Thankful.

As my (2 or 3) faithful readers know, I've been dealing with this migraine business for almost 10 years now.  It's been a struggle.  I've had days when I couldn't get out of bed because of pain and days when I didn't want to get out of bed because of depression.  I've had to miss countless social functions and completely change my life to accommodate this unwelcome guest.

After years of praying for the struggle to end, I've finally come to a place where I can not only accept the suffering but even be thankful for it.  It sounds twisted, I know.  But God has steadily been revealing to me that I am the person I am because of what I've been through and am still going through.  He could have taken this pain away at any moment, so there has to be a good reason that he hasn't.  In some strange way that I may never understand, I can be more useful for him in my pain than I could be as a healthy person.  That's still hard for me to accept sometimes, but I believe so fully that God is truly good and has my best interests at heart that I can trust him completely.

C. S. Lewis once said, "Hardship often prepares an ordinary person for an extraordinary destiny."  I believe that wholeheartedly.  Think about all the people in the Bible who God used in big ways.  None of them were without suffering.  Esther was forced into a marriage.  Moses was taken from his mother as a baby.  David was chased by Saul.  The Lord uses hardship and suffering to mold us into the people he wants us to be. 

I'm not at all the person I was ten years ago and even five years ago.  Back then I had it all together.  I was in control.  I knew where I was going in life, and I knew how to get there.  Boy, was I disillusioned.  Today I know that the only good things in my life are from God, and I have relinquished control of even the little things.  My faith in him has grown exponentially.  He's humbled me in ways that only suffering can do.  He's taught me to lean on other people and allow them to help carry my burdens.  He's shown me what's important in life.  And if changing me is the only reason for this ordeal, it's enough.

I still pray for healing, and I still get discouraged and frustrated on occasion, but I know that my Heavenly Father holds me in his hands, and I know that he wouldn't let me suffer for nothing.  He's preparing me for something great, and one day all this will be worth the struggle.

Strength in suffering.

I recently read a blog post by a fellow migraineur named Kerrie, entitled "True Strength."  Kerrie was outraged by a post she'd read in a chronic pain Facebook group that said, “Pretending to be happy when you’re in pain is just an example of how strong you are as a person.”  She argued that being able to be vulnerable and open about your struggles is the true show of strength. 

I completely agree with her.  It's much easier to put on a brave face and pretend like everything is okay.  When you are real with people about your pain, it's scary.  Letting people in is scary.  I used to think the way the author of that Facebook post thinks.  I pretended I was fine and lied to everybody around me, especially my family.  I didn't realize that I was hurting myself and hurting them.  I just wanted my family to not worry about me, but in shutting them out, I made them worry even more because they knew I wasn't telling the whole truth.  And wearing that mask hurt me just as much as it did them.  I didn't know just how much I needed the support of others.  Being strong means doing it by yourself, right?  Wrong.  Being strong means knowing when to let others help carry your burdens.  I wonder just how different all those years could have been if I had just been honest with myself and with those around me.

If you want to read Kerrie's post, here it is: The Daily Headache: True Strength.

Besides being honest with those around me, something else that's been helping me be strong in suffering lately is the book of Philippians, particularly the first chapter.  Paul is writing a letter to the church at Philippi while he is in jail.  First of all, he doesn't just shut down and mourn his circumstances while he's there; he continues his ministry, just in a different way.  Also, he acknowledges that God is using him even in his suffering.  Tim Keller tweeted recently: "God doesn't use us despite our suffering.  He uses us through our suffering."  Along those same lines, Paul says, "And I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that what has happened to me has actually served to advance the gospel."  Wow.  Talk about faith.  I've been trying (with God's help) to think about my illness in that way.  I often feel like I could be of so much more use to God if I were healthy, but He knows exactly what He's doing.  He can heal me at any moment He chooses, and there's a reason He hasn't yet.  I may not see the whole picture now, but I'm thankful to be able to play whatever tiny part the Lord gives me--even if it's through suffering.

God's spoken world.

This week I started a book called Notes from the Tilt-A-Whirl: Wide-Eyed Wonder in God's Spoken World.  I'm not very far into it yet, but I must say, it is beautiful!  The writing style is different; it's a little tilt-a-whirl-ish, circling among multiple topics simultaneously.  It's almost a stream-of-consciousness but not quite as crazy and definitely not as annoying.  Reading it feels like having a conversation with a friend.

The author is super down-to-earth, not a lofty philosophical theologian type.  In fact, he's a college literature professor who's never published in the spiritual/religious genre before.  (Oh, it's a Christian book.  Guess I should have mentioned that.)  In fact, he even uses curse words and slightly crude images here and there.  You may think I'm crazy or "un-Christian-ly", but that's refreshing to me.  It's real.  It indicates freedom in Christ, a religion built on relationship instead of rules.

