine.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Never satisfied with myself, I never achieved worthiness to possess that dress, much less actually put it on and unite myself to it. Not yet. Maybe in a month. Maybe the month after that.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And the days keep passing and then the seasons change and all of a sudden it’s been years and here you are. In the same place, but the dress is gone. Things do change. Just not the things you expect.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I’m 48 years old now. I never thought I would be 48 years old.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">28, yes. 38, most definitely yes—wasn’t that what I was reaching for all along? But 48? It’s hard to grasp.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My mother was 48, but I still wear cool shoes. Doesn’t that count for anything?</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Strange changes.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I didn’t expect to be here in this same place and so not the same as what I envisioned either, and I find myself so puzzled by the changes that crept up around me—the ones I didn’t see coming. Mindsets.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“I have no notion of loving people by halves,” says Isabella Thorpe in Jane Austen’s </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>Northanger Abbey</i></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. “It’s not my nature.”</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The quote resonated with me years ago. Decades ago. I thought it was a universal truth.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It isn’t.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But this one might be: “You can’t pour from an empty cup.”</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I’ve wrestled so long with this idea of contentment and fulfillment and my own nature to want something that is not clearly defined and somehow out of reach but just barely and if I wait just a little longer or work just a little harder or gaze just a little more determinedly on the face of Jesus and die to self just a little more enthusiastically then any minute now it will be attained. But that change doesn’t seem to come. The Holy Contentment isn’t realized, not that I haven’t tried.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I can’t deny there have been needed changes. Absolutely needed for survival. But one thing I have had to swallow, finally, is the reality that survival isn’t always solution.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Necessary, yes. Absolutely. There is no cause to look back in that case. But looking ahead comes with troubles and questions and choices and disappointments all its own. It's not as if we ever say, "That's resolved and now it's time to soar."</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Would I live by formula if I could? To see the end and attain it by a series of calculated steps? To lay a map and follow it? A program. A manual.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Is certainty worth a soulless burden like that? Sometimes I’m not sure. Two roads diverged, that is for sure, and I took one and left the other, not knowing what lay ahead but yes, expecting.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There is a reality over all of this that I want to lay hands on, but the stuff of faith isn’t about grasping with the hands, but taking the next step toward the end, not knowing how way leads on to way, but knowing it does. And somehow, this changing path that’s always still the same is going somewhere, toward Someone.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Maybe that’s why contentment is always just out of reach. If I were truly satisfied in the moment, would the future hold any draw for me at all? Is there a gene for hope somewhere in the human DNA code, and perhaps it pours out its signals at some mitochondrial level that tells me really, we have one foot in another world, and this dissatisfaction is Holy? A Holy Discontentment? A place to rest within dissatisfaction?</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We are not yet what we are to become. Loving by halves. Seeking survival in the moment out of necessity. Falling short of reaching yesterday’s goal, yet again today. But on a winding path of loops and detours and dead ends that require some steps backwards at times, always on our way to a destination, a holy one, defined by completion and fulfillment and . . . love. </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;">A love that never changes, and in that, changes those that enter it. </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">A love that comforts. Fills. Includes. Desires. Sings. Sees. Leaves nothing wanting.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div>
<span id="docs-internal-guid-a6cf311f-a6b8-0b2e-e0c4-2dc08edffe5f"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Isn’t that what Love’s supposed to do?</span></div>
</div>
--Rebeccahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00634179030174821176noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2497430725885292880.post-25780760872456300802017-02-07T14:26:00.001-05:002017-02-07T16:25:42.189-05:00Already. Almost<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Today began with death.<br />
<br />
Actually, it began like any other normal weekday. I got up at the same time as any other normal weekday. I let the dog out, like any other normal weekday, at the same time. I wonder sometimes if any of my neighbors know my routine.<br />
<br />
