Consider the Lilies

The birds are singing. The flowers are blooming. The sap is running through the trees. The rivers are gushing and caterpillars are turning into butterflies. Ahhh, the signs of life that accompany Spring!

(((((record scratch)))))

Right. So it’s not really Spring. In fact, Old Man Winter seems to be just biding his time, choosing for the moment to hang out a mere hour and a half away in Banff. He seems to have had a tire blowout or a burned out radiator after the rough trip from the Western side of the Canadian Rockies or something and has had to camp out there in that quaint little Mountain village that we love to visit for now. But we know he is on his way. The winds are blowing and the snow clouds are hanging just on the edge of the horizon, taunting us with their pending arrival.

But the Spring time I was referring to is the one in my mind. I have been sleeping well for a few weeks now and I feel like a new person. A well rested person. A well person. It’s lovely. Truly lovely. And for all that I learned by God’s grace through the trials of the last couple of months, I wouldn’t wish to go back “there.” I am however experiencing something new in this Spring time of renewed health. The ever present tendency to forget. The tendency to go back to business as usual.

When I was in the throes of whatever it is I was going through, I would gobble up every good day like it was a rare feast. It was, as far as I knew. I never knew when I was going to feel cruddy again. Didn’t know how many days of feeling good I had before the other shoe dropped… and just how many shoes there might be. Was I dealing with a biped, a quadruped or a millipede? I knew it wasn’t a monopod. But that is neither here nor there.

The point I’m getting at is that I learned to savor every good day. I wasted much less time than I had before being sick. When I was down, I was down for the count and was practically worthless in the way of getting things done. So when I was up, I was really up. I cleaned things, planned things, cooked things, exercised, taught things, read God’s word more, helped move antique pianos (um… that wasn’t a good idea. My shoulder was not happy with me) and thanked God aloud for the good day. I began noticing how little time I was spending on the computer among other things. The experiences of feeling awful and unable to contribute I’d had had made me that much more aware of what I should be doing day in and day out. So my suffering had brought my times of non-suffering into focus. They pushed me to be more purposeful and kept me from idleness. And my suffering made me hungrier for God and for His spirit to be in me in everything I did.

Now that I have been feeling well for a few weeks I have noticed something. In this Spring time of wellness I have begun spending more time in less fruitful ways. I have not felt the immediacy of doing good or seeking Christ that I felt during the “winter.” When I was feeling my need of him — feeling my hunger — I craved being near to Him. I desired Him like the bread of life that He is. I feasted on Him and couldn’t get enough. And I wanted to honor Him in my activities.

How easily we can go back to our ways of ignoring, little by little, that gnawing hunger until we almost feel it no more. Until we once again become numb to Him.  Comfortably numb.  How easy it is for us to fill ourselves with the spiritual equivalent to Cracker Jacks. Almost all Fluff and Corn Syrup. With a peanut or two thrown in to make us feel like we are eating something healthy.

“John 6:32   Jesus said to them, “I tell you the truth, it is not Moses who has given you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. 33For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”

34″Sir,” they said, “from now on give us this bread.

³⁵Then Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty.“

How easy it is for us to accept substitutes for the Bread of Life. The Israelites grumbled and complained in the wilderness at miracle bread that greeted them at the door of their tents every morning. They whined and blubbered about what they had been sent. They wished to fill their bellies with something more substantial. And we, with clucking tongues, wonder how those darn Israelites could have been so ungrateful! But then came Jesus. The Bread of Life. The one who said, “For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him. Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me.” How often do we, like the masses who followed Jesus, look at Christ and take a little to be polite or because we know it’s good for us or because we had just seen him do something amazing and we like the miracles… but then turn up our noses at our Daily Bread and look at God and say, “Please Sir, Can I have some more?!” doing our best Oliver Twist impersonation.

⁴¹At this the Jews began to grumble about him because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.”

It’s so easy for us to chase after things less filling. Less substantive. Less lasting. They had just eaten miraculously multiplied food.  And they wanted more.  They were likely thinking of how it would be nice to never have to go grocery shopping again if there was really a bread that satisfied forever.

