Four years ago my Mother in Love became sick. We discovered after a hospital stay with complete renal failure that she had Multiple Cell Myeloma. Months later she went to the city to have a stem cell transplant at one of the nation’s leading hospitals. Her time there was as she has described it her time of “being the closest I’ve ever been to death.” In the four years since it’s not been an easy road for her. Monthly and sometimes weekly or more appointments at the Cancer Center, changes in treatments, side effects in medicine, sleepless nights, and sometimes just feeling plain old crappy.
Yesterday, she calls me after returning home from another appointment with some good blood report readings and some not so good. She relays all that, but then begins to share about a woman that sat by her in the waiting room, probably in her 30’s, recently diagnosed, and scared. You’d have to know my Mother in Love. She’s never ever really met a stranger. So she strikes up a conversation with the girl, and then begins to take the pain that she has walked in for these past four years and turns it into a pulpit. She shared about how God saw her through treatments, transplants, radiation, sickness, it all. She talks about how faithful and close He is, how much He loves, and how much He loves that girl and that she doesn’t have to be afraid. Then my spunky 73 year old Mother in Love goes through the rest of her appointment and drives home, a challenge for her but as I tell her jokingly, frequently, “She’s a tough old bird.”
I was out running errands for her today, and thinking about all this and some of the personal challenges I have faced and am currently facing in my life. Then this verse from Philippians 1 crossed my mind. “…Everything happening to me in this jail only serves to make Christ more accurately known, regardless of whether I live or die. They didn’t shut me up; they gave me a pulpit!” Philippians 1:20 The Message. It occurred to me that a stranger sitting next to my Mother in Love in a Cancer Center is probably feeling things pretty close to what a Centurion Soldier in Paul’s time must have felt chained up next to Paul. You either love it or hate it, but you for sure are going to hear about Jesus and everything He’s done. Paul reports to the Philippians that during his time in prison he has told everyone around him that he could about Jesus. Many in his captive audience wanted to know more about this Jesus that turned Paul’s life upside down and changed a persecutor of Christians to a preacher of Christ. Although beatings, chains, dirty prisons, poor food, and fellowship with rough cut prison guards were Paul’s daily life, he had taken all this and turned his pain into a pulpit at which he proclaimed the Goodness and the Love of God.
For four years my husband and I had been involved in a ministry called Encounter Ministry. Every month they have had a weekend get away at a small rural church campground. People from many different denominations of the Church come. There are several sessions about different topics that typically start with a testimony of what God has done in the life of someone who has struggled. I’ve heard women at the Ashes to Beauty Encounters speak about losing husbands, children, drug addiction, porn addiction within their home, marital unfaithfulness, PTSD, suicidal intentions, abortions,depression, anxiety, abuse- verbal, physical, mental, and sexual, etc. They talk about how they had suffered such great loss and pain yet they have found peace, joy, love, forgiveness, etc. in Jesus and how much He has changed their lives. Once again they have taken their pain and turned it into a pulpit to declare a God who understands our weaknesses and wants to reach in and raise us above them.
I’m certain that life in Jesus is a series of victories over struggles. I know I won’t totally arrive until I arrive i.e. see Jesus face to face. I have been very aware, as of late, of some of the hard things I have had to walk through in my life. I know several people who become aware of that and then freeze only to be stuck in the Pain. I was praying about this as I drove from point A to point B on my outing today. Suddenly it occurred to me, “What if the hell we experience here on earth, the teeth gritting hard stuff, are the very things that enable us to help some one experience the eternity of heaven?” My mother in love has not enjoyed the pain of sickness, but what if all that was to reach that young woman at the cancer center with heaven’s hope in eternity for her? Paul didn’t enjoy the things he suffered, but what if the hellish torment he endured was the very thing that spread the gospel to a descendent of the Europeans that went down the line to finally give hope to a small town American girl, me, in the 80’s? There are countless accounts of martyrs, missionaries, and ministers that have endured much to be able to proclaim loudly from the pulpit built upon their pain. My resolve must be that “what the enemy meant for evil, God will turn for Good.” Hoist myself on top of it and proclaim from the very tip of the pain the God who Heals.
I’ve been kind of stuck on a song by Elevation Worship as of late. It’s called “Graves Into Gardens”. The chorus says, “You turn graves into gardens. You turn bones into armies. You turn seas into highways. You’re the only one who can… You turn mourning to dancing. You give beauty for ashes. You turn shame into glory. You’re the only one who can.” This same God who does all these things as we let Him into our lives, is the same God who turns the pain we have walked through into a pulpit. That we can proclaim all that Jesus has done for us. He’s the only one who can!
