The first post I have actually written...

The other day I was thinking about some friends of mine who have suffered greatly but have still kept the faith. Some of them have are writing about their experiences and have blogs; other just need a little encouragement. So I thought to myself, "I already post the encouraging thoughts of faithful believers who are strangers, so why not my contemporaries and friends?"

The first of those--who might be listed among the "cloud of witnesses"--is my friend, Amanda. Amanda and I went to college together and got to know each other by serving in some of the same campus groups and swapping good music (Over the Rhine, baby!). Now we catch up via phone several times a year and have added book titles to our swap-a-thon; we often find we are reading the same encouraging Christian literature (Streams in the Desert)!

Here is one of my favorite posts from her blog in the past year:

Friday, December 10, 2010

A new normal

Someone posted this article on another blog that I read. It's all about the stages of adjusting to a chronic illness. The stages mentioned are denial, fear, anger/frustration, grief/depression and then eventually acceptance. I really like how the writer describes each stage. I also feel like I continually go from one stage to the next.


I wanted to share an excerpt that really spoke to me:


" I love how Bruce Campbell says that acceptance involves the willingness to build a new life.   He discusses a great analogy on acceptance from one of his self-help groups.  The woman wrote an essay, “Welcome to Holland”, where she says that having CFS was like planning a trip to Italy but when the plane lands, you’re told “Welcome to Holland.” 

“Holland!?” you say. “What do you mean Holland? I signed up for Italy! I’m supposed to be in Italy.” But there’s been a change in the flight plan. You have landed in Holland. And there you must stay.
The important thing is that it’s just a different place. You must buy new guidebooks. You must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would not otherwise have met. It’s slower paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you’ve been there a while, you look around, and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills, Holland has tulips, Holland even has Rembrandts.
So, welcome to Holland. Along with the patient in your life, you have landed in an unexpected destination. You have experienced the loss of a dream and are challenged to adjust to a different type of life than you had planned. You have probably lost some companionship and, instead, may have taken on new responsibilities. But, like the person in our class, you have a choice to dwell on what you have lost or to seek out new possibilities.

This is not the life I signed up for. I really struggle with acceptance because I don't want to believe that this is how I'm going to be for the rest of my life. Instead, I try to focus on accepting how I feel on a daily basis. Instead of thinking, I'm never going to be able to have energy again. I try to think, today I may not feel well but I will try to make the best of it and hopefully tomorrow will be better.


My faith has really been challenged through having CFS. I am constantly repeating Jeremiah 29:11 over and over again: "For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." It's so hard for me to trust and let go of all of my worries and fears. I find myself planning things for when I feel better. I try to plan when I'll be able to have a baby, when I'll be able to go get my masters, or when I'll be able to exercise like I used to. But when I'm filling my brain with these thoughts, it doesn't do me any good. Because then I'm constantly thinking about what could happen and not thinking about what I can do. I need to get used to this being my new normal.


So have I fully accepted that I have CFS? I don't know! I guess it depends what day you ask me!


I highly recommend that you read the whole article:
http://www.fightingfatigue.org/?p=8806

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And I highly recommend that you read her whole blog!


 http://knittygrittyonlife.blogspot.com/

--Cari

Unto Himself

"He brought me forth also into a large place; he delivered me; because he delighted in me." (Psa. 18:19.)

Fearing to launch on "full surrender's" tide,
I asked the Lord where would its waters glide
My little bark, "To troubled seas I dread?"
      "Unto Myself," He said.

Weeping beside an open grave I stand,
In bitterness of soul I cried to God:
"Where leads this path of sorrow that I tread?"
     "Unto Myself," He said.

Striving for souls, I loved the work too well;
Then disappointments came; I could not tell
The reason, till He said, "I am thine all;
     Unto Myself I call."

Unto Himself! No earthly tongue can tell
The bliss I find, since in His heart I dwell;
The things that charmed me once seem all as naught;
     Unto Himself I'm brought.

--from Streams in the Desert

"We'll never survive..."

"And Jacob was left alone; and there wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day." (Gen. 32:24.)

Beloved, this must ever be a typical scene in every transformed life. There comes a crisis-hour to each of us, if God has called us to the highest and best, when all resources fail; when we face either ruin or something higher than we ever dreamed; when we must have infinite help from God and yet, ere we can have it, we must let something go; we must surrender completely; we must cease from our own wisdom, strength, and righteousness, and become crucified with Christ and alive in Him. God knows how to lead us up to this crisis, and He knows how to lead us through.

