He's Here...Now

It's 5:00 a.m. and I've been in the hospital just worshiping Adonai. I feel like there' s a lot I need to get done, but He told me, it's all right...it'll get done (what's important) and the rest will be okay the way it is.

What does He want me to tell you? That where ever you are; whatever you are going through or will go through, He's here. You don't ever need to be afraid of what you are facing or fear that somehow you can't get through what's coming; He's here.

When you cried silently, fearfully in the dark...He's here.
And when you draw your last breath....He's here.
And for ever person you love in between...He's here for them too. And He hears every one of your prayers....not one go un-noticed.

Dear Sara,

(Note: this letter is addressed to a friend who suffers from Anakylosing Spondylitis and is very disabled by it yet has a remarkable attitude. You are all invited to read it. Maybe it will help someone else as well.)

Dear Sara,
I have a bunch of questions I would like to ask you as I look at my life and go through what I am going through with asthmatic and arthritic diseases. I find I'm at a crossroads. My health for the past three years has steadily declined, hospitalizations are frequent, and the times that I am home I am usually ill. I am most of the time, in my recliner.

While there is still a small hope that things will improve at some point, my hopes of this are beginning to fade. For example, I still look at yoga DVDs and read articles on exercise-- knowing that chances are close to impossible that I will ever do anything like that again. But while I KNOW this with my mind, my heart does not know it. My heart is still a woman flying like the wind down the paved trail in Goshen on her well-used roller blades. I think the only way I am going to be able to incorporate my heart and my mind into some form of reality is to go through the grieving process....and I am still in the stage of "Disbelief."

Did you grieve Sara, when you finally realized that THIS IS IT..."I won't be leaving this apartment any more?" I read your post after your last ever doctor's visit to the office. You said you cried. I cried when I read of that event also.

Did you know from the get-go that your disease was going to lead you where it has? Were people honest with you about that? Because no one has been very honest with me. And I find that difficult to deal with. If someone could just TELL me what the future will hold, I think I could deal with it better. But for now, it's a big unknown and that is just as scary as the worst possibility. I can't prepare myself for it because it's also as bright as the best possibiltiy. Maybe no one really knows what my future holds. They know what it will likely hold but they don't want to say that because there's a small chance that things could improve.

Anyway...That one small chance that things will get better is what is giving me the biggest problem. I can't really grieve over a possibility. I can't even grieve over a PROBIBILTY; and I can't reconcile myself to it: I'm just stuck in the land of Denial. So I do things like joining an online weight loss community...and feel frustrated by all the exercise talk...I have to ignore all the goals that involve aerobics and strength training. I look around my house at the increasing mess and I make "plans" about spring cleaning and junk removal and garage sales....and now I am beginning to realize that this ALL is just complete foolishness. I haven't cleaned my house in several years (we've had to have someone come in to do it). I think about my herb garden....and realize that my houseplants are all dying because I haven't even been able to care for them, let alone a garden.

And now I've got to ask myself some really hard questions. IS that slim chance really there? Am I just kidding myself with wishful thinking? Has the possibilty faded and dwindled into a complete unlikelihood, in the realm of miracles? I don't want to be negative, but REALISTICALLY, will I ever do these things again?

And if the answer is yes to those questions, what is the next step? How did YOU handle it? Did you ever go through the stages of grieving and in your last one finally get to the point of choosing joy? Or did you somehow bypass that all and jump right into joy?

I'd like to skip to the conclusion myself. It would help somehow if someone would really take the time to talk honestly about my life and situation with me. I wish I could get my two doctors together and we could have a meeting about it. I think that because I don't talk much about, for instance, the pain that I'm in; people...even my doctors, do not understand or know how limited my life has been....that the combination of pain and breathlessness has been almost completely debilitating.

Sara, I don't have friends like you have, or the support that you seem to have, or even the financial wherewithall to have the options that you have. As I lay here in my hospital bed today, I wonder if I'll be able to go home from here...and where I'll go if I can't? And if that is the truth, then why am I worried about losing a few pounds and getting "in shape" when I can't even manage a flight of stairs?? And if I can somehow influence my ability to get better, than what am I doing laying here whining about things?

Sara, I hope you realize that some of these questions are directed at myself. And others are rhetorical...maybe aimed at God....I wonder if this is a process that everyone goes through at whatever stage in their life when things take a turn for the worse and they wonder about their future independance?

Life is not an orange

I've been rather engrossed in a new pursuit in the past few weeks...I joined "SparkPeople.com" and have been working on losing weight, and more than that, beginning to live a healthy life. (As much as is in my control of course...Never mind the fact that for the past week, I've been as sick as a dog!) This website is a community of people drawn together by the fact that they have goals and are determined to meet them and to change their lives as a result.

