A New Thing

“I can’t go to Hawaii. I have responsibilities…a home, a dog, a 6-month dental cleaning.”

A friend called asking if I would be interested in housesitting on the island of Kauai, Hawaii. Only a few days prior, plans for a week-long visit with this friend in Hawaii fell through. Of course I felt disappointment. Now a new, even more inviting offer to fly to a tropical paradise for a lengthy stay, complete with housing and an automobile, lay before me like a Christmas bonus. But my initial response was to give thought to a house, a hound and oral hygiene? That alone reveals a desperate level of my need for a get-away.

I eventually came to my senses. I rented out my house, dropped my dog off at his grandparents’ farm and rescheduled with my dentist. Self-employment allows for “have laptop, will travel”. A recent break-up with a man I imagined my soulmate left me relationally unencumbered and longing for a fresh start. Nothing left for me to do but board a plane. 

My window seat afforded intermittent entertainment “in the Cloud” (Sorry, I couldn’t resist!), until we reached the ocean. Infinite miles of foreboding blue-black Pacific waters lulled me into boredom. A seatback screen in front of me listed movies for my viewing pleasure but nothing tickled my fancy. Until I noticed an e-flight map with a dime-size cartoonish airplane inching across the Pacific. My digital display indicated miles remaining, miles traveled, speed, flight time in hours and minutes, and our ETA. In fascination, I watched for hours as the plane crept slowly between past and future. As this new adventure loomed before me, excitement welled up inside.

The Bible talks about new life in Christ…”The old is passed, the new has come”, (II Corinthians 5:17). When we receive Christ by faith and in repentance of sin, He gifts us the opportunity to check our baggage at the Cross. We lay down our past failures, indiscretions and folly in exchange for new life in Jesus.

But often we succumb to the temptation to pick up our trunk of transgressions and lug it around once again. Excess baggage develops into a ball and chain of self-condemnation for our old ways. A faint, familiar voice taunts, “Who was I kidding thinking I could start over? I’m a mess. I’m always going to be a mess.” Still, our hearts ache to travel light. We ask, “Could Jesus really take my sin, my past and all the ugliness, and separate it as far as the East is from the West?” The resounding answer, of course, is ABSOLUTELY!

If you don’t yet know this freedom in Christ, you can. Pray a simple prayer asking God for forgiveness of all things past, acknowledging Christ’s death on the Cross as payment in full for your sin. In that moment of inviting Him into your heart, your journey into life with a capital “L”  begins. If you HAVE received Jesus, according to the Bible you’re a new creature. No more looking back over your shoulder, no more ruminating over your past. The future lies before you as your own Christmas bonus made possible by the birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

As our Boeing 767 landing gear locked into place and raced toward an asphalt strip bordering Pacific waters, Isaiah 43:19 came to mind:

“See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.“

What New Thing does God want to initiate in your life?

Renounce your trunk of transgressions, place your faith in the one who knows the way, the One who declared He IS the Way. Trust Him to show you where your faith journey will take flight.

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Revisiting the issue of “the One”

More than a decade has passed since a particular blog post spiked the comment section following. Not even a post written by me but one penned in response to my invitation to any male brave enough to write from a man’s perspective about “Test-Driving Your Relationships”. The discussion regarding discerning God’s Will, particularly regarding who to date and ultimately marry, brought numerous lively comments. Because of richness and depth, I’m sharing one comment that was particularly poignant, (written by John P.) He raised a number of great questions we might ask of a potential mate rather than camping out out on, “How do I know if I’ve found ‘the one’?” Definitely worth revisiting, pondering and heeding.

“The ‘one,’ the soul mate, is a myth, and a damaging one at that. Boy meets the one. Girl meets the one. They get married and realize their spouse is not the one. They have missed God’s perfect plan and doomed to live Plan B while the one is out there somewhere. This is a bad scenario and must be avoided by having God reveal whom he has chosen for us. We refuse the wisdom He offers, choosing to abdicate decision making and so we wait, and wait, and wait for God to make the decision for us.

