.: sacred dance of grief and joy {entry 1}

What suffering, hardship and grief has taught me about contentment and joy. 

Nearly four years ago to the date, I was asked to share a part of my journey with my chronic illness at church during a series on joy. This was in the first year of my illness and the beginning of discovering a theme throughout the time I have been sick, realizing this was a season marked by something one of my favorite authors calls the "sacred dance of grief and joy."

I find it interesting that although I wrote these words four years ago, there are so many lessons and themes that were happening in my life then, near the beginning of a similar season of grief, that resonate with many of the things I am walking through now. 

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Written and shared with The Rock, Nov. 13, 2010:

"You know, to be completely honest with you guys... when Hoops and John asked if I could share tonight, a few weeks ago... I couldn't quite put my finger on all of why, but something just wasn't sitting with me well. I realized part of me felt uneasy because like Hoops said last week, this word, "joy," is difficult to definite and can be easily misunderstood.

But, I think most of my resistance came from the fact that for most of my life, through various experiences in the past, I felt that being a Christian meant I had to be happy all the time... and that if I wanted to be accepted, I had to wear a mask. 

In all of that I learned that it wasn't okay for me to not be okay... and I always had to have this "joy" I would always hear about, or be happy.

But, like me, many of you have probably also found that we can't live like that for very long... because life just isn't like that all the time. I mean, none of us here tonight are immune to the reality that sometimes, life is just hard.

::

I find the "illusion of control" I used to operate within simply laughable.

If there is anything that the unpredictability and all that has come with this illness has done in my life, is bring me to a place where daily I am reminded how little I am in control. For that alone, I can truly say, AMEN.

Many times, I've been brought to this place where I have no choice, even though I fight it some days, but to make a choice to trust and rely upon my God. The God who is truly with us in this, who is present and active in these circumstances even when it doesn't always feel like it.

This journey has led me to consider and wrestle with the question, what does it mean for me to be fully alive in this season? What does it really look like for me to have joy, to find hope, peace each day? To live my life when it feels like so much has been taken away? To rejoice in the midst of suffering, to grieve when the time to grieve, laugh when the time to laugh?

God, what does it really, as Matt Rogers says in his book, When Answers Aren't Enough, for me to "experience you as a God who is GOOD... even when life ISN'T?"

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I remember a turning point when this became most real.

It was about mid-summer (2010), I had started the day, sitting on our porch, drinking my morning tea (pretty typical, if you've been over to our place and joined me on the porch, my new thing), and you know, I as watching people go by, to and fro, to work or whatever they had going on.

Then all of a sudden, a wave of emotion hit me. I felt like I was viewing life from the outside. Like there was this WORLD out there I was once a part of but now felt I couldn't enter...

I was sitting in this chair, already fatigued even though it was just two hours into my day, and I remember thinking, "I'm YOUNG, I'm 26 years old for crying out loud, isn't this what's supposed to be happening at the end of my life, like when I'm 90??"

And in that moment, I told God,  

"You know this just isn't fair. It's not fair, God. 

Lord I know that you love me, I known that I am seen and known by You and that you care for me deeply... but I cannot reconcile, for the life of me, these two images... 

My heartfelt view of You, of a God whom I have experienced intimately all these years as a Father who I KNOW loves me... with all that is going on in my head... trying to wrap my mind around how that same God would allow me to experience so much pain...

I need to know in my heart, how can I truly experience You as good in the midst of this, because right now, to be honest, it doesn't feel like I can. Lord, help me, to understand. 

Because there is obviously so much more to who you are that I do NOT understand...

::

And I sat there in that place for a while. And I waited. I realized in those moments that for quite a while now I had been feeling abandoned.

You know, some days it is easy for me to accept all that has come with this new season, but other days, it is a hard pill to swallow.

On this particular day, everything within me was fighting it. I wanted it all to be over. I wanted parts of my old life back and I just wanted a day without pain. I realized I was grieving and that I missed being able to do many things I loved doing.

But man, is that hard to admit. I struggle sometimes to feel like it is immature or a sign of a lack of trust in God, if I admit that there are things I miss or that I have to grieve how different things are now.

