.:: a thief in the night ::.

It was like a thief came in the night.

Taking away life as I once knew it and giving me a new way of living, a new way of being in this world.

A new way to be human…

Without my consent.

It took what I once knew as life and in exchange gave me a garment I never would have asked for. Yet knowing to grieve yet also embrace this garment was not only critical for my heart but for my own now 26-year journey I’ve been on with God.

I shudder yet am in awe at the reality that even from the very beginning, from that first ER visit, something within me knew that there was something more going on, more than I could even comprehend at the time.

-- SUFFERING AS A SACRED JOURNEY --

“We have all faced such moments—times when we recognize anew that we are called to journey that will shape us and change us.

The journey has the potential to heal us or harden us. It will harden us if we attempt to do an end run around the desert, valley, or craggy peak where God compels us to walk.

It will soften, break, mold, and heal if we choose to take our sorrow and suffering by the hand and walk by faith into the damage of our past, the struggles of the present, and our fears of the future.” - Dan Allender, The Healing Path

I knew even from the very beginning that this was the start of something I knew not all entirely what, but there was a distinct shift, as if I felt the thief making the trade and found myself reeling, asking myself surely this isn’t what I bargained for.

Some days I can’t even remember how good life felt before I got sick. That life seems so far away and so unreal.

Such a far cry from the realities that have become my daily existence.

And it is just like that
In a moment

That everything can change.

I find just when I begin to understand how to function, adopting a pattern of medication, heat, ice, more medication, knowing what activities I can do, knowing what activities I can’t do, that suddenly that thin rug of security and normalcy gets ripped out from underneath me.

I find that instead of this being a linear journey, the type of journey that makes the most sense to us, the one that seems the most fair, the most reasonable, you know where things progress and improve on a upward linear slope, that this is anything but that.

That instead of linear, I feel like I’m going around in circles. Instead of progressing, regressing.

Wait, this doesn't make sense, we think. As it shatters the formula in my mind that as time goes on things will just naturally improve, get better, go away. Time is moving forward, but I'm going backwards.

Just when I think the pain is the worst its ever been, a new pain gets factored into the equation. Or just when I feel I now know what to do if my legs go completely numb while I am trying to walk or drive, or just get about in the house, that suddenly new symptoms start developing, and the pain and the tingling/numbing sensations that I now know somewhat how to manage, begins to spiral out of control. And I am in this place where the terrain looks hauntingly familiar to where we started.

Going in circles.

-- THROUGH DESERTS AND VALLEYS --

“A loss of faith comes when God no longer seems predictable and sure. It comes when our heart desperately longs for him to change the outcome of a situation and he chooses not to act according to our best sense of what is good. It is when our healthy, beautiful child dies under the wheels of our care. Or when our happy, secure marriage crumbles. Or when the deep, God-given desire to have children dies with an emergency hysterectomy…

Our heart aches for good things, legitimate desires. And when God refuses to act to keep those desires alive, we find that our faith falters. Sometimes it dies. When faith withers, so does our capacity to remember his redemption with awe and gratitude.

When we lose faith, we also feel powerless to change our future…

This precarious new piece of bad news symbolized my newly awakened conviction that life is not predictable, except in its unpredictability." - Allender

-- EXPOSING THE INTENTIONS OF EVIL --

But you know what, it is interesting that we say “a thief that comes in the night” because this is exactly the sinister nature of the one we all know as our Enemy.

We are told that our Enemy has three missions: to steal, kill and destroy.

Period.

There is nothing else. Yet he weaves his mastery into a cloak that looks anything but deceiving but one that seems to embody truth.

To the suffering and the sick, he says, "your God is not strong enough. Your God is not big enough. Come on, if He really loved you, He would make you better by now, or the doctors would have figured out what is wrong with you, or you no longer have a purpose, you can’t do anything, you struggle just to make it through a day how are you ever going to do all you once did, you’re never getting any better, just quit making a fool out of yourself, no one will be able to help you, you no longer have anything to offer, why hope, you see where that got you, do you really think there is a day where you will not be dealing with this,

you’re not getting anywhere might as well give up now, things aren’t getting any better, look your symptoms are right back where it all started, they are only getting worse, there is no hope for you, you will just have to suffer with this the rest of your life, we’ll never find what is causing the symptoms, you will just have to deal, your God isn’t going to come through for you, all of your friends will abandon you, you are so weak now, no one wants to take care of you, you’re never going to get better, this is just how it is always going to be..."

LIES! And on and on he goes. He whispers them to us all day, even while we sleep.

He will stop at nothing to get us to exchange the truth of God for a lie. He fashions these idols with the very lures he knows will snag us. He will stop at nothing to turn our hearts from placing our trust in the One true God, our Lord and Savior. He will lie to us in our heartache and in our pain and despair and say, where is your God now.

But what He doesn’t know is that nothing can come between a Father who is absolutely crazy in love with His children. A Father who comes through and never abandons His children, yet rescues, fights for, advocates for, comforts, cries with, strengthens, breaks down and builds up. A Father who is faithful. Who even though the roads He leads us to walk are most of the time anything but safe and comfortable, that the journey, while it may seem painful at the time, is one marked out for us with the hands of a Loving Savior who says, "You will not have to walk a single step of this alone, I am with you."

They say to win a war you have to know your enemy.

I now know what hell looks like. Far too well.