How like them I am. How readily I have gone back to spending more time on fruitless pursuits? How quickly have I all but abandoned my prayer time that had become so necessary for me mere weeks ago? How readily I have opened my mouth wide to things that do not satisfy.  How quickly I grumble about my portion just, like the masses that followed him that day after the feeding of the 5,000 grumbled when they found out that the real Bread was standing before them, just like the Israelites, who had been granted a freedom meal and freedom from lives of want and slavery, grumbled when they were given self-replenishing miracle food in the wilderness.

So my prayers have begun to shift recently as I’ve seen this negative trend in me.  I am asking God to keep me hungering and thirsting after Him that I might always feel as full as I did when I daily felt my need of Him in the valley. This is not to say that I shouldn’t spend any time on the computer or playing games or anything like that.  Just that I need to be delighting myself in Him and the things that please Him and this translates to seeking to honor Him with my schedule.

I’m still thanking Him for the experiences I’ve had that caused me to feel the depth of the pangs of my hunger for Him.  I want to feel those hunger pangs even now, though winter looms outside, in the Spring of my health and to regularly feast on Him so that I am filled to overflowing so that I can hunger and thirst for nothing else.

Before you read the rest of this post please push PLAY.

My man has loved U2 since something like 1982.  So this is Christmas and birthdays and anniversary and Valentine’s Day all wrapped into one.

Over the past few months you have followed my story and prayed with me and for me, that God might heal me and give me rest.  There were many nights that I lay awake remembering, admittedly at times with bitterness, His promise, “…for he grants sleep to those he loves.”  I am pleased to tell you that I have been sleeping quite well for the most part for the past several weeks.  The herky-jerkies, as I like to call them, still happen every night but they are much smaller than they were before and they don’t seem to bother me enough to keep me awake for very long.  God has indeed been granting me sleep.  For all the days when I wondered if I would ever sleep peacefully again, I have had at least as many good nights of sleep.  And I feel like a new person.  Not only does my body feel renewed, more importantly my spirit does.

What seems like foolishness to us (for what earthly good can we imagine the torment of sleeplessness to be?) is the wisdom of God.  Many a night I spent literally crying out to God for relief and rest and sometimes screaming out in despair at the “unfairness” of feeling like the only soul in the Western hemisphere who wasn’t asleep (though in reality I knew there were probably a goodly amount of people who were awake for one reason or another.)  But then God woke me up.  Sure enough, my eyes were open.  And puffy.  And getting unsightly purplish bags under them.  But I had not been awake to what He was or could be doing.

Eph. 5:13 “But everything exposed by the light becomes visible, ¹⁴for it is light that makes everything visible. This is why it is said:
“Wake up, O sleeper,
rise from the dead,
and Christ will shine on you.”  ¹⁵Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, ¹⁶making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil. ¹⁷Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord’s will is.”

Starry Night by Vincent van Gogh; itself a picture of good arising from less than ideal circumstances and brightness being revealed at night as it was painted from the view he saw out his asylum window.

He woke me up and Christ shone on me even in my sleep deprived stupor.  I saw the glory of what He had done for me on the cross and I saw the glory of what could be done in me and through me through something as “foolish” and seemingly pointless as sleep deprivation.

When I was with my friend, Catherine, she reminded me of something as we prayed for God to heal me.  She reminded me of the blind man to whom Jesus gave sight.

^{Matthew 8:22}They came to Bethsaida, and some people brought a blind man and begged Jesus to touch him. ²³He took the blind man by the hand and led him outside the village. When he had spit on the man’s eyes and put his hands on him, Jesus asked, “Do you see anything?”

²⁴He looked up and said, “I see people; they look like trees walking around.”

²⁵Once more Jesus put his hands on the man’s eyes. Then his eyes were opened, his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly. ²⁶Jesus sent him home, saying, “Don’t go into the village.”

She reminded me that God does things in steps sometimes and He doesn’t do it that way because He couldn’t do it faster.  Jesus surely didn’t have to go back for a second round to heal this man.  He did it in steps for a reason.  Many who come to Christ don’t have a single “moment” where they can say, “Look, this is the very moment I came to faith and suddenly all was made clear.”  All who come to Christ see very dimly at first, whether they trust Him first as a tiny child or as a grown person.  Regardless of their size, their faith is usually small — a tiny seed.  But even this new sight allows them to behold things that they never before imagined.  They see light and they see shapes and shadows of the truth and they say, “I believe, help me in my unbelief!”  And they begin to see things as they truly are with growing clarity.

