The Game, Part 1

“...in his beloved children, our Father works a most kind good through our most grievous losses...In the testing ground of evils, your faith becomes deep and real, and your love becomes purposeful and wise.” David Powlison

The Game

Part 1 of 3

The late morning Bakersfield sun is so hot you can smell it. Air, heavy with its heat, is impossible to breathe and feels like something one has to bite, chew and swallow to make passage through.

She hangs on the picket fence in her usual place under the fig tree. The five year old loves this spot for she can see before being seen while she is looking and waiting. Some days she has to wait a long time and so tires of her game and goes away. Other days, like today, it happens quickly but only, it seems, if she is very, very quiet. A man is coming. As he follows the dirt path hugging the canal, he doesn’t know that he is moving closer to her secret hiding place. Then, just at that spot where the path turns the man in her direction, the five year old stops looking and begins watching.

It‘s the face that she watches. It mustn’t look sad or angry and so few qualify. But this one does. Excited, she crouches low for safety and with palms sweaty, squeezes the pickets extra tight. “Hi!” she calls out.

Without fail the man jumps for she is so hard to see under that fig tree. Most of them become angry or act like they didn’t hear her so she knows they weren’t nice after all and she has been tricked again. But not all of them. Not all. This one looks in her direction and raising his hand to shade his eyes, smiles and says “Hi!” back. Heart racing with dreams and possibilities, she climbs onto the bottom slat of the picket fence, stretches as tall as her five year old legs will allow and asks, “Are you my daddy?”

My Guest Post at Peace for the Journey

Dear Friends,

Elaine Olsen has generously invited me to write a guest post for her blog, Peace for the Journey. Please find my story, "The Goody Bag," there under her 2010 Archives.

Rich in Biblical teaching and helpful applications, Elaine's love of God's Word along with her creative writing style have made her blogsite a favorite of many.

I am working on my next post for this site and sure do hope to have it up by this weekend! Thank you for reading along with me when you can. I'm deeply grateful.

Keep Shining

It was a gift from the heart and the hand of Elizabeth Claire, my granddaughter. She was eight years old when she made it. Intended to bring me pleasure, it also evokes joy. A fragile treasure made of child-dreamed pearls, it’s iridescence is beginning to wear. So I’m selective when I wear it and careful how I store it.

“Keep Shining.” I would have thought a little girl would have wanted to leave a more familiar message like “keep smiling.” But she wanted more. She wanted shine. And how I love that. I love it because it prompts me to think that while I can always paint a smile on my face when needed, shine comes from within.

Shine comes from enduring. It comes from refining. It comes at great cost but always with promise. It whispers of glory traded for pain that will one day be known as light and fleeting when understood through the mind and the heart of God.

So I wear my little bracelet when receiving chemotherapy or visiting Oncology. It’s the only piece of jewelry I own that can go with me through the myriad scanning machines that search for cruel and errant cells. I continually read it’s message and take comfort in the knowledge that what is seen doesn’t last while what is not seen is eternal and I remember the words of C.S. Lewis

“This is what mortals misunderstand. They say of some temporal suffering, ‘No future bliss can make up for it,’ not knowing that Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into glory.”

The Pacman

"Honey, honey, hush. Hush! Nothing is there," my mother said. "Trust me, I'll show you, monsters don't live under your bed."

Most of the women were strangers to me and, as is the way of polite company, were not what they first appeared to be. It was a writing seminar so we wrote. The quiet room was the color of french vanilla. Outside a lilac covered patio served as a foyer to the gardens. While I couldn't see the waterfall from where I was sitting, its splashing sweet song hinted of peace, of cool water on sun burned skin. But it was peace hinted, not embraced for I was not what I appeared to be. I listened, I smiled, I wrote. But moving stealthily within the deepest recesses of my body were malignant Pacman cells ferociously gobbling up good and happy ones. Cells making war on cells. Biological fratricide.

"We need to talk about pathology," said my surgeon weeks before the seminar. Whatever else was said in his exam room that afternoon disappeared into an emotional black hole. Everything, that is, except that he was certain. Cancer. Stage 4. Terror perforated my life and Heaven seemed silent.

