Category: waiting

Jan 23

This isn’t what I had planned…

For weeks I planned this photo of my grandkids in their new, matching Mickey and Minnie jammies we were giving them for Christmas. I envisioned them sitting in order from 8-year-old Bauer down to 1-year-old Mathis, but knew that wasn’t realistic. So I opted for girls on one side (the three of them are definitely “besties”) and boys on the other (with the two older brothers keeping track of their little brothers).

It seemed like a good plan. Who would have thought that asking 4-year-old Callie to put on her Minnie socks would be so traumatic? Or that 6-year-old Benjamin would be exhausted waiting two minutes for us to take the shot? Or that 2-year-old Jack couldn’t face forward for ten seconds?

Oh well, I gave you something to smile about today, right?

This is a humorous example of plans gone awry, but it’s not particularly funny when life plans get sidetracked by health crises, financial struggles, marriage difficulties or other stresses. Believe me, I haven’t been laughing for the past eight months as my husband and I have faced one health ordeal after another.

For him: A failed knee replacement, which led to more surgeries, a long stint in residential rehab,  weeks of daily I.V. antibiotics and another round of PT.  For me: Lyme disease, then a broken wrist requiring surgery and complicated by a nerve injury leading to many months of therapy–still not completed! Oh, and just for good measure, all the “traumas” I’ve faced caused cardiac issues necessitating weeks of heart tests and monitoring (so far everything looks good and it’s “just” supra ventricular tachycardia).

Plans for summer vacation were thrown out the window. Fly fishing outings were shelved. Fall speaking engagements were put on hold and then spring ones, too. Invites to host new friends for dinner were postponed. Desires to start a women’s Bible study were forgotten.

And instead, a new plan was made…trust God even when life isn’t going the way we had planned. My author-friend Carol Kent understands how I feel as she writes in her wonderful new devotional, He Holds My Hand:

“You have an agenda that seems right, and your natural inclination is to develop a strategy that seems practical, predictable, and timely. It’s easier for you to trust Him when everything makes sense and you can foresee a positive outcome. However, there are times when He will interrupt your carefully made plans and ask you to do something that makes no sense.

“Always remember God’s great love for you and His desire to give you opportunities to minister to others along the way. Often, the most important appointment in your day will come disguised as an unwanted disruption. Some people around you need to learn from you, and He will bring others into your life to help you find renewed hope and fresh faith.” #HeHoldsMyHand

OK, Carol, I’m looking forward to my occupational therapy appointment today as a chance to continue talking about spiritual things with my hand specialist while he tries to ease my chronic pain and swelling. And I’m thanking God for dear friends who call and cheer me up just when I need it most.

Has God allowed your plans to be interrupted? Perhaps, you’ll join me in trusting Him while looking for new opportunities to share and receive His great love. The Message paraphrase of Proverbs 3:5,6 makes it clear: Trust GOD from the bottom of your heart; don’t try to figure out everything on your own. Listen for GOD’S voice in everything you do, everywhere you go; he’s the one who will keep you on track.

P.S. We never got a good shot of all seven grands together, but here’s a couple pretty sweet ones separately.

Please open the music video below in your browser to enjoy: “Trust in You” by Lauren Daigle

Dec 05

Why We All Feel Homesick Sometimes

Everybody feels homesick once in a while. Even our older daughter, a very independent, self-sufficient young woman, admitted she was homesick when she first went away to college

“It was in the fall of my freshman year,” Danielle recalls. “I remember I was homesick for a couple of hours…but it went away.” (I told you she was independent!)

I think many of us can feel a little–or a lot–homesick around the holidays. I know my Indiana daughter and her four kids are homesick for a Pennsylvania Christmas with all the rest of our family, but it won’t happen until Dec. 30.

And even though I have two wonderful daughters and three fabulous grandkids nearby this season, I’m homesick for a childhood California Christmas with my “little” brother and our parents. What I wouldn’t give for another holiday to celebrate with them.

Perhaps you are homesick for a loved one this year too. Or maybe you’re having a hard time facing the holidays because of health issues in your life or your family’s.  Or financial struggles or relationship issues or any number of life trials.  It doesn’t seem “fair” to be struggling at Christmas.

We have dear friends whose 30-something daughter was recently diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor. She’ll be getting radiation and chemo as her family prepares to celebrate her baby’s first Christmas. So not fair.

Another dear friend is trying to enjoy holiday festivities for the first time in 47 years without his beautiful wife by his side. So not the way he had imagined his retirement years to be.

Even if you haven’t been grumbling about struggles, you probably have heard plenty of others doing so. Did you know that every complaint is a symptom of homesickness?

Every time we growl that circumstances aren’t fair or we’re disappointed in an outcome or we bemoan how we’ve been treated, we’re acknowledging that we’re homesick.

