Summer 2013
To quote Dickens, it has "been the best of times and the worst of times". I am embarrassed to admit that it has been quite a while since I have last written anything of significance. However, this past Summer has necessitated putting my thoughts down. In part for my own need for clarity and in part to pay tribute to some amazingly important people in my life. A good friend of mine encouraged me to write some things down not only for myself but also for my rapidly growing little boy, knowing that at the root and heart of who I am is a writer. Writing has always been cathartic for me and I love that my friend knows and values this about me and urges me to do so, even when it's been easier for me to escape into life instead of paper. So, here it goes. My best attempt for the here and now.
The past two months in many senses have been amazingly good. I've gotten to watch our little boy Aaron grow and change and reach those life mile-stones that are so pivotal to any parent. He's only just turned 10 months but already he is walking everywhere and into everything. It's been such a great joy to watch him thrive and discover life with new-found independence, even if it's meant my toes have been kept hopping trying to keep after him! He has been an incredible amount of deep joy even in the presence of great sorrow. The beginning of August saw the sudden departure of Ken Massey from this life into the gates of Heaven. To me, He wore a myriad of hats. He was my youth-leader, my foster-father, the man who discipled me and taught me so much about God and my position in Christ. His life as well as faith and investment into my own life helped forge my own passion for the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, or, as Ken would have put it, "the Great God of the Universe". Did that mean that we always saw eye-to-eye? No, but that does not negate or demean the fact that I loved this man as one loves a father. Men, myself included, are far from perfect. We live this life but a vapor in the span of eternity and we fumble in our humanity and falter with mistakes, misunderstandings and our own ignorance and pride. We should learn that in the Lord only, when we are weak HE alone is strong. Our true place in Christ is one of humility, acknowledging God's ways and thoughts are higher than our own. There is no amount of theological training, no amount of Christian service or "doing" that can EVER attain to the scope and magnitude of our God. Men are men. God is God. We should never reverse that order. We are to acknowledge our limitations, yet we are also to forgive as we have been forgiven, love as deeply as we have been loved, serve not to our own selves or interests, but to the glory of our King, who alone is triumphant and exalted. Yes, Ken left a legacy of passionately serving God and always pointing the way to Him. He bragged on Jesus every chance he was given. I will miss him more than I can say. All I ever had hoped to do was to make him proud.
Thus ushered in September. Just one month shy of her 90th birthday, my grandmother, Wilma Pabst, passed away as well. A friend of mine reminded me of what her name means. In Dutch, "Wilma" means: "resolute protector". It's English origins mean "determined protector". My grandmother, to me, was very much that. Throughout everything I have experienced, through all the ups and downs, my grandmother had always been there. In many times of doubt and uncertainty I NEVER had to question whether or not my grandmother loved or supported me. Her love was unconditional. Even at times when my own was selfish or demanding, her's never was. She was a force of stability on which I clung to the value and love for family even when as a young girl my own was so fractured. She was strong and tenacious, kind and compassionate. She instilled within me so much good. A love for the outdoors, for animals, for the farm, for creatures that were otherwise unlovable. Yes, even a large accidental turkey (she received him in a litter of chicks) and fighting roosters. Together we nursed many of these misfits back to health. We would sit with them toweled in our laps in her living room on the farm, seated on the couch or my grandpa's recliner. Sometimes we would talk, other times we just enjoyed being together. I also fell in love with old Audrey Hepburn movies. I learned embroidery and how to play dominoes around her dining room table. I still have a cheese cloth with an embroidered rooster we worked on together in my kitchen drawer. I also learned how to drive a stick-shift out in gopher-infested pastures and to climb trees, as well as scale a barn roof much to the dismay of my grandmother. Times spent on Grandma's farm were precious moments as I look back now. I was afforded the opportunity to just be a "kid" to Grandma. Everywhere else in life at that time had forced me to grow up faster than any child ever should. There is no doubt in my mind my grandmother loved me, or that I loved her "to the moon and back". To say I miss her is wildly understated. I am so proud and thankful that she got to meet my great joy, my little boy Aaron.
So, it's been a full two months of introspection, of loss and grief and of joy too. The reality of grief, at least for me, is that it alters one's reality. There will never be a moment where these two precious individuals are met again this side of heaven. I have found myself pilfering at times through boxes in a desperate attempt to locate just one coveted photo or two with it's ability, much like a Rolodex, to transport my mind back through precious memories, special times, important moments. You see, God used my Grandma and Ken to help shape who I am today. Honestly, I'm still discovering who exactly that is. Their passing and the disruption it has caused in life for the present has brought a good amount of introspection that has taught me a fair many things - good things. One is that growth should always be a life-long process and, as God reminded me through our pastor's sermon on Sunday, should never become static. If anything my Grandma's and Ken's passing has solidified within me a deeper desire to know God more, to continue growing, changing, and discovering. I want to be pliable and teachable. As much as I would love to have the answers to all my questions in life, and believe me, there are many, it is simply not for me to fully know. However, I rest in the assurance that I am fully known and seen by my God. He has not forsaken me and He has not stopped working. He is the same today as He was yesterday and will be tomorrow. In times of loss and rapid change He is a powerful constant. In all things, even those things for which I lack understanding, I can trust fully in my God's large and encompassing hands. As Ken had directionally been a spiritual rudder so to speak in my life and my Grandmother had been the glue, so God has always held all things together and still does. For me, for this day, for the past two months, that is enough.
