I used to struggle with fearing not. I know that bad things happen. There have been plenty of bad things in my life and in the lives of those I love. So, the old standby of sayings “well, what could happen?” or “it could be worse” (honestly, who wants that?), they never worked for me. I have a super good imagination (see WRITER) and I’m a professional trouble-shooter (sounds much nicer than pessimist), so my brain is very active.
I used to struggle with fear. And then I didn’t. I do have my short moments, mind you. But I spent a long time in biblical study on fear and in prayer about fear. Through meditation with the Lord, over a period of many months, I uncovered several key incidences in my life that lead me to worry and fear. I’ll tell you what I did when I faced them: I wrote them down and burned them one by one. I prayerfully asked God to heal me of those things and to teach me not to fear. Because the opposite of trusting God is fear. I had to ask myself: Did I really mean it when I said I trusted God? Mostly. I did mostly.
And I realized mostly wasn’t enough.
This year my husband was unemployed for several months. We’d been here before, and I did all the things you do when your income is cut off—I reorganized our budget, I called people and put things on hold, we cut back on everything. All the reasonable things you do. And then? I sat around in a panic and worried…NO. In fact, I didn’t fear. I wasn’t even tempted to fear that my husband wouldn’t find work. Neither of us was (fear can be catching…and I guess the lack of fear can be catching, too!) In fact, several times I actually forgot he wasn’t employed.
Did I have a memory lapse? No. I trusted God.
Do bad things happen? You bet they do. Lots. But through those bad things, God has always provided for us, comforted us, carried us, walked with us, and I knew—really knew—He would do it again. So we prayed and asked for our needs to be met and didn’t fear. This was a cognitive decision we made and Jesus sent His Holy Spirit to settle this into our hearts in a way I had never imagined possible. Let me tell you, the peace that comes from this is incredible. It overflows. And it sticks.
I’ve faced a lot of scary health things in my life. I used to fear. I used to hate the unknown, the long time it took to get a diagnosis, the in-between when my very good (see WRITER again) imagination would take hold of me. But, when I had to face the foundation of my faith, and my trust in God versus those fears, I’ve let it go (no, not like the sappy song). I trusted God for the outcome. WHATEVER THE OUTCOME. It is well with my soul. Seriously.
Here are some verses I read to remind me not to fear. They remind me that Isaiah, Moses, Jesus, and Paul had a lot of earthly reasons to fear. And instead, they bent their knee to the Father, and their pen to paper, to share with those of us still in the battle. They are commands, they are promises, they are God’s great Word of Truth.
I hope they help you, too.
Isaiah 41:10 Fear not, for I am with you;
be not dismayed, for I am your God;
I will strengthen you, I will help you,
I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.
Isaiah 41:13 For I, the Lord your God,
hold your right hand; it is I who say to you, “Fear not,
I am the one who helps you.”
Deuteronomy 31:6 Be strong and courageous. Do not fear or be in dread of them, for it is the Lord your God who goes with you. He will not leave you or forsake you. (and Jesus quotes this!)
Deuteronomy 31:8 It is the Lord who goes before you. He will be with you; he will not leave you or forsake you. Do not fear or be dismayed.
Mathew 28: 18-20 And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
1 John 4:16 So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.
Romans 8: 35-39 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written,
“For your sake we are being killed all the day long;
we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.”
No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
May our Lord remind you of His great love for you,
If there’s anything I’ve learned in the past few years, it’s that thankfulness is a manner of being. It’s something you either shroud yourself in, or something you try and pull on like a tight pair of jeans straight out of the dryer. I find the former much easier!
All around me are posts about thankfulness—because at this time of year in the US, we’re celebrating Thanksgiving. I could list a thousand things I’m thankful for—but someone else might not have one of those, and I’d leave them feeling less. And confusing monetary and health advantages with being blessed by God is fraught with issues. So instead of being thankful for singular things, I’m going to encompass them. No…that’s not cheating!
The other day, outside of my bible study class (Bible Study Fellowship—if you’ve never attended, you need to!), I was waiting for my friend to pull her car up for our ride home. The sun, having been in hiding for well over a week, blazed down, blinding us all.
As I waited, enjoying the musky smell of fall leaves and wet bark dust heating in the sun, a grandmother walked by, holding the hand of her sweet toddler grandson. As soon as they left the shade of the building, the little one grabbed his face, covering his eyes from the blinding light. She gently pulled away one of his hands and led him from the building, across the parking lot.
His free pudgy hand still clumsily covered his clenched eyes, and she smiled down lovingly at him, encouraging him on with her kind tones, leading him. He didn’t peek in between those fingers. He didn’t pull back and ask what she thought she was doing leading him into traffic without his being able to see. He didn’t panic. He just toddled along, his hand in hers, completely trusting grandma to take him wherever he needed to be.