There are moments of physical pain and anguish, of hopelessness and despair, moments I want nothing more than this all to be over and the pain to go away or to have my old body back that I literally feel what hell must be like.

I come face to face with the Enemy himself and the devil’s playground daily.

Face to face with the Enemy of our Souls who wants nothing more than to turn another heart from the one true God.

But, He is not God. He may be powerful, yet his character and his role is relegated to one function: to deceive.

To steal our joy, kill our hearts and destroy our faith.

To hold tightly to a distorted image of who God is and to get us to misunderstand His ways and His love for us, so we will become enslaved to the captivity our Savior has already freed us from.

But, the good news is, there is so much more to the story.

We find victory is ours. Not just in the end but now, in our present challenges and circumstances.

"Is He safe?"

"No. He is not safe. But He is good."

While I feel I have come face to face with the reality of hell everyday, simultaneously, I come face to face with glimpses of heaven. Face to face with entering into the presence of God in ways that seem to surpass all understanding and to which no words can try to describe.

In touch with the One whose love I can find my refuge and strength in, and One who alone knows the way that I take.

It is as if while I’ve been giving a new way to be human, I’ve also been given new eyes to see.

It is as if that which was once black and white is now in living color.

Vibrant.
Alive.

Exploding with the grandeur and beauty of God.

The little things in a day or a drive home from somewhere that normally I would overlook, but now see and taste as nothing more than the goodness and beauty of God.

He is everywhere.
Bursting forth life in every corner.

Glimpses and moments where I feel the tenderness of His heart melting mine. Holding me when I cry. There with me in those moments of defeat when I try and am unable to do that which was once easy. Rescuing my heart again and again from hardness, cynicism, giving up, getting bitter, losing hope, losing faith, losing love.

Yes, my Redeemer lives.

He is more alive and more present than ever.
He is more real and more powerful than ever.

His Spirit is speaking more clearer and louder than ever.
He is here with me in my moments of sorrow and grief, the same with me in the simple joys and delights a day can bring.

Yes, the Lord is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. My heart and my flesh may fail, but Lord you are my treasure. My great reward.

As the song sings, "and now just to know you more, has become my great reward.

May your kingdom come, may your will be done, all I want is to be Yours…"

-- THE DREAM OF HOPE, REMEMBERING REDEMPTION --

Early in the section entitled The Allure of Redemption, in a chapter called “The Dream of Hope,” Dan Allender shares a story about a couple, John and Maria who lost their four year old daughter to leukemia and their journey of healing, as they received little solace from their church community and were just urged to trust God and know He works all things for good and stop grieving, and in their pain are led to a support group with other parents who had lost children to cancer. They find solace, support and healing outside of the church, then being so moved by their experience, yearn to provide the same safe place for those suffering who also happen to be in the church:

“In an odd way, John and Maria began to taste new hope to be truly human—to feel, to doubt, to struggle, to see, ask, and knock without having to have an immediate answer or much of an answer at all.

They felt alive, raw, and full of sorrow, life, death, and hope in ways they had never known before. They began to see a change in their character and experience freedom to talk to others about their most cherished convictions in a winsome and compassionate way.

Hope focuses not on circumstances, but on Christ’s coming and the redemption of our character.

If my hope is centered on getting a new job or being healed from an illness, then I have given my heart to what is tangible and material. My heart will never become any bigger than that in which or in whom I hope.

But when my hope is centered on the coming redemption, I begin to take on his glory. As I become more and more molded by the far future, the now becomes both more bitter and sweet. Bitter in that it is not enough; sweet in its foretaste of what lies ahead.

There is an ancient language in us, a memory from Eden that resounds in us as we recall our past and read about the promises of our future. Hope is leaning into the unknown, risking our lives for a future that is promised in the Word and tasted a few hors d’oeuvres from our story…

We move into the future not with a map, a plan, or a clear structure, but with the whisper of a story that reminds us we will again see the goodness of God in the land of the living. The whisper is the voice of God’s Spirit reminding us of the cross and our individual moments of exodus.

The whisper is also our own voice that mimics the Spirit by calling our memories to the stage and seeing the theme of redemption time and time again in our lives. God reminds us, we replay the stories, and then we move into the future with the confidence that God is good."

Beautiful. “And I am confident of this, that I will see the goodness of God in the land of the living.”

That He alone is God; He alone is so, so incredibly good. Why is it that the same cup of suffering that is so bitter, is also so sweet? There are some things which even reason knows not of. Yet, we can place our entire being, our entire hope in this love that is unfailing, this love that is our hope, our strength and refuge, leading us through the tempest of the storms to still waters. Yes, God, you my Lord Almighty, are with me, though I cannot see, you know the way that I take and what every step of this road looks like, I will follow You.

“Lord, your love is enough, you will pull me through… I’m holding onto You.

Yes, your love is enough, I will follow you, I will follow You.”

Glimpses of the future, of the larger story God is telling…

Of the finiteness of this season…
That there will be an end. And a new beginning.

That there is hope now.

That my happiness is not contingent on my circumstances. That I can experience the fullness of life and learn what it means to be fully alive, fully human this season.

What does it look like to love? To embrace. To speak. To care. To serve. To fight. To struggle. To overcome. To cling to the One who calls and knows me more intimately than I know myself.

To live in the reality of His coming, His redemption, the redemptive movement of the present moment and the present circumstances, the hope for all that is to come that glorious day when He returns or calls me home, when we are united face to face.