When God Seems Late
Four days, ninety-Six hours and five-thousand, seven hundred and sixty minutes later Jesus arrived. By anyone’s measure of time Jesus was late. Lazarus was dead. Four days dead. Common Jewish belief of the day was that the soul lingered near the body for three days after death in hopes that it would return to it. Lazarus had been dead longer than this, just a day past the point of hope. Lazarus was irrevocably dead. Measured in moments Lazarus’s death could be accounted in the following: One day for the time it took the messengers from Bethany to arrive where Jesus was, two days for the time that Jesus stayed away, and another day for the time it took Jesus to travel to Bethany. Many Jews had already come from Jerusalem to Mary and Martha in order to comfort them, but Jesus, their friend, the one whom loved Lazarus, was absent. Confusion must have been thick in the grieving sister’s minds. Just three days prior Mary and Martha had sent a messenger to Jesus saying the one he loved was sick. Not just a passing kind of sickness, but the kind that had prompted a frantic appeal of two sisters who knew their brother lay dying. Where was he, why had he not he come? They must have sat waiting, sat praying, sat hoping that at any moment Jesus would return and their brother would be well again. Each day lingered, each morning passed, until finally, not long after the messengers were dispatched, Lazarus breath became a whisper and then was gone. Hope turned to despair, life gave way to death. For four days Lazarus lay wrapped in strips of linen and cloth, his body giving way to the effects of decomposition. Mary and Martha had known that Jesus could have prevented this, Jesus could have saved Lazarus, but he didn’t. Mary and Martha had no way of knowing that even though Jesus loved them and Lazarus, he had chosen to stay where he was for another two days. They had no way of knowing that it was for God’s glory that Jesus did this, for their own sakes that Jesus tarried, that He, God’s son, would be glorified through it. All the grievers could see were the burial clothes, the closed tomb, and the dead man behind the stone. Yet Jesus wasn’t late. He was right on time. Lazarus’s death was less about timing and more about life than anyone could have even known. Not just Lazarus’s life, but there very own.
There are so many times in life that I feel much as Martha and Mary must have felt. Circumstances that I can’t help but feel are hopeless. Moments I think that God’s too late, or that He simply chose not to show up. After all, God is God and He can do anything, right? Through agonized pleas and prayers I question, doubt, and wrestle with the God who can do all things. In my mind I know this to be absolutely true, yet my vision becomes clouded, my ability to discern compromised by feelings of loss and the pressing demands of the circumstance it’s self. I too easily forget that God is more invested at times in the process than the petition. Life is less about me and more about God’s glory. Jesus waited to come to Lazarus’s family because there was more at stake than Lazarus’s physical life. There was a truth to be revealed, a spiritual lesson to be learned. God can do anything. “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” asks Jesus in John 11:25-26. I ask myself this very same question, do I believe this?
The reality is that life is difficult. Very difficult. We were not promised that we would be spared from pain, grief, loss, persecution or heartache, or exempt from sickness or even disappointment. What we were promised was God himself, an everlasting life in the hands of the Father if we are willing to lay our own lives at the foot of the cross. Our walk with the Lord is not simply a supplication, but rather an absolute surrender of everything we are, everything we hope to be, everything we desire, every fiber of our being that Christ may be supreme and glorified. A lifting down of self so that Christ may be lifted up, into His proper position, High and exalted. Do I want Christ more than anything else? Am I willing to die and lose my life so that I may find it in His merciful embrace? These questions are personal and difficult. Not until the stone was rolled away and Lazarus stood, his hands, feet, and face still wrapped in cloth, did many believe. What amazement must have filled the mourning crowd, what awe must have been present as the people helped Lazarus remove his burial clothing. The stone had been rolled away and Lazarus and been resurrected. The impossible had turned miraculous. Many saw, many believed, many put their faith in Jesus that day. Jesus moved that day in the way God his father directed, not how people demanded. The question, at least for me, is can I recognize God’s hand in my own life, even if it works in the unexpected ways that go contrary to my own and realize that God is in the process of doing the miraculous? God’s alive, He’s working, and He’s not late. No matter what my heart may feel, God is working out His plan, in His way, and in His timing. He does this so others can see Him more clearly, so that He alone may have all the glory. Yes, God’s not late. He’s just not done yet.
"Nearly every time I have told it and tried to explain what I think God wanted to teach me in it of absolute commitment and trust, someone has asked, "but why did God let it happen?" Someday they and I will be satisfied with His answer. On thing I am perfectly sure of: God's story never ends with "ashes."
~ Elizabeth Elliot, These Strange Ashes
Chapter Six Is Complete!
And . . . as I sit, typing away on chapter seven! Hoping to have it finished today as well. Ah, the joys of writing.
"It's not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena . . . who, at best, knows in the end the triumph of great achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly. So that his place will never be with those cold timid souls who know neither victory or defeat."
Is it Painful?
As Chip Ingram states, "don't ask why, ask what." Check this link out and listen - it's great stuff! Once at the site, click on "How to Rebuild Your Broken World, Ask Why Ask What, part 2." It's a wonderful reminder of who really is in control, nomatter what we may be facing.
http://www.livingontheedge.org/home/broadcasts/online_daily.php
