Dancing in the Desert: Call Your Troubles "Sam"

If you know me well, you know how much I hate snakes, and it's more than just in the "ew they're creepy and disgusting and God should have left them off His creation list" way.  Suffice it to say, in my world, pink roses are to promises what snakes are to impending doom.  (It's a long story that I plan to share with you someday.)

("The Snake and the Rose" by Ninfa Benoni)

At any rate, you could have certainly colored me intrigued when Brooksie gave me a heads-up that our pastor was going to be preaching on "snakes as a symbol of healing" two Sundays ago.

Snakes?  Healing?  There were too many eye-rolls and oxygen-sucking sighs for such a statement.

But I heard him out (with great anticipation, I should add).

Coincidentally (I see you there, God!), the sermon related a story of Moses in the desert.  It wasn't one I was familiar with--it was a sidebar noting the Israelites' incessant complaining about their circumstances and God's response of sending poisonous snakes to bite them.  God gave Moses a bronzed serpentine scepter upon which anyone bitten could look and not die.

The symbol of what had hurt them, our pastor noted, was what could ultimately heal them, and it even became known as the famous Rod of Asclepius, which you might recognize on signs at pharmacies, hospitals, and any other place of "healing."

I began to ponder the message he drove home--is it possible that our troubles can be a gateway to healing?

From the dawn of time, God has been using that which afflicts us to make us better.  Like chemotherapy, it doesn't make sense--fighting something deadly with something that seems and feels even deadlier.  And when God prescribes a hefty dosage to combat the malignancies of our character, we may watch our former selves waste away.

But sometimes, that's exactly what the desert is for.

To have our troubles, our isolation, our obscurity, our pain kill the ugliness inside--and along with it, whatever is necessary to break us in the process.

It is only then that He can rebuild and heal.

I read an excerpt from Jesus Calling that same day, which coincidentally beckoned us to befriend our troubles because they stimulate goodness.  I laughed out loud and told Brooksie, "Okay then.  I'll just call my troubles 'Sam.'"  But when I said it aloud, I stopped laughing, for I understood.

With as much as our pain or our troubles can dominate our lives at times, they deserve an identity.  But that identity needs to be something we can control.  When we let it run rampant and unhinged, it can feel so gigantic and vicious, and it's a bunch of lies.  So it deserves to be viewed and identified in God's light and truth--as a helper, not as a detriment.  As a medicine, not as a poison.

As a friend, not as a foe.

So name your troubles. Call them "Lionel" or "Rick" or "Sam."  Call them "Ashley" or "Linda."  Do what it takes for you to understand that this desert, this wandering, this season of drought and frustration and mystery doesn't exist to take you down.  It exists to reach down deep and pull the goodness out of you, letting all the rest of it blow away like sand in the wind.

You can be healed, my friend--no matter the means it takes.

Dancing in the Desert: Nothing Is Beneath You

The thought happened upon me while I was folding baby blankets at work a few weeks ago.

It's one of those tasks that no one enjoys doing--one we secretly hope someone else will do when we "forget" but needs to be done nonetheless.  I hadn't even been aware it was on our downtime chore list until recently.

That day, the downtime was there, the warmers emptied of linen, and I couldn't find a good excuse to ignore the glaring necessity of this painfully menial task.  Snagging what felt like hundreds of the duck-graced pieces of fabric, I stacked them high on my desk.  Their hastily-folded corners were awry and messy, and they towered haphazardly like a molten, melted pile of well-worn cloth.  One by one, I pulled them off the stack and folded them into neat, puffy squares.  And though it felt tedious and admittedly far below my qualifications, I felt a godly nudge.

This isn't beneath you.

I thought extensively about that.

Nothing (unless morally compromising) is really "beneath" any of us.

I then repeated the same essence in a different phrasing as another blanket swept through my fingers:

I'm not too good for anything.

If you'd told a young, thriving, princely Moses that he'd be stripped from his royal duties to go tend sheep that didn't even belong to him in the middle of the barren brush of the Midian desert, he might've responded with my initial displeasure of folding blankets.  Maybe he would've told God that that was so far beneath him, he'd need a passport and a month's worth of travel to arrive there.