God does not have a perfect match for us (other than Himself). Have you seen the church? God does not even have a perfect match for Himself! You want a Biblical marriage. Get over the myth of what you think a perfect plan looks like, find a real man or woman with a heart after God who is willing to walk a REAL journey with a real, live-able, workable faith and love. Prune your affections from those things that dull discernment and seek to fill your soul with things other than God. Know whom God is calling you to be, whom He is pruning you to be, what sacrifices He requires of you to become the man or woman of God that He has put as centermost in your heart to become. Is this potential mate compatible with your journey? Are you compatible with theirs?

God does indeed love you more than you could ever imagine, but He does not have a perfect plan (and a perfect spouse as a major component of that perfect plan) for your life. Well, theoretically He might, but it will never get enacted in this life on earth, because the shoes are too big for our imperfect feet to walk in. Our feet and legs are too small to take those large, perfect strides. We don’t need a perfect plan, or a perfect match. We need to be imperfect, earthen vessels of divine grace to one another as we work out our Salvation. His part of that walk is perfect: ours … not so much.

I wish God would make all my decisions for me, or at least the biggies: spouse, career, education, iPhone or Android. As a good parent, our Father seems much more interested in training us to walk in wisdom, stretching us to think His thoughts, transforming us to love the things He loves, than He does in how well we perform in carrying out some perfect agenda. He treasures our imperfect decision making and in true God-like fashion, redeems our scribblings as He incorporates them into the masterpiece of His creation. Joining our imperfect lives, imperfect decisions and imperfect mates to His perfect Son is an act of faith. He is the great Redeemer, not just for forgiveness, but imparting to us the Holy Spirit, travelling this imperfect life with us as we are transformed and led into the complete (and perfect) fullness of fellowship with God.

We are fickle creatures. There will always come along another who grabs us as being prettier, smarter, kinder, richer, more loving, spiritual, and who will never grow old or have morning breath. The flesh is stupid that way, always chasing after some idol, something better. What if a nicer vessel does come along? And it will! Whether it truly is, or only imagined, does not matter. You will believe it to be so. Accept the inevitable and plan ahead to just get over it. God is infinitely perfect, wondrous and beautiful beyond compare and yet our eyes light up for the things of this world all the time. – Prone to wander, Lord I fear it. Yet, in faith, I am not paralyzed. I keep turning my heart and face toward home.

Do you delight in your prospective mate? Good. Do you delight in the One whom this vessel contains? Excellent. In loving this vessel, are you able to fill and be filled with God’s love for them and for you? The wine of His love, my friend, is the real treasure. Over time it will transform the vessel from within.

Do you have a God birthed desire to be poured out in sacrificial love for this person? Choose wisely, asking and expecting God to give you wisdom, not decisions. The one whom you choose will prune you deeply. You should have a pretty good idea of what things in your life, and in their life, will be lopped off, and what things will flourish as a result of that pruning.

How long does this take? It all depends. Are one or both of you going through a major transition in life: entering adulthood, graduation, career change, freedom from chemical dependency, emotional breakthrough, parenthood, break-up, empty nest, divorce, death, spiritual rebirth? If so your needs at the moment may be way out of proportion than what for you is ‘normal life.’ If you or your loved one are ‘in love,’ twitterpated, high on the good, good feelings of limmerance (the feeling of falling in love), then you really don’t know one another when sober. This is no time to be making life-long covenants. Give the feelings, the natural chemical high, time to return to a normal state. Do you love yourself and your prospective mate for whom they are and for whom God is calling each to be? Or are either of you just in love with how you feel about life and yourself when high on limmerance? Limmerance makes the critical person gush with positive things today and the gloomy person vibrant with optimism – they are finally happy with themselves and they love you for it. For a season -a very short season. The season of limmerance passes, the criticism and gloom that they despise in themselves returns and they realize that they ‘missed God,’ you are not ‘the one’ He prepared as part of His perfect plan for their life.