In fact, we are all homesick for our real home…Heaven.Ecclesiastes 3:11 tells us that God “has planted eternity in the human heart.” We all have an innate longing to live forever in a place where everything is fair, there are no disappointments and we never are mistreated. But we need to embrace the fact that is not going to happen here on earth.  In fact the earth itself, like us, is “homesick” for the way it used to be.

Paul says in 1 Corinthians 8: “But with eager hope, the creation looks forward to the day when it will join God’s children in glorious freedom from death and decay.”

All this decay and death we–and the earth– are experiencing is not the way it’s “supposed” to be. It doesn’t feel right because it’s not. God’s perfect plan is still to come.

“We, too, wait with eager hope for the day when God will give us our full rights as his adopted children, including the new bodies he has promised us.” (Romans 8:23b)

Go ahead and put a “new, healthy body” on your Christmas list, but realize no matter how many remissions and cures we get here and now, one day we will leave these earthen vessels behind and get the new, immortal bodies our Heavenly Father has promised all Christ-followers.

One of the people I look forward to meeting in Heaven is someone I never knew on earth: my paternal great-grandmother May Andrews Peirce. She was a prolific poet and I’d like to think my writing ability came down through her genes. In 1928 when she was nearly 60, she wrote a poem she called “HOME.”

In childhood’s days, our thoughts of Heaven
Are pearly gates, and streets of gold.
But in the gathering years,
When time, within its fading leaf
With eyes, perchance be-dimmed with tears,
And hearts oft’ overwhelmed with grief,
We look beyond the pearly gates,
Beyond the clouds of sin’s dark night,
And see a place where loved ones wait,
A place all beautiful and bright.
And over all, we’ll see the face of Him
Who’ll bring us to our own—
Not to some far-off, distant place.
For Heaven is, after all, just HOME.

To enjoy Chris Tomlin’s “Home” music video, open in your browser or use this link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twL3v5r8s6o

 

 

 

 

 

Oct 10

Don’t Underestimate the Power of God

 

By Chris Tiegreen
“Our Bible is full of miracles. Sometimes, it feels as if our lives are not. The difference between the two can be disheartening, especially when a miracle is the only thing that can help us through a time of need. We pray to God and hope that He will answer, wondering where the miracles have gone. If we really listen, we will hear Him tell us to open our eyes.
“God’s dramatic miracles are scattered throughout history, sometimes in clusters (as in Acts), and sometimes spread out over painfully long years. But even when we don’t see the drama, God is always doing miracles. He redeemed us, after all–that was a miracle in itself. And He continues to work in our lives. Sometimes we see His hand, and sometimes we don’t. But the fact that He is working, whether behind the scenes or in plain view, should always fill us with hope.

“One of our problems is that we often anticipate the ordinary from God. We pray with realistic expectations, hoping He will answer us with obvious answers. Our minds confine Him to the predictable, forgetting that He is able to do infinitely more than we can even imagine (Ephesians 3:20). We underestimate Him.

“When you pray, trust that God is working. He may be working behind the scenes, or radically changing hearts in the midst of our circumstances, or waiting for the plot to unfold a little further before He intervenes in a visible way. But the key to seeing God work is to expect Him to work, He is–and always has been–the God of miracles.” 

Content taken from THE ONE YEAR AT THE CROSS DEVOTIONAL, by Chris Tiegreen. Copyright © 2011. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. (Bold added.)

 

 

Please open this email in your browser to enjoy the music video “He Still Does (Miracles)” by Hawk Nelson.

Oct 03

“I thought I was a goner!”

 

In recognition of National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, I’d like to introduce you to my dear friend Polly, a cancer-free, five-time survivor–including three breast cancers, one of which was stage 4!

Polly’s personal cancer journey began more than 15 years ago, although her family’s trek with this dreaded disease stretches back decades. Her mother, several maternal aunts and her sister all had breast cancer and the nagging thought of it always was there in Polly’s mind, too.

So when she got the same diagnosis at age 48, she was anxious and upset, but not really surprised. The shock came four years later in 2007 when the cancer spread to her lungs and bones and was considered incurable . (And yes, this story is going to have a “happy” ending–keep reading!)

“I thought I was a goner!” she recalls. “I kept thinking ‘I hope I have another birthday’.”

Polly had the lung tumors surgically removed and started more chemo. We talked and prayed often and Polly kept drawing closer to God as she sat on her front porch each day watching hummingbirds, reading the Bible and talking with her heavenly Father in prayer.

Four months later, the PET scan showed significant improvement and two months after that, all signs of the cancer were gone. She stayed on “maintenance” therapy for a while, but eventually that was stopped and she still is NED–No Evidence of Disease.

“”It’s a blessing beyond my wildest dreams,” she says. “It’s been a wonderful journey of whole new closeness with the Lord.  He just knows what I need right now—this minute, this hour.

“I have learned to seize each day,” she adds. “Every day I get up and say ‘you can have a good day or a bad day’ and I always choose good.”

