How Pain Knocks Some Sense into Us

Sunday, the trunk attacked me as I was getting something out.

I wasn't paying attention and didn't notice it wasn't raised all the way, so when I let go it konked me in the head. Today is the third day and the swelling has gone down but it is SORE! Combining that with the bandaged biopsy spot on my nose, and I for real look like I’ve been in a fight! 

And I have, of a sort.

The enemy plays really dirty and does not mind adding insult to injury. 

We know this, but we often get distracted and don't have our defenses all the way up, and so we get konked in the head.

I think it's easiest to get distracted in the waiting periods.

I am currently in a waiting period...the middle...of finding out my biopsy results from 3 spots. These three new scars are added to roughly two dozen others I have had in my lifetime. This will make the 4th scar on my face. The last one, three years ago last month, was the first one to come back positive for cancer. Scars are never fun, but the others were easier because I didn't really worry. Now I do. Last time, I had to have MORE surgery, and bigger scars. It was serious and scary. That makes facing it this time harder. This waiting for the phone call results is tough and, well, I have been fighting against despair and sadness and worry. And vanity.

These can all be distractions.

It’s a strange experience to undergo surgery on your face. To know there's a chance that, afterwards, you might not look like the you that you knew before the surgery. It's a hard thing to know you'll have a daily reminder of what happened staring you in the face.

Worry. Distractions.

As a sixteen year old girl, God gave me a verse that has become my life verse. It's not a feely-good empowering verse! It's a tough one to swallow. But God, in his mercy, wanted me to have hope. So he plastered Psalm 119:71 over all my scars. "It is good for me to be afflicted, so that I might learn your ways." 

These last few years, on different levels, have been tough on my self-esteem. When you don't think you struggle with vanity, beware...you may get konked in the head while you are distracted! 

I realized I was already struggling with feeling pretty before, and now I have to walk around with stitches and a bandage on my face. Worry. I have started thinking through the reality that I might have to get part of my nose cut off, and I have realized how vain I really am.

It's like a big konk in the head. A bruise to the heart.

Sunday’s message at church (ironically RIGHT after the trunk attacked me) was about having hope in suffering. 

My Pastor said: “Suffering and pain have a great power to do things to our heart. Bad and good. It can equally stir up self-centeredness and sin and also maturity and inspiration. Pain stretches us.”

It stretches us.

It konks us in the head and the heart. 

I have found myself praying more than once in the last few years, over different areas, faced with things that could be very hard, “God, please don’t let this be my story?” I understood in those moments that those hard things could be good, could bring glory to God. But it still didn't mean I wanted to pay the price if I didn't have to. It’s hard to walk in hope knowing things may NOT turn out how you hoped. Today, as I thought that, I thought about Jesus praying in the garden the night before he faced pain and torture, about him asking God to let salvation come another way if at all possible for him to avoid the pain of the cross, and yet then he said, but no matter what, YOUR will be done.

That's powerful on so many levels.

I WANT to accept God’s plan, like Jesus did. But I also find a measure of comfort knowing that even Jesus said, "God, if it be possible, please don’t let this hard thing be part of my story?"

It's that waiting period. That hard part of thinking, this might be really painful, and I don’t want to worry before I know. But it’s hard. I don’t want to freak out when/if I get the bad call. It’s hard. I don’t want to have part of my nose cut off, or have more cancer. It’s hard. Life is hard.

It is.

But God is good. I CAN trust His plan.

Today, I am praying that you and I both will rest securely in His plan in our lives in all the hard places right now. That we will be able to pray like Jesus, “Father, if You are willing, take this cup from Me; yet not My will, but Yours be done.”  — Luke 22:41-42 

Light gets in best in the broken places. Scars can create deeper healing. Scars are places the bad stuff has been removed. It's pain with a purpose.

Some knocks happen to knock the bad stuff out and make room for the good stuff!



Letting Go and Digging Deeper

I told a friend the other day that I was going to start nicknaming God “Ironically” because of how often I jokingly say “ironically enough...” followed by some great thing God did. 

One of those moments happened today and also involved one of my favorite movies: FINDING NEMO! 

As I was driving to work this morning, I was thinking about skin cancer (I’m 39 and facing my third surgery today) and some other life challenges I am still facing and have faced recently. I thought about how God had repeatedly whispered the words “Let Go” to me for several weeks. Suddenly, I remembered the part in Nemo where Marlin and Dory are in the whale. The whale is helping them, but to Marlin it looks like they are trapped...swallowed up. He fights against it and becomes hopeless. When happy Dory says the whale is telling them to do something crazy, move further in, go deeper, Marlin resists, even tho Dory has been right in the past about crazy things. Dory tells him the whale is saying to “let go” but Marlin is scared. So the whale forces them to move by raising its tongue, but Marlin still stubbornly grabs on and then tries to keep Dory from falling, too. Dory tells him “It’s time to let go.” Marlin looks at the abyss beyond her, then back at Dory. He is scared, but he knows he has to make a choice...does he trust her and the whale and let go, or does he not? He closes his eyes, and lets go. And letting go actually sets him free! And delivers him to his next destination.

