We don’t weep alone

Those who suffer most, God uses most –a friend acquainted, with suffering.

Tuesday: Somber news overshadowed my day –an old friend’s beautiful daughter who worked for a foundation providing organ transplants (after receiving one of her own) has died of cancer. Heavy with sadness, I went about my chores while snow swirled and the thermometer plunged.

Later, cooking salmon for supper, another dinner flashed through my mind. Then it was eggplant sizzling in a hot pan. It began to stick so I added a little oil. Mistake.

Flames rose, spread to the curtains at the open window, then jumped to the floor. I screamed. Jim came running. The trauma of that long ago night still catches my breath. Our lives would never be the same.

If the deliverance from Egypt is the central story of the Hebrew people and the cross is central to the New Testament, that blaze is the defining event of our marriage.

I drove to the ER and walked the hospital corridors barefoot rather than take time to find shoes. It’s only after all these years that I remember Yahweh told Moses to remove his shoes in the presence of God’s holiness, revealed in a burning bush. We, too, encountered this holy God through fire.

Jim suffered third-degree burns on his arm and hands, snuffing out the flames with towels. Afterward his skin was peeled away appointment by miserable appointment so healing would come.

One evening Jim, a practical kind of guy who wasn’t sold on Christianity, sat on a friend’s sofa and placed his life in Jesus’ hands. At the same time, I opened my eyes to the presence of the third person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit living within me. What might have destroyed us instead saved our young, struggling marriage.

A few weeks ago we received a prayer card signed by our church staff, who know we’re going through stuff. Marty Christian, children’s program director, wrote a note on the card recalling how Jesus responded when His friend Lazarus was dying.

He didn’t come when first called. When He arrived Lazarus was already in his tomb, dead four days, his sisters in despair. Jesus saw Mary and Martha weeping and wept, too.

Twenty years ago I stepped into Lazarus’ dark tomb cut into a hillside in Bethany. I sat on the cold stone bench where his wrapped body once lay and imagined what it was like when his muffled ears heard Jesus call, “Lazarus, you come out of the tomb!”

Did life slowly seep into his veins as his heart began to thump? Did his muscles quiver with surging energy? Did his eyes squint like mine when he stepped into the light of day?

Death couldn’t hold Lazarus when Jesus called; weeping and mourning turned to joy.

Our kitchen fire was one of those times for us.

The scars that remain say at our lowest point God allowed Jim to walk through fire. He never once pointed a finger at me, evidence grace and love were at work.

All of us on planet earth endure suffering. The cross is central to our faith because sovereign suffering was nailed there. There is more to the story, good news that followed, but without a Suffering Servant there is no empty grave. No story. No hope.

I don’t understand why a loving God permits suffering on an incomprehensible scope. Yet the winds this wintry night whisper we don’t weep alone.

Our Lord accepts what we place into His scarred hands, He weeps with us as I wept this morning, although I never met my old friend’s child. I’m learning to trust that Jesus is intimately present wherever suffering exists, that tears may continue for an endless night but joy comes in the morning.

If we’re intentionally garbed in God’s compassion we can enter into the suffering of others, too. And we must. In this day it’s primarily through our own hands that His blessings flow . . . or are withheld, although we never encourage another soul without the Spirit’s help. God may be out of our sight, but we are never out of His.

I sensed Marty Christian understands this because he closed his note with, “Rest in God’s love for you. Rest in His suffering.”

If you’re in a furnace right now, lean into Isaiah 43:2 (NIV), which Jim claimed as his own:

When you pass through the waters,
I will be with you;
and when you pass through the rivers,
they will not sweep over you.
When you walk through the fire,
you will not be burned;
the flames will not set you ablaze.

This blog appears at the start of Advent for Celtic Christians. Forty days to prepare for Christmas. At our house we’ll light a candle each evening, a small flame awaiting the One who brought light to a dark world.

All will be well.

In memory of Maikki Nan Newton, https://www.thellf.org/how-to-help/in-memory-of/

Texting Thru Recovery/ indianagazette.com

(Photos: 1999 in Bethany, within walking distance of Jerusalem; candles and Josiah in Princeton by Tara.)

No splinter too small for God to waste

There is no place where God is not. The Creator of space fills all of it.

The delivery room and the cemetery.

The ocean depths and my morning tea cup.

The storm and the stillness.

Such knowledge is too great for me, higher than all that tethers me to earth.

Knowing this doesn’t keep me from feeling hurt right now, scratched by that old splinter of rejection.

It threatens to disturb older wounds that in the vastness of time matter little or nil.

Except to me.

I wanted to be invited, included. And I was not.

God entirely will be there that day.

And will be entirely here.

Weaving a pattern far bigger than my small view, the Lord takes tender threads of disappointment and draws me near through a portal I didn’t see before. The raveled thread I dwell upon darkly tightens my ties to the Divine.