So I came to the seminar to learn something about writing, hoping to rescript my life or at least to come to terms with it and the God I love. But over the course of the next two days other stories began to penetrate the below zero bone-aching cold of my own. Stories written and spoken by lovely and decent people that gave evidence of other gobbling Pacmen more hideous to me than mine. Beth wrote of her two sisters, one a twin, who were killed by their alcoholic father driving in a drunken rage. She survived only to suffocate on the guilt of surviving. Tina wrote of being raped by daddy and then by brother and then by brother's friends. Hate. Pernicious and venal. Savage mortal Pacman cells gobbling up good and happy ones. Someone should pay, they said, and Heaven seemed silent.

I do not know what became of Beth and Tina and the other lovely and decent women that I met that weekend a few years ago. But when I was told Monday that my remission has failed, that Pacman is back gobbling his way through my bones, I thought of them. And I thought of The Cross.

"Those who passed by hurled insults at him, shaking their heads and saying, 'You who are going to destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself! Come down from the cross, if you are the Son of God!'

In the same way the chief priests, the teachers of the law and the elders mocked him.

'He saved others,' they said, 'but he can't save himself! He's the King of Israel! Let him come down now from the cross, and we will believe in him.

'He trusts in God. Let God rescue him now if he wants him, for he said, 'I am the Son of God.' "

Matthew 27:39-43

Mortal Pacmen raised their fists at the foot of the cross that Friday while spiritual Pacmen screamed and screeched their apparent Hellish victory. Hate. Pernicious and venal. It cost God His very best but the curse of Pacman's hate and drunkenness and rape and despair was broken.

"The angel said to the women, 'Do not be afraid, for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified. He is not here, for he has risen, as he said. Come, see the place where he lay.' "

Matthew 28:5-6

And speaking into the ravaged places of every heart that will choose to accept that His sacrifice was for them, is the song of the waterfalls peace and the redemption of Pacman's destruction. Not an answer to Beth's and Tina's and my question. Rather, a solution to our problem.

"And when they saw him they worshiped him, but some doubted.

And Jesus came and said to them, 'All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.

'Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.

And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.' "

Matthew 28:17-20

My beloved mother was wrong. Monsters can hide under the bed. Sometimes they are disease and sometimes they are car wrecks and sometimes they are dad. But Heaven's silence is never Heaven's absence.

The prophet cries out

Death will be swallowed up in victory.

 

Mary's Choice

First there's confusion: "Hey, where's my car?"

Then there's unease. "I left it right here. I know I did."

Then there's panic. "Yes, I'm positive I did. Help! Call Security! Someone has stolen my car!"

And finally, humiliation. "We'll help you find it, Mam. Most cars are not stolen."

"Young man, do I look like an idiot? I know where I parked my car. I parked it here close to the front of the store where I usually go in."

"Yes, Mam, and you're sure you entered through Nordstrom's?"

"Of course I didn't enter through Nordstrom's. I entered through Macy's as I always do."

"Yes, Mam. Um, Mam? You're in the Nordstrom's lot. Macy's is around the corner."

Deafening silence, three wide-eyed blinks and then, "Please assure me, young man, that I didn't tell you my name."

If only I had listened to my friend who has learned the secret to not getting lost in parking lots: pay attention. "Notice your surroundings," she said. "Look for easily remembered landmarks."

Landmarks, markers, monuments - things that help us mark where we are so we can safely navigate to where we want to go. But I rush, too full of the mandatory to pay attention to the important. Too full of the should to be deepened by the could. I don't pay attention and I get lost.

This is the gift to me from metastatic cancer. I am learning to prefer Mary's choice.

As Jesus and the disciples continued on their way to Jerusalem, they came to a village where a woman named Martha welcomed them into her home. Her sister, Mary, sat at the Lord's feet, listening to what he taught.

But Martha was worrying over the big dinner she was preparing. She came to Jesus and said, "Lord, doesn't it seem unfair to you that my sister just sits here while I do all the work? Tell her to come and help me."