And the same can be said for us when we endure trials and can’t see the forest for the trees.  He may not answer us in the affirmative quickly.  Indeed for many the answer will never come in the form that they hope and pray it will but will they also remain deaf to that which God might be saying “Yes?”

I am a Christian and have been for years, since I was a child.  As a child I saw Him as my savior but He looked more like… well, a tree.  I recognized the cross as important but I didn’t, and in my spiritual immaturity couldn’t, internalize all that it meant in every area of life.  The basics of the gift of faith were there but there was definitely room for improvement in my spiritual sight.  As a child, the tree was all I needed to know to trust Him.  And the tree doesn’t shrink in value as you begin to behold Christ more clearly.  It’s a tree that grows with you as you begin to behold it for what it is.  Still, the older I grow, the more I appreciate the tree, but also, the more work He does on my spiritual eyes, the more I see my Savior as a real live person and all that that means.  I continue to need his prescription to see Him better.  I have to return to Jesus over and over and over that I might be given His new and ever clearer prescription for the renewal and improvement of my view of Him.  The prescription might be something as “foolish” or strange as spit… or sleep deprivation or loss or poverty, or anything else that we can’t imagine a good reason for.

As I struggled with waiting on God in the last few months, I knew that others were enduring far worse for far longer than I.  But even in the midst of my sleeplessness when I feared that I might never have a normal night’s sleep again and my eyes actually ached from having been open for too long, Jesus opened the eyes of my heart and showed me the answers to the questions that I was not asking Him.  And He gave me hope for the struggle I was enduring.  He made things bright and clear even in the darkness and depth of the nighttime of my soul.

His healing doesn’t always touch the things we want it to touch when we want it to touch it.  But it addresses the real problems we have that we tend to consider far less real than the temporal things we face from day to day.  We might feel that our brokenness is primarily in the area for which we are seeking His healing.  But He will operate on the source of the brokenness and He will heal us with a healing that will last forever.  We will all go through life with a certain amount of sorrow, suffering and grief.  Some have bigger portions than others.  But I have found that those with the larger portions of suffering and sorrow and grief have an even greater portion of grace and even joy when they are abiding in Christ.

Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

So if you are enduring something that you think may never end, keep returning to the one who is able to make your vision of Him, and all that He is doing and has made, clearer by whatever means He chooses, each time you return to Him in faith.

While God has seen fit to bless me with sleep over the last several weeks he has simultaneously awoken my husband in the night and kept him from getting a full night’s rest for a while now.  I’m not sure why it always seems to work this way but clearly God works on husbands and wives in turns so that one of them always seems to be getting a somewhat better night’s sleep than the other!  Fortunately my husband’s inability to sleep lately hasn’t been accompanied by any strange medical phenomena.  And just as God worked on me in the night, He is working on my man.  This morning The Pastor reminded me of this Psalm that he was reflecting on at quarter to four in the morning.  Psalm 16.

⁶ The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places;
indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance.
⁷I bless the LORD who gives me counsel;
in the night also my heart instructs me.
⁸ I have set the LORD always before me;
because he is at my right hand, I shall not be shaken.

David obviously wrote this in a time of trouble as in v. 1 he asks God to keep him safe and tells Him that he has taken refuge in Him.  He then goes on to remind himself of how good God has been to him and how he knows that he will enjoy security in God both physically and spiritually, and not only security but pleasure in Him both temporally and eternally.  He saw clearly in the darkness, both the darkness of night and the darkness of his life experiences.

The Pastor responds more quickly to God’s leading than I do I guess, which is good.  I want a husband and spiritual leader who is ready and willing to hear what God would teach him through his inner and outward battles.  It took me several weeks to begin thinking spiritually about my circumstances.  While it took me a relatively short time to start asking God to heal me, it took me a good deal longer to understand and accept that He was healing something much more broken by allowing me to suffer, it has taken the pastor a much shorter time to glean wisdom from his sleeplessness.

He wrote this poem this morning when most of us were fast asleep.