But unlike any other normal weekday, this morning there was a guest in the backyard. A small, gray, harmless guest, likely nibbling the clover that grows in patches back there where once there was a lovely, manicured sod--for a little while.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-x0ppxR5KNjM/WJo5j7v3lEI/AAAAAAAADss/N66jgxSyILMZC1NQPj9gRbXiR7Yn64FIACLcB/s1600/rabbit-meadow.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-x0ppxR5KNjM/WJo5j7v3lEI/AAAAAAAADss/N66jgxSyILMZC1NQPj9gRbXiR7Yn64FIACLcB/s320/rabbit-meadow.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
I can't help but imagine her so peacefully nipping and chewing in the quiet, placid setting of early morning, before the houses wake up, one electrical light at a time; before the dawn. With its fences around it, our backyard must feel safe to the little things. That's probably why she came.<br />
<br />
But at precisely 6:15am, like every other normal weekday morning, I opened the kitchen door and let the dog out back. She was gone in a flash, like every other normal weekday morning.<br />
<br />
I heard the rabbit scream even through the closed doors and windows. Scream and scream. She had not been quick enough to make it through the wire fence at the back before she was caught.<br />
<br />
With bare feet and wet head, I went into that darkness to help but I couldn't get the dog off. I had to get a shovel and use it as a barrier between the dog's chest and the fence to pull her back enough to get her to let go.<br />
<br />
I'd like to say the day got better. It didn't get worse, but as People of the Redemption, don't we get impatient to see evidence of that redemption right away? I wanted something in this day to fix the horrific way it started.<br />
<br />
By mid-day, I was just too restless to keep plugging at the parent and teacher resources I was writing, my mind a flood of memory and sound and ineffable sadness. If I could grab it, name it, I could conquer it, right? And move beyond it? But no. It's there. The reality that things die, and sometimes for no good reason.<br />
<br />
So I took a walk.<br />
<br />
I do so most days, past the Cathedral of All Souls. Past the shops and empty benches. Over the warpy, hazardous brick sidewalks that I love, even if they are treacherous and will one day likely take me down.<br />
<br />
It was breezy and cool and nothing in the familiar setting made me feel enveloped or safe this time. It just felt cold. Empty. Quiet. The church bells didn't ring on this walk. There wasn't even traffic to wait for at the crosswalks. My own reflection in the shop window at the yoga gear store was the only pedestrian I met. In the distance, there was a siren. Punctuation, it seemed to be, on the sentence written this morning: There's always an emergency somewhere in this world of dire need.<br />
<br />
I passed the Christmas shop, like I always do, but this time I stopped before reaching the Corner Kitchen. That was it, wasn't it? That was what I needed.<br />
<br />
I needed Christmas.<br />
<br />
I do hope the women who work in that shop don't get jaded by selling there year 'round. They didn't seem to be today, which is good, because I needed to be greeted with exactly the welcoming cheer they offered. Do they realize they aren't simply offering trinkets, but the artifacts that will be the vehicles of generations of memories, handed down even unconsciously through families that may be strangers to them always, binding hope and love and relationships to the most important hinge in the history of the world?<br />
<br />
I wandered among all the baby Jesuses, letting it sink in. Everything there exists because of one absolute truth: God came down. Light shone in the darkness. Death is ended. Love wins.<br />
<br />
The words PEACE and JOY are repeated on the shelves and the walls, in frames and painted onto baubles, hanging from the ceiling and knit into clothing and stockings and blanket throws. PEACE, Rebecca. JOY, Rebecca. He came. It is finished.<br />
<br />
There's no way to accept that he had to come without seeing the darkness that he came into. And some days are like this--characterized by the experience of the darkness. That I am not feeling the redemption does not negate it though.<br />
<br />
He came down.<br />
<br />
It is written.<br />
<br />
There's a nativity in that store that looks just like the one my grandmother always set out at Christmas time, on the hearth she never used otherwise. I stopped and stood there, remembering her. Remembering happy childhood memories. Remembering promises made long ago. She's gone ahead of me. So has my mother. The childhood I wished for my own children has had far much more pain in it than I ever imagined. I can't give them the good that I would have, if I had the power. The days don't have to start with a literal death of some small, innocent, gentle thing to bring with them the burden of how absolutely tainted everything is...<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-U5giqaFieTI/WJo7Dkb-5MI/AAAAAAAADs4/dcoFpgBZmOISz4yBEktOxJGboQ36aGmBgCLcB/s1600/nativity.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-U5giqaFieTI/WJo7Dkb-5MI/AAAAAAAADs4/dcoFpgBZmOISz4yBEktOxJGboQ36aGmBgCLcB/s400/nativity.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
But God... in his mercy...<br />
<br />
Who willingly goes into dark places, into death?<br />
<br />
Only the one who cares about the perishing more even than his own comfort. And oh, you and I... we are so much more to him than that tiny bunny was to me. I ran, on horizontal ground, but he came, headlong, downward into the very midst of all the suffering and sin and division and war of the ages, with his face set like stone toward the one and only solution and gave himself into it, so that one day, all we will know is redemption.<br />
<br />
<br />
PEACE, and courage, and joy today... Already. Almost.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br /></div>
--Rebeccahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00634179030174821176noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2497430725885292880.post-45125465661711139952017-01-07T13:18:00.000-05:002017-01-07T13:38:41.284-05:00What I'm learning in the snow<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I'm a flatlander.<br />
<br />
I grew up in the hot, dry, flat, sandy midlands of South Carolina. I really don't like to be cold. I've never acclimated to temperatures that regularly drop to the teens, and sometimes even to the single digits. When it hits 3--which it does rarely, I grant, but I've seen it happen--I automatically think: Something's broken. This can't be right.<br />
<br />
Snow for us more-Southern Carolinians meant a few flakes swirling in the air, which sent us racing in pajamas and bare feet to the window begging for it to stick. If it was enough to cover a car windshield, you could bet school would be canceled.<br />
<br />
We had no sleds. Who could possibly afford such an extravagance that would almost never have that proverbial snowball's chance in you-know-where to ever be used? We also had no hills, so there's that. But there's a picture of my older brother, about age 8, pushing me, about age 4, in a cardboard box on what might have been an inch-and-a-half accumulation, around our flat yard. I wore a red knit hat and mittens, and you would have thought it was an Olympic event and we'd just won gold, given the delight on my face.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-MlD8wNVligY/WHEnSFAlGgI/AAAAAAAADOw/cBHwii3P_toOW-kB86aVHPcfL7OjzPoDwCLcB/s1600/1973%2BSC%2Bsnow%2Bw%2BJimmy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-MlD8wNVligY/WHEnSFAlGgI/AAAAAAAADOw/cBHwii3P_toOW-kB86aVHPcfL7OjzPoDwCLcB/s320/1973%2BSC%2Bsnow%2Bw%2BJimmy.jpg" width="291" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
Even that dusting of snow meant joy.<br />
<br />
So snow has a mystic quality to it that even now, almost exactly 23 years after moving to the highlands, where we do get some snow a couple of times a year, and where we do have hills, the effect hasn't worn off. It still has a majestic, magical quality for me.<br />
<br />
It still feels like a gift.<br />
<br />
Even today.<br />
<br />
I have the day alone. Just me and my dog. My girls are away, and there was a tinge of sadness about that this morning. I didn't bound out of bed like I would have on a snow day with them here. I took a very slow start to the day. It was the dog's begging to go out that pushed me to bundle up, find the boots I don't think I've worn since last March, the closest thing to water-proof gloves that I own that are NOT fine leather, and that cute hat I wear only for times such as these, and head out to play fetch with her in the snow.<br />
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But there are things I'm learning on this day, alone in the snow. Things I probably wouldn't have learned if I didn't have the time to do it myself, all the while reflecting in the quiet. Here are a few of them:<br />
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--When playing fetch in a deep, dry snow with your faithful, furry companion, a wiffle ball is a much better option than a tennis ball. Though it doesn't go as far, it is much more likely to remain visible near the surface of the snow than a tennis ball, which has some power to disappear completely and simply NOT be unearthable (unsnowable?) until the spring thaw.<br />
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--While it is a very good idea to act in advance of the snow to stack some dry firewood in a covered spot near the house so that it's usable and easily accessible in case the power goes out, it is ALSO a very good idea to go ahead and bring the snow shovel up out of storage too. I recommend putting it just inside or just outside the door you'll need to use first. I will remember this next time.<br />
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--Had my super-economical and labor-efficient grandfather lived where it snowed, I am sure he would have taught me the wisdom of clearing off the TOP step first, instead of starting at the bottom (which was closest, since I did <i>not </i>think to put the snow shovel near the door last night, and had to go out into the backyard shed to retrieve it). Start at the top and you won't shovel the snow TWICE. (Quite a realization for this Southern girl.)<br />
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--68 degrees really can feel too hot sometimes. (Does this mean it is possible that I actually COULD acclimate to enjoy the cold? I still hate to think of the conditions I would have to immerse myself into and the extent of time to so suffer before I would come to call 19 degrees balmy or even refreshing, though.)<br />
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--Dogs are good company in the snow. They really are. But they are not as good as kids. So this morning, when the beautiful child who lives across the street rang my doorbell to ask if my children could come out to play, the twang of pain in both our hearts when I told him, "No," was real. And I stood and watched with love deeper than those inches of snow, as his little booted feet made the first marks on the pristine landscape. His footprints are still there, and when I took the dog out, I chose to go out the back only, so that my dear little friend's tracks stay undisturbed as long as possible. <i>Merciful God, pour out your blessings on that boy, all the days of his life. </i><br />
