Excerpt from today’s writing: forgiveness theme…

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What Raul said about having forgiven Suzette had got to Vince more than anything. He kept thinking about it. Raul said that he’d tried but been unable to forgive Suzette for taking Maddie from him. He’d been able to forgive a lot, but not that. But when he’d started praying about it, God had helped him learn how to forgive. “Sometimes it’s a daily choice, or even a moment by moment. It has definitely gotten easier with time, but…” Raul had broken off and looked away for a moment, “It was definitely harder for awhile after Maddie came back, and then when the stories started coming forth…well, I had to do a lot of praying and choosing to forgive again. A lot happened to Maddie after she took her, things I don’t think I’ll ever know all about. Maddie can be pretty close-lipped.” Vince had agreed. And privately Vince had been wondering ever since. Was it possible to be free of his mother’s…of his own inability to forgive her completely? And his own experiences didn’t even come close to things that had happened to Maddie and now as he heard things about Misha’s father.

Misha didn’t act like someone who had been abused however. “Misha, you have trouble forgiving?”

“Yep. Anyone who tells you different, lies.”

“Trouble forgiving your father?”

“Yeah, most of that is past now, and I’m finding God is restoring those portions of our relationship. He was too severe. My biggest hurdle with forgiveness was forgiving God, however.”

Vince hadn’t thought of it in quite such a way, but it made sense, he guessed that was part of his problem with accepting that God might even be interested in knowing him in the way Pastor Dale said. He was seeing some of what the man was saying, and darn but he did feel awfully guilty of his own sins when he thought about Jesus dying on the cross for him. He should ask more questions, but he was still biding his time…but the day would come when he’d need to answer some hard questions about himself. Not about who his family was, not about what crimes his father had done or that his brother was perpetuating in family tradition, but about what Vince had done. Who knew maybe then he’d be able to address the thoughts of his mother. He’d stayed away from those thoughts for sixteen years, he’d been seven when she’d left and set it all behind him.

Misha picked the conversation back up, “Forgiving God for letting my mother get cancer and then taking her from us. That was the hardest, still is hard sometimes. Everything in our life changed. It was a direct attack upon our family and not one of us escaped unscathed.”
“You’re the only one who seems to be doing okay.”

“You call this okay? One brother who traipse around the world never settling lest he might have to face real life someday, another spending a couple of years in prison for getting involved with the wrong people, and another serving life for killing someone in a fight. Then there’s Dad, who was just plain stupid, in his business partner choice as well as not keeping track of his financial obligations, never thought the day would come when I’d see him behind bars. Not to mention that fact that I’m raising a child of each of my brothers…none of whom have ever been married…” She broke off and grinned at him, “This is starting to sound worse than it is.”

“I don’t think so.”

“But it does sound worse, because I’m more and more convinced that God brought me here. Dad was right, people here are trying to take care of me.”

“If you’ll let them.”

“Yeah, I’m working on that. Hard to trust people, and I’m pretty stubborn.”

“I wouldn’t know anything about that.” Vince’s dry tone made her laugh, and he joined in. It was when his friends said things like this that he began to think that maybe he’d have to check into this God who could cause a body go through things and yet He didn’t leave one alone to face life. He could use someone like that on his side.

Standing in the Ashes

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It is marvelous to see something dead come to life.  Some years ago I drove through Yellowstone and in one portion it was obvious that fires had come through a few brief years before, but it wasn’t all black—rather it was teeming with new life.  Trees rapidly rose among the ashes of their kin.  The signs were all around—life was being renewed.

It is the moments when all is black around, when the charcoaled bits of life and dreams, smolder with dim blazes—it is those moments when the heart despairs.  The whispers that all is lost, all is gone, all is dead, those whispers give bitter twists within the corridors of our hearts.  The pain seems to have no end, the tears never stop replenishing, and the stoic face we wear is showing its cracks.  We try to tell ourselves that it will be okay, that there is hope, yet reality intrudes and always with that whisper of unrelenting doom.

A woman I met recently told me a part of her story, of life with her first husband, of the pain of living with an abuser.  My mind snagged on certain points in her story like when her voice hesitated, “the beatings were bad,” and when she said, “I was homeless with a baby,” and last, she admitted, “I didn’t get a driver’s license until I was thirty-two.”  All things that made my mind sit up and take notice.  We were talking about when we have lost all, starting over with nothing.