Like a splinter just below the skin, this irritation is deep enough to infect if not removed.

God wastes nothing. When cancer resurfaced last winter, I found that cords of sadness added richer tones to my song I didn’t know were missing.

At the request of my book editor I’m writing about disciplines of the Christian faith this fall. God consistently allows me to stumble over whatever obstacle I’m currently writing or speaking about. Right now I’m considering thoughts on detachment, not often discussed as a spiritual practice in my faith tradition.

We Protestants are missing something powerful here.

Detachment is choosing to place emotions, thoughts, things, goals and even relationships to the side, to detach from them when necessary, letting my heaviness be carried along in God’s stream of peace.

God invites me to detach when I’d rather whine. The Lord knows how I permit perceived injuries to consume all the air around me, as if I deserve better from a broken world, forgetting the world deserves better from me.

Faith urges me to confess, release and move on while some agitated part of me would let old miseries rise like yeast, ballooning until I burst from self-pity and splatter it all over this otherwise golden autumn day.

The God of choices says choose.

Choose hurt or choose Me.

Like Joshua heading into battle for the Promised Land, I can choose which deity I’ll serve.

Lesser gods who topple over and crumble when winds blow, or the Rock of Ages.

This splinter of discontent surfaced at the same time my oncologist’s office took me off my oral chemotherapy. Otherwise I lack the stamina to fight even the mild sinus infection that’s been bothering me. If you see me and I don’t shake your hand or hug you these long winter months, please understand. I’m trying to avoid germs and will flap my elbow like a chicken wing at you, instead.

It seems like a contradiction. I’m off medicine that is saving my life so I can grow stronger and recover from a measly cough and head cold.

Here too, God says choose.

Choose worry or choose Me.

Choose the path to relinquishment or the brier patch of malignant defeat.

I choose to detach from what is not grace-giving.

I choose to give thanks: And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. (Colossians 3:17 ESV).

I choose to believe that all things work together for good for those who love God and partner with the Spirit’s purposes.

Last week I let Jim remove a stubborn tick from my spine. I wanted to huddle in bed and forget about it but chose temporary pain over contracting Lyme disease.

I choose to not ignore spiritual splinters that prick my pride and sting my feelings and instead pursue God’s healing ways.

I choose to rest in Creation’s goodness.

To love others over self.

I choose hope over dread.

I choose to not waste anything.

I choose God.

All will be well.

Texting Thru Recovery/ Indianagazette.com

(Tara overlooking the Pacific by Dar Nakagawa, Hawaii; New Zealand photo & mine by Julie in Philadelphia)

The hands that formed my character

“My kindness is all you need. My power is strongest when you are weak.” 2 Corinthians 12:9 CEV

A girl out of my past commented after she viewed a photo I posted on my blog. Okay, I’m a little free with the word girl –Charlotte is now a grandma –but I picture her as the kid she was when we grew up together in State College.

My Mom was one of Charlotte’s junior high teachers. The message I received said:

“Thank you for the challenge to drink in God’s word before I drink my morning cup of coffee. I noticed your hands in the picture of you holding the mug. Your hands look so much like your precious mother’s beautiful hands. I was blessed to have her for English and whenever she stopped and leaned over my desk, I would look at her beautiful hands.”

To say I’m honored is an understatement. Seventy years ago those hands taught me to fold my small ones in prayer. Mother’s hands shaped my character like a potter shapes a vessel.

Her hands were always engaged in acts of kindness, caring for her brood. They prepared thousands of meals, soothed away my tears and fears, guided my own as I cut out Simplicity® patterns and sugar cookies, and tucked me in at night.

I dreaded her determined hands, though, when she gave me Toni ® permanents. The worst part was the odor of ammonia that filled the kitchen. I perched on a Sears Roebuck catalog draped in a towel while she pulled curlers tight, making sure the perm was set. Ouch!

More than once Mom used her hands to create prize-winning Halloween costumes. When I was old enough to notice I asked Mom why she wore the same skirts and blouses for house work that she wore in public. Back then most neighbor ladies wore house dresses, but not Mom. She was surprised I noticed. Calmly stacking canned goods on the shelf, she replied it was a way to save money for more important things, meaning the needs of her family.

I can see her thoughtfully holding a pen, writing letters. Like me, Mother was left-handed and understood my frustration at smearing ink dipped from an inkwell on my papers as a first grader back before ballpoint pens came into common use. With aging, chemo and weight loss my bony hands are swathed in skin that resembles crepe paper but when I fold them together for warmth they still feel a bit like Mother’s in her later years.

Charlotte’s unspoken message in her post is that it’s always the right time to be kind. Hers was a small kindness; those are often the ones that linger with us. Conversely, people remember when I’ve been a grump. . . and I do, too.