Is He leading you thus? Is this the meaning of your deep trial, or your difficult surroundings, or that impossible situation, or that trying place through which you cannot go without Him, and yet you have not enough of Him to give you the victory?

Oh, turn to Jacob's God! Cast yourself helplessly at His feet. Die to your strength and wisdom in His loving arms and rise, like Jacob, into His strength and all-sufficiency. There is no way out of your hard and narrow place but at the top. You must get deliverance by rising higher and coming into a new experience with God. Oh, may it bring you into all that is meant by the revelation of the Mighty One of Jacob!


--from But God

For those who "Walk in White"

from Oswald Chambers' My Utmost for His Highest:

DO YOU WALK IN WHITE?

"We were buried with Him...that just as Christ was raised from the dead...even so we also should walk in newness of life" (Romans 6:4).

No one experiences complete sanctification without going through a "white funeral"--the burial of the old life. If there has never been this crucial moment of change through death, sanctification will never be more than an elusive dream. There must be a "white funeral," a death with only one resurrection--a resurrection into the life of Jesus Christ. Nothing can defeat a life like this. It has oneness with God for only one purpose--to be a witness for Him.

Have you really come to your last days? You have often come to them in your mind, but have you really experienced them? You cannot die or go to your funeral in a mood of excitement. Death means you stop being. You must agree with God and stop being the intensely striving kind of Christian you have been. We avoid the cemetery and continually refuse our own death. It will not happen by striving, but by yielding to death. It is dying--being "baptized into His death" (Romans 6:3).

Have you had your own "white funeral," or are you piously deceiving your own soul? Has there been a point in your life which you now mark as your last day? is there a place in your life to which you go back in memory with humility and overwhelming gratitude, so that you can honestly proclaim, "Yes, it was then, at my 'white funeral,' that I made an agreement with God."

"This is the will of God, your sanctification..." (1 Thessalonians 4:3). Once you truly realize this is God's will, you will enter into the process of sanctification as a natural response. Are you willing to experience that "white funeral" now? Will you agree with Him that this is your last day on earth? The moment of agreement depends on you.

"Hoo hoo hoo! Look who knows so much, heh?"

Spectators at the cross of Calvary imagined a dramatic escape or rescue as the proof of Jesus' kingship. God had an infinitely greater demonstration in mind. The Son would not manage to escape from the hands of His captors or from the nails and wood that held Him, nor would someone else come to His rescue. He would go through the last extremity of what it means to be human, and by that very means, by death itself, He would destroy the power of death. He would become, by His obedient dying, the "Death of Death" and "Hell's Destruction."

When we, in our "lesser miseries," plead for escape or rescue, what unimaginable "solutions" God has stored up for us! But often, in response to our pleadings, the word is Trust Me.