But the reality is, God has not been pushing me away from that place, but inviting me to grieve.

Showing me it's okay for me to feel sad sometimes. Angry. Frustrated. Confused with God. To find that all He wants me to be is real, and find that I am received.

In those moments out there on the porch, before I could continue processing suddenly something stopped me dead in my tracks. I felt like I heard these words so loud and clear, it nearly made me jump, they seemed nearly audible, when I heard:

"To not confuse God with life."

I just sat there dumbfound. "Okaaaay," I'm thinking to myself, "What does THAT mean?"

And then I heard those words again, slower this time, "do not confuse God... with life..."

Slowly it all started coming back to me. I remembered reading those words a few weeks earlier in Philip Yancey's book, Disappointment with God, where he shares what a man he calls a "modern-day Job," found while going through a series of trials:

 I learned first not to confuse God with life," He said.

 "We tend to think that life should be fair because God is fair. But God is not life. And if I confuse God with the physical realities of life--by expecting constant good health, for example--then I set myself up for a crushing disappointment."

- Disappointment with God, Philip Yancey

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These words brought freedom. As I've been pondering them the last few months, it is as if these words slowly began to free my heart and release me to view this differently.

 I began learning that God's goodness reaches far deeper than pleasure or pain, but that it embraces them both.

And slowly, instead of anger, I began to take joy in this God who was with me and just as broken to see one of His children hurting. 

A God that I have found, as Matt Rogers says, "laughs when we laugh and cries when we weep." A God who I heard in those moments actually agreeing with me and saying, "You're right... no, it is not fair." It was in that moment that I remember asking, "Okay, so God, show me how to live my life with this."

Suddenly, all that mattered in that moment was hearing Him tell me, 

 "Do not be afraid, for I am with you. There is not a single step of this you will have to walk alone."

And so He began to show me ways along with the help of one of our doctors, ways to manage the pain and the symptoms so I could be out of the house even if just for a couple hours a day.

I started to be grateful for those times out on the porch where I could just sit and be still with God and know that that was enough. It still amazes me that in nearly nine months of being mostly at home, I've never been bored a single day in this, which if you had told me that nine months ago, I would've told you were CRAZY, because I would've told you that that was no possible, that surely I would've gone crazy by now, as I was normally out and about all the time and hardly ever home.

But you know, I think even that is totally God's grace. I've found I've been given this gift of time in this season. More time to love and be loved. More time and more ways to share life and share His love with others, and receive His love from others as well.

 I feel like the Lord has also opened my eyes to the reality that life is fragile and unpredictable, yet that each day we're given, and life itself, is truly a gift.

My husband, Ben, has been nothing but a gift to me as well in all of this, I am so grateful to have him in my life. It blows me away that there has never been a time where he has made me feel like a burden.

He has joyfully served me in this... as Christ does... and has reflected the heart of God to me so many times and constantly reminds me that how he (Ben) feels about me or that his love for me has not changed in all of this, nor has my identity or worth. God has used this trial to strengthen and deepen our bond as a team as well as our love for one another and for God.

We have both never been more broken or needed God more. We've been reminded that this race is a marathon, not a sprint. As we continue to ask God for just enough grace and just enough strength each day to endure and fight these battles one day at a time.

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But this fight for joy is a constant, raging battle. Our situations may not be the same, but as many of you know from the things you are also facing, this fight is not easy, or something I feel I will ever really "master" or figure out.

But maybe that isn't the goal anyway.

Maybe living within the reality of the tensions between doubt and faith, turmoil and peace, hope and despair, joy and sorrow, and finding that those things can sometimes, and often do, co-exist.

And maybe then, embracing God in the MIDST of those tensions is more of what is being asked of me.

Yet I have found this fight is worth it... one that has reminded me that it's okay to be weak. That I don't have to be the strong one anymore. That I am weak. It is He who is strong.

Even in that weakness, there is a joy, a freedom.

I've found in those moments of pouring out my heart to God like I shared from my porch, and even wrestling with Him again in the last couple days, that through it all, after working through all the emotions and then allowing Him to speak truth to my soul, God has allowed me to experience a peace that truly does guard our hearts and minds... a peace that turns into hope. And a hope that produces joy.

