Strength of Purpose

Yesterday I climbed into a canoe. I had been hesitant, wondering if it was possible for my body to flex at that angle, but the opportunity was upon me and I grabbed it. Mustering up courage for the sideways motion with my weak right side -- I stepped over and down. Everything worked, and soon we were paddling across a glassy lake ringed with scarlet tinges while our bow made a smooth arrow of ripples. The sky was a silent shade of blue that seemed to mute all sound but the faraway chatter from the other boaters. 

Into the moment a blur appeared and I looked up at a bald eagle gliding thirty feet over our heads. He swooped, dipping a wing, and then lifted to cross the lake and perch in the top of a tall pine. The image was so right in its immensity, that there was nothing to say. 

Just prior to the canoe ride we had been gathered as a large group on a stone patio within the woods. We had come to meditate on encouragement, and consequently much sorrow, grief, loneliness and fear had been dragged into the open. Sitting in a circle, we represented the spectrum of suffering which has comprised the struggles of the ages. I pictured the millions of times the same scene had been repeated as over and over bruised and bloody bodies were pulled to the side of another...for comfort and encouragement. Time and time again, the burdens have been sifted through and sorted into proper order; nothing permitted to remain as overwhelming as it had at first seemed. 

The origin of the Anglo-French word “encourage” is simply to fill with courage or strength of purpose. Alongside a fellow sufferer willing “to give a reason for the hope within”, we are infused with bravery. 

No situations were changed while we sat there under the trees recounting God’s promises to each of us, but we were filled with new strength for the days ahead. 

Today there was no bad news. There were no waves of repercussion from difficult decisions. No calls or messages came with tales of fresh trials.  Nothing intruded to erase the remembered image of a black and white eagle circling above us in a brilliant blue sky.

Even youths grow tired and weary and young men stumble and fall. 

 But those who wait upon the Lord will gain new strength: 

they will soar on wings like eagles, 

they will run and not be weary,  they will walk and not faint.

Good Things

A couple of weeks ago we were visited by a family containing one extra-small, one small, and one very-close-to-no-longer-being-in-the-small-category personages. 
The word “delightful” can be overused, but not in the case of these three, as they worked busily at one hundred intricate tasks every minute...usually accompanied by a sort of background singing or mumbling murmur.  Occasionally they would reach up and pull one of us larger ones down into their world of important and curious flotsam and jetsam. I’m conscious of how earnestly we tried to echo the sounds, searching for the importance and meaning through the cobwebs of our age and the responsibilities of the real world.

Into just such a moment of enchanted distraction I attempted to serve breakfast. Pulling at their attention with questions, I barely registered as I asked number of pancakes? spoon or fork? honey or syrup?

“So,” I continued with my stalwart invasion of reverie, “do you want your orange juice in a glass, or do you have a special cup?”

“Special,” came the dreamy reply.

“I would like a special cup also,” stated the one who seems to be looking at the world of grown-ups, thinking that perhaps he is just nearly one of them.

I saw my error clearly. I had been enquiring about the existence of a spill-proof safety net of a drinking vessel, but three pairs of eyes were now sparkling with anticipation over the impending production of a special cup. They were riveted. 
“Special it is, then.” I improvised as I turned toward the cupboard holding all of my drearily mundane options.

That exchange came back to me a few days ago as I reached into the same cabinet for a juice glass. I selected one from the batch I prefer -- the bubbly plastic highball cups. I choose them because they feel sturdy in my hand and seem to hold the right serving size. 
It is what I served to my small-ish guests in that moment of heightened anticipation. 
And my choice pleased them! Not because they had a preconceived standard that I met, but because they trusted my evaluation. 
These were, indeed, special cups.

I prefer the world of small people. It’s a good place to be. I can’t help but see through their eyes the shape of the really real world -- where I am given good things, told they are so, and left to trust that the One who has handed them to me is not improvising but working out a plan He set before I was even the proverbial “twinkle in my daddy’s eye”.
 

Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; 

knock, and it will be opened to you.  

For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, 

and to the one who knocks it will be opened.  

Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone?  

Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? 

If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!

Post Traumatic Ramblings...