--from The Music of His Promises, by Elisabeth Elliot

Living a fast; when our food becomes God

From the author of the blog, Every Bitter Thing is Sweet: I was asked through a comment on an earlier post to write on fasting. While a topic very close to my heart, I have to admit it's intimidating to "put myself out there" in regards to it. For a few reasons: First, I had a very real struggle with eating and my weight through high school and college that even showed itself again twice afterward. I've since had deep healing in this area, but I want to handle this topic with kid gloves as I know there are readers who still walk where I've walked. To receive the real fruit of fasting, the line between fasting food and weight manipulation can't be crossed. (Fasting food is not for those who are actively struggling in this area. More on this at the end of the post.) Second, I've "failed" over and over again. I may have broken more fasts than I've completed. My point in sharing this is not because I believe God desires for fasting to be perfected and that, to write about fasting, I need to be good at it. But to the contrary, I want to carefully communicate that fasting produces a "success" that isn't measured by how it's executed. I've learned this through my many fasts broken a few days or hours early ... and God's response. ***************************** God met me at my weakest moment - in fact, I think that provided the entryway for our true introduction. I had a relationship with Him for years that was built primarily (though not solely) around a construct of success. God gave me "my best life now", I thought. He added to my impact.  And the accolades which came as a result of that impact only fueled my conception that life with God translated into promotion. Then, the naive prayers I prayed when life was good were answered. God slowly, but mercifully, began to unravel my success. He allowed trials and subsequent pain that didn't fit my paradigm of Christianity. He uniquely leveraged circumstances to draw out the fears and insecurities which my success had served to mask. He undid me. And then He wooed me. He met me. He engaged with my pain and applied the kind of healing that only a Father can. He bandaged my wounds, and in the meantime my cold heart started to thaw. For these years, I felt like I was living a fast. The things I relied upon, even just the momentary pleasures of life that remained through all those trials, were drained. My food became God. I needed Him to get through a day, even just an hour. Most mornings He was the only reason my feet hit the floor beside my bed and didn't stay nestled under the covers all day. In this place, I couldn't really understand people who were lamenting about going through a whole day and forgetting to acknowledge God. My circumstances - and a new awareness of real depravity in my heart - had left me leveled. I was faced with the reality, day in and day out, that I was nothing without Him. During that time, He began to reconstruct my understanding of Him in such a way that I actually relished my weakness - because it was the very thing, the only thing, that brought me into the safety of His fatherhood. Voluntary weakness. That's what fasting is. Putting ourselves in a position to need God, in a way that runs counter to our daily life's cravings. So my stage was set to seek more of this, when life wasn't so hard. Circumstances began to fall into a better place and my heart felt the benefits of real emotional healing. I found myself noting, like those others I couldn't understand before, my days passing without an encounter with God, much less a recognition of Him. I wanted the "glory days" back when my flesh was weak but my heart was alive. I wanted the personal touch of God laced through my day. Enter fasting. Periods of time, sometimes days, others weeks, others just hours, where I said "no" to what I craved and "yes" to the weakness that invites Jesus. The form didn't really matter - at times I had a grace from God to fast all but water, and other times I fasted things like sweets and meat or solid foods - it was my resulting weakness that provided the entryway. I wanted to put myself in a position where I recognized my gaping need for God. Resisting the little things that provided for my daily highlights, made it so that only God would (and could) be my highlight. And somewhere in the awkwardness of being cranky, depleted, uncomfortable and hungry, His Spirit inside of me begins to take the wheel. My flesh takes a backseat. Cognitively, it makes no sense. On the days I fast, it feels like my productivity plummets, but somehow the sweet power of God trumps my weakness. So much so that I want to do it again the next week. It is good and so bad, all at once. I dread fasting days, but love what comes of them. Things I've prayed for (for months, oftentimes) take wings just after those fasts. And the ugly parts of my flesh, the part I plead with God to remove, not surprisingly lose steam after prayer and fasting. I get a taste of stepping off the treadmill of cycle after cycle after cycle of the same struggles, the same fears, the same sins. Fasting, somehow, produces breakthrough. God brings freedom when I have no strength to implement a victory plan. His ways are just so counter to this material world. And yet, I don't really like fasting. But I love what it produces in me. And the key is not being a "good" fast-er. The kingdom of God doesn't advance solely through discipline, in my perspective, but the eye of the father is on the one - like me - who falls seven times but, yet again, gets up. Fasting takes the intangible truth that God is strong and we are weak and infuses it into our soul. It is utterly humbling because it reveals how much our lives depend on things that aren't God. Like chai tea lattes. And regular meals. To fast is to desperately need God to carry it through. I broke a fast once by scarfing down a family-sized bag of peanut M&M's. It had probably been a year at least since I had even one. But they tasted so good (for about 5 seconds until my empty stomach was ready to revolt). And God told me to press delete, and start over. No shame. Get back up. Fasting isn't about self-will, it's about putting yourself in a place to receive desire. So even "failure", just as long as you don't quit, can produce heart-level results. For those of you who share my history with eating struggles, but haven't yet had victory (or those of you who are pregnant or nursing moms or who have health conditions which preclude you from fasting), there many things to fast beyond food. Television. Internet. Email. Phone. Just the noise of life that can be a crutch. Those things that, if removed, allow us to acknowledge our emptiness. It is in weakness that He found me. The years where I got the props from other people for my ministry and my impact and received regular kudos for my faith paled in comparison to the dark nights where Jesus met me in the barren field. And the ground that was taken in my life during that time was so vast, that I refuse to wait for another set of circumstances before I position myself to receive more of Him like that. In weakness. God speaks into our void. Fasting creates the atmosphere where reliance on that Voice is the only option. But the days will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them; then they will fast in those days. Luke 5:35

"We have already succeeded."

God moves in a mysterious way
His wonders to perform;
He plants His footsteps in the sea
And rides upon the storm.

Deep in unfathomable mines
Of never failing skill
He treasures up His bright designs
And works His sovereign will.

Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take;
The clouds ye so much dread
Are big with mercy and shall break
In blessings on your head.

Judge not the Lord by feeble sense,
But trust Him for His grace;
Behind a frowning providence
He hides a smiling face.

His purposes will ripen fast,
Unfolding every hour;
The bud may have a bitter taste,
But sweet will be the flower.

Blind unbelief is sure to err
And scan His work in vain;
God is His own interpreter,
And He will make it plain.

-William Cowper, 1774