A joy emerging from the sheer delight of simply being His child. Where that alone, our identity and belonging in Him, is enough.

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I think this is what joy looks like. At least what it has come to look like for me right now. That before all my questions are ever answered, I can rest in knowing that God is going to take care of me... no matter what. 

That I can rest, knowing He is holding me close and He will never abandon me. That He alone is my rock and my salvation. That who He is and who I am has not changed. That I can rest, in the security and love of a God, of a Father, who has been so good to me in this... and met me in ways I cannot begin to explain.

Joy that was once lost, can be found. A sense of joy that is based upon God rather than something we can muster up on our own. A joy that is deeper than our feelings and not dependent upon our circumstances; one that is rooted in Him and His promises, and in His love that never fails.

As Dan Allender says in The Healing Path, "Joy is not an absence of struggle or sorrow, but the taste of the presence of God as he surprises us with his gracious love, whatever our circumstances."

- Testimony shared with The Rock, Nov. 13, 2010
:: Photo by Pam Nakamura

.: it is still winter

I loved today's talk at church.

(Not the talk of this original sermon series art used above, this photo just represents what the majority of this post is about there was no way I could not use it.)

But alas, back to today's message. It was on God's intended purposes for marriage and how many of those are lost today, but the parts that struck us the most was when they talked about seasons of marriage, going through spring, summer, fall, and winter and what each of those can represent, occur in the lives of our marriages.

I was finally given words to this thing I have been feeling and trying to articulate and express ever since my most recent discharge from the hospital as few weeks ago due to a recent and unexpected setback with my health.

I have been trying to find words to describe the grief, describe the joy, describe the heaviness, describe the moments where things have felt lighter, describe the deep sadness, describe the sense of heartache and loss that at times has been overpowering, describe the sense of whatever it is that we have been walking through this last month and six days. 

An induction into a new season of grief within a current, ongoing season of grief. 

Finally, today, words were given to give voice to that which has been eating me alive.

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For the last four and a half years, we've been in winter.

Let me back up, for the second half of today's talk on marriage, Kay Warren joined Rick on stage as they went through four different seasons no marriage will be a stranger to.

Real briefly, as they explained them in the overview:

SPRINGTIME... represents those seasons of busy-ness, where you're running non-stop, the two of you seeing each other is more like ships passing in the night, where it feels like life can't slow down.

SUMMER... as they described, tends to be short in our household... "summer is when things are going well, summer is represented in those seasons where it's easy, it's great, everything is going well, etc."

FALL... is when things change. It's kinda messy, just like the leaves changing and falling to the ground, fall represents those seasons in your marriage when things are changing and it's about how will you adjust or not adjust to those changes.

WINTER... and then winter comes. seasons of winter in your marriage are times of bleak sadness, times of deep loss, we are still in winter, Kay says, and we don't know how long it will last (referencing the loss of their son, Matthew).

::

Just hearing about seasons today did something to my heart I can't even articulate.

What I found funny was that for whatever reason, as I've been wrestling with trying to write about and articulate the grief and this new season and the sheer just emotional exhaustion I have felt comparable to how I was even just a month and a half ago or two months ago before this most recent setback. 

For whatever reason yesterday, after running into a photo from our honeymoon four years ago in Colorado on Friday that I wouldn't get out of my mind, something within me had me search for the rest of them. The rest of a set of pictures I hadn't looked at or wanted to re-visit in years.

There is something about my honeymoon pictures that now is comforting. 

Newly, strangely, oddly comforting as I haven't been able to look, let alone post them for nearly four years.

Some of that has been I just hadn't thought about it or had time, was already backlogged on a million other pictures.

But the other part of it are all the emotions that come up whenever we think about our honeymoon and that period of time, a time that felt like that of a cruel joke, I felt better than I had since I first got sick that March 2010 (this was June 2010), on my wedding day by some sheer miracle and then that continued into our honeymoon.

Maybe this really IS over, let ourselves believe, it almost felt too good to be true. 

My body and my capacity seemed it was slowly being restored. Maybe this really would be a fresh start and beginning of a new season for us not only as newlyweds, but two souls already weary from a medical journey they did not choose.

