Ceeeeeeeeelebrate Good Times, Come On!

Have you ever read 1 Corinthians 12:21-26?  I never had, but I recently did.  My study of Romans took me there.  If you’ve never done a Bible study before, you should know this before you start one.  There is a boat load of page turning in a Bible study.  When you sign up to study Romans, don’t go thinking you’ll be all sacked out and staying put in Romans, Romans, Romans for the next nine months of your life.  You might have signed up to study Romans, but you will be instructed to read six-hundred verses on four –hundred different pages in three dozen other books of the Bible.  Your study of Romans will have you looking up things you didn’t even know could relate to Paul, and yet somehow, they will.  God is pretty cool like that.  He can make things that don’t make any sense, make perfect sense.


So I read 1 Corinthians 12:21-26 and I’m pretty . . . okay absolutely . . . certain God wrote it for me when he decided I was going to get myself a brand new semi-colon at the end of 2013.  Why he felt the need to speak truth to me through thoughts of internal body parts, let alone the ones that do what colons do, I might never fully understand, but he got my attention. 


These verses are about parts of the body, and the truth is, God is talking about the body of Christ, not my large intestine.  He is reminding us that everyone plays a role in sharing the love of Jesus.  We are all important and relevant and necessary to grow God’s kingdom. 


If I had read these verses a few months earlier, I would have stopped there.  I would have enjoyed and accepted their reminder to cherish all people, because everyone has indescribable value and infinite worth.  We all need each other because our Creator provided us all with different gifts, and by working together, we can glorify Him.  


The thing is, I didn’t read the verses a few months earlier.  I read them less than two months after major surgery, and they took on a completely different meaning.  If I truly believe God is in the details of my life, then I have to believe he planned that particular detail.


Verse 26 says, ‘If one part suffers, every part suffers with it.’


My friends, I now know that to be true. 


After surgery, my stomach hurt, my incisions throbbed, my back ached.  There was a lot of discomfort sitting down, even more when I managed to move. Everything was uncomfortable – standing, sleeping, showering, sneezing – holy cow was sneezing almost the death of me.  There was constant pain.  There was suffering.


Please know that I realize my suffering was small compared to what so many have been through or are going through.  My pain was temporary and minimal.  It was first world pain.  No children were starving, no little girls being sexually assaulted, no young men being gunned down.  I was suffering in a warm home, heated, furnished, and filled with every necessity (and a whole lot of other stuff).  I was suffering with my family safely by my side and any medicine I needed at my disposal, while friends delivered food and gifts.  In all honesty, ‘suffering’ is totally NOT the right word for what I was doing.    


Still, I learned an important lesson during my “sort of suffering.”  I learned that God was right when he said, ‘If one part suffers, the other parts suffer with it,’ because y’all, my colon might have been the source of my pain, but it was my head that needed the healing.


I wasn’t created to be sedentary.  I’m not cut out for giving up my independence.  I’m addicted to guilt, and relying on others to do so many of the things I usually do on my own threw my addiction into overdrive.  And so, while my incisions got better by the day, my mind became more muddled by the minute.


The world looked blue.  Everything seemed like work.  Life felt incredibly hard.


I’ve never been diagnosed with depression, though I feel certain I had a touch of it after Charlie was born.  It didn’t last long – his smiles somehow brought back my own – but I remember those incessant, dark nights in the weeks after his birth, awake and alone at all hours, the tears falling as I longed for a hope I couldn’t seem to find.


That hopelessness appeared again after my recent surgery, uninvited and unwelcome, and it changed me.  I will never again underestimate the strength of anyone who suffers from a chronic illness or is struggling though a lengthy recovery.  And I will never again doubt the power that is in the body of Christ, because in the end, it came back to that after all. 


Leave it to the author of life to write just the words to make me understand, and to lead me to those words in his ever perfect timing.


It took a diversion into my own circumstances to make 1 Corinthians 12:21-26 settle into my heart and stay there, but I’m glad for it.  My depression went away on its own, and I’m glad for that too.  But as I face new circumstances in my life that might send people I love into their own depths of pain, I know without a doubt, the body of Christ is alive and well and full of mercy. 


There are stories everywhere about people all over the world making a difference, and there are people right here in my own community who are willing to do the same.  There are so many amazing people making up the body of Christ.  People who have been given spiritual gifts and are obedient to use them to help others.  All our gifts are equally valuable.  They are gifts of grace used to ready God’s people for service.  They are not meant to compete, but to complement one another, so the body of Christ may be built up as a unified force - one capable of doing the greatest of things for the least of these.