For the first couple of days, I really cruised by the goals and didn't pay much attention to meeting them. Then, I started following the diet. Then I started losing some weight. Then I got excited about it. And today, I ran smack into the realization that this is no mere calorie counting or exercise buddy program...this is a program that will change you from the inside out. Now I know that only God is capable of cleansing our sinful hearts, but this place and its people are adept at zeroing in on the games we play with ourselves; identifying those places of dishonesty or blindness that we all have; and confronting them and helping us see the roles they play in our weight gain and loss.

Now, I had not told anyone at this website that I have a mental illness (short of mentioning depression to one woman).... I thought (without really thinking it out...just one of those conversations we hold with ourselves and don't invite our minds): I will JUST deal with the weight issues there. I will keep my mental illness over here, and my weight recovery over there and the twain shall never meet!

So what happened today. I got all paranoid about a woman's comment to me on my blog (on the website) and when she called me on it (asked why I was looking for something that wasn't there ) I realized it.

My life is not an orange. I cannot segment it and compartmentalize it and keep the parts apart from each other. EVEN something like weight loss is a WHOLE person endeavor. And I cannot just "turn off" my mental illness nor can I hide it.

Shoot.

So. I confessed the truth to the woman...very rationally. I told her my diagnosis and my reasons for wanting to keep it a secret. I also admitted that that may not be wise.

WELL. That was several hours ago and I haven't heard from her since.

So.
Okay

Maybe the world just isn't ready for obese mentally ill people who want to improve themselves. Or maybe I'm being paranoid again and she just hasn't gotten my email yet.....

haha.
You never know.

Down but not Out

Hi,
Just a word to explain my silence: I'm down with pneumonia. I'm feeling pretty miserable right now, but I promise that when my head can contain thoughts other than, "Wow, my head really hurts" or "where're the tissues"--I will be back in full working order. Please continue to stop by -- I'm sure another three days or so and I will be back in full swing. Thanks!

Living the Questions

I am reading a book entitled Prayerfulness by Robert J. Wicks. He is a writer who approaches his craft and his life from a perspective deeply grounded in the Catholic tradition but who, I find, has much to say to all Christians about what it is that makes a Christian person of faith different from anyone else around us. The manner of being which he called "prayerfulness" is really a Christian Mindfulness or a spiritual mindfulness as it developes from a life deeply in tune with the God of Israel, Isaac and Jacob. A prayerful consciousness and manner of being is really what makes us who we are: Children of the Almighty God.

There is much in this book that is of interest and which would make for great discussion, however what I want to focus on here is a section where Wicks describes a number of people who encountered the deep, unsearchable side of God; the depths of which most people would rather not plumb. When life hands us pits rather than cherries, it is hard for us to see when we are starving, the longterm sources of life and sustenance contained in those pits...for we are starving NOW, hungry NOW and often question why God should hand us a bowl of unpalatable hard things.

Wick quotes a woman who in turn quotes Rilke in his Letters to a Young Poet:

"Do not search now for answers which cannot be given to you because you could
not live them. It is a matter of living everything. Live the
questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it,
one day live right into the answer."

I like this thought: live the questions. And one day the path of questions may very well lead you smack into the answers that you sought. But the path of uncertainty and darkness must be walked. It must be lived. For it is our journey. We cannot find the answer to why God allows us to hurt, why He allows our beloved ones to die within the facile image of the smiley-faced God that so many want to serve us. "Smile, God loves you." "God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life." Yes, both of those statements are true. But they fail to mention that God often demonstrates his love for us in ways that we cannot comprehend and often don't recognize as love. They fail to mention that the path to the wonderful destination God has planned is often one of anguish, sorrow and pain.

I do not think that it is fair to God nor fair to the world that we hide the truth about him in such euphimisms. Because then, when someone embraces such a shallow happy God and suddenly find themselves plunged into torturous suffering, the obvious next step is to blame God for the false advertisement which drew them to him in the first place. If you look throughout Scripture, you will see that God is pretty honest about the pain and suffering mankind will face in their journey toward the Kingdom of Light. He never promises health, wealth or prosperity, regardless of the claims to the contrary by some believers.

Why are we as humans so inclined to insist that the world owes us fairness? Why does suffering strike us as such an injustices, such a WRONG? I think the answer lies in CS Lewis's remark, the "We were not made for this world." Our hearts are designed to live in a world where justice reigns, where pain is barred, where Death is conquered. We must come to understand, that this life is the life of questions. It is leading us to the world of answers. We must allow it to take us through some pretty dark paths in the journey there. We need to understand that this very journey is what refines our souls and prepares us to withstand the intensity of glory that we shall find in that "Answer-World." We have to understand that it is in the hard knots of hardship which we have been handed, lie the seeds to the life which does not end nor disappoint.