But God knew it wasn't.  And God knew Moses needed to do something he was "too good for."  He shaped Moses' character for 40 years in the desert until Moses was good at doing something he was too good for (tending sheep), in order to lead him to do something Moses didn't feel he would ever be good enough to do (tending the Israelites).

Read that last sentence again--it's a doozie!  See the irony?  The pattern?

I believe God wants us to do big things for Him.  But I think one of the greatest obstacles to us accomplishing them is our own pride.  We don't want the small responsibilities and to have to work up to the greater ones!  We're ready now!  Not folding blankets--give me something better!  Something more noteworthy!

And yet, I find there are countless examples in Scripture where God does His most intricate preparation of His most effective leaders by having them do something far beneath them.

From dungeon-sitting, to enduring humiliating name-calling, to sheep-sitting--God loves to whittle away the hot air of our pompous beliefs about ourselves so that He can reconstruct a pure and humbled distinction that is far more adept at carrying out His work.

It arrives in the physically abject and everyday tasks--from hauling out the smelly garbage and changing the dirty diapers and folding incessant piles of baby blankets.  It includes fetching cups of coffee for people who don't know your name and may never care what it is.  

It can involve emotionally "degrading" and hair-splitting tasks of giving grace to admitting fault to saying we're sorry.

We're not too good for any of it.  None of it is beneath us.  If we are intent on achieving big things for His kingdom, we can't skip lessons to get there based on the touting of our self-reported, self-important resume.  He knows our hearts, and He knows what we're ready for.

We all start at the bottom somehow.  Greatness begins with the menial.  Greatness begins with the lowly.

Greatness begins with the desert.

So pull up a chair and join me, will you?  After all, these blankets won't fold themselves.

Waiting...For You

Here I am, God.  The world around me feels like it's falling apart, and I'm waiting for you to fix it.

When I miscarried before I got pregnant with Harlow, you taught me not to hold onto anything too tightly.  Hold it all loosely, you said.  And I learned it, Lord, but then I forgot, and I've dug in my nails again, and I'm waiting for you to say that I don't have to loosen my grip on anything.  I'm waiting for you to say I've learned enough for a lifetime.  But here we are again, and even though you won't speak, I feel you.

I feel you plucking my fingers, one by one, and telling me to stop holding on so tightly.

I've been here before.  I've met you right here, broken and scared at the foot of your request to surrender and throw my trust upon you.  And last time, I fought. 

But this time, I know better.  I might be waiting around forever for you to tell me I can have things my way.  So like Abraham, I'll follow you up the mountain.

Because you're good.

And I'll lay down what matters most.

Because you're faithful.

And I'll be willing to lose it all.

Even if you don't send a ram at the last minute.

No, I'm not going to wait around for you to pry it from my hands.  You can have it all--it doesn't belong to me anyway.  And even though the world is chaotic, and you seem to be missing in the midst of it--

Like C.S. Lewis says, I'm here.  And I'll get up.  And I'm intending, though it feels like you've forsaken me.  When I feel powerless before the world, I'll remember--

There is power on my knees.  There is power in your Name.

For I know you're good.  And I know you hear me and you see me and you love me.

And I'll thank you for every moment of comfort that you've allowed me to have and every provision you've chosen to give.

You're good, God.  Let the whole world know!  I give it up!  I give up the wait for your answers and the downfall of wrong and my need to feel good and my longing to feel comfortable.  Give me you.

Give me you.  Give me all of you.  You are what I want, and you are what I need, and without you, none of the rest of it matters because it isn't forever.  But you are.

So take it all.  Take everything, if you want.  And I'll keep moving.  Keep intending.  Keep living.  Keep waiting.

Waiting.

Waiting for you, Lord.  And I'll wait forever, Lord, if I have to.

Because you're what I want--and that's a wait that will be worth it.

Waiting...For More

Lord, can't I just have everything I want?  Some days, it feels like you leave me hanging in need.  There's so much to pay for, worry about, satisfy--I need more.  More of everything to help my heart and my eyelids rest a little more easily at night.