But the Lord said to her, "My dear Martha, you are so upset over all these details! There is really only one thing worth being concerned about. Mary has discovered it - and I won't take it away from her." Luke 10:38-42, New Living Translation

There are all kinds of lostness. Sara Groves sings winsomely of losing our baby teeth, our common sense, our innocence. Sometimes, she says, we lose our appetite, our guiding sense of wrong and right, and, on occasion, a will to fight. But her ideas are balanced with another which becomes her song title, for no matter what we lose, "We Cannot Lose God's Love." It is not just a clever song sweetly sung. Scripture is interwoven with powerful no-compromise promises* purposed to guide and to anchor the soul. I may feel lost this hour, but God knows exactly where I am. He also knows who I am and what I am and yet there is not one thing I can do to cause Him to love me more or love me less.

I quake when my prognosis sounds scary and my courage fails, I am despondent when my hair falls out and I feel embarrassed, I weep over the profoundly painful things in my life and the lives of my family and close friends. But when the quaking and the desponding and the weeping stop I find myself just where I need to be, right there with Mary, prostrate before my Ground of Being, needy and listening and receiving all I require. And for that moment that I allow it, there is no confusion, there is no unease, there is no panic and there is never humiliation. I see my Landmark and know that I'm not lost. At least, not for that moment that I allow.

*Two of my favorite Biblical promises:

"Behold, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands; your walls are continually before me, 

Isaiah 49:16

"...for he has said, 'I will never leave you nor forsake you.'" Hebrews 13:5  

A Complex Good

Evil is never good even if good

may come from it...

Evil is always evil...

God exploits evil for His

redemptive purpose

and thereby produces

A complex good... 

C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain

Adapted by Lynne Farrow*, Ventura, CA for her art journal exploring this theme.

  

  

Wednesday. Someone has been harshing my mellow. The enemy is at the gate and I blush at what continues to make me weep. It's my fingernails. Chemo nails, I call them. I have wigs to cover my hairless and now slightly fuzzy head but there is no covering for this indignity of creepy fingernails that have lifted off their nail bed. Fear begins to spiral me down into an old despair which I have learned can take me further than I am willing to go. Trust has flown the coop, taken a hike, left me in the dust and I can't seem to will it back. I want to rejoice that I am in remission. Instead the MP3 player in my head is set on repeat and I hear my oncologist's words, "The expectation is that the cancer will return... The expectation is that the cancer will return... The expectation is..." The battle is getting long. The skirmishes keep repeating and I'm losing ground in baby steps. I hate this disease and today I'm terrified of it's cure. 

Thursday. The librarian notices my nails. "Ohhh," she says. "That looks familiar." I try to shove my hands into non-existent pockets. "I want to tell you," she felt compelled to share, "I wouldn't trade my cancer experience for the world." "Really," I say, hoping my smile doesn't look like the grimace that it is. "Oh, yes," says friend librarian. "I have learned so much through it." She rejoices that she is cured and, truly, I am happy for her. But as I drive away it feels like a psalm of ashes. With Stage 4 we don't usually get cure; the blessed ones get chemical vacations. Pity party alert! Couldn't I learn what I need by just breaking a leg? I groan and look at my nails again. "Oh God, if I have to go back on those chemicals..."

Friday.  "A complex good..." I long to revisit such a trust - to forever pen "no fear" across this page of my journey, never visiting it again. But, like biblical manna, there is only enough trust for one day and my insufficiency may have more to do with a faulty perspective than a feeling. I remember the recent difficulty I had in taking a photograph of the ocean. Focusing on the distant water, I blurred the foliage. Focusing on the foliage, I blurred the cresting wave. I had to decide where to focus the shot. So too with my heart. Will I focus or trust or believe all that I fear and can see or will I focus or trust or believe God who knows the end from the beginning, who sees what lives in the dark, and who has promised he will work all things, good or ill, to the benefit of any and all his children? Acceptance of evil in the expectation of a greater good has long life in scripture: Jesus Christ in Gethsemane (Matthew 26), Joseph in Egypt (Genesis 45:7) and Paul in arduous journeys or prison (Romans 8:28. 2 Corinthians 4:16-18). Focusing on fear, I become wholly fearful. Focusing on trust I may still feel fear, but it does not prevent trust-filled behaviors.