Rambling aside, here's what I wanted to share:

The author, N. D. Wilson, talks about the language of God.  We so often get frustrated when we don't hear God speaking to us, but the truth is He is speaking--all around us, every moment of every day.  We expect God to speak in English, but why would He?  He's not American.  Or British or Australian or Canadian for that matter.  Why would God even need words to communicate?  I mean, He's God for crying out loud!

Wilson says we don't hear God not because He isn't speaking, but because we are listening for the wrong language.  God's language is His creation.  He spoke it into existence, didn't He?  He spoke and a mountain appeared.  We look at that and say, "Oh that's too hard; I'll make a shortcut," and we choose the word mountain to mean the actual thing.  God doesn't need shortcuts.

But mountain isn't the answer I needed, you may say.  That's fair.  But God speaks things through His creation as well.  Just one example: "Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these." (Matthew 6:28-29)

Listen for God's voice today.  His words are all around you.

P.S. I highly recommend this book.  You can borrow my copy when I'm finished.

Fiction for a change.

I'm a day behind on posting my WFMAD writing for yesterday.  (Imagine that.)  I decided to try some fiction today.  Enjoy!  (And if you don't, don't tell me.)

She had walked these same halls before, sat at this same desk in this same office under these same blinding fluorescent lights, but today was not the same as any of those days before.  Today was different—not just because it was a new month and a new year—no, today she was a new person. 

Nobody had noticed anything yet.  As she walked through the office building, got her coffee in the break room, everyone nodded their usual hellos and good mornings, but they were too preoccupied with their own small lives to notice even such a drastic change in hers.  Rather than make her feel insignificant, though, it made her feel strong.  She could fool everyone; they would never know until it was too late—if they noticed at all.

She sat at her desk in front of her computer, cup of coffee in hand, just like she had every other morning.  But she didn’t check her email.  She didn’t browse the day’s top news stories.  She simply sat.  And thought.

The world was still the same—still spinning on the same axis, still orbiting the same sun.  The people were still the same—still hurrying on the sidewalks below, still yelling insults into their cell phones.  So why was she different?  What had changed?  She had to admit she liked the change—it made her feel powerful, secure—but she didn’t understand it.

She had the vaguest notion of something strange happening as she slept, but she couldn’t be sure.  Had someone entered her house while she slumbered?  Had an intruder somehow done this?  She had no way of knowing.  She’d thought to get an alarm system when she first moved to the end of the lonely street, but things always came up and the money was never there. 

She had no nearby neighbors to notice if someone strange had been lurking on the street.  And of course she lived alone.  It had never bothered her until now.  Of course, bothered wasn’t really the right word.  Wasn’t she happy about this change?  Wasn’t she glad it had happened—however it happened?

Yes.  She was happy.  She needed this.  She stopped asking questions and simply accepted it.  Whatever it was, it was going to change everything.

Wfmad and wishes.

One of my favorite YA authors does a writing challenge every year she calls Writing Fifteen Minutes a Day.  It lasts for a month, and she gives prompts on her blog every day, which you can choose to use or not.  Here's the link if you're interested: http://madwomanintheforest.com/wfmad-day-2-your-abundance-of-time/.  I'm going to try it.  I always love any excuse to write.  I might (read will) fail here and there--I'm already a day behind--but that's okay.  We'll see what happens.  Here goes!

Eleanor Roosevelt once said, "It takes as much energy to wish as it does to plan."  Yet we spend our time wishing and then lamenting the perceived death of those wishes.  Why not plan their existence instead of planning their funerals?  What kind of place would the world be if people spent their time planning instead of wishing?  What kind of life would I have if I did the same? 

Why do we prefer wishing over planning?  I think it's because wishes can't disappoint.  You'll never fail at wishing, but you can--and likely will--fail at executing those wishes.  We value our pride over progress.  We crave the safe and familiar, because we know it keeps us secure and keeps our pride intact.  If we try something new, we're making ourselves vulnerable to failure and rejection.  Nobody likes that.  But without failure, we would never know success.  How often is success achieved the first time trying something?  Hardly ever.  If we stayed in our little bubble without ever trying anything, sure, we wouldn't fail, but we wouldn't have a chance to succeed either.  If we gave up after that first failure, we wouldn't ever make it.

Think of some of the greats of history:  Albert Einstein, Benjamin Franklin, Martin Luther King, Jr.  What would have happened if Martin Luther King, Jr., had said, "I have a dream," but didn't act on that dream?  If he had just wished for a different world and not planned for change?  Where would we be?  Or what if Franklin doodled bifocals and lightning rods in his journal but never planned to create them?  The world is nowhere without wishers who plan and act.