Kindness is in short supply lately.

It’s a crucial shortage –nothing ripples more throughout our kids lives than what they learn through acts of kindness. In a letter to the Little Sisters of Charity Mother Teresa wrote, “I prefer you make mistakes in kindness than that you work miracles in unkindness.”

St. Paul listed kindness as a mark of the Spirit-led life. Hundreds of years earlier the prophet Jeremiah said,

This is what the Lord says:
Stand by the roadways and look.
Ask about the ancient paths:
Which is the way to what is good?
(Jeremiah 6:16A, HCSB)

We’re more than lucky if we have a guide to show us timeworn ways in which to walk. Mother instilled in her children that our choices matter, demonstrating by her own that the godly way is also the way of kindness.

No one has perfect parents or a perfect childhood. Mine was touched by emotional trauma that still haunts me. But Mother was my role model and defender, a gentle mama hen whose feathers could fly if anything threatened her chicks.

Knowing I won’t be around forever, I try be that for my kids and grandkids, thankful God’s kindness is greatest when I’m weakest.

Sometimes it seems like our different generations live on different planets, but little victories taste sweet. Last weekend Josiah and I created an original recipe, red velvet cherry crisp; on his last visit I taught Eli to play Chinese checkers. Delighted, he beat me in the second game.

We keep a round ice cream container from the 50s filled with antique toy figures in a dining room corner. When young ones visit they’re free to set up wild scenes, taking over the Queen Anne maple table that belonged to my folks.

And they still hold my hand, praise God.

Small moments are magnified by an undercurrent of urgency—pinpoint flashes, like stars in the night to guide them on the way of kindness, as Mother guided me.

All will be well.

Texting Thru Recovery/Indiana Gazette indianagazette.com

Standing the test of time

Look! I am placing a foundation stone in Jerusalem, a firm and tested stone. It is a precious cornerstone that is safe to build on. Whoever believes need never be shaken (Isaiah 28:16 NLT)

I strolled a short stretch of the Ghost Town Trail with others this week, soaking in the sunny warmth that shimmered through every translucent leaf.

The trail is well named. It’s one of a network of paths along deserted railroad beds with renewed purpose. Bikers and hikers waved as we passed, basking in the brilliant afternoon light. I would guess few if any of us thought about those men who long ago built this corridor, making our outings possible.

A short distance from Dilltown we crossed over the sturdy new Armerford foot bridge, supported by four massive stone pilings. They’re the only remnants of the railroad bridge that once spanned Blacklick Creek, here.

Armerford was one of several now-deserted mining towns that once dotted this region. As far as I know, nothing is left of this little community. The homes are gone, the people who lived in them have left or passed away. Perhaps someone has recorded the stories of these ghost towns, but the only evidence we saw of Armerford that day was these rock structures.

They brought to mind when Jim and I met at IUP. We visited three different Indiana church services in a row. In what seemed more than coincidence, in each we sang a hymn from the 1800s, “The Church’s One Foundation is Jesus Christ our Lord…”

Our cornerstone, Jesus under girds His church and people with His strength. Whatever else happens, this foundation will prevail.

Jim and I raised our kids in one of the churches we visited as college freshmen. We must have passed along some of our faith because on Sunday afternoon Tara Joy, our middle child, was installed as Pastor of Christian Nurture at a Pittsburgh church, surrounded by family and a caring congregation.

Standing in that sacred place, I was happy for the ways this church and others reach out in ministry with practical compassion. They point to Jesus, who came in fragile human flesh so we would know what Love looks like.

How Love acts.

How Love dies to self.

This is the good news, that Love endures.

More than ever, I need to hang onto this, for those times when the power of the word “cancer” seems more compelling than faith. I let doubt almost win after I had some scans recently, uncertain what they meant until I finally saw my oncologist who cheerfully said they were satisfactory.

Despite my fears, at the same time I was a woman on a mission. Last February I was invited to speak at the Delmarva Peninsula Christian Writers Conference, scheduled for last Saturday. In March when my diagnosis looked bleak my sister, one of the organizers, said they would understand if I backed out.

Knowing how draining speaking can be, I considered taking an easy exit but felt the Spirit whisper I should proceed as if all would be well.

“I’ll be there in October,” I promised. .

Because cancer is not my most basic reality.

I have an inner chapel that cancer cannot touch.

So, in the last week I not only walked the Ghost Town Trail but also the boardwalk in Rehoboth Beach, breathing in the goodness of salt air.

With God’s help, I led that writing workshop in Delaware, believing a promise is a promise.

Then we scurried up the road some three hundred miles for Tara’s installation, where I prayed and wept in one of Pittsburgh’s most beautiful sanctuaries.