Night School

sleep was a given
now I’m living in a time zone
all alone
with just me and God for company

faced with myself
counting time
cracking bones
repeating lines my brothers before me
screamed out in the night

faced with your goodness
thirsty for answers
taking notes
your mysteries make more sense
than the things I know

in the silence of night
I’ve met a brotherhood
More real than my life
Aches more helpful
than comfort
lines carved by a sharp and burning light
tracing a picture of the face that a busy life forgot

you’re the only one
who throws someone in the deep end
to teach him to breathe
you jump in too
singing I will never leave

adrenalin junkies
Sunday school flunkies
meet themselves coming back
at the feet of the King who kneels to rule
at night school

On top of what God is teaching The Pastor about Himself and about himself through this period of time, it seems He is also teaching him just a little bit about how I felt many of those days after nights when I had gotten little to no sleep.  God is very skilled at killing more than one bird with a single stone.  Pray that my husband’s sleep difficulties might grow into tasty fruit and healing leaves.

But have you heard of Smile Pox?

Very frightening disease.

Very deadly.

It’s a vile and vicious virus that can take years from which to recover.

Trust me, you do not want this stuff in your house.

We have thought about quarantining ourselves for the duration of the year.

But then, maybe the world would be better off if we would just all willingly expose ourselves and our kids to it after all…

Yeah.  I think that’s a better idea.

Maybe we should host a Smile Pox party?

Please try to ignore the fact that I am very delinquent in reporting on my “baby’s” fourth birthday.  But it’s amazing to me that it was a whole month ago.  I’m not sure where all the time goes.  If I could find the black hole in the universe where all of the days, months and years that go by without a mother’s permission I think it would take up, like, a lot of space.  Like a really big number of light years of space. But that is what happens when kids are sick for weeks on end.  All of the days and weeks just start melting together and running down the drain like so much rainwater.

I don’t know why but I just knew the night before that my baby was going to wake up sick on his birthday.  Call it a sixth sense or something but I just knew it, even though he had no signs of being sick the night before.  He was the last one to get it though so I knew it was only a matter of time.  He came into my room crying that morning with a blazing fever and a scratchy, “Mommy!  My fwoat hurts!” followed by a seal-like coughing fit.  Poor baby.  He didn’t even remember it was his birthday.

I swooped him up and sang happy birthday to him and got him some Advil.  Then I brought him downstairs and got him set up on the couch with a pillow and blankets, preparing him for a day of watching T.V.

Normally we do birthday presents after dinner and before cake but this child looked too pathetic…

My ovaries made me run upstairs and wrap his presents right then.  We are not very particular about wrapping around here.  It just gets ripped up anyway so we use brown crumpled paper and newspaper if that’s what we have lying around.  It was a very quick wrapping job.

That morning the big brothers, who were also all sick, ran around the house concocting presents for their little brother and making cards.  It was so sweet.  They went around gathering treasures that they thought he would enjoy, putting them all into a decorated shoe box.

Treasures such as a coloring book and a baggy of marbles…

And a used notepad and Pokemon cards…

After he opened these gifts he declared in an unconscionably cute scratchy voice, “This is the best bewthday evah!”

I particularly liked the cards…

He had to stop and refuel a few times…

Then he opened Mom and Dad’s expertly wrapped gifts… this was the one he had asked for…

(And yes, those are pony tail holders holding that gift closed on either end.  Hey, it’s what I had on hand!)

And he also liked this little ornament…

I couldn’t resist him in his cape with that enormous lolly pop.

Later we had pumpkin bars for his birthday cake.

It turned out to be a very sweet little birthday.  I still can’t believe my “baby” is four!  I’m going to go looking for that black hole.

As you can see, I have changed my blog name and look again. What can I say? Internet branding is somewhat wasted on me. I have managed to stick with “Life is Like a Lunchbox” for what? Three years now? Something like that anyway. It was a cute blog name and catchy but it doesn’t really define me and the chaotic crazy contents of a lunchbox no longer thrill me. I realize this means you also might have to change the title in the link on your blog if you happen to have one. I’m sorry about that. But if you don’t change it, I don’t mind. If you know me, you know that I like change. When I was little I used to move my bedroom furniture around on a whim all by myself. I would have had all of it upside down on the ceiling if I could have. I think that is the only configuration I never did use in my child-like bedroom design planning. My point is that I like changing my header. But I think this will definitely (never say never) probably, most likely, in all certainty be the last time I change my blog name. I only changed it once before actually so in almost four years I think that’s pretty good! In that space of time I’ve changed houses, underwear, cars, wardrobes, dogs and religions. No, just kidding on that last part.

