peace

You Light a Lamp for Me: meet the One who produces quiet hearts in dark valleys

/ bekaburnsblog