Only for us to come back from our honeymoon and without so much of a moment's notice, find the tentacles of this disease come reaching for us before our car even hit the parking lot. Grief, hardship, and another seemly unending chapter of this season with this dreadful disease was just beginning. Just when we'd thought maybe we were at the end.

When I look back at our honeymoon, much like how I view other periods of our lives the last four and a half years where we've been provided moments of relief, moments that no matter how long or how short or whatever form they would come, this one specifically being our week-long honeymoon, they were moments of respite and relief we so desperately needed. 

Those moments and pockets of relief, like someone coming and puncturing tiny holes in a balloon;

letting out some of the air and we feel like ahhh, we can breathe a little, we can breathe right now...

Similar moments, those moments, beginning with this picture, the start of a new season of winter in our lives, yet one of the moments of summer and spring in the midst of this new current winter.

Then just the next day, another moment of respite at our first Mizzou Alumni event here in California.

While we are living in winter, He alone is the One who provides for us light in this present, seemingly unending darkness, streams of life and living water in the desert, and hope. Hope, in the midst of desolation and despair. 

He provides, like manna from heaven and streams breaking forth in the desert, times of relief.

We all need relief. 

Those pictures were some of those moments. This picture taken in the midst of the beginning of our new season of winter within our winter, were precious moments above the ground and the trenches of the reality of life here in the wilderness and the desert, moments were time seemed to stand still, and for just those moments, everything was okay, everything was at peace, it was well.

I think it's anything but ironic the level of deep joy we were experiencing in this photo and finally being together after a week apart through some of our worst nightmares.

This was when grief, sadness, hardship, and came into our lives in the midst of our already winter, bringing a storm with a strength that left us literally flat on our backs, completely knocked off our feet and overwhelmed by its intensity, a winter storm that came with the strength and power of the current winter we'd already learned to live in.

Moving to California has been part of our respite.

Just like the temperatures here make for a mild "winter," it's still winter in that our problems and my illness and the myriads of ways this still affects our lives, etc have not gone away, but we've been provided a bit of relief from the bitterness of the cold.

I don't mean this literally, but figuratively, its only coincidence that temperature-wise this is true as well.

::

STILL IN THE DESERT | I remember numerous times feeling I thought we were finally, FINALLY, entering the promise land, only to find, we are still, we still have miles, years stretching before us of wandering through the wilderness of the desert.

But we have been here once before.

It's like circling around a trail, thinking you're getting back to where you began, meaning you were done and you'd now get to go home or move on to the next thing and then instead of coming up again with the entrance, you come across a clearing that is cloaked in total, utter darkness, it's ten times colder here than it was in some of the darkest coldest nights you recall in the wilderness.

 And worst of all, the trail and path that you thought you were coming in close on that you thought was near the beginning and thus your exit, you are met with a sign that says "Now entering Death Valley," temperatures, living conditions: bleak, and instead of being close to the finish, you find you have hundreds, thousands more miles to go.

Yet all you know and see is how much this is like the beginning, as you step into that forest once again, entirely blinded and stunned by the harshness of the winds and the bitter cold cutting through the last bit of exposed skin on your face not wrapped up in etc etc

Knowing you've been that place before, yet things are only just beginning.

A week in right. travel separate paths then finally reunited again, it was still winter, it was still scary, we were still shook up, but the events of the last week have broken, striped and changed us. being united again felt like Christmas.

It didn't matter the temperature, it didn't matter the circumstances or the nightmares of the last week we'd both been through.

All that mattered is that finally, we were together.

And we weren't alone.
And sometimes that is all you need.

That night was a gift of springtime and summer.
As are times we go to the beach.
As are times the nice weather offers a bit of relief, one less thing to worry about, have to suffer, deal with, he's taken out the variable of weather...

But, it is still, winter.

Our honeymoon was what we hoped, the beginning of a new season with my health.

I felt tricked, I felt amazing on my wedding day, on my honeymoon, slowly beginning to let our earned skepticism guard down, maybe, just maybe what the doctors were saying this time was true. maybe this thing really IS over and just like the most recent doctor had said, this should clear up in 6-8 weeks.

