to hope takes guts

This is Junior. Now 8. He lives with wonderful foster parents in Honduras. He is a delight. And I miss him times one hundred million.

Not everyone understands how you can spin two lassos at the same time, one of hope and one of grief. Jodi Picoult, Vanishing Acts

To hope takes guts. 

Hope deferred makes the heart sick. When we hope, we risk heart sickness. The vultures of disappointment surely have eaten more than once of our flesh. 

My family had hoped…

To remain in Honduras to love the children at Rancho Ebenezer

To build an addition to the school there

To be there until Edgar graduated high school

To hope is to join Adam and Eve again in the garden. A desire fulfilled is a tree of life. The phrase “tree of life” takes us back to Eden. The tree was in the middle of the garden. Next to it grew the other tree. The forbidden tree. We ate. We died. And we have struggled with hope ever since. 

But it also calls us to remember the end. We, as overcomers, will feast on the tree of life in the paradise of God (Rev. 2:7). The leaves of the tree will be for the healing of the nations (Rev. 22:2).

On the wall in our den in Honduras, I painted a tree. To me the tree represented life. The reality is that often our hearts are sickened here on the other side of the Garden.

Every day people make brutal choices. I know what it is like when the rubble of life overwhelms and you have to make a devastating choice.. A day came when we had to walk away. We placed our precious Honduran children back in the arms of the Shepherd who loved them before we had even seen their smiles. 

The grief that followed threatened to take my very breath away. 

My grief is not over. Grief doesn’t end because it honors the loss as precious. It evolves and blends and changes. It changes you. The things I grieve are far too precious for the grief to one day be “done.” Gradually, I am trusting God with my pain and my sons in Honduras. Over time, He is showing me that He is the Defender of the Weak. And He shows me that the Weak is mainly me. I can trust Him with the Weak – my Honduran sons – more when I can trust Him with the weak in me.

Faith has grown in my heart where I have allowed the Father to hold me in the pain. 

Today I am buoyed by hope. The path of suffering has sewn a few things into my soul. Hope. Faith. Perseverance. Strength. The end result is that I know my Savior better. I trust Him more. These things would not be there had not the VineDresser pruned me back to a nub. 

This week God has given me the chance to talk with a grieving mother. I listened as she gave voice to her pain. I shared with her my Hope and Strength birthed through suffering. When two believers can share their stories and burdens, the Holy Spirit consoles both of them.

 It is right to grieve. It is right to hope.

When a desire is fulfilled, it is the hors d’oeuvre for the feast of heaven. 

Until then, we have hope.

We must so hunger for a different tomorrow that we risk losing today to gain it. Dan Allender

Update on 05.7.2011 by gigi

Shortly after I posted this, I learned that the "wonderful foster parents" I referred to above don't live at the Ranch anymore. I do not know who Junior is living with at the moment. I am investigating this and will keep you posted. This I know and this I find comfort in: God is a Defender of the Weak. He has Junior. 

i want to see

I live in a garden. This garden, while beautiful, is ravaged by the Fall. The thunder outside reminds me that danger is imminent. I am not safe. Children in this garden get brain cancer and die. Adolescents are plagued by eating disorders. Some take their own lives. Mamas get breast cancer. Daddies drink themselves into an early grave. Danger is everywhere. The effects of the Fall, of the day when the Woman took the apple because she did not trust her God, are evident every moment in this garden.

I live in a garden. This garden holds the possibility of rebirth. Every spring astounding beauty is birthed. Blooms like banners of a million colors crawl out of green balls. New life is everywhere. The rain feeds these buds. The green in the grass sings to my eyes of a Creator. I connect to a Mama in trouble. I offer her my hand because she has offered me hers a few years ago. I offer her companionship on this treacherous and breath-taking path called life. My heart swells when my love picks up his son and dwarfs him in big arms cradling him in LOVE. Smiles the sizes of watermelons speak to me of wonder and mystery. Laughter fills my halls and I know that LIFE is more powerful than destruction. Hope lives in this garden.

I live in a garden. We groan for new life. The flowers and the rocks and me and the Mamas in trouble, we ache and we groan. We beg God to have mercy. We beseech Him for new LIFE, for grace, for help. We ask for eyes to see His Presence in this garden.

I live in a garden: in the now and the not yet. He is RISEN. Victory is mine, ours. Yet I struggle, fumble and fall. One day pain will end. One day death will be defeated. One day sin will not afflict my body. But that day has not yet come. Yet it has. The knowledge that Jesus won by losing fills my bones and my lungs with a scent of the promise. 

He has paid the ransom. I am free. I can live free. Laughter is the music of hope. Hope is more abundant than despair in this garden. 

Today I can choose to see Him. If I need to, I can ask a friend to help me see Him. I want to see HOPE. 

life in the blood

I am no Hot Yoga expert. I’ve been to class about six or seven times. The philosophy, as I understand it, is to compress areas of the body to deprive them of oxygen. Then as you re-open those areas, oxygen-rich blood flows to them and with it healing. 

Healing is in the blood.