Although I received a positive report on Thursday, I live with advanced cancer. There will always be more tests, more chemo, more bridges of faith to cross. The thought makes me weary until I remember I don’t walk alone. The best thing I can do is persistently press my hand into that of my walking companions –above all, the Sacred Three.

I dare not trust the sweetest frame, but wholly lean on Jesus’ Name.

My hope is built on nothing less.

All will be well.

Texting Thru Recovery/Indiana Gazette

Because we all need a little hope

Questions. We all have them.

A group of breast cancer survivors relaxed on leather couches in a comfortable lodge at last summer’s Casting for Recovery fishing retreat. I was lucky to be among them and grateful for a time set aside to ask our medical team questions. One stood out.

While much of our weekend was spent with the mechanics and thrill of fly fishing on the Little Juniata, there was an undercurrent of heaviness for me, knowing these younger women with so much to live for need a strong anchor to hold them steady through the years ahead.

A woman with metastatic breast disease posed the most memorable question. She asked Dr. Diane Buchbarker, the oncology physician with us, what it’s like working with patients who die. Isn’t it a depressing occupation?

.It was a brave question with a wise answer.

The air was still until Dr. Diane spoke, “All physicians have patients who die.”

That struck a spiritual cord, pulling back the curtain on our common destiny. I smiled at what she said next. Because of rapid advances over the past 20 years she can offer patients more hope than when she first entered medicine. She said just that week another advance was announced, this is why she thinks oncology is a hopeful field.

Wow. Hope. That’s all I could think. At home, friends suggested I share what she said with my readers, because we all need a little more hope.

When I told one of my oncologists, he agreed with Dr. Diane. He said it’s his job to help folks like me live as long and healthy as we can. October, when there’s a massive effort on increasing funding for cancer research, is a good time to share a word of inspiration.

When our COURAGE and Cancer leadership team met to plan October’s gathering someone said we’re born to die yet created to live forever. I had to think about that for awhile.

I picture my days on earth like an arch stretching from the autumn-colored hills and valley outside my north window to the forested mountainsides to south and far beyond. Sometimes clouds mask my view of the arch, but never God’s.

Life, like clouds brushed by sunrise and sunset, is never stationary. The hope offered by Jesus give wings to my feet, for He promised, “I have come that you might have life and have it more abundantly.”

Abundant life.

Whatever valleys we pass through.

Abundant life.

To offer to friends and strangers.

Abundant life.

Despite our questions.

More powerful than foes within or without.

More powerful than death itself.

The Spirit empowers us to live into the promises of Jesus. The biblical book of Romans 8 tells us the Spirit groans in intercession for us with divine intention that we know God’s unrelenting presence through His suffering, crucified, Risen Son.

A friend who has suffered an unspeakable loss recently posted:

Now there are some things we all know, but we don’t take’m out and look at’m very often. We all know that something is eternal. And it ain’t houses and it ain’t names, and it ain’t earth, and it ain’t even the stars … everybody knows in their bones that something is eternal, and that something has to do with human beings. All the greatest people ever lived have been telling us that for five thousand years and yet you’d be surprised how people are always losing hold of it. There’s something way down deep that’s eternal about every human being. (Thornton Wilder, “Our Town,” Act III, 1938)

Questions?

We’ll always have them.

Hope?

Hope is an anchor, holding firm and steadfast when gales blow.

We didn’t directly discuss spirituality on that fishing retreat I attended, but it’s my deep hope that faith in our Creator is the anchor of my fellow survivors.

Thank you, Dr. Diane. You made my day.

Thank you, Lord. You literally made my day!

And all the days to come.

All will be well.

Texting Thru Recovery/Indiana Gazette

Priming the pump with Psalms

My hubby Jim always has a project going. Right now it’s a bubble rock, gurgling its melody outside my kitchen window. He set a water tank in the ground, drilled five rocks, ran a pipe through them and voilà – we have a bubbling fountain by our front walk.

Actually, completing the job wasn’t easy at all. To begin with, the base stone is a glacial rock weighing a few hundred pounds. Jim rolled it down hill at our cabin and then had to get it in the car. I wasn’t there to see how he did it, thank goodness! It took energy, sweat, digging, drilling and hours of failure and experimenting before he completed the project.

Jesus said be complete, like His Father. You probably haven’t read “complete” in your version of Matthew 5:28; more likely it says “be perfect.” What He meant was keep growing into the perfect image God has of you. Nobody else in all the world can be you as well as you can!

The more intimately we know God, the better we know ourselves. What we believe about God has a lot to do with what we believe about who we are. Our understanding of God’s grace gives meaning to how we talk. I notice a guy who often says he feels guilty talks a lot about sin, while a friend who accepts her imperfect self spreads cheer like sunshine.