As much as we’d like to think otherwise, God does take us there during our lives.  Sometimes more than once.  I enjoy Vicki Hinze’s books, but I was surprised when I read her blog about losing everything multiple times in her life (you can read the entry here.)  For some reason, I thought people losing everything is a distant problem for the few.  Like the homeless, like the people standing on the corner.  But rock bottom is closer than most of us think.

You realize the value of things when you lose them; just as you hurt when you see dreams pass away.  Death of dreams before they had a chance to commence causes the heart to grieve for what might have been.  The heart cries—they never even had a chance!  Sometimes it is the dreams of what can never be, for a barren woman seeing her childbearing years slip past with only her heart to grieve what might have been.  It’s the living through the death of a loved one when everything within cries, ‘It’s not time!  It is too soon!’

Many dreams slip away with this heart’s cry, “But, God, the dreams, the hopes for the future, they are dying!  They aren’t even a possibility anymore!”  I can flip through my mind’s eye, and I see my dead dreams—some in the not-so-distant past.  They are ashes, they will not rise again.

There is one good thing about the process of their dying, and one good thing about my losses—I have changed.  Before, when my heart didn’t know of their impeding loss, I saw God as there, standing a few feet away.  He was my friend, the one who had done much for me.  My mind recognized Him then.

Now my heart knows Him.

He isn’t far.  My heart has snuggled close to His many times.  I don’t have the doubts of former years.  I know He is standing by my side.  He doesn’t let me cry alone.  He doesn’t stop the tears, but he doesn’t pretend they don’t exist.  His voice is a whisper in my ear—

There will be a day…

The radio spills songs of hope, words of encouragement.  Standing in the ashes, we can know He makes a way.  All is worthless, except this one truth, God is here.  He is the one who makes a way where there seems to be no way.  I do not see the way, but I do not need to see.  I merely need to believe.

The woman, who was abused, now reflects on her new husband, of two children raised and a new young child.  She is not old.  She has a new life.  She talks as someone who knows who God is.  At some point, she has seen His hand in her life.  I hear hope in her voice as she talks of having PTSD, but that she might have something to share with others who have or are escaping from an abuser’s hand.  I hope she finds a way to share her story.

Those stories of old were not much different, Moses fleeing Egypt, Jacob fleeing his father’s home for fear of his brother’s wrath, Jonah in the belly of the big fish, Joseph chained in the dungeons, Abraham leaving kith and kin.  Those stories were of losing everything.  But one thing remains.

God.

Even when we cannot remember what His promises are, we can believe that He will be faithful to fulfill them.

It is true that life goes on, but in the way of firestorms as long as there is fuel for the fire they march on, dreams morphing into new ashes.  The dust of dying dreams makes me cough, but my lungs have adjusted to the stench of death.  This is life, but I can smile, albeit grimly, because I know that HE knows.

Job’s life was changed forever.  He sat among the ashes of his life scraping his hurts with the hardness of a burnt life.  He knew that nothing would be the same.  And it was not.  Even though there was restoration, God gave him children, and riches, those things could not erase the memory of what had been.  Do you think he stopped thinking about the children he lost?  Do you think he did not think of them every day for the remainder of his life?

I think Job remembered his children.  And yet God is able to bring healing, and amid His numerous murmurs of comfort, there are promises of joy that will come when moments of mourning begin to fade.  As David said when he lost his first son by Bathsheba, “I shall go to him” (2 Samuel 12:23).  That is hope.

God’s promises march on.  To today, to tomorrow, to the day following.  He does not leave us, if anything He enables us to cling closer to Him than we ever dreamed possible—and that, my friend, is a miracle.

I admit to counting the years of my life.  I’ve done the math.  If I live an average life span, I am a few years past the middle—it is a relief to know I have fewer years to face than when I began.  A morbid train of thought?  I know.  But as Paul said, “to live is Christ, and to die is gain” (Phil. 1:21, italics added).  So I have judged the gain as something I rejoice at the thought of, and long for at times.  In fact, I fully expect that longing to grow.

But to live is Christ, because in living God honors us by allowing us to see something that is beyond what the mind comprehends—because He is bigger than our lives, and when we cast a look around our field of death, we see that something is happening, something that not possible…we see a stirring of the bones as Ezekiel would say (Ezekiel 37:7).

As I stand in my ashes, I can see that stirring of new life rising from the ashes.  These are not my old dreams.  These are not the old ways.  This is something new.  I thank God that He can see past my limited view because He gives new, limitless dreams.  I hug His heart close to mine as I watch.  He knows the tenderness of my bruises so He is slow in revealing the new plan, the new purpose.  Oh, I know it’s not new to Him, I suspect He had it in mind all the time, but it is new to me.  Just as I did with the old, I resolve that this new thing I will not cling to.  I’ll hold it in open hand, where He can use it as he desires.