I went to talk with a counselor about five months into this new stage of my life. I should have gone again, but somehow it was never the right week to start something long-term. Still, in that brief time, she managed to convey a few things that resonated.  The first was that I didn’t have a choice to have or not have PTS. Frankly stated, I had lived through a terrible event, so I was experiencing post-traumatic stress.

Another truth I learned is that in trauma, your first response is survival. I recall trying to tell the EMT that I couldn’t breathe because the seatbelt suspending me was too tight. His blunt words were, “If we cut the strap you will fall and crush your daughter.” I knew from his tone he was making an important point, but I couldn’t even think of what it meant other than I had to keep waiting for relief. There wasn’t room to consider myself in relationship with other people -- I only knew that I had to somehow get some breath.

To this day I grieve my first response.  That moment stands as a summary of all the midnight black days of pain, fear and grief that our daughter went through alone. I suppose understanding the normal characteristics of this abnormal disorder is supposed to help me see that I was reacting in a typical way -- but I wish I had been exceptional and heroic. I wish I had shown a love that would willingly lay down my life rather than a preoccupation with my own survival.
I wish I had been ...God, I guess.

Ultimately, my recurring struggle is that I would have done this differently.
All of it.
Our turn off that highway would have happened 90 seconds sooner, the car would not have been filled with so much weight, we would have made it across the road before we were struck...the list goes on.
If it were still to happen as it did, each of us would have emerged with a rock-solid faith that proves God’s wisdom and goodness. The truth is much messier than that.

Job confesses, “Though He slay me I will hope in Him, yet I will argue my ways to His face.”  Many times I have “argued my case” to God for not writing this story differently.

In kindness, God reveals His deity to Job, displayed in the creation and sustaining of all things.  And then all of us who are reeling from the trauma of the Fall and living in a world bent by sin hear Job’s confession:  “I know that You can do all things and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted... Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know…I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees You.”

Amen.
No matter our first response, He takes us to the place where we see Him.

To whom then will you compare me, that I should be like him? says the Holy One.

Lift up your eyes on high and see: who created these?

He who brings out their host by number, calling them all by name, by the greatness of his might,

and because he is strong in power not one is missing.

Why do you say, O Jacob, and speak, O Israel,

“My way is hidden from the LORD, and my right is disregarded by my God”?

Have you not known? Have you not heard? 

The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. 

He does not faint or grow weary; His understanding is unsearchable. 

    

The Testimony of the Work

When the summer evenings nestle a little closer into the days and the morning air promises a more bracing start than last week’s, it is time to lay hurting aside.

Gathering up the late tomatoes and cleaning up the spindly, exhausted stalks I reflect on this changing in the seasons of the earth as well as within me. There has been a good harvest. We have had bounty. And to focus on the mess that remains is foolishness. It is better to just get to work tidying it up so it doesn’t rot the last of the fruit.

Gardening is easier for me than growing. Out-of-doors the perfect balance of soil, seed, sun and water can be relied on to produce sprouts, leaves, blossoms and -- finally-- ripening good things for the table. In my heart things are never so predictable.

Weeds in the vegetable bed are pulled out more effectively than the dandelions and thistles that anchor and flourish in my humanness. I tire. I become frustrated. I am hindered. And usually the obstacles to my cultivating good things are intertwined with people. Sometimes I let them down; sometimes they let me down. Occasionally it reaches outright betrayal between us. Then I am bewildered to be once again feeling such abandonment over the display of the limits of finite creatures to love and care for one another.

Even when the offense is legitimate (which is far less often than I encourage/counsel myself), I focus too much attention on the small sprouts of hurt. Gradually, I choose to nurture those destructive spiny green stalks, to the detriment of the good things. But there is no accomplishment in that -- any fool can grow weeds.

Wisdom sends me back to my Maker. I do not understand why He put such important work in the hands of flawed people, but He has commissioned me to love as I am loved, and to forgive with the measure given to me --  poured out and running over.

That is the task of pulling up rotting and decaying things, and clearing space to nurture the last fruit. It is the testimony of the work, year after year:  plowing, planting, weeding... and delighting in the harvest.