 

You say you'll meet all my needs, but what about my need to relax and feel like the world won't crumble around me if I look away for two seconds?  Isn't that need just as real as my need for water and food?  For what good are physical provisions if my mind is too preoccupied with when you'll provide next?

 

And then, I remember.  Manna.  When you carried your people out of their known world and into the unknown wilderness, you didn't leave them hanging for what they needed.  There was never the promise ofmore, just enough.  You showed up every day and every night for them with just enough.  You didn't let them keep any extra for a "rainy day."  You knew there wouldn't be any "rainy days," so you shriveled up their stockpiles, for what was the point of them?  They weren't going to need them.

 

And is that what you mean when you shrink us down to our barest bones of provisions?  Maybe it's your way of saying, You don't need this.  I've got you covered.

 

Even though you gave them what they needed every day, oh, how they complained that it wasn't tasty enough!  Give us something different, God!  Your provisions are boring me!

 

Oh, God, is that what I'm saying to you when I want more?  I don't mean it in that way.  It's just that sometimes, I find it scary to trust you.

 

Why does it feel that way?  It shouldn't.  I think of David and the stones you provided in the brook to take down Goliath--he took five, but he only needed one.  You provided a loss of appetite for the lion when Daniel spent the night in his den.  You provided a cone of protection around Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the furnace.  You provided a lamb on Mount Moriah to take Isaac's place.  You provided wood for Noah's ark, grain for Ruth and Naomi, loaves and fish for a multitude.  You provided a baby in a manger, a calming of the storm, a sacrifice for our every sin.

 

You look after the needs of the sparrow and the blooming of the flowers.  You're watching me, too, and keeping tabs on what my mind and body need most to keep going in this season of wandering and waiting.

 

The Israelites didn't spend the rest of their lives in the manna state.  At last, after a long period of waiting, you did give them more.  You gave them a Promised Land, bounteous and plentiful, with the manna stopping only once their feet had crossed over the threshold.

 

Oh, Lord.  Your provisions--why should I complain about the lifelines you give while I await the day that my worries and cares will be but a memory?  How could I be sick of your gifts?  The proof that you see me and hear me?

 

Maybe it's my own fault that I find it hard to rest and relax.  And maybe you'll keep shrinking my stockpiles until I finally learn the concept that I'm in your hand, and you're not going to let me drop.

 

Lord, I'm waiting.

 

Waiting.

 

Waiting for the day when you'll decide to give more.

 

But in the meantime--your manna?  It's enough.

Waiting...For A Downfall

Oh, Lord.  There's so much that seems wrong in the world and so little that seems right.  It's one of those seasons where every time I'd like to turn right, everything else goes left.  It's almost enough to give up sometimes and say, forget it.  I'll just do what I want because following you and following the rules only seems to bring me more heartache and difficulty.  Why do you make it so hard to follow you?  Why do you keep blessings for those who chase after you so far out of reach?

 

Once upon a time, you seemed quicker to set things right.

 

The prodigal son had his fun, to be sure, but then he got a pigpen.  He was reduced to slop and mud, and it was enough to bring him home.  Running home, that is.  He had done something wrong, and you made it right.

 

David was an adulterer, a killer, and a liar, and his comeuppance came in the loss of the child he conceived with his mistress.  A grief that buckled his knees and retaught him how to pray and beg for your mercy.  His wayward heart was no match for your bold switch of discipline, and he was reborn unto you.

 

Saul murdered those who loved you, and you met him plain as day on the Damascus Road.  You flattened him and blinded him until he gave into the concept of you.

 

I've read how you can quiet money changers with the flip of a table.  You've silenced a nation with waters of blood, painful boils, and swarms of locusts.  You've parted an entire sea for your children and then sewn it back together to drown the chariots of their enemies.  You've flooded the earth to rid it of sin, sent a disobedient prophet into a fish belly, and penalized the entire world over the failed temptation of a piece of fruit.

 

It should be so simple that the downfall of wrong satisfies the good of you, Lord, and makes everything right.

 

But why do you makes us wait for that downfall?  Why do you make the wronged wait so long for things to be made right?