I was immediately reminded of the lesson I’ve been learning in Bible study (on my own and this class): God is completely trustworthy. Not only when I can see where I’m going. Not only when I’ve got an inkling of the future—but always. Even when I’m blinded by my circumstances. Especially then, I’d say.[tweetthis hidden_hashtags=”#God #Thankfulness” display_mode=”box”]God is completely trustworthy in shadow or light![/tweetthis]
So that’s what I’m thankful for most of all. My Father’s hand leading me and drawing me, with love in His eyes, compassion in His touch, and gentleness in His voice. He never lets me go.
The happiest of Thanksgivings to you and yours!
Psalm 139:9-12 If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me. If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light about me be night,” even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is bright as the day, for darkness is as light with you. (complete passage here)
Have you heard of the books titled All I Ever Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten? Or learned from my dog, or from the Wizard of Oz, or from Star Trek (that’s my personal favorite). They list all the positive and negative things the author learned about life from those experiences. But I have a new take.
This past year, I’ve taken stock of a lot of things in my life, and I can honestly say I’m more whole now in this broken body than I was before I got much more seriously sick. Illness affected my life from birth. Little did my family or doctors know, but my body had a genetic break that kept me from making antibodies to colds or infections that, over time, got worse and worse.
April McGowan 1973
This is me in the hospital, age 3. Raggedy Ann is peeking over my shoulder (I still have her) and that bear seems to be doing an excellent job of standing guard!
Here’s what no one tells you. Chronic illness doesn’t just change a few things in your life, it changes everything. Part of those changes extend to the very definition of what quality of life, happiness and joy mean–and their effects on every aspect of our lives. And although I’m riding on a hard road I wouldn’t wish on anyone at all, I’m thankful for it. I never thought I’d say that.
For the next several weeks, I’m going to be sharing about how everything I needed to know to live well, I learned from being chronically ill. I’ll make a helpful tab on my blog to chronicle them all in case you miss any. Here are some of the highlights I’ll be covering (the order may change as I go along):
What marriage means
What parenting means
What suffering means
What friendship means
What loss of friendship means
What living in the moment means
What submission means
What support groups mean
What life goals mean
What work means
What helping others means
What plans mean
What hope means
What dreams mean
What acceptance means
What boundaries mean
What grief means
What being tired means
What giving up means
What hanging on means
What honesty means
What commitment means
What sacrifice means
What trusting God means
I’ve learned a lot in the past 45 years from chronic illness. Especially in the past five years. Lots of hard things. Lots of good things. But those hard things, when I let them, helped shape me into a different form—into a person I like a whole lot more, and into a faith deeper and more intimate with Jesus than I could have ever imagined. I venture to say that any challenging experience you have can do that, if you let it.
So I hope you’ll join me as I blog, and take part in conversations along the way, sharing your heart with me, too.
If you’re like me, the American dream was drilled into your head through television. That dream is slightly askew these days, but I think it’s still holding fast in our psyches. It goes something like this: I’m going to marry the person of my dreams. We’re going to live happily ever after (whatever happily means by your definition). We will be married forever and die at a ripe old age, painlessly, holding hands in our sleep. Marriage is all about love and romance and passion and having my needs met. Right?
It doesn’t include driving your spouse to the hospital at 2 AM because he can’t breathe, and then sleeping in the hospital parking lot in the car with your baby because you can’t trust yourself to drive home. It doesn’t include holding your spouse’s head while he or she vomits, or wiping up the floor because they’ve missed the toilet. It doesn’t include watching your spouse fade from the person they were because of chronic illness a good forty years ahead of schedule due to a genetic disease. It doesn’t include going into debt to pay for medications and specialists. Or watching them spend thirty plus hours of each week curled in a chair because their life-saving medication makes them feel awful. Or surgery. Or accidents. Or any of those uncomfortable things that reminds us this life can be one trial after another.
But it should. I feel like petitioning every premarital counselor out there and asking them to change their quizzes. What will you do if you can’t take that trip you’ve always wanted to take? What will you do when your spouse becomes disabled (we all seem to at one point or another), or if your spouse gets cancer and loses a body part or goes bald? If they lose their minds to disease? What will you do if your loved one is suffering? When you need to bathe them or change them? Will you leave because you can’t bear to watch them suffer? Or because your needs aren’t being met and they’ve become a burden (whatever burden means by your definition)? I sure hope not.
This blog post honors those who stay.
The world says self, but God’s Word says sacrifice. God created marriage as a sacrificial covenant. It’s not just a safe place to have kids. It’s not just an expensive party where your friends and family come wish you well and and give you awesome presents (we got 12 clocks…is there a hidden meaning in that?). Or about tax write-offs (and thanks to the government, that’s about to end anyway!). Contrary to popular belief, it’s about loving that other person sacrificially. It’s about putting them and their needs before yours. It’s not about you, it’s about them.
