Healed and Home

Since childhood, I have prayed for my mother to be healed of diabetes. As a young child, I simply prayed that the diabetes would go away. As I grew physically and spiritually, my prayers became focused on staving off the ravages of this cruel disease: "please don't let her suffer kidney failure," "please give her strength to endure the dialysis," "please let her circulation stay strong so that limbs don't have to be removed." The prayers were all there - sometimes wrapped in one encompassing prayer: "Take care of Mother."

In God's perfect timing, he knew when it was time to answer the ultimate prayer of healing. He answered that prayer on Sunday, April 20. God always answers prayer, but perhaps not in the way that we might envision. My mother did suffer kidney failure, but not until she was 61 years old, after living with diabetes for 41 years. And the dialysis was terribly hard on her body and heart, but she did it for 10 years - a long time for a dialysis patient. And her circulation failed in the extremities of her body, and she had to have limbs removed...three surgeries. No, my prayers were not answered the way the I imagined, but God gave us something so much deeper and wider than granting my requests for an easy life. Her body was worn out and I know that she was ready to go, but yet she never complained. She never questioned or wavered in her faith. Sitting confined to the wheelchair, she would still say, "God has been so good to me." And she meant it. We have seen a living example of rock solid trust in God that was lived out despite great pain and suffering. Mother died at home, literally in the arms of my father. She slipped out of this world - shedding the broken and worn out body that had stayed so strong for 71 years. She left my father's arms and with new legs walked into the arms of her heavenly Father. I like to think that she ran - on legs that are strong and eternal. Our dear friend Calvin Miller said during her eulogy: "I bet Betty is dancing and saying, 'if only you could see me now.'" I know that she is.

I could ask a thousand questions of God - not the least of which is, "why didn't my mother get the opportunity to enjoy a healthy body for her entire life?" "Why did God give her a body that would struggle to make it to 71 years?" - which doesn't really seem very old after all. "Why?" But those questions really have no answers. Life is full of the unanswerable. If I open my eyes and begin to look at this world, the "why" questions are endless. God walks where I am walking. He knows the pain of death. He knows the sorrow of loss. He did not spare himself from it, so I must believe that there is something beautiful and redeeming about pain and suffering. I don't understand it. In fact, most of it is a mystery. But my mother - who is dancing on two strong legs, understands it completely.

Changes

In the next few days, I will have my new website up and running, complete with a blog. I am unsure whether this blog will continue and be a link from the website, or whether I will create a new blog for the website. For me, the jury is still out on blogging. It can become a tremendously self-serving thing - and can create the illusion that you are connecting with people when in fact it would be easier to connect by email or, heaven forbid, face to face contact. When I count up the time that I spend in front of this screen as opposed to getting out and being with people, I begin to realize the danger of the computer. I'm a marginal Facebook user. I mostly use it to connect with college friends I haven't seen in twenty years, and friends who live far away. So I discipline myself not to hang out on it when I could be out doing some much more productive. Blogging often feels the same way. I've heard plenty of anti-blog people give very good arguments against them, and I am almost convinced. The problem is, in my blogroll I have blogs listed that I read. Most of my blogroll friends are like me, and only blog about once a week, but I love to read their once-a-week posts, and I would be sad if they cut me off from their lives and dumped their blogs. So I'll keep a blog in some form, perhaps without the comments because I really hate that part of blogging. As a writer, It's sort of like asking for a critique of your writing every time you publish something - with the negative critique simply being the lovely little "0 comment" flashing at the bottom of your post for four straight days. Actually it's worse because you're never really certain if someone has read it and just didn't get it or like it - or if no one has read it at all. Anyway, most of that sounds like whining, and this post is starting to sound like a rambling blogger who has nothing more to do than sit at her computer and blab to no one in particular.
So - I'll take my uncertainty about blogging and keep turning it around in my mind for a while. Care to comment?