Only to be met with this evil monster, grief, and all its companions on our doorstep the minute we came back.

Our dating period seems like a dream.
Yet I'm so glad we had that.

I'm so glad we had a taste of life in the context of our relationship and marriage, where things aren't always as hard as they are now, as they've been the last four and a half years living with chronic illness in our home. 

Today as Kay was praying, my eyes filled with tears as i was thinking of the joy and things we experienced in our short dating period that were only supposed to continue into our engagement and our first few years of marriage, yet a bliss and a newness and a spirit of celebrating, a season of summer and spring, a season of rejoicing that we got to experience amidst the hardship and grief but never without it.

Today my heart was reminded of the ways He's done this in the past and made me start a new prayer and resolve to see how He will, in this, in the context of the last four and a half years, begin/continue to restore what the locusts have eaten.

::

We longed to be like "normal" couples.

To get to experience the feeling of being newlyweds, while our experience was catapulted to that of an elderly couple, as many of our counselors and mentors and physicians would echo, with me being completely unable to hardly move, let alone be out of the house for more than 15-30 minutes at a time, unable to be on my feet longer than 10 minutes without getting dizzy, unable to drive.

Or go for a walk, like a normal couple, but my body couldn't make it down the street, let alone back.

Instead of newlyweds, we were living the lives of an elderly couple where one of the spouses is now caretaker.

Going through as my counselor would tell me and help me process repeatedly, how many of the things we were dealing with and going through were things that married couples typically experience towards the END of their marriages, yet here we were, having to deal with it in the beginning and in the context of a new marriage.

Just like this image of a tree for Saddleback's "50 Days of Transformation" series from the beginning of the year, while it has still been winter, there have been periods, moments, days, afternoons, sometimes weeks of summer/spring as depicted by the half of the tree to the right. Yet, notice how it is the same, not a different tree.

Just the tree in a different season or aspect within a particular season.
And somehow just seeing and hearing about this today at church, this reality of seasons that have taken on new meaning for us in some of the first and most formative years of our marriage, today, hearing about these seasons especially from those experiencing a winter of their own, reminded me that nothing is wasted, these times and seasons, as difficult as they are to live and walk and survive through as I find myself feeling now, these seasons never are intended to last forever.

We are just passing through.

::

The reality is we both know, believe it or not as this last setback was and is still hard to believe, it is still winter.

Yet, ever since listening to the message and running into photos from some of those different seasons we've been in , everything from our honeymoon to our moving out to California, my heart was ignited with a hope, a hope in this present darkness that nothing in this world can ever take away.

My mind was soon flooded with images and hopes and dreams and desires,

of how my God will restore what the locusts have eaten, of how He plans to continue to use and redeem the pain, of all He has done and will continue to do,

this God, who has anything but forsaken us, nor forsaken me.
this God who enters into every single season and hardship and joy and pain,
who is present, who is faithful.

::

For whatever reason, for the first time just looking and posting pics from my honeymoon has been healing for me. I no longer feel the intense feelings of hurt, lament, loss, and betrayal those images and memories would once bring. Anger, hurt, loss, lament, feeling completely and utterly betrayed by the One who allowed us to experience such respite, only to come home from our honeymoon feeling tricked, tired, but ready for a new stage in my battle with chronic illness, where I could just start to get better on my own.

Yet, now I look at them and there is a much different set of lens at which they're being filtered and processed through. 

I no longer feel hurt, betrayal, or disappointment from God who I felt was leading us in another direction, I see the very hand and presence and faithfulness of God, of a God who is present in our suffering and in our weakness, of a God who never ever abandons His children, no matter how hard the winter gets.

A God who does more than merely sympathize and emphasize, but who enters into our pain. In a way more real than anything on this earth we have ever experienced nor imagined, this God who is coming, this God who has come to restore, reclaim, and redeem life.

Life as it was intended to be, not life as we know it.
A God who is coming back to reclaim Eden.

This God who is truly a God who "laughs when we laugh, and cries when we weep."

One who does anything but sit idly by when His children, His beloved are suffering, this God who takes us by the hand and gently whispers time and time and time again to our hurting, feeble, and broken souls,

"I will carry you."
Through and in every season.