And that’s really what the change is about. We are changing. Ever changing. And that is God’s grace! We change in bad ways of course… always itching for newness. But He is also changing us “from glory to glory.” And maybe that itching for newness is something good that He put into us. After all something as basic as the seasons exist in part, not only that life might continually be in a state of growth, but also in varying states of renewal whether it’s in the dying of autumn and winter to the budding and blooming of Spring and Summer. And we are called to put off the “old” and on with the “new.” Like every good thing that He has made there is the potential for us to pervert it and turn it into something that we worship and not something through which we worship and enjoy our creator. So change and newness are good. My favorite quote of Jesus is in Revelation when He said, “Behold, I am making all things new!”

So don’t give me too hard a time for changing things up on you.  Change is good.  Newness is good.  Life is good.  God is good.  Etc.

So I decided to go with the lilies for several reasons.  One of my greatest temptations is to worry and to fret and to generally be a control freak.  But Jesus has called me to a much freer and much more abundant life than the small life of worry.  He has said to us,

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat; or about your body, what you will wear. Life is more than food, and the body more than clothes. Consider the ravens: They do not sow or reap, they have no storeroom or barn; yet God feeds them. And how much more valuable you are than birds! Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life? Since you cannot do this very little thing, why do you worry about the rest?

“Consider how the lilies grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you, not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today, and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, how much more will he clothe you, O you of little faith! And do not set your heart on what you will eat or drink; do not worry about it. For the pagan world runs after all such things, and your Father knows that you need them. But seek his kingdom, and these things will be given to you as well.

“Do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father has been pleased to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions and give to the poor. Provide purses for yourselves that will not wear out, a treasure in heaven that will not be exhausted, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

He speaks so tenderly to us, His little flock, precious and dearly beloved.  He’s given us this little thing called The Kingdom.  And we toil and spin and turn in circles over our needs, wants and desires and we make them into items of worship when all the lilies is bloom where they are planted and look up into the heavens reminding us from whence all of our needs are fulfilled in Christ.

I also chose lilies because I love lilies.  I particularly love water lilies.  I took the picture in my header and converted it using fancy Photoshop editing tools to turn it into a watercolor-like image.  So you see, the new theme works better in so many ways.  I don’t take many pictures of lunchboxes.  But lilies?  I will never tire of taking pictures of lilies or seeing lilies in my header and I will never tire of being reminded how little a lily does to make itself so beautiful and how much more loved I am than the lilies.

As my husband reminded me today in his sermon, using the analogy of Gollum in The Lord of the Rings, I can let go of all the things in this life that I call “My Precious” (my health, my reputation, my things, my loved ones and having things go my way) and lay hold of the one who calls me beloved.  The Father sent His Precious into the world and put His Precious on the cross so that I might lay down what I called Precious and instead cling to Him and call Him My Precious.  My Precious Jesus.

I’m so thankful He is changing me.  Thanks for letting me share my experience of those changes.  And thanks for not being mad at me for changing up my blog.  And thank you God that you never change!

Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.

A Dad, four boys and two dogs in a wrastlin’ match…

It ain’t purty folks. It really ain’t purty.

I just wanted to update you all and thank you for praying!! This wave of the herky-jerkies is much less severe than the last one and I am learning how to cope with them and fall asleep in spite of them! I am doing some deep breathing techniques as I fall asleep and whenever a jerk comes and I have been able to fall asleep quickly every night! AND better still is that I am down to 1/4 of a sleeping pill! I am so encouraged and so thankful for all of the prayers that have been said on my behalf.

I feel well! While the jerks are still there I am learning how to manage and lessen my autonomic response to them and that alone has encouraged me so much. I can see plenty of blue peeking through the clouds!

Thank you all for your prayers and thoughts and encouragements! It has meant so much to me to know that so many people are praying.

I forgot my camera when we went to our friends’ house to go trick-or-treating tonight.  But The Pastor had his iPhone which did the trick.  But he didn’t get many shots.

This was the highlight though.