Yesterday in my spiritual direction group, we talked about an image I had drawn in my journal on April 14. I am aware that God is drawing me closer and asking me to trust more in Him. To trust the ways He has carried me. To trust His provision. To trust His plan. 

I drew this “trust cup” weeping out the trust I continue to deposit in it. I put some trust in, but it just leaks out. To be sure, the cup has less holes today than it did six months ago and a lot less than it did ten years ago!

My spiritual director said, “Just sit with Jesus and ask Him about the cup.”

I love it when she says that.

This morning I flipped through a book I am reading about Lent called Bread and Wine. An excerpt called “Life in the Blood” caught my eye. It was written in 1935 by Toyohiko Kagawa. I read the following:

It is like saying that because God is love, when you put water into a bag with a hole in it, the hole in the bag won’t matter! You must close up the hole!

You can’t reveal the glory of God if you have a hole in your heart, no matter how much of God’s glory you receive. It is Christ who fills up that egregious hole. 

I felt like Jesus sat down at the table to have a cup of coffee with me.

I read on...

Blood circulation has the power to heal wounds.

Love creates the same pattern anew. It redeems the place that was lost. To the measure of its depths, the love of God can perfectly heal the holes of the past, and all its sins. It does not merely repair the damages of sin, but even transforms that which has been broken into perfect health, perfect working capacity.

Really? Transforms the broken parts? Perfect working capacity?

Love is endowed with the power to redeem and heal throughout the past, present and future, every part of the whole The supreme manifestation of that love is the blood which Christ shed on the cross. This love enables us to believe in the forgiveness of past sins and the healing of past offenses. 

I think the holes represent my unbelief. Maybe my job is to name the unbelief. Jesus repairs the holes. I wonder if perhaps He repairs them from the bottom up. As I name them, bring them to Him, He repairs. With each patch, trust grows deeper.

And so goes the Good Friday - Easter rhythm. The stretch and expend energy, then rest rhythm. The desolation where-is-God, then oh-there-You-are rhythm. Today on Good Friday, I name the holes of my unbelief. 

Can I trust a Man who gave His very Life for me? 

it's easier to bolt

In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus asked his disciples to watch and pray three times. Three times, they snoozed. 

I am reminded of how easy it is just to bolt. Staying present is hard work. And, frankly, I can’t do it all the time. I can’t do it very well. To me, this is the purpose of Lent: to become aware of my weakness and know that I desperately need the grace of God. 

Monday evening I was busily cleaning out my closet (a chore I loathe), when Matt’s voice boomed from above: YOUR GROUP! It was like the voice from Heaven calling me out of my slumber. Quickly my eyes read the clock: 7:22 p.m. My group starts at 7:00. I spent the next 7 minutes agonizing over whether to drive the two miles to my group and interrupt them. 

It’s one thing to zone out and forget a commitment. But this was my SECOND week to completely space and forget my listening group. 

On Monday evenings, we gather to share what we are hearing from God. We receive one or two pages of insights and a few passages of Scripture for the coming week. Each of us shares what we see in the passage and how God is forming our souls through His Word.

I find it humorous that the passage with most punch for me this week was the one in which the disciples slept while Jesus suffered. Humorous because God gave me an object lesson in my own forgetfulness or lack of awareness. He reminded me of the difficulty in staying awake. He reminded me that I need Him.

In the end, I drove the distance over the speed limit. I rushed into the group. “Perfect timing,” someone said. They welcomed me like a community of grace would welcome a stray lamb. 

I am praying to be more present this week and to remain awake as we await the resurrection celebration on Sunday. And I am applying GRACE when I slumber.

Even so, today I celebrate this stupefying fact:

God has set EVERYTHING right between him and me. Romans 10:10

watch and pray

Today we enter Holy Week. In Honduras, no greater holiday exists. La Semana Santa far outshines Christmas. Stores shut down. Most people, even the poorer families, find their way to the beach. 

In downtown Tegucigalpa, artists craft carpets of painted sawdust covering the narrow streets. Curators walk the streets with spray bottles sprinkling water so that the sawdust won’t blow away in the dry wind. On Holy Sunday, a priest and some men in white robes will walk the carpet and stop at each station of the cross. A mass is held at the end of that procession in a small cathedral nearby.

I am pondering the moment when Jesus enters the Garden of Gethsemane and asks his disciples to watch and pray. He says he is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. His disciples snoozed. 

When he returns, he says: “Stay alert; be in prayer so you don't wander into temptation without even knowing you're in danger. There is a part of you that is eager, ready for anything in God. But there's another part that's as lazy as an old dog sleeping by the fire."

This lenten season has been long. Amen, anybody? While I wait for spring, I am craning my neck to see the Resurrection just around the corner. It’s hard for us Protestants to stay in this death watch. Historically, I have paid little attention to this week. Living in Honduras changed me in a number of ways.

This week, I heed the words of Jesus: WATCH AND PRAY. The Spirit is willing but the body is weak. 

I want to learn to pray the words Jesus prayed. And mean it.

"My Father, if there is no other way than this, drinking this cup to the dregs, I'm ready. Do it your way."