Do not be so fast to judge God by the questions until you have seen and experienced the answers. Let him finish his sentence before you presume to say that you understand his intent.

A Confession

I have a confession to make. I have fallen short of the status people have assigned to me as a prayer warrior. Lately, I've been struggling. Not really struggling to the point where I was ready to cash in my faith, but was definitely on a downhill slide. But now, I see that really I'm at the bottom of the hill, working my way UP. And it's slow. Painful. Difficult. But it's part of my journey. The hill is not my faith. (Faith cannot be scaled, climbed, or attained by effort on our part.) No the mountain I 've been facing is my own inclination to decay. My tendency, as all things on this earth have, to move from the complex to the simple (this is according to the 2nd law of thermodynamics if I am understanding it properly.) Now for a banana, that means rot; decomposition. For me, it has meant a paring down of a complex life, a busy life, a life jam packed with gifts....to what is truly basic. To the life of a person who has been stripped of abilities and who has to face pain and sickness daily. And these things, my friends, cause one to question what truly is the meaning of life.

I'm coming to grips with the fact that my daughter is leaving the nest soon, that I may soon no longer be independent in terms of my activities of daily life, that my marriage is struggling, and that I cannot even serve in my church as I once did. Heck, I can't even get down on my knees to pray anymore. And I do not have the memories of a long and happy life to comfort me in my old age. Nope. I am only 47 and they have, most of them, been 47 hellish years.

So what does this have to do with being a prayer warrior? I'm GETTING to that!

I was reading a blog post today by a friend from the UK who was discussing the situation in Haiti and talking about how, really, we are helpless in the face of that tragedy. And another blogger I follow, spoke the same sentiment in her blog today also. There is endless, "pointless" suffering in the world. And I share a tiny fraction of it. But by and large, we throw up our hands and feel overwhelmed and futile in our efforts to help. What can our mere $50 do in the light of the enormous need?

Today, the worship leader at my church spoke of his parents and their commitment to prayer for all those in their lives. And he made the comment, "And that's why, I think, that they are still here. God still has this job for them to do." And he went on to say that no one need have a wasted life, even if they are completely disabled and living a life which by outsiders' assessments, may be worthless and pointles; they can still pray.

So how am I going to tie up this mess of random thoughts, you ask, and make it into something coherent??

Like this:

I've been struggling with my life. With feeling pointless. With feeling cheated. With feeling like a useless person to God. And I never could describe myself as a person who shakes a fist at God (although I did one time many years ago), but they say that depression is repressed anger. So okay, I've been depressed. Even my daughter pointed it out. But I didn't know the source of it. Until these things all clicked into focus.

I've been depressed because I feel like I am a wasted life. So I really quit studying God's Word and quit really battering the gates of hell with my prayers. So today, when someone prayed for me in church (thanking God for me and calling me a prayer warrior), for a moment I felt special, useful (and the next moment felt guilty because I've fallen shy of that title lately). When the worship leader spoke about his parents and that their lives were possibly of more use to God than a minister or missionary...When my friend who took me out to lunch today, said that many people have read my writings and are blessed by them...I started to realize that my life is important. It is important because those prayers could not get prayed without me. And when we are faced by earthshakingly horrific situations like the one in Haiti, we are not useless or insignificant. We can pray. And who knows the repercussions of all those millions of prayers going up for the Haitian people? God does. And He probably has angels perched and ready to go to their aid, just waiting for our prayers to release them to their task.

So there you have it.
Didn't think I could do it, did you?

Embracing our Unattained Dreams

I think that, at some point in our lives, we will be slapped in the face with our limitations and with the reality of who we really are. For many, that means recognizing that we are ordinary, fallible, mortal, perhaps not-so-intelligent or not as gifted as we'd thought. For others, it involves the acceptance of some restricting factors - external factors or physcial ones - which keep us from attaining the full bulk of the promise held out to us by our gifts or intelligence. For some it will mean recognizing that the "American Dream" is going to pass us by and that we cannot work, scheme or luck ourselves into wealth or fame.

We can respond by sinking into a morass of depression; turning tail and running, fueled by denial; or we can welcome the knowledge as a deeper level of self-comprehension and embrace the factor causing us to fail to attain our dreams. We can, instead, work to define new goals or re-directed ones based on the core understanding of the reality of who we are.