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--Finally, even the shabbiest and most broken of things become beautiful when the snow arrives. My backyard is nothing special. At least two out of five spindles are loose. Deck flooring planks have dried and curled upward toward the sun that, today, I can't believe does actually beat 90 or more degrees down on us many consecutive days in the summertime. The storage building roof is bumpy with lichens and the lattice around the bottom has long ago fallen into shards in places. The lawn... well, once there was a lawn. A summer of drought and dog and children has left it pocked, sparse, weedy. But today, it's truly gloriously beautiful. The Leyland cyprus at the back border claims Christmas is still with us. The cyprus is right. The blemishes in the lawn are covered completely. And so, I'm reminded, are my own.<br />
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"Though your sins are like scarlet," my Redeemer promises me, "they will be white as snow." (Isaiah 1:18)<br />
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You forgave the iniquity of your people; you covered all their sin. (Psalm 85:2)<br />
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Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven, and whose sins are covered. (Romans 4:7)<br />
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Amen and amen.<br />
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Rejoice!<br />
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--Rebeccahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00634179030174821176noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2497430725885292880.post-51136379464665825692016-11-17T09:37:00.000-05:002016-11-17T09:37:09.719-05:00Attacked by God<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Out of the mouths of babes...<br />
Yes, it seems my kids are so often putting it into perspective for me. Or sharpening a perspective. Or making me rethink a long-held, entrenched perspective.<br />
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I've been attempting to hold a weekly Bible study with my two elementary-age daughters this fall. We've had some good moments. Most have been trying. I'm far better equipped to teach and explore with older kids and adults than I am with the younger ones, but we keep doing it.<br />
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My goal is to touch key points throughout scripture, showing them how God has determined to have a people for himself, and how he makes that possible in Jesus. So far, we've lingered in Genesis longer than I initially planned, but there have been some rich portions to take from it, so it's worth it.<br />
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Last week, we talked about Jacob wrestling the Angel of God all night, and clinging to him, saying, "I won't let you go until you bless me." I thought I had communicated the way I envisioned that scene, but you never know what literal-thinking little ones actually come away with.<br />
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Last night, we sat down to move on to the sons of Jacob, and I asked if they remembered who Jacob was. Jill's hand shot up, her body wiggling all over like a puppy greeting its master after a separation. "I know! I know!"<br />
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"He's the one who got attacked by God!"<br />
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What a humbling moment for me. I always think that story is about me, and how I resist God, and how I try to control him for my purposes. It's me-centric in my perception. Or it was, until that innocent and honest and forthright statement. Those of you who know me know it is true: She wrestles with God. Daily. Hourly. I love him and I want him and I do not understand where this is all going and what he wants from me, but I will NOT let him go until he blesses me.<br />
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What Jill remembered, though, was that God initiated. God came upon Jacob. God began this altercation with the schemer who was walking his walk as confidently as the Bee Gees approaching a movie camera. He was slithering his way into the life he wanted and he was getting it done. He'd already secured the familial favor of inheritance from his impulsive brother by trickery--no need to wait on parent or labor or even the promise of God for that. Matters well in his own hands. And how did God respond with a "blessing"?<br />
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He injured Jacob. He touched his hip so that from that point forward, Jacob walked with a limp. The rest of his life.<br />
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No more arrogant strutting for Jacob. No more moving ahead confidently only in his own strength. God hurt him--permanently. To bless him.<br />
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From that day forward, every step the supplanter took (that's what the name Jacob means) was a step in remembrance that he was now Israel--he who wrestles with God. And every step would be a reminder of dependence on the one who was guiding those steps already, the one who determines the outcome, which is that he will be our God and we will be his people.<br />
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It will be. Whatever it takes.<br />
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Oh, how I have prayed, for myself, for my friends, for my children: "Relent, God! Relent! It is too much for us!"<br /><br />I never would have articulated it this way before: attacked by God. But I've felt it. Haven't you?<br />
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Can we look at the patriarch, the hardship of his life, the wandering, the hunger, need, broken families, assault of his daughter, assumption that his most beloved son was dead, uprooting, and then... outrageous, unlikely, lavish, excessive blessing even in this life--the land of the living--with the unthinkable yet to come in the next? Can we claim it too? That it's for a reason, he has a purpose and that <b><i>I don't get it!</i></b> I don't get why the injury has to be but will open wounds that are fertile ground for prodigal good--<br />