It took a new semi-colon to help me fully understand this truth.  Hey, sometimes God has to knock you over the head to shove you into the light.  Or, in my case, he had to let me experience the super fun phenomenon of phantom poop.  (Call me for the exciting explanation if it doesn’t come up on Google!)


You see, when my body wasn't 100%, my head couldn't function at its best either.  The body works as a team - each part doing it's job to accomplish a goal - and so must the body of Christ.  Mind and body are always related, just as human beings must always be relational.


We are meant to suffer with one another.  We are meant to suffer for one another.  And as Verse 26 continues . . .


If one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.


Don't you love how God often saves the best for last? 


If one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.


Yep.


We are meant to celebrate together too.


I can't wait for that part!!!
 

If You Turn 'Mom' Upside Down, It Says WOW!!!

God made me a mom and I’m so glad and grateful and, sometimes . . . even all these eleven plus years later . . .  alarmed. 


This job?   This permanent role?  This relentless responsibility?


It’s Just.  So.  BIG.


Carrying life and then caring for life for their whole life and mine.


The sleepless nights never end.


I held them in my belly for all those months and in my arms for what felt like years, but it’s the heart that does the heavy lifting every second of every day of every week forever.  And the heart, though it beats strong and constant, it breaks easy and often.  It swells with each milestone they reach, the fullness of love, joy, and pride overflowing as I stand in awe and witness their growth, only to shatter with the realization that every act of independence they take is just another good-bye.


Motherhood is the most difficult thing I’ve ever done. 


It’s also the most extraordinary.


So I’ll stay up all night if I have to . . . for their whole life and mine.  The heart will ache and the heart will break.  But more than anything, it will beat with the certainty that motherhood is an incredible blessing from God, and next to Jesus, Charlie and Libby are the greatest gifts I’ll ever know.

Happy Mother’s Day sweet friends!  I hope you are all having a wonderful weekend celebrating the greatest, most challenging and complicated and wondrous and exhilarating job in the entire world!!!

Turn on the Light

Life has been a bit of a whirlwind lately, and the words just haven’t come.  That Lent project of mine seems so far in the past – the days when I could find gratitude around every corner.  Turns out, when you’re searching for things that make you feel thankful, the world seems full of those things.  You feel thankful.  But when you stop looking, the gratitude is no longer so easily found.  And the thankfulness?  Well, it begins to wane as many of those things you once counted as blessings begin to bear down more like burdens.

It’s when I’m in the dark that I realize how far I have to go.  When life is hard and everything feels like work and I doubt and fear and dread.  That’s when I understand the true state of my soul.  That’s when all signs point to the fact that I still don’t look anything like Jesus. 

He’s in there somewhere.  Buried deep among my discontent, he sits patiently waiting for me to look past my selfish mess and see him reaching for me.  Every so often, I acknowledge that he’s calling my name, and I rush towards him, full of eagerness for our reunion.  But the connection is brief.  I’m like a child who races towards her father when he shows up at the park, only to give him a quick hug before running off again, free to go and do and be as she pleases.

I know I should linger in his presence.  He is the only one who can provide the comfort I seek.  And yet, I search for it in anything . . . in everything else . . . and then act surprised when there is no comfort to be found.

There will always be dark places in our lives, and dark is difficult .  It’s disorienting and dangerous and it makes us feel so alone.  Just imagine being in a completely dark room – nothing but blackness all around.  You can’t even see what’s right in front of you.  You’re scared and you’re stuck and there seems to be no hope at all.  Now, think about what the flame of even one small candle brings to that dark place.  With a single spark, physical light enters your surroundings.  It makes the darkness recede, and suddenly, you have knowledge and understanding.

Jesus is light.

When life is dark, He is the one who illuminates what is real and shows us the way.  We just have to remember to look for the light.

I stopped looking.  That little Lent project of mine – the channeling my inner Ann Voskamp and counting blessings each and every day – it ended when Easter came.  I celebrated the resurrection – the single greatest reason for hope - and then I stopped looking for reasons to be thankful. 

Man I have SUCH a long way to go.

You see, when I don’t focus on the source of light, all I see is dark.  When I don’t let the light of the world bring clarity and truth that point me in the right direction, I end up in stumbling through blackness.

Light overcomes darkness.

Jesus overcame death.

If I walk towards the light . . . if I run to Jesus . . . I will find my way.  I will find the comfort and peace and freedom I’m looking for.  The dark will disappear and I will be thankful again.