My mom says her mother used to tell her, "Wish in one hand and crap in the other and see which fills up faster."  While a little crude, the saying has some truth.  Wishing gets you nowhere.  Wishes aren't tangible.  Wishes don't change anything.  We can't wish for change and just hope somebody else acts on a similar wish.  We must act.  We must plan.

What are your wishes?  Maybe they're wishes for a new career or even a new hobby.  Maybe they're wishes for rebuilding relationships or being a better role model.  Wish all you want.  The more wishes, the better!  But give those wishes legs to walk, hands to reach out.  Make something of them.  A wish alone is worth nothing, but a wish paired with action is worth everything.

The beauty of God's timing.

In the church, we always tell each other, "Just wait for God's timing.  He'll take care of it."  We pray, "Lord, I really want this, but I know you'll give it to me in your own time."  But the whole time we're saying those things, we're crossing our fingers and hoping we're right.  We use "God's timing" as our go-to mantra when things aren't working out the way we think they should.  It's our way of convincing ourselves that we're going to get what we desire and that God doesn't ever tell us no when we ask for something.

When I say we, maybe I really mean me.  I talk about God's timing a lot, even to Him, but rarely do I truly trust in His timing the way I say I do.  If I really trust in Him and know that His timing is perfect, why do I get frustrated when things don't happen now?  Why do I ask Him for the same things over and over again?  Or worse, why do I take matters into my own hands?

God has taught me a lot about faith over the last few years.  Hebrews 11:1 says, "Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see."  Sure  and certain--those are strong words.  It doesn't say "pretty sure" or "mostly certain".  My brain usually tends to operate in the pretty and mostly category.  That way I don't get my hopes up and get let down.  Because, see, when I put all my faith and trust in the Father, I don't have anything to fall back on.  There's nothing in my power I can do to make it happen.  If it doesn't work out, I can't fix it.  But here's the thing:  There's no such thing as not working out with God.  Everything He does is intentional.  Every lost job.  Every heartbreak.  Every failure.  He has orchestrated them all perfectly.  His scope goes beyond my immediate desires and what I feel are immediate needs.  His timing takes into account not only my entire life, but the lives of all His children.  That's the beauty of it.  When I think of it that way, I don't have to cross my fingers anymore and hope He'll take care of me.  I can sit back and be entirely sure and completely certain and perhaps even learn something in the process.

Lighting and filters.

In photography, lighting is everything.  The light in which you look at a subject creates the mood and the feeling of the scene.  It isn't the other way around.  The vibrancy of the subject doesn't create the lighting.

Life is sort of the same way.  The brightness of our lives--our feelings of contentment and happiness--depends less on what's happening and more on the light it's happening under. 

When a photographer walks into a photo shoot, he doesn't just go with whatever lighting the room has to offer.  He brings his own lights.  Even if he takes a photo outside where the lighting is kind of monopolized by the sun, he uses filters.  Why do we so often think in life that what we see is what we get?  That whatever happens in life has to determine our outlook?  That the light that's there is the only light we can use?

In Christ, that almost isn't even an option.  When we come to know Him, He changes our filters.  He becomes the light through which we see the world.  Our views on life are no longer determined by our financial situation or health or job or anything that's out of our control.  He sets up the lighting.  He places the filter on the camera.  A difficult coworker becomes a person who needs Christ.  A lost job becomes a chance to follow our dreams.  A traffic delay becomes a time to listen.  Christ changes the way we notice things, and He also changes the things we notice.  The negative aspects of life tend to fade into the background, while the positive aspects become more pronounced.  We cherish the good moments in life and shrug off the less-than-good ones.  When we look back, we don't see the dark times but the ones His light is shining on.

Christ is doing this in my life right now, and He's teaching me how to let Him do it more and more.  Sometimes it's difficult to relinquish the final product of my photographs to Him, but the more I let Him use His lighting and His filters, the more my life looks like His masterpiece.

Photo challenge.

I'm a little late, but I've decided to start a 365-day photo challenge.  Unless I find a better one later I'm using the challenge created by fatmumslim.com.au.  I couldn't find any good American ones.  I can't say I'll post my photos here every day (You know I'm bad at blogging.), but I'll post them as often as I can.


January 1:  Today

I spent my day curled up under a blanket reading.  My favorite things and a great way to start the new year.  This particular blanket was made by a former prostitute in India named Priti.  I got it from an organization called Sari Bari.  They help women who want to escape prostitution.  The women make purses and blankets and such out of saris.  Each item comes with the name of the woman who made it.  Really neat ministry.  Check it out:  saribari.com