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I don't get it. But I believe it. Can we believe it together? If so, tell me. Tell each other. Tell how he attacked you to bless you and how you're singing as you limp through. As long as it is called today, will you share your wounds to move us all forward? I sincerely want to hear your stories, oh nation of priests. Preach to me of how you were attacked by God and blessed in it.<br />
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And if you're not yet sure, keep wrestling. Hold on, and don't let him go until he blesses you. It's what he's about. It's what he does.<br />
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--Rebeccahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00634179030174821176noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2497430725885292880.post-21118251659944194852016-11-09T10:16:00.000-05:002016-11-11T15:19:57.345-05:00The Morning After<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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I woke my daughters differently this morning.<br />
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It's usually a palm laid flat on each back, one at a time, and the words, "My little lamb, it's time to get up." And they each complain and ask for more minutes, which they usually get.<br />
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This morning, it started the same. The hand, warmth through the blankets. The smell of children sleeping. The gentle stirring, but instead of asking for more minutes, the littlest said, with eyes still closed, "Who won?"<br />
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And I told her.<br />
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She responded, "Mommy, I don't want to get up. I don't want to go outside ever again."<br />
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I know she didn't really mean it, not "ever again," but I also know her heart was honest.<br />
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Last spring, a little boy in her class was crying at school. He has brown skin. Black eyes. Black hair. He's small. Another child told him that after the election, he wouldn't be allowed to live here any more. It broke my daughter's heart. I hoped then I was assuring her honestly that it wouldn't be that way. I hope today that's true.<br />
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But I know that's still in her memory, and it's likely why she doesn't want to go outside ever again.<br />
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But I told her, "We have to, baby. We have to get up. We have to go out. We have to go be the church. We have to love people more than we ever have before. Everybody's hurting. Everybody's afraid. We need to love harder." And she got up. And she went to school. They all did. Life goes on, and our opportunities to be light in it are a little different than they were. We still have a reason to be here.<br />
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People with whom I have for decades shared similar ideas and often similar actions held very different views this election season. Discussion didn't bridge the divide for us. "I don't get how you can see this differently than I do" was stated repeatedly. I felt the same way in return.<br />
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Many whom I love felt very strongly that one person was their only hope to protect their <i>legal </i>right to hold and express their faith views. That drove their votes.<br />
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While I didn't support their candidate or the primary opposition, I feared that supporting the person in whom they put their hope would do far more to damage my faith witness, regardless of its legal status. It isn't so much my legal right to hold my faith that concerns me. It's the actual advancement of the gospel--the good news that there is a God and he loves people and he forgives and reaches into lives and gets people by the heart and never, ever lets them go for all eternity--that I am more concerned about. So even if the law stays favorable, how we get it and how we keep it does matter, because it's on the street with my neighbors and friends, coworkers, shoppers, drivers, parents, coaches, clients--that's where associations are made and connections to the Jesus I know should be realized. Not with a public persona who looks nothing like him.<br />
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So we got up this morning. Heavy hearted, but accepting. There's sadness because there's fear and there's hurt among our communities. There's determination, because truth and love are not things anyone can legislate--in or out. And law doesn't lessen obligation or opportunity. <br />
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So we got up. And we went out, because we love you. We loved you yesterday and we love you today, and we will love you. We love because HE first loved us. That won't change.<br />
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--Rebeccahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00634179030174821176noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2497430725885292880.post-20831927318306192222016-11-06T21:13:00.002-05:002016-11-06T21:47:41.495-05:00How Does a Boaz Come To Be?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
There's a blogger out there who calls herself A Modern Day Ruth. She is waiting, praying, asking God daily--sometimes hourly--for his provision of a Modern-Day Boaz for her. A kind man. A God-fearing man. A man who will see her, tossed roughly about by life but still faithfully putting one foot in front of the other and being crafted in those moments into a more beautiful person--one who wants to love and is more able to now than before all the crises that shape her. A man who will see that, and despite all the brokenness and history and "not the way he planned it" perspective, choose to love her anyway.<br />