Sunday.  There is great power in reflective  remembering. Pastor teaches on Romans 5:1-5 reminding us of the purpose of repeated affliction in building character and strength. He retells the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-Nego (Daniel 3) who are bound and thrown into a furnace of fire. How, I wonder, did I miss this point before? They came out of that furnace with nothing burned away except the ropes that bound them when they were first thrown in. God puts us through the furnace of affliction not to harm but to set us free of the things that bind and control and imprison bringing good out of evil. As I reflect again today on Jesus Christ, I am surprised and humbled by the number of my own memories of escape and rescue and peace in the face of past evils. Fear, finally, is on the run...or at least on a fairly fast jog.

Most likely this will not be the last time fear scores a near win off me in our game of darts. But I trust it is going to find it harder to hit that bulls eye that it keeps trying to paint on my back side. The Bible says that when I was most vulnerable, when I did not love God, Jesus Christ gave his life for me. (Romans 5:8) As my pastor has said, if he loves us that much when we didn't love him, does it make any sense that he will not see each of us through to the end of whatever he brings into our lives when we are "one of his kids?" I have power to overcome because he gives me grace to do it. And the grace to do it is going to come from remembering and from practice. As in over and over and over again. 

It is a complex good. My mellow is unharshing.  

  

*The above photograph is the first page of an art journal which was created by Lynne Farrow to record her daughter's fight with cancer which included a double mastectomy and a partial hysterectomy. Anyone interested in exploring how to create their own art journal to document a significant life issue is invited to email Lynne at lynnefarrow@sbcglobal.net

Pie In the Sky

Like most people who feel compelled to create, I have a disturbing self-editor who seldom does me much good. Mine perches uninvited on my left shoulder and takes great umbrage at not only what I write about but how I say it. Looking like the old rooster that loved to terrorize little-girl toes when it was my turn to feed the chickens, it makes loud and obnoxious noises which sound like that song from the Music Man "pick-a-little, talk-a-little, pick-a-little, talk-a-little, pick-pick-pick, talk-a-lot, pick-a-little more." 

It's particularly discouraging today because I have been meditating on recent comments to this blog dealing with biblical hope and new beginnings as well as an eternal perspective regarding the realities of living with and through pain and profound despair. "What a lot of pie in the sky," says obnoxious rooster from the uninvited perch on my shoulder.  Where had I heard that before?

It was an interview recently on NPR. A noted scientist and author had made a comment about people who believe in life after death as exhibiting a "psychological weakness." There was a time and a place for that sort of belief, he argues, but it no longer exists as there is no longer a Darwinian advantage for it. We have evolved beyond it. I wonder if noted scientist and author has access to the same newspapers that I do.

"The Universe doesn't owe us meaning," he goes on to say. "If there isn't any meaning, there isn't any meaning and that's just tough." There is no pie in the sky. "However, " noted scientist and author quickly adds, "you can make your own meaning..." That, he goes on to explain, is in the work and art we produce, our love for nature and our families. But what, I wonder, about those people who cannot produce art and work, whose minds are either so undeveloped or savaged by vices of their own making or events they could not control that they cannot love or reason? The second way that noted scientist and author claims we can bring meaning to our life is by how we understand, how we interpret the existence of life and natural selection. So, there is meaning, just not the meaning said scientist and author doesn't approve. It's a meaning that begins with man, not God. The pie is only edible if it is man made and not God made.

Jesus said, "I am come that you might have life, and that you might have it more abundantly."John 10:10

"...that you, being rooted and established in love may have power...to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge - that you may be filled to the measure of all the fulness of God." Ephesians 3:17-19

"Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves." Philippians 2:3

"Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal." 2 Corinthians 4:16-18

If that is pie in the sky, make mine a large slice of lemon meringue.