So. If you have stayed when it was messy, painful, heartbreaking, perspective shifting, expensive, inconvenient, dream-killing, hard, sleepless, tiresome: thank you. You mean the world to your spouse who feels like a burden, who wishes they were different or circumstances were different. You are showing them and the world what it means to die to self. You are reflecting the sacrificial love of God to your spouse, your kids, your friends–even strangers. And in that, the sacrifice Jesus made for us all.
I’ve been thinking about vulnerability lately. Our society doesn’t like being vulnerable. We admire strong people, go-getters. We don’t gravitate toward the weak, to exposed underbellies or chinks in armor.
As babies, we come into the world trusting and ready to learn. Unfortunately, for many including myself, some of the first hard lessons we learn are that people let you down, betray you, hurt you, and you’d better face the world as a boxer–your guard up, ducking and weaving for cover.
There are all kinds of games people play to keep themselves safe. They build barriers, hiding behind forced smiles and platitudes. How are you? You’re fine. Even if you’re not. Then they go on to act one way with one person, and differently with another. They become evasive and non-committal. They only let a few in past the walls…and secretly they’re pretty certain those folks are going to let them down any minute. In fact, a lot of people are subconsciously waiting to be let down, and might even orchestrate events to prove it. In doing so, they get the result they were so worried about getting.
But being vulnerable doesn’t have to mean we’re weak. If you think about it, being vulnerable goes against our grain. It’s hard work to keep those barriers down. Now, I’m not talking about exposing yourself to people who have hurt you in the past, tossing your pearls before swine. On the contrary, I’m talking about going deeper, trusting more, sharing more honestly with those closest to us, and then branching out.
Does that make you edgy? Do lots of reasons not to let your guard down race through your mind? What about that last time you counted on someone and they let you down? But what about that last time someone didn’t?
That’s where the Lord has been taking me these past few weeks, and it made me plenty edgy. He’s been revealing this weakness in me, turning it to a strength through my submitting it to Him. It’s been hard, but very good, too. God’s pretty amazing that way, using all our brokenness to reveal His love and His glory. His amazing strength.
Jesus knew what it meant to be vulnerable. He made himself available to people of all walks, made himself approachable, and knew what it was like to have those closest to him forget him, deny him, even betray him unto death. But those he was vulnerable with, those he loved freely were changed forever. Imagine for a moment your Savior was unapproachable, closed off, unsympathetic–would you be be drawn to him for any length of time?
Thankfully we have a High Priest who has experienced every part of this life right along with us. Hebrews 4: 15-16 says: Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has ascended into heaven, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin. Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.
Is there someone in your life you need to let down your walls for, reach out to, walk closer with? I encourage you to do so. Our journey is much too short to spend it alone.
Last week a tiny sparrow smacked into the sliding glass door of our house. The evidence of a loud thud and tiny, downy feathers stuck to the glass led my family to race to the door and see. The bird sat stunned near our dryer vent for a long time, very still. No one was sure if it was alive or not. I’m a pretty hands-on type of girl when it comes to animals, so I crept out and gathered it in my hands. The bird’s delicate body was covered in a feathery coat, speckled brown and white, camouflaged perfectly for winter. Nothing appeared to be broken.
I was struck by the near weightlessness of this helpless creature cradled in my palms. How wonderfully made it was to ride the wind, to hide in bushes and trees—but a bit clueless to avoid reflective house windows. Soon after I made contact, the stunned state wore off and it attempted to jump. So I put it in a box with a towel (for warmth and protection from the occasional passing neighbor cat) and went back inside to keep it from being too frightened. It didn’t stay long, and soon jumped out and hid in the bush near our back porch. Eventually, it flew off and I’m sure had an amazing tale for its friends—and a major headache.
I feel like that bird sometimes. I’m going along with my daily tasks, minding my own business, thinking that the path I’m on will get me where I want to go. I’m flitting here and there, checking things off my list when suddenly WHAM, I’m sitting stunned on the back porch in the freezing cold, wondering what I’m doing there. Wasn’t I doing everything right? Why have I been derailed by illness, stress, an unexpected event?
I don’t really have an answer for those questions. Life holds pitfalls and trials just as much as it holds happiness-although the trials seem to last longer and are burned into our minds so much easier than the joys.
I do know that I’m promised, if I belong to the Lord, He is with me. He will lift me in His mighty hands, cradle me and comfort me until I feel able to begin again. But, unlike my leaving the bird to fend for itself, He will never leave me nor forsake me.
If you find yourself slamming against a window of your own, don’t despair. He is with you.
Deuteronomy 31:6 Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or terrified because of them, for the Lord your God goes with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you. (full text here)