But first we should accept and face and integrate the pain of that initial loss and failure. I have real trouble with this...real difficulty in feeling and mourning it and experiencing its pain for the still-birthed, beloved infant that it was. Rather, I intellectualize it and shelter my heart in this manner and I'm so successful at this evasion that even when I welcome it and seek it in my desire to move on, unfettered by past failure, I cannot get in touch with the pain of this loss at all....Even though I know full well that it lurks, like some secreted ghost from my past. I think that I explain my denial as a kindness to myself, but in truth it is not. It would be kindness, rather, to welcome the failure and to accept it without self recrimination; without calling myself names; without feeling that the failure to achieve my dreams, means that I am a failure. This is the process I am attempting to undertake so that I can move on from this stuck place, with newer, perhaps more appropriate goals.

An Award

I received an email yesterday that notified me that this website was chosen to be featured by an organization dedicated to the relief of chronic joint pain. Their website can be viewed at the following URL: http://thumbjointpain.net/thumb_pain.php and the award page is as follows: http://thumbjointpain.net/blog_awards/index.php?id=2950. I would like to extend my thanks to this organization for their selection of Treasures from Darkness for distinction in this manner. Please honor them with a visit.

No More Excuses

I want to apologize to you all for the negative, self-pitying tone of my last several posts. Yes, I have "reasons" to be negative...many of my reasons are earth-shaking and I have not, nor will not now, discuss them here. But just because I have a reason, does not mean that I have an excuse.

I was just reading some blogs...catching up on the backlog in my Google Reader...and there were several in particular that caught my eye. The first one was a re-post of a blog by Sara Frankl (http://www.gitzengirl.blogspot.com/). She has, maybe more than anyone I know, reason to be self-pitying and to feel defeated by the circumstances of her life. But she refuses to. In fact the choice that she has made to feel gratitude and joy has become so much a part of her nature that she does not give way to even moments of self pity...She automatically redirects herself to focus on God and on His strength in the times when she feels that she cannot go it alone.

Then I read a blog on gratitude (http://audreycaroline.blogspot.com/) on the ten lepers and how, when the one returned to Jesus to say "Thank You," he was made well. And the Greek word for "well" implies a spiritual wellness and salvation as well as a physical one. The others may have been made physically well, but he had obtained WHOLENESS and internal healing as a result of his expression of gratitude. I've written on the topic of gratitude before, but had forgotten to practice what I'd preached. And as a result I've allowed my circumstances to chip away at my wholeness and my integrity and have become more fractured.

Then I read Pastor Ryan's blog (http://www.thisisreverb.com/) which delineated his numerous goals for 2010. I was astounded at the scope and the magnitude and the ambition of these goals. If I achieved even ONE of them, I would feel that my year was a success. When New Year's rolled around and my mind turned to resolutions, there were lots of things that I wanted to STOP doing, but there was little that I aimed for. Little that I desired to accomplish. There, I think is the crux of my problem.

This leads me to the next blog. A good friend of mine, Diana Flegal, wrote an article for a blog that challenged me to my core. (See: http://hartlineliteraryagency.blogspot.com/2010/01/are-you-person-of-action.html)
Her entire blog post is inspiring but there is one quote which I believe, sums it up:

we are looking at a New Year with new opportunities to act and resolve, to do
something about our goals and move toward our dreams. Doing nothing is not an
option. We must take our future into our hands, forget the failures of our past,
the rejections ....and become a person of action.

This was not just another motivational blurb...it was an arrow shot from the mouth of God to my heart. I have been sitting back on my excuses...aiming for nothing...and feeling sorry for myself because ofthe difficulties in my life. I need to set some concrete goals. Define my desires and work toward making them happen. And not only that, but I need to be grateful for the things I have....for the things that God has made me and given me.

And one last thought I'd like to leave with you: I also read today a quote by Mother Theresa. It ends with the following words:

Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough;

Give the world the best you've got anyway.



You see, in the end, it is between you and God;

it was never between you and them anyway.

It is between me and God. Not between me and my obstacles. Not between me and my family. Not even between me and my body, which is waging war against me. It's between me and God. And it is to God that I will have to answer for how I used it.

a fine mess you've gotten into, Ollie

I am having trouble coming up with topics to write about here. My mind seems to be on vacation and my life is on "pause." I do very little with my days other than to wash a few dishes (maybe), take a shower (even more unlikely), sit with my laptop and surf the net, and take naps. That is a really pathetic existence. It might be okay, if I were say, 74...but I'm 47 and it's really too early to retire. My thoughts have all been sucked out of my brain and then vaporized into the atmosphere. I question sometimes if I'm really here at all. If I am here, then why am I not DOING anything more productive?

