Category: Pause & Ponder

Adjusting and Believing

~ Barbara ~ 6 Comments

Regretfully, I didn’t get a post scheduled for this morning. I seem to yield to an unrealistic tendency to fill time slots without considering the emotional drain of current circumstances. A blank in my schedule does not mean I should fill it. I may just need to breathe.

Last week I told you we are walking through some health issues with our son David. Let me introduce him to you in case you don’t know him.

David is a young man of 44. He has mental deficiencies that render him nonverbal and have his intelligence locked on about the level of a 6-year old. In some ways he’s intellectually years ahead of that. Spiritually, he’s ahead of most of us.

He prays in earnest for everyone—that is not hyperbole. I don’t know of a waitress who has served us without the blessing of David’s prayers on our ride home. He prays for every flashing light we pass, every upsetting headline, every ball game, every surgery or sickness he hears about, every affliction or problem—everyone. Paul would have loved him because he pretty much prays without ceasing (1 Thes. 5:17).

He also worships wholeheartedly—without reserve, without question, without doubt that there is a God who sees, knows, and loves him. David praises as naturally as he breathes. He and the psalmist are like-minded: “Praise the Lord. Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good; His love endures forever” (Psalm 106:1).  

David is sweet and without guile. David is a pray-er and a worshipper. And David has cancer.

The good news is, it is highly curable and his prognosis is good. The hard truth is the road to get there is undesirable. This week is his first of four 5-day weeks of chemo several weeks apart. He displays anxiety and is not happy about it, but his attitude is wonderful and he cooperates. He kisses all the nurses and today he asked one if she knows Jesus. (She does.)

Over the years I have prayed for many cancer patients, asking God for healing and grace. This week I learned how vapid my prayers have been. In my head I would check off the type of cancer and whether chemo or radiation, but I had no notion of what either meant. I could never imagine what it was like to sit for hours and watch bags of fluid drip so slowly, knowing that the chemicals fighting the cancer were sapping the body. The tentative adaptation to a new normal, the sluggishness of passing time, the air of resignation, the watching of the clock, never forgetting the end is months away (and for some much longer).

This is why I never got to my blog this week. It was simply not in my bandwidth, but I will take a page out of David’s playbook. I will pray for every concern, every need, and every person that comes our way. And I will worship the God who is always worthy, always in control, and always the lover of my soul.

Thank you for listening to my mother-heart. And thank you for praying—and worshipping—with us.

Finding Hope, 65 Meditations for a Broken Heart

Why I Don’t Need a Bucket List

~ Barbara ~ 1 Comment

I do admit, it would have been exciting to post pictures from a cruise ship or European castle on last week’s mention of our 55th anniversary. It’s not that I don’t want these adventures—it’s just that I can wait for them. There is no experience now that will not be exceedingly better in my future. So I can wait.

I can wait to scale Mount Everest without laboring breath and throbbing knees. One day I will look into the Grand Canyon without anxiety and walk down its walls of sandstone, limestone, and shale, then climb up the other side, stopping to pet bighorn sheep and elk. I will explore the Great Barrier Reef, all 2,900 reefs and 900 islands, and dive deep to discover the wonders it holds, without tiring—and without gear. I will walk desert sands unhindered by the sun, explore caverns with underground rivers, and climb a sequoia. I will slide down Victoria Falls and ride on the backs of lions and elephants. I will wander through the Swiss Alps and watch the Northern Lights dance across Norway’s sky, counting the stars—perhaps I’ll fly through them!

And if these natural wonders are not on the new earth, it will only be because they’re replaced with vistas even more wonderful! Pictures of the sights I admire today will pale like black and white newsprint on yellowed newspapers. Colors will explode in shades never before seen. Sounds will mesmerize with unmuted clarity. The air will shimmer with its purity.

No, I don’t need a bucket list for my span of years on this planet. Wonders await me for an eternal lifetime of exploration and discovery.

Photo by Donald Giannatti on Unsplash

Pause to Ponder your Body

~ Barbara ~ Leave a comment

For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb…
My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place,
when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.
How precious to me are your thoughts, God! How vast is the sum of them!

Psalm 139:13, 15-17

Every vein was perfectly placed when I was in my mother’s womb. As a child, I ran and played without a thought about the miracle of my heart beating or my blood flowing. When I was a teen my body changed into womanhood, including all the normal mood swings, but I was still oblivious to the wonder of my brain directing my body parts or my veins carrying my blood. I had children and aged, but my health allowed me to come and go at will, my worst ailments being a backache or headache, so I was still mindless of the miracle of the daily ebb and flow of my body… until now.

Now I am mindful of my heart beating irregularly, of the intricacies and cooperation my unseen body parts, of the miraculous complexities of the human body. I had a stroke, went into a-fib, and, this week, had a cardiac ablation. We call a CT (computed tomography) of the brain, the loop recorder in my chest, and the ablation procedure modern day medical miracles.

As I contemplated what was about to happen—a doctor would insert catheters into two veins, directing them up into my heart, and sensors would record my heart’s electricity, identifying the area causing the arrhythmia and create small scars in my heart to block the irregular rhythms—I was awed. Yes, a modern day medical miracle. But it pales in comparison to the miracle of my creation.

God wove those veins in place when He formed me. They were in place when I toddled and grew and aged. Throughout those years my heart beat with regularity, until it didn’t. The mercy is that I overcame the physical challenges of stroke and a-fib. But, with all due respect, I must put modern medicine in its place because, as astonishing as it is, it pales in comparison to the miracle of God’s intricate creation. Indeed, medicine only discovers the details of God’s amazing design and learns aspects of the human body’s functionality that God ordered. He is my Creator, Designer, Sustainer, Healer. Selah.

“I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made” (verse 14).

Ponder the River

~ Barbara ~ Leave a comment

There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, 
the holy place where the Most High dwells.
Psalm 46:4

The river is for us—a source of supply, an origin of life, a spring of hope—a river of blessing that flows from God. It makes us glad by feeding our faith, satisfying our souls, and renewing our spirits. In times of turmoil I find it is often enough to simply say, “There is a river.”

God is the source, supplying all we need when we drink deeply. There is no shortage where God dwells; He is with us and promises help (verse 5). Even when “nations are in uproar” and “kingdoms fall,” the earth melts at the sound of His voice (verse 6).

There is a river. Let the certainty of that truth assure your heart and minister peace to your soul.