I think Polly’s optimism and faith is especially amazing because she has survived four more primary cancers (two breast, one melanoma and one rectal), all caught early stage and cured with surgery.

“If this wasn’t my story, I might not believe it,” she admits. “But with God, (my oncologist) Dr. (Marc) Hirsh, and gumption, here I am!!! And I give all the glory to God, who has never left my side.”

I believe Polly has been experiencing what it’s like to walk with God as He goes before us and lights our way during the dark times. Don’t expect that He will light up your whole journey—He might reveal just the next few steps. And don’t imagine that His provision will arrive way ahead of time so you can stockpile it for later.

God’s perfect timing is wonderfully  illustrated in a story shared by Corrie Ten Boom, the Dutch Christian
concentration camp survivor whose family helped hide hundreds of Jews from the Nazis during World War II. The conversation she relates took place when she was a little girl and her father tried to console her fears that she would be unprepared when she had to die someday:

Father sat down on the edge of the narrow bed. “Corrie,” he began gently, “when you and I go to Amsterdam—when do I give you your ticket?”

I sniffed a few times considering this.

“Why just before we get on the train.”

“Exactly. And our wise Father in heaven knows exactly when we are going to need things, too. Don’t run out ahead of Him, Corrie. When the time comes that some of us have to die, you will look in your heart and find just the strength you need—just in time.”[1]

“Don’t run out ahead of Him.”

What marvelous advice. God needs to go before us into each day. We don’t yet have what we need to face all of our tomorrows, because we are not yet there. But every day as we come to our heavenly Father in prayer, He promises to guide us and provide for us in that minute, that hour, that day.

 I’d like to pray Deuteronomy 31:6 for you today: Do not be afraid and do not panic before them.  For the LORD your God will personally go ahead of you. He will neither fail you nor abandon you. Amen.

[1] Corrie ten Boom, The Hiding Place (Grand Rapids: Chosen Books, 1984), 44.

Aug 29

Do We Always See God Work Everything for Good?

So if God works all things together for good, does that mean in our lifetime we will see that promise come true?  Maybe…maybe not.

I consider myself extremely fortunate that God has allowed me to see firsthand how He has used my cancer diagnosis for good by giving me a worldwide ministry to cancer patients and their caregivers. However, I’m very aware that many others still are waiting to see that promise of Romans 8:28 come true.Our view from inside an earthly trial is limited and distorted. We often cannot see how what is happening could ever possibly be used as part of God’s good plan. And we must realize we may not actually get to see the “good” because it’s not coming until the distant future.  We have to ACCEPT that we don’t have the big picture.

“Now we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely…” 1 Corinthians 13:12

But accepting that we don’t have the whole picture is not very comforting unless we also BELIEVE that a loving God does.

Some years ago our youngest daughter, Lindsey, who had just graduated from college (and as the daughter most like me, butted heads with me the most as a teenager), wrote me a Mother’s Day note that said in part: “I didn’t always agree or understand when you said ‘no’ to me, but I never doubted that you loved me.”

That’s what it means to trust. We choose never to doubt that God loves us even if we don’t always agree or understand when He answers “no” to our prayers.

However, just knowing these two truths—accepting we don’t have the whole picture and believing a loving God does—is still not enough. We have to CONTINUE to walk by faith and not by sight. Even if we’re not from Missouri, we humans tend to be “show me” people. We want to see first and then believe. I am an extremely skeptical person (which makes me a great newspaper reporter, but an annoying wife), and I always want the facts, the explanation, and the logic before I’ll agree with just about anything.

But the Word of God, my compass in life and especially in the storms, tells me that as believers we are different than others in this world because “we live by faith, not by sight.”[1] Or as another translation puts it, “That is why we live by believing and not by seeing.”[2]

I must constantly remind myself that I don’t need to see it all because God sees it all from the beginning of history to the end of time. As one writer explains: “Because we see only this sliver of time, we tend to view all of time through the same narrow and ill-fitting glasses. We forget that God is not bound by time. He exists outside of its minutes and millennia.”[3]

He and only He has the big picture. We move ahead not knowing for sure how–or when–it all will work out, but believing He does and will guide our way.

I don’t know how to say it any other way than we simply walk by faith.  And if we don’t have the privilege of seeing in this lifetime how it all works for good, we can be encouraged that we are not alone. Read the list of faithful heroes in Hebrews 11 and don’t miss verse 13: “All these people died still believing what God had promised them. They did not receive what was promised, but they saw it all from a distance and welcomed it.” 

Remember the ABCs of trials: Accept you don’t have the whole picture; Believe a loving God does; and Continue on by faith and not by sight.

Adapted from 50 Days of Hope, copyright 2012  by Lynn Eib
[1] 2 Corinthians 5:7, NIV
[2] 2 Corinthians 5:7 NLT
[3] Taken from a devotional published by the Outreach of Hope “God Keeps his Promises,” 2001.

Music video “Walk by Faith” by Jeremy Camp also available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygyOECYwd-4