A few years ago my husband came to a realization that it was time for a change. Three of our four kids had graduated high school and it was no longer necessary for me to drive a mini van. It was time for us to get something a little more “sporty”. After test driving a Dodge Challenger with a Hemi (probably not a good idea for my lead foot), we settled on a more conventional Dodge Charger with four doors and a V6. Fun to drive, but not overly tempting for my race car driving dreams.
This Mother’s Day will be my 25th as an official Mother. It’s kind of hard to believe for me. Being a Mom was something I always wanted to be, but it was also the scariest of propositions for me. From the day I found out I was pregnant with my first to today I’ve always had this awareness of what I lacked for being the Mom I should be. I’m sure if I was able to take a poll of all the moms out there that is what they would tell you too. It kind of comes with the territory. There’s always someone more creative, with a cleaner house, more respectful kids, healthier meals, happier husband, taking all the “me time” they need, and so on- kind of mom. For some reason “comparison” is the favorite game of moms all around. At least it was my game of choice for most of my childrearing years, and on occasion still is…
Covid 19 has put a major damper on my expressions of hospitality. It’s a bummer. Usually this time of year marks the beginning of bar b ques, friends hanging out, fires in our fire pit, music on the patio or front deck. I think that last year around this time we had a huge fish fry. Not so much this year, with the gatherings of 10 or less order. It’s a weird switch. I’ll be the first to admit that the one with the greatest gift of hospitality between my husband and me would be him. He’s a party all the time kind of guy. Before quarantine hit, and some other life changes that we went through last year (God moving us to a different church, and us stepping down from leading a Bible Study/ accountability group we had been doing weekly for 4 years), our weeks were spent trying to figure out what would be the menu for the next cook out and how many people can we invite. If I would put the brakes on, for any particular reason, he would want to know what was wrong with me. The weekends were meant for family and friends. Anything less was inconceivable in his mind.
My Grandpa was born in 1914. He died a few years ago just a few days shy of his 101st Birthday. When he was 4 years old the world was in the midst of another infamous pandemic, The Spanish Flu. I never heard him talk about it, so he may have been young enough to not remember it much, but I do remember hearing stories about his life during The Great Depression. How as a boy he hunted and fished, not for pleasure, but to help feed his siblings and himself, so much so that he wasn’t much a fan of either when he got older. He just went to the pond and watched us fish. He witnessed World War I and II, the Korean War, and Vietnam War, the war his oldest son fought in and was faced with uncertainty of how that would end up for him, he came home. He had loved ones born and loved ones die, among which were infant grandbabies. He lost a great grandson, my nephew in the Gulf of Aden- lost at sea while serving with the United States Navy. He saw marriages in the family, he saw divorces. He stood at the side of the casket of his only lifelong love of 60 plus years gazing at her and commenting on how young she looked, like the days before they had moved from Kansas decades before. He outlived all his siblings, 7 of them, and most of his friends. In fact towards the end, that fact kind of hit him- “I’m the last one left.”
From the time my girls were little bitty they were aspiring ballerinas. The love for the dance came with a gift of two tutus that a friend had found. Their Grandma took them and spruced them up. The girls, ages 3 and 5, fell in love with them the moment they put them on. Days and days, hours and hours of twirling and prancing around the house in what was just a hand me down. To them it was the ultimate princess outfit. As they grew the Barbie Movies- “The Nutcracker”, “Swan Lake”, etc. reinforced the desire to dance. As they grew, I finally got them set up with dance lessons with a friend. They were thrilled. I sat on the side lines as they learned the basic moves of ballet. Most of the time quietly whispering to the mom next to me as we visited and waited.
Every once in awhile I would hear the instructor give the girls a little tip on how to do one of the harder moves more effectively. In one of the dances they were learning, they were supposed to twirl from one corner of the rectangular dance floor to the other. A move that I am certain, if I attempted it, I would land flat on my back from the dizziness. Their instructor told them that the best way to make it from point A to point B while twirling across the floor was to have a focal point picked out on the wall that they were going to. She said to start by twirling slowly and to watch for the point with each turn as they moved towards it. Sure enough the more they practiced it, the more straight their path from point A to point B became and the less dizzy they felt.
(WARNING…Big word usage for End Times theories ahead. Stick with me there is a point in it.)
Your Love 