 

And yet, there's some kind of magic happening behind the scenes of the wrongs that hang around too long.  There's some reason Joseph didn't lose his mind or end it all during the years and years he waited for justice in the dungeon.  There's a reason Paul's writings in his prison cell are some of the most magnificent and memorized pieces of Scripture or that his words are loaded with the most powerful charges to faith, gratitude, and holiness. 

 

There's a reason that the wrong Jesus patiently endured shook the earth to its very foundation.  And there's a reason it rewrote the future for those of us who choose to believe.

 

You always right the wrongs, don't you?  Eventually.  But in the meantime, I see you giving all the tools the wronged need until you straighten it out.  You never leave us truly helpless while we wait for you.

 

And those who wait the longest in the hardest of situations--

 

Aren't they the ones who make the biggest difference?  Who have the greatest impact?  And though it seems like your hand is harshest upon them, perhaps it's because you find them favored? 

 

Maybe you won't make it all right with pigpens or slop or blindness or pain.  Maybe you'll make it all right by showing the world that those who love you can sit in a pile of wrong with their heads held high.  Maybe you want the world to see that "all right" can coexist with madness.

 

Maybe you won't deliver the justice with the violence of a thunderous storm, but in the quiet, commanding assertion by the lowliest and most wounded of all that there's nothing to be worked up about--for this isn't how it will end.

 

Oh, my heart, Lord--it is waiting for you.  And it's waiting.

 

Waiting.

 

Waiting for the downfall of whatever won't bow to you.

Waiting...To Be Healed

There's pain, God.  Everywhere.

There's physical pain--daily sticks to see if the blood sugar is normal, pokes to make sure the blood is okay, pricks to give medicine.  There's the chronic ache of a back that started after a car wreck and still won't go away.  There's stomach pains that can't be appeased, migraines that won't surrender.  There's lupus and cancer and literal broken hearts.

Then there's the emotional pain--figuratively broken hearts, though they often feel literal.  There's losing pregnancies, losing grown children, losing parents.  There's watching someone you love fight a disease you'd gladly take on as your own.  There's watching your child go back and forth between two homes, with no understanding for why mom and dad are so angry with each other.  There's signing of divorce papers, signing over of rights.  There's addiction and guilt, regrets and remorse for every second of the day.

We hurt, God.  And we want to stop hurting.

I want you to be the Lord of Lazarus!  The one who calls us from the grave and gives us life again!  For oh, how wonderful it would be to never have to let go or say goodbye.  Be the one who tells the lame to walk, so we can run and tell the news of your glory!  Be the God of Job, who though capable of taking everything away, can give everything back twice over.  Be the Lord at the well and the Lord drawing the line in the sand, who meets us in our brokenness and carefully sews us back together.

We want to be healed.  To be cured and whole.  To consider heartbreak and misery merely nothing but a memory, and one we don't recall well.

C.S. Lewis called pain your "megaphone," one you use to "rouse a deaf world."  And while I understand your need to get our attention and the effectiveness of pain, couldn't you take it away once we turn to you?

Sometimes you do.  Sometimes you wipe it all away, like the ailments that fell away at the touch of your cloak.  But for others, it's slow and monotonous.  For some, it never happens until this life becomes another.

So I have to stop and remember--healing is a process that's different for everyone, for we all have different combinations of hurts and different makeups that respond differently to those hurts.  It's like the babies I take care of in the hospital.  What's the first thing the parents ask us?

When will my baby be well enough for me to take home?

We can't ever answer that, especially on the first day.  We can give ballpark numbers and typical paths, but the truth is that every baby is different, and every baby heals differently.  I can't tell them if their baby will sail through perfectly and never need a blood transfusion or a round of antibiotics or oxygen.  I can't tell them if their baby will hit every roadblock and setback imaginable, with everything from a high-frequency jet ventilator to steroids to a perforated bowel to eye surgery.  No two paths to healing are exactly alike.  But what I can assure the parents is that babies don't stay in our unit forever.  One way or another, healing comes.