I thought today how accurate that is in my life right now. The problems surrounding me sometimes feel like they are going to swallow me. Sometimes I exhaust myself by trying to get out on my own. It feels like a hindrance. All the while Jesus is happily swimming next to me and saying, "This thing you’re in is actually going to help you get to your next destination, but YOU HAVE TO TRUST ME AND LET GO." Sometimes, he forces us to move deeper. Sometimes, he gets us to the end of our abilities to get us out of our way. But he doesn't force us to let go. He wants us to choose to trust him.

How often do we look at Jesus, who is asking us to fall WITH him, and we still choose to hold on and try to control things? How often do we look past Jesus at the unknown and choose to stay in the bad place that we can see? 

Well, “ironically enough”, after these thoughts I pulled up my FB memories and TWO of my memories over the last 7 years involve NEMO! 

People, YES, this is kind of funny to say that Jesus is speaking to me through a cartoon about a fish, but Jesus is so kind and good like that! He cares about us. He validates his words to us. He not only gave me one, but two validations that this reminder was from Him today! He doesn't just love us. He LOVES us!

He loves you. Are you listening?

Do you feel like you’re being swallowed up in the middle of your hard stuff today? Let go and fall with Jesus! Cast all your care on Him. Not only will it set you free of your worry and anxiety, it will deliver you to the next place you’re supposed to be! 

But the choice is yours! 

🐟 🐳 #2018Choose

(👇🏼 this is the movie clip, if you’re interested!)

https://youtu.be/O_u4h_N2lTw

Happiness is a Direction You Choose

Everyone wants to be happy.

We spend a lot of time looking around for things that will make us happy. We look to other people, ourselves, our job, our money, success, good health. We think if we just had this, or if they would just do that, or if I just wasn’t this way, I would be happy. 

We’re so busy looking around us that we miss the very thing, the only thing, that can truly make us happy. 

Sometimes, we need others to point it out because we are simply too caught up in our journey, and blinded by ourselves, to truly see.

My daughter pointed it out to me last night. It was right under my nose. Or I guess I should say "above" my nose.

I had gotten so used to it being there that I didn't see it anymore.

She reminded me to look up.

I was talking to my 10 year old daughter about choices, while I tucked her into bed. I almost always include this phrase when I pray with my kids at night: "Jesus, please give them wisdom to make good choices, and to see beyond the moment." Earlier that day I had told her and my son that at the beginning of each year, I prayerfully ask God to give me a word that He will use in my life that year, and that my word this year was CHOOSE. I told them I had already seen this year how greatly what I choose to do, or say, or go, or be affects my life and that some good choices are easy to make, and some are hard. I told them that some may not feel good in the moment, but after the moment passes we see how important it was to choose the right thing. I told them that even when bad, or sad, or hard things happen, it's okay to be sad, or mad, or cry, but we don't have to choose to stay there. We can choose to step into joy.
That night, after praying with my daughter, praying for her to have wisdom to make good choices, she said, "When you were talking today about your Word this year being CHOOSE I immediately looked up at that sign on the wall that you made that says 'Happiness is a direction you CHOOSE' and I also thought about that little chalkboard on your dresser that says 'CHOOSE'. I guess that's why you have them there, huh? To remind you?"

A million things went through my mind at once! I thought, wow, kids really are very observant and are processing stuff around them more than we think. And I also thought, in surprise, I forgot about the big huge sign on the wall in the living room!

We talked a bit more and I hugged her and told her goodnight. I walked into my bedroom, passed the little chalkboard sign, and smiled.

This morning, I walked into the living room, and looked up. Thanks to my daughter's reminder, I intentionally stopped and chose to look up.

"Happiness is a direction you CHOOSE."

I stood there, my neck craned back, staring at those words. I thought about how often we pursue things in front of us to try to make us happy. Or we get so used to the big sign on the wall, the thing in our home, that we don't even see it anymore. Usually it's because we are looking down, running after the wrong things. We look to our own hands and feet to bring us happiness. We think we are choosing the right direction.

But we forget to look up.

It's harder to look up. When we look up, we are looking away from ourselves. When we look up we can't even see ourselves. When we look up - we walk by faith, not by sight.

But we have to choose to look up.
Sometimes, we need others to remind us to adjust our focus.

Lysa TerKeurst says "We steer where we stare." In other words, we go where we are looking. If we choose to look at the wrong thing we will go the wrong way. If we choose to look only at sad things, we live in sadness. If we choose to look up, everything around us melts away and we choose the higher thing, the better thing.

Psalm 37:4 says it best..."Take delight [happiness] in the LORD, and he will give you the desires of your heart."

God wants to give us happiness. We need only choose to look to him for it.