To understand what God is like, I look at Jesus. As a Hebrew boy, He memorized the Psalms, probably all of them! In “What We Need is Here, the Heart of Christian Spirituality” my friend Roger Owens says the Psalms were Jesus’s prayer book and song book. They were His history book, too, teaching Him how earlier generations of His family’s people opened their hearts to God.

Imagine Jesus singing Psalms those 40 days He fasted in the desert. Perhaps the angels who kept Him company sang along. Perhaps they sing along when we pray, too.

Psalms prime my prayer pump, like pouring some water into a dry pump encourages water to flow from springs deep underground. A verse like Psalm 110:1, “Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all the earth!” sets the Spirit within me free to rise up, very much like my overflowing bubble rock. The Psalms resemble the small electric pump in our underground 20-gallon tank. They generate my faith, enabling it to flow over rocky obstacles, quenching my thirsty soul.

I bet a lot of us memorized a Psalm or two in Sunday school. For me, Psalm 100 stood out. Later I read, re-read and underlined others, storing them within for that time I would need them. A line or passage often hums softly against the background of my days, a reassuring hint of their Composer’s presence.

I like how Owens calls his chapter on Psalms One Hundred-fifty Prayers. He says the Psalms are unique; in them we hear God speaking to us and find prayers to offer back to Him, a two-way conversation.

Some passages speak about seeking vengeance against enemies. They seem to tell me more about our humanity than God’s divinity, and there are a lot of them. Instead of thinking of human foes when I turn to them, I substitute cancer, my very personal adversary.

What attitudes, circumstances or disease come against you and your household? Try praying Psalm 35:1 (NASB), Contend, O Lord, with those who contend with me; fight against those who fight against me. Like most Psalms that express dread or fear, this one ends praising God’s faithfulness.

The Psalms invite us, God’s imperfect children, to a come-as-you-are party, to feast on the songs of His ancient people. Roger calls the Psalms a lavish banquet, a feast prepared with us in mind. Just don’t expect fast food, in fact this spread was prepared over 2,000 years ago.

As a teen, Roger felt like he found his own story in the Bible when he read Psalm 40 and came to verse seven: Here I am, I have come; in the scroll of the book it is written about me.

We can find our stories there, too. Psalm 139 says the Lord intricately wove me in my mother’s womb. It promises that He entwines me with love and that I’ll never wander beyond His gaze. While I can’t always understand God’s plan in times of trouble, I believe He is there. This is what faith means.

Reading different translations of the Bible can give a fuller sense of what they mean, like these paraphrases of Psalm 138:8,

You will do everything you have promised; Lord, your love is eternal. Complete the work that you have begun. (“Good News Translation”)

And “The Passion Translation,” You keep every promise you’ve ever made to me! Since your love for me is constant and endless, I ask you, Lord, to finish every good thing you’ve begun in me!

Thank You Lord, the Author and Finisher of our faith, that You always complete what You begin.

All will be well.

Texting Thru Recovery/Indiana Gazette

‘In the stars His handiwork I see’

Like a kid at Christmas, I was elated on Tuesday to post: “A good report from my oncologist today–patients who do as well as I am have many years ahead AND word from my editor that a contract is in the mail for my book, which will be published by Upper Room Books in March 2021.”

Thanks to Facebook, 400 friends joined in my joy. I don’t take their response lightly. When someone says my good news absolutely made her day, her love and support makes mine! When friends and family say they’re praying for me, I feel sheltered in caring layers of healing love.

Although it was October 1, I was so pumped that sweltering evening I decided to sleep on the deck. It took me back to sleeping in our backyard with my twin sis and the girls next door. As I lay there, Ralph Carmichael’s “In the stars His handiwork I see” floated through my mind. A chill around midnight send me inside, where I grabbed a plush throw to take out with me and swallowed a gulp of elderberry protection.

Since my chemo pills compromise my immune system, I’ve become intentional about caring for it. I’ve averted the flu for years with a flu shot, combined with a spoonful of what Jim and I’ve labeled with a laugh, ‘The Recipe.’

It began with a relative handing me a bag of dried elderberries. She said soak them in vodka in a glass jar, store it on a dark shelf for three weeks and then swallow a tablespoon every few days to build up my immunity to viruses. Even her Amish patients say the concoction works.

Remember the Baldwin sisters, who introduced us to “The ‘Recipe’ on The Waltons, demurely offering their special beverage to guests? Jim and I traveled to Lake Placid one autumn and on the way there stayed at the Silver Spruce Inn, a B&B worthy of a Waltons’ episode.

Built in the 1790s near Schroon Lake in the Adirondacks, it resembles a lodge with beamed ceilings, cedar paneling and ten fireplaces, thanks to the reputable and wealthy Sallie Miller Smith. A friend of Eleanor Roosevelt, she expanded the place by seventeen rooms in 1923.

With her sister Margaret, Sallie was known for giving new shoes to children during the Depression years but that wasn’t the extent of their reputation.