My heart marvels, because as just as the power of His creation rises in the heart of the forest to bring renewal of life, so the power of his purposes and promises have the power to bring new life in the midst of loss.

Maybe, just maybe, losing is gaining.

On second thought…

I am sure of it.

Abandoned to Die

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Despair lurks near.  I must keep my guard up.  My children need me.  When I was a child, I thought this could never happen to me.  To my children.  How naïve I was.

I thought there would be somewhere to run, somewhere to go, someone to help.  But my friends, my neighbors…their children are dying too.  I wonder if my eyes show my story as their eyes show theirs. 

Each day, as I go to the pool I see her there, my friend Sasha.  We don’t speak, but we linger as we wait.

For what we wait, I do not know.  There is no one to stop us.  We want, we pray, for someone to stop us.  There’s no clean water here and praying did not stop Sasha’s babies from dying.  She is mostly silent now.  I miss her laugh. 

With a quiet sigh, I take the first step.  She follows, knowing that we must provide water for our families.  She doesn’t know how sick my children, whom she loves dearly, really are.  I don’t have the heart to tell her.  Instead I must believe, no matter how hopeless, that there is someone out there, up there, to hear my prayers.

The preceding story is fictional, but the need for clean water is universal.  Each year, if safe drinking water were available, 2.2 million children’s deaths could be prevented.  The Water4 foundation is dedicated to help by digging wells—using hand-drilling technology, low-tech drill kits, and training.  They also desire to produce jobs for nationals by training them to dig wells.   When a well is dug, the equipment can be moved to the next location.  Thus, they can reach remote, rural areas with water.

God created us to have a need for water.  When it is absent, or polluted, we suffer.  Those are the facts.  He also called us to share His living water—the water that never fails.  How can we share that spiritual water with those who are dying and those whose children are dying from lack of safe drinking water?  By first providing for physical needs, we open the door to sharing about the spiritual well that never runs dry.

Water4 shows God’s love by providing water, which prepares hearts for the Gospel message.  They have partnered with World Vision, which has a strong evangelistic emphasis.  Together they meet mankind’s need for physical and spiritual water.

There are many who, as in the above story, suffer silently—with only God to hear their cries.  But He does hear.  Like the story’s narrator, I want to hear Sasha laugh again.  That can only happen if families have access to clean drinking water.  Prayerfully consider supporting Water4, a foundation that understands that eternal life can spring from a simple cup of water.

“For whoever gives you a cup of water to drink in My name, because you belong to Christ, assuredly, I say to you, he will by no means lose his reward.”  Mark 9:41 (NKJV)

A New Sound

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I’ve had some interesting experiences during worship, but this morning’s worship time at church was unique.  The last couple of weeks worship has been wonderful.  Last week, the pastor said something about his wife telling him to do what he knows–I can’t remember his exact words, but the essence I got out of it was that we need to return to some basics.  And worship is a basic.

In my experience, worship is a vital part of what God has for us.  It’s amazing that as we honor God, as we bring him our hearts and pour them out–He gives us so much more in return.  As David said “I was glad when they said unto me, let us go into the house of the Lord.”  There is joy, hope, peace, grace, and help.

Back to this morning, I was enjoying the sound of worship…do you ever do that during a service?  Pause and listen to God’s people pour out their hearts, it’s like a crescendo of heavenly music that takes on a transcendent quality…  Three quarters of the way through the worship service, there was a change in the voices–in the music.  I can only describe it as African.  This from a congregation that is, at the moment, consisting mainly of caucasian and hispanic descendants.  It was totally awesome!  I have to admit, I didn’t do much singing, I was busy laughing.  I can’t shake the feeling that it was a miracle–because well, maybe I have some of that feeling that ‘white men can’t…sing’ like that.  Lol.  Isn’t God good!

Now I’m curious, do you have any stories to tell?

Endeavor

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When starting a new endeavor, it always seems to take longer than expected.  Whereas, this is normal for the men in my family (however long they say a task is going to take, always takes twice as long, I’ve learned to do the math quietly…one hour is two, two days is four…etc.), it is not normal for me–except in the case of this website, or blog, or whatever you call it.  I have hit the tops of time I can spend on it now, just wanted to get the annoying, but informative, wordpress pre-fabbed verbage off of the site, so talk to ya’ll later!