The worst part of it is that I can't even think of anything that I would LIKE to do; or imagine anything that I would be capable of doing. Why is that? I was always a pretty competent person ...how is it that I have become such a ball of MUSH?? Mentally and physically I have really declined in the past couple of years. Why is this? Is it something I have allowed to happen? Is it in my control?

Last week I thought to myself, "This is ridiculous, I should just go out for a walk to get out of the house." I made it to the end of my driveway, when I was overcome by pain and breathlessness. If I had a mile long driveway, that might have been okay...but it's really SHORT.

Where is the worth in such a life? Is it anything that I can change? What would I change it to and how? If our lives are a gift, then I've put mine into a closet and forgotten about it. Or else, it decided to be given to someone else and it forgot all about me. What does God think about all of this?

If I ask myself what else I might do should the opportunity arise- say a job or a hobby or something like that- I have to honestly say that there is very little I CAN do because pain and asthma have become apparently insurmountable. And because of that fact; I have lost whatever muscles were still functioning due to my not using them. I really wish I could have physcial therapy to at least maintain, but the co-pays are just too much when combined with all of the other medical expenses. Same with therapy. That's another thing that's had to be tossed out the window. I'm too poor to get medical treatment and too "rich" to get any assistance. And top off that disaster with a dollop of apathy and exhaustion, and you have yourself a fine mess.

I am sorry for the negativity of this post. I was hoping to be an encouragement to you guys, and instead, here I sit whining. Please forgive me.

Stable in 2010....

So, 2010 is upon us.
I had a list of New Year's Resolves. (Those are resolutions in disguise...I thought if I called them "resolves" I would be more likely to keep them for more than a week!) I, like most people, have not had a great deal of success at keeping my resolutions for long. But I think that the idea of assessing ourselves and thinking of ways in which we want to improve is a good one. I think that goal-setting is also a good thing. I'm sure you've heard the expression, "If you aim at nothing, you are sure to attain it." We need to dream more. We need to self-assess more.

I heard of an idea today that I like. My blogger friend, SaraFrankl (whom I've several times quoted here) said in her blog today (http://gitzengirl.blogspot.com/2009/12/gracious.html,) that she likes to choose a word...usually a quality that she desires to develop in herself, to focus on as a theme for the new year.

Want to hear something strange? When I thought about what word I would choose, the word "stability" came to mind--or stable. I would like my health to be stable...and not be ping ponging from the hospital to home every other month. (I know that this is something I have little control over, but the word "stability" has appeal to me in other ways as well...) When I went to "Merriam Webster's Thesaurus" online, when the page opened up, the word that it was displaying was "stability." Isn't that odd? Speaking of confirmation!

Here is what Merriam had to say:

Stability
Meaning: 1 the ability to withstand force or stress without being distorted, dislodged, or damaged
Synonyms: firmness, soundness, steadiness, strength, sturdiness
Related Words: dependability, durability, reliability; solidity, solidness; cohesion, toughness
Near Antonyms: insecurity, weakness
Antonyms:instability, unsoundness, unsteadiness
2: the state of continuing without change

I think, after reading that, you will see why the word has appeal to me. I need to learn to withstand the forces of my life without becoming dislodged or without my mind becoming distorted. I would love to be described as "sound, steady, strong,..."

I think in terms of stability though, that part of it, will involve, acceptance of the limitations I have without being rocked by them. My view of myself should be solid enough so as not to be shattered by things which are a consequence of my illness. This is easier said than done, obviously.

Another factor of stability is the fact of being solid enough to be "there" for others when they need you. This involves, not only being a shoulder for friends to cry on, but also being available to my family even when illness is demanding my attention....even when it is demanding my strength and reserves of patience. So often, I've had nothing left to offer my family. I've been deflated and sucked dry by my illnesses, both physical and mental. I would like to be a firm place for them....a dependable resource...a port in a storm. And for the past three years, I just haven't been there at all.

In regard to the second meaning of the word: continuing without change....In regard to my health, there is little control that I can have. However, I would like to be unwaivering in my constancy...in my faith,...in my hope....in my trust....in my secure knowledge of my God. I would like to be unshakeable in my habits of devotion: prayer, study, worship, etc..

I know that I cannot be stable if I am not grounded on the Rock Who Never Changes. It is only if I dig deep into the constancy of God, that I can hope to have any stability...It is not something I can conjure up on my own force of will or desire. And somehow, I know that even if the winds of mental and physical illness blow hard, I can remain rooted in the I AM; that I can be grounded in the moment; that my faith will not falter. And that is my great desire for 2010.

Thank you Sara, for such a great idea.