The innkeeper led us to the basement where the sisters operated a speakeasy during Prohibition; a massive mahogany bar from the Waldorf Astoria remains from that era. In the dining room we glimpsed a secret panel behind a built-in bookcase with shelves just wide enough to hold contraband bottles.

Fast forward to now. If you’d like to experiment with a home elixir to short-circuit colds and flu, please research the web and be sure to avoid elderberries that are still green, which are toxic.

Sambucol, black elderberry extract with a sugar base, can be purchased in place of our homemade stuff. I carry Sambucol tablets in my purse, especially when traveling.

Vitacost’s website says an ingredient in elderberries may stimulate the immune system: “Certain flavonoids are found primarily in the pigments of dark blue and deep purple fruits such as black elderberry.” These berries have “twice the natural antioxidant capacity of blueberries and significantly more than cranberries.”

When I’m home I take our recipe but overall I’m cautious to protect my liver. I talk to it, telling it what a good job it’s doing healing lesions and how thankful I am for the way it processes the meds I take. It, in turn, tells me to treat it kindly. Most of the time we get along famously.

Health is about finding balance. It might seem crazy for a woman with a diagnosis of cancer to sleep on deck furniture when we have an air-conditioned bedroom for nights like last Tuesday but wholeness, whatever our age, involves recognizing and immersing ourselves in small joys. I won’t soon forget watching stars spread in their ancient patterns across the sky.

Humans are wonderfully, fearfully made. We differ wildly in our beliefs and practices, but everybody wants to be healthy. Even Jesus, who likely spent many a night in the open air. What better time to ponder the Creator of stars than when sleeping under them? Rest in this paraphrase from Psalm 8:

“O Lord, our Lord, how excellent is Your name throughout all the earth! .… When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars You set perfectly in place, what are we that You are mindful of us? You’ve made us a little lower than Your angels, and crowned us as Your sons and daughters…”

What an awesome God.

All will be well.

Adapted from Texting Thru Recovery 2017, Indiana Gazette. (my photos) ©2019 Jan Woodard

Releasing Shadows of the Past

There it was, the old Lewistown train station, a momentary stop along the tracks on my way to Philadelphia, rousing sleeping memories. Dad had dropped Mom and me off there for a trip to the New York World’s Fair. I was a senior in high school that autumn.

The only other person in the station was a young guy with a friendly smile. I smiled back and discovered his name was Jim. He was a Penn State student going home to Enola near Harrisburg for the weekend, the next stop down the track.

Mom and I continued on our journey and the following morning, along with Grandma who lived outside the city, squeezed into a massive, crowded elevator that carried us to a monorail zooming to the fair. I glanced around and was more than surprised to see, crammed in the back, a boy I’d double-dated with the weekend before.

I wasn’t entirely at ease with this fellow, he was a little fast and smiled too much. Not like the guy in the station the day before, but as if everything was a perpetual joke. Still, I put on a happy face and we toured the sites together for a few hours.

A few weeks later my identical twin sister Marilyn was serving dinner at Penn State’s HUB cafeteria where we both worked part-time. As she dished up carrots and mashed potatoes a student with a friendly smile paused to speak, supposing they’d met in Lewistown.

Because she worked that night and I didn’t, my sister was invited on a date by the boy from Enola. A college junior, he was teased by friends for dating a high school girl but hey, they just celebrated their golden wedding anniversary.

Chance encounters. A smile, a nod, a conversation. We never know whose paths may cross ours or what stranger may become a friend. Stored in cells that clutter my memory file is something about everyone I’ve ever met, a fading catalog of every interaction and emotion, however brief. I long ago forgot the name of the boy on elevator, but not feeling vaguely uneasy around him.

Places, too, store memories. The Lewistown station opened in 1849, the longest continually operating railroad station in the country. The website nightwatchparanormal.com that records unexplainable activity says locals claim shadowy figures dressed in garments from an earlier era have been photographed there. Some report a cold, odd feeling about the place.

Upon reading that, masked feelings from my own past crawled out of hiding, hunched images of heartaches, veiled in black, packed inside the subliminal regions of my brain like passengers in an over-crowded elevator.

What do I do with apparitions that slip in and out of my mind?

Releasing old emotions is a must for inner healing says Kelly Turner, PhD in Releasing Suppressed Emotions, a chapter in her book, Radical Remission, Surviving Cancer Against All Odds. Turner describes lifestyle changes needed for the possibility of healing to happen. Her stories gird me with hope that I, too, can resist cancer.