And I watch those parents wait.  I watch them come every day and bring milk.  I watch them change those first diapers with their breath held tightly, deathly afraid of pulling too hard on a tube or wire.  I watch them hold their babies for the first time and feed the first bottles.  I watch their faces fall when they hear that they can't go home this week like they hoped, for the baby briefly stopped breathing.  I wait with them.  I cheer them on and remind them that one day, these days of leaving their babies to sleep in a hospital when they go home at night will soon be nothing more than a memory.

Sometimes healing comes when the baby doesn't have to fight anymore and can slip silently away to the heavens in the rocking arms of his aching mother.

But healing comes.  Always.

And God, I see that the process that gets us to healing is just as important as the healed state itself.  For it is the pain and the waiting and the two steps forward and three steps back that make us hardy and refined.  It makes us who we are.

And so Lord, I'll take what you give.

I'll take the casts and the pokes and the pain and the brokenness that it takes to get me well enough until I'm Home.

So I'm still here, waiting.

Waiting.

Waiting for you to heal.

Waiting...For An Answer

I can't hear you, God.  Are you there?  I search for you every day and every night, but I can't see you or feel you.  Every urge within me compels me to believe you've gone away and left me, but I've been here before, and I know it isn't so.  And while I long for you to answer me, I understand that sometimes, this is what you do.  You observe.  You're in the room, refusing to speak, refusing to intervene, and refusing to let me know why.

I know you could give me what I want at the drop of a hat.  You could.  But you're not.  Which means there is a reason.

Why does your silence always feel like abandonment?  It shouldn't be so.  I think of Esther.  You never spoke once in her entire story--your name is never named.  But you're there.  You're written in the pages, in every comma, in every period, in every black-inked letter that swoops into the desperate cries for you to save.  They don't ask where you are, even though you're quiet.  You're in the ear of Mordecai, capturing every threat of murder before it becomes a reality.  You're in the jeweled golden crown atop Esther's mane, which has been placed for such a time as this.  You're in the room when she kneels in prayer with her handmaidens, in the throne room when she begs the king for aid.

Your answer is in a stake of impalement.

You're there, unspoken as it may seem.

I think of Joseph.  Again, we never hear your voice when the world seems to be falling apart for someone who doesn't deserve it.  But you're there.  You're in every colorful stitch of the coat that makes him favored and yet hated.  You're in the bottom of the well, where he's left for dead, and in the slavery cart where he's promised life, captive or not.  You're in the house of Potiphar and in his dark, unmerited dungeon of despair.  You're in the feast and the famine, in the Egyptian throne room.

Your answer is in an embrace between a traitor and betrayed.

You're there, quiet as you may seem.

I think of the 400 years of silence in the Bible, when the world longs for you to come and save them.  It's a black-out period of no seeing or hearing from the living God.  But you're there.  You're in the wings of the heavens, crafting the perfect plan for redemption.  You're in the belly of a girl, growing fingers and toes and a heart that beats for the soul of mankind.  You're in the dirt of the dusty road to Bethlehem, in the occupancy of every inn.  You're in the moos of the cows and the constant ache of a labor pain.

Your answer is crying in a manger.

You're there, tiny and helpless as you may seem.

I think of Jesus, kneeling before you in the Garden of Gethsemane, begging you to change your blueprint of salvation.  We don't hear you speak to your own Son.  But you're there.  You're in the footsteps of the guards, in forty pieces of silver, and in the cold kiss of betrayal.  You're in the cuff upon his wrist and in the denying words of Peter.  You're in the release of Barrabas and in the hand-washing of Pilate.  You're in the crack of every whip, the point of every thorn, the steel of every nail.  You're in every drop of blood, in every bead of sweat.  You're in the dying belief of a criminal and the darkening of the clouds.  You're in the ripping of the curtain, the splitting of the rocks, and the final breath of Love.

Your answer is an empty tomb.

You're there.  You're here.  No matter how long your answers take.  You're in every detail, for even in your silence, you don't let go of control.

And so, in your silence, I'll listen.  I'll look for you.  I'll search the patterns of your mysteries with the entirety of my heart.

I'll be here on my knees, waiting.

Waiting.

Waiting for you to answer.