Books in Queue

These days, I'm reading two books at once. I've always had a real aversion to this. Erin does it, only it's usually three or four books at a time. I'm far too linear, and have always been afraid that I would confuse the contents of one book with another - merging a murder mystery with a how-to book...not good. But I have about 15 books stacked up, waiting on the "to read" shelf and so I've been forced to double up, since four of them are books I must read for a project. I'm interested in them, but I'm trying to balance out each of the two books I'm reading at once. For instance, I've been reading a book called "A Crime So Monstrous: Face to Face With Modern Day Slavery" by Benjamin Skinner, and along with it "Prayer: Does it Really Matter?" by Philip Yancey. This seems to be a balanced combination, although I find myself wondering if praying about the fact that there are 27 million slaves worldwide - a large percentage of them children -is nothing more than an exercise in futility. Yet, as Yancey says in this book, "What is the point of prayer if not to express our heart's desire, especially when it matches we know to be God's will on earth? Who knows what will happen when we pray what we know God desires?" So as I read about slavery in Haiti, Africa, Eastern Europe, India, and yes, the United States, I feel as if I should do something....prayer may seem futile, but it IS something. The fusion of these two books seems to be the right chemistry to take me out of my small little world.

I finished the book about slavery several nights ago, and am pages away from finishing Philip Yancey's book. I highly recommend both of these books. So what's in queue? Not sure yet. I'm still looking for the right chemistry between two books on my "to read" shelf. Stay tuned.

A Gift

Yesterday was one of those "ugh" days. It was rainy and messy, and we had kid issues and I had articles that just wouldn't write themselves. By the time the afternoon rolled around and the teenagers got home, I was ready for bed. About 5:30 p.m. someone rang the doorbell. A man was standing on the porch holding this octagonal stained glass window. I was not in the mood for buying anything so I tried to look pleasant when I opened the door. He introduced himself as Noel, and said that he lived in the neighborhood. I kept smiling, waiting for the sales pitch. Noel said he had driven by our house quite a bit (we live on a main drag) and had noticed our octagonal window in the front. I should mention that I never liked that octagonal window, and had thought several times lately that it needed a round stained glass in it. But just as I had decided that, I had also taken a vow of House Decor Poverty. In my efforts to curb the ugly monster of consumerism, I have looked around my house and decided that I have "enough." My walls are aren't blank, we have furniture to sit on and coverings over our windows and full bookshelves. So I decided not to pursue round stained glass. But then here was Noel standing on my front porch, and I was sure he was going to give me a sales pitch that I needed to buy this perfect octagonal stained glass he held in his hand. But that's not what he said. He told me he had purchased this stained glass in Branson, but recently one of his parishioners had given him a stained glass that he had hung in place of this one. "So I thought I would offer it to you." He said, smiling. I'm sorry to tell you what my response was:

"How much?" I asked.

He looked puzzled and held it out to me. "I don't want you to pay me for it. You can have it...if you want it." Honestly, I didn't know how to respond. I was waiting for the catch. But he just stood there holding out the stained glass to me and smiling. I took it.

Noel is the former rector at a local Episcopal church not far from our house. Now I don't know if rectors in Episcopalian churches regularly hear from God any more than pastors in Methodist churches. But whether he knows it or not, Reverend Noel listened to God. Every day we have choices to make. We can make the easy choice and put the stained glass in the Goodwill donation box, or the riskier choice of noticing that someone else might have a place for it, and show up at their doorstep out of the blue on a rainy Monday afternoon. If it were me, I think that piece of stained glass would probably be sitting in my Goodwill donation box. I didn't really NEED the stained glass, but I kind of needed a little boost - a gift to remind me that God is near, and loving us through the hearts and hands of other people. I don't have that many serendipitous occurrences in my life, at least not ones that I notice. But God gave me one yesterday and reminded me how something so simple can mean so much. God provides us with all that we need. "Don't fret", Jesus says in the gospel of Matthew, "God knows what you need and he'll provide it for you." That's my paraphrase. So God provided a little something yesterday: a little stained glass and gentle reminder to be a blessing for someone else...even if it's a tad risky.

Thank you Reverend Noel. I'm so grateful that you listened.