There is only one, ‘The One,’ and that is the Lord Himself. The Holy Spirit is your only true Soul Mate. May the Lord grant you wisdom and insight as together you discern how joining your life with another will change you both and aide or hinder God’s calling on your lives.“

Comfort & the Kindness of Strangers

I begin this post with a heartfelt apology. To those who followed my blog for years and who were left wondering what happened to me after my cancer diagnosis, I sincerely apologize that I’ve not been more forthcoming on this site. While I shared some of my story on Facebook, I felt compelled to focus primarily on treatment and recovery, and to carry my brokenness–of which there was much–to the Cross. I’m sorry if the last 2+ years of blogging silence caused confusion to others as I embarked on this very personal journey.

Plenty of people openly share when they face trials, challenges, sickness, devastation and loss. I’ve even been one of them, at least prior to the cancer episode when I felt the Spirit whisper to me this time will be different. For better or for worse, I would not experience this round of suffering in the public eye as I had in the past.  If you’re familiar with this blog site, you know of my recovery from PTSD related to my home break-in, my struggles and ultimate healing from a brain injury following my car accident, the toll taken on my heart during the Waldo Canyon Fire, my challenges as a single mom. You shared in my despairing journey with my dear mother through her cancer battle. But my own medical story would be written in private as Cancer became an intense introduction to a deeper intimacy with my Creator than I’ve ever known.

When persons I expected to walk closely with me through the valley instead walked away, the pain was too crushing to write about. In retrospect, I understand how even their actions proved instrumental in turning my eyes and heart to Jesus. This was our journey. He wanted my full attention. And He got it.

Please don’t get me wrong. Journaling, blogging, speaking publicly are reasonable outlets for processing grief and suffering. I hold tremendous respect for those who invite the public into their pain. Their vulnerability speaks to their courage and often serves as a source of encouragement.  I personally benefited from such vulnerability over the past 30 months, especially when most tempted to feel sorry for myself in my cancer battle. Comfort seeped through cracks in my heart each time I read Biblical encouragement poured out from a soul-shattered friend as brain cancer ravaged her young child. More comfort blanketed me as another dear friend boldly proclaimed God’s Goodness even through agony of grieving a son killed in Afghanistan. And in the thick of my battle, letters from my warrior Paratrooper son, serving our country from a Middle Eastern sandbox, pleaded with me to fight bravely in his absence. I’m profoundly grateful for fierce testimonies from individuals defiant in the face of enemy forces seeking to crush them, both figuratively and literally.

Even as God reintroduced me to total emotional and spiritual dependency on him, He often brought random humans for immediate physical support, including a friend I met years ago on the East Coast who flew out to spend a week in prayer over me. And multiple strangers. A single woman I barely knew came bearing casserole, cards and comfort. Neighbors shoveled snow from my driveway – ridiculously steep in our Colorado foothills. An elderly couple at a supermarket followed me through a checkout line, then loaded groceries into my car. (They said I looked pale and weak and God told them to help me.) A UPS driver discovered me in my car passed out from radiaton exhaustion and made sure I got home okay. Three unknown teenagers helped me when I lost balance and fell in a parking lot. Coworkers brought food and hugs.  Former students made my home festive with Christmas decorations and music. So much “kindness of strangers”. And so Good Father. I embraced Comfort in unexpected ways that only our Heavenly Daddy could orchestrate. And orchestrate He did…through grueling months of treatment and into my recovery, He sent angels to minister to me in practical ways while family, friends, even clients and literally hundreds of people I’d never met in person bathed me in phone prayers and cards.

In January, the Lord gave me a word for 2019…COMFORT.

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. For just as we share abundantly in the sufferings of Christ, so also our comfort abounds through Christ.  II Corinthians 1:3-5 NIV

Indeed…as we share abundantly in the suffering of Christ, so also our comfort abounds. Now in Remission and restored to health again, I’m called to COMFORT others. What could be more fitting?