I believe God, who is on the side of life, leads me to resources like this. His will is wellness, His nature is wholeness. I want to mirror His character, inside and out. I Corinthians 3:18 says, “And we, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory are being transformed into His image with ever-increasing glory…”

Transformation is at the heart of radical remission. Secure as I am in the depths of God’s love, part of the transformational process is clearing out garbage I’ve allowed to fester within. Getting rid of entrenched emotions is like cleaning the bathtub drain, pulling out stringy hair, dead skin and slime I didn’t know was clogging the pipes.

Coupled with the wonders of grace, it takes a heart willing to mature and change to live unveiled and unafraid before God.

The pages of my Bible and every fiber of my being tell me I’m not alone, although sometimes the way is dark. Even then, “In Him was life, a light to all … shining in the darkness, and darkness has not overcome it.” (John 1:4-5 paraphrased.) The family of the Trinity helps me not to flounder when I hit a rough patch, shining a flashlight along my path through the dim corridors of inner healing.

If you sense a need for more light on inner shadows, you’re welcome to join me in praying to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly beyond anything we could ever think or imagine:

Please help me Father to empty myself of everything that isn’t life-giving, knowing You’re my Peace.

I surrender the shadows of my past to You, Jesus, knowing You’re my Counselor.

Reveal phantoms I need to boot out of my memory bank, Holy Spirit, knowing You’re my Deliverer.

All will be well.

Texting Thru Recovery/Indiana Gazette

First image: Conrail/Amtrak; station & sunrise- my pics

Oatmeal & Olive

Put my life in good order, O my God –Thomas Aquinas

PHILADELPHIA – First thing every morning I have a bowl of oatmeal, ground flaxseed, almonds and fruit, accompanied by a cup of tea. It’s one of the few routines in my day.

This morning I was greeted with a breakfast smoothie. My daughter Julie blended kale, organic oats, pumpkin seeds, banana, mango, coconut and keefer, topped with blueberries. I don’t often eat greens for breakfast –images of Green Eggs and Ham come to mind –but this was cool and satisfying.

I’m at her row home in Philly, built a hundred years before our own. Last spring I didn’t know if I would travel anymore. This summer I’ve thrived, enjoying reunions with my siblings, children and some nieces and nephews. More evidence I’m doing well.

They all want to keep me that way. As fall arrives, health is a big motivator. It’s why I came here by Amtrak. The train sways more than a car but is a stress-free, inexpensive way to travel across the Allegheny mountain range and Pennsylvania’s “amber waves of grain.”

Fields of drying corn, like migrating hummingbirds and other winged travelers, announce autumn has arrived. Here in eastern Pennsylvania the sun sets about 20 minutes earlier than in our town but wherever we are in the northern hemisphere, evenings of lingering sunlight are slipping away.

Before I left home I trimmed back black-eyed susans and planted mums around the mailbox. It will soon be time for hot cider and cornbread baked in a cast iron skillet. Jim and I ate butternut squash the other night and later roasted the seeds –the tastes and aromas of my favorite season.

Laundry on clotheslines waved in the wind as the train passed by small town backyards, city-scapes and farmland. Feeling on overload, my stomach fluttered over upcoming duties that feel like king-sized sheets too big to fold by myself, haphazardly clothes-pinned to my schedule.

“It’s not enough to be busy,” wrote Henry Thoreau. “So are the ants. The question is, what are we busy about.”

My mentor texted me that quote and the Dalai Lama’s response when asked how to find happiness and fulfillment: “Routines.” Everything I’ve read about living with cancer suggests reducing stress (routines help with this), making peace with ourselves and others, and practicing contentment in a consumer-driven world where we’re continually pushed to desire more.

Deliberately choosing to be glad, seeing each day as more than something to cross off a calendar with an X, is the only sane way to travel though life.

I wonder if this is what St. Paul meant when he penned, “Pray without ceasing.” Be continually grateful on some level of the Spirit’s presence. An attitude of gratitude expresses the sustaining hope that, despite hardship and loss, it’s good to be alive.

Establishing routines take practice. Instead of being hyper-concerned about things I can’t control, I try to keep moving, eat well, think wisely and breath in and out a litany of trust throughout the day:

Walking daily, greeted by blue cornflowers and goldenrod at home; by a multitude of mutts and their owners on city sidewalks. (Breath in.)

God is here. (Breath out.)

Writing my book, thankful I have a publisher and the goal of holding it in my hands. (Breath in.)

God is here. (Breath out.)

Picking and drying herbs before frost steals their essence –basil, rosemary, sage, fennel, chives, dill, mint. (You’ve got the idea by now!)

God is here.

Sharing meals (sometimes surprises!), sorrows and blessings with friends and family.

God is here.

Taking daily chemo pills and keeping monthly appointments for injections that I’d rather skip.

God is here.