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I know a lot of hurt and abandoned women. Many are not so bold as Modern Day Ruth, to put it out there on a public blog--the cries of our hearts. But most have at least wondered: Do they exist? Boaz-es. Today. Are there men like that any longer? And if so, where do they come from? What shapes them into such men who can be strong enough to be bold and stand against convention, and kind and good too, in that strength?<br />
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This morning, I heard for the umpteenth time about Rahab.<br />
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Rahab the prostitute.<br />
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Rahab the lowest of the low.<br />
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She wasn't just a woman. She was a Canaanite woman. Ewwww!<br />
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She wasn't just a Canaanite woman. She was a Canaanite woman who sold herself to men, and not just to men but to Canaanite men. Over and over.<br />
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It would really be hard to find a person who would be considered any more low and unclean to the "holy and upright" men at the time than Rahab. The Canaanite prostitute.<br />
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But as we know, she turns out to be the heroine of the story, used by God for the good of his people. The pastor said, "Our markers for shame so often get flipped into signposts for glory."<br />
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I have a lot of reason to hope that is true for more than just Rahab. The prostitute.<br />
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The pastor had us flip ahead to Matthew 1, to show us how glorious Rahab's story ends up being. You probably know that part of the point of that lineage listed at the beginning of Matthew's gospel is recording for us how Rahab--the unclean--was one of the women in the holy and royal lineage of not only King David but Jesus himself. A Canaanite woman, a prostitute, married into the nation of Israel and credited throughout history in the line that brought God to earth in human form. Glorious, no doubt.<br />
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But I knew that. My mind got stuck elsewhere today. Today, the light shone on something else, something much, much more practical and mundane, I suppose, but without it, the Divine embodiment wouldn't have happened so I think it's important even if it wasn't the ultimate.<br />
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For the first time today, it actually sank in for me where Rahab's place in that lineage fell. You see, the prostitute, the used and abused and desperately worthless woman--that woman, was the mother of Boaz.<br />
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The same Boaz that gets referred to today as the example of what abandoned women long for. The kind, hardworking man who looked outside himself and the business of his daily life and his workers and saw the abandoned and displaced Ruth and cared for her--and felt blessed by her and not embarrassed or awkward or repulsed when she responded to his kindness.<br />
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What makes a Boaz?<br />
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Boaz was born into a family that seems impossibly unlikely. We don't know much at all about who Boaz's father was. His name was Salmon. Was he one of the spies that Rahab protected? Or just another Israelite who, for some unimaginable reason was willing to take HER as a wife after Jericho fell? We really don't know. But Salmon did the unthinkable and took a Canaanite wife--a woman who had been utterly used by men. A desperate woman. A woman with no hope except to sell her body (and I promise you, her perception of selling her soul with every transaction) to stay alive in a world that saw no other value in her.<br />
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And with that union, a son was born, and nurtured into the man that women even today consider the manliest to be desired.<br />
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I wonder what the mother-son discussions were like as little Boaz grew into a man. I wonder how he saw his mother, how he loved and respected her, how he learned to dignify other women and to think humbly of himself. (I want to credit his father here too; I can imagine Salmon himself had to be humble and open-hearted and forgiving in an extraordinary way.)<br />
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I think we're getting something wrong. I can get pretty anxious about the way that ALL the brokenness is likely shaping my children. I worry about the loss of ideals. I worry about how much they're missing--all that I wanted their perfect childhoods to be. I cannot claim to understand God's economies and how he somehow works something majestic and holy and royal and divine out of the darkest threads in our stories.<br />
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But he seems to do so. Because Rahab the prostitute raised a Boaz, and through him nurtured the line of the King of Kings--who binds up the broken hearted and adorns his Bride, who lay in her blood and filth, with purity renewed. The Bridegroom who never abandons. The Kinsman Redeemer who isn't ashamed of his Bride, but glories in calling her his own. The Boaz of Boazes.</div>
--Rebeccahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00634179030174821176noreply@blogger.com2