Grabbing a couple naps a day is another necessary routine for me and most cancer warriors. It’s challenging, especially when away from home, but this promise holds as much as ever: “…My Presence goes with you, and I will be your rest.” (Exodus 33:14 paraphrased)

Rest is key to healthy routines. Both Olive, Julie and Bob’s happy little blue tick beagle, and our golden doodle Chewie relax every wiggling inch of their bodies after outings. They play hard and rest deeply. Can I learn from them, as well as from the ants?

Lord, teach me it’s okay to move more slowly without struggle or self-condemnation.

Rest energizes me to fulfill my calling, but I never have to do anything alone, not even fold sheets –Jim and I do it together. I have a broad community ready to embrace me. Jesus knows the strains we bear and offers quiet strength: “Come to Me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” (Matthew 11:28 NIV)

God is in our routines.

In our gratitude.

In our rest.

All will be well.

Texting Thru Cancer/Indiana Gazette

Copyright ©Jan Woodard 2019

What I set my mind upon

Hazy wisps of dreamlike impressions often come to me between sleeping and waking in the form of a song or word. Like a touch of angels’ wings, it turns the day to blues and greens and all the colors of the sky. Last Sunday morning as I curled under the sheet I heard a line from a worship song, “And to the healing virtue of Jesus, we say Amen.”

Why that song came I don’t know, except as Heaven’s response to prayers lifted for me. It’s an unexpected delight when praise is the first thing that sweeps through my mind in the early morning, especially when the hurts of others are heavy on my mind.

I learned while working with people with dementia that music can dwell in almost any part of the brain, in “anything above the neck,” one health professional joked. As Pastor Kathy says, how fun is that! Days later, that melody remained with me, streaming through the ordinary chores that compose my hours as a woman living with hope, “The healing virtue of Jesus…”

Virtue means honor, worth, goodness, integrity. Jesus offers all of His healing character to people crippled by wounds too deep for words. The Spirit groans within us, as I also groaned with grieving families this week.

It’s easiest to respond to His healing virtue when we’re grounded in the Word, which abounds with healings. St. Paul wrote new believers, “Set your mind on things above, not on earthly things.” (Colossians 3:2 NIV). The only way I can do that is by choosing love and beauty over darkness and doubt. When fear reveals it’s ugly head, I need to remember to cast it into the farthest sea.

St. John’s first small letter tucked at the back of the Bible focuses on love because, “Perfect love casts out fear…” (I John 4:8) The “Aramaic Bible in Plain English” paraphrases it to say, “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear, because fear is by suspicion, but he who fears is not grown up in love.”

A Bible teacher once told me to remember Job’s comment, “What I feared has come upon me; what I dreaded has happened to me.” I never gave that much credence but now realize fear is a hallmark of cancer. I cannot allow myself the luxury of setting my mind on fear, not when heaven and earth offer life and breath today.

“GOD’S WORD® Translation” says it so simply,”No fear exists where his love is.” How perfect is that!

I have daily encounters with people living with burdens, most often cancer, opportunities to encourage others as I’ve been encouraged by so many. I’d love to meet Olivia Newton John, who does the same thing on a bigger scale. We both had our sacrum fractured by lesions, we are both thriving despite metastatic disease, and we were both born in the same year (although we may not look like it!)

I admire Olivia’s confident attitude and giving spirit. She considers where she lets her mind wander, mindful our thoughts can get us stuck in a bog. “I don’t think about cancer,” she says, and doesn’t pay attention to statistics because they “can tweak your mind into believing them. I’m not a statistic.” (www.msn.com/en-us/health/health-news/olivia-newton-john)

Our minds refuse to stay empty, however, continually filling up with junk or jewels. We can only rid our minds of junk by replacing it with gems. A Monarch butterfly for instance can be a precious gift, a messenger from God. This fragile creature, dependent on milkweed for its Eastern habitat, has the endurance to fly thousands of miles across North America to warmer climates. Millions are now packing their bags for the journey.

Darlene, a new friend recently diagnosed with breast cancer, let me share this email with you: “Today I went to the oncologist and had promising news. From the reports he feels it is stage one and since I am such a healthy person, feels I will do well…

“I felt a little lighter after that. I’m a positive person. The day I heard the word (cancer) from the doctor, I crumbled. I wanted to just stay home and hide in a corner, but that passed.

“I always believed everything happens for a reason. The coolest thing happened to me this morning. I was outside standing in our driveway when a Monarch butterfly kept flying above my head. I was being silly and held my hand up and said, ‘Come here, little fella.’

“That butterfly landed on the back of my hand and just sat there. I brought my hand to my face and felt such a connection while it looked at me. I was in awe! Then it opened its wings and flew up to the sky. I was speechless, I looked to sky and said out loud, ‘Lord, I got your message.’”

How incredible is that!

All will be well.

Texting Thru Recovery/Indiana Gazette

(Butterfly image: Pinterest. Olivia Newton John image: closerweekly.com. Photo of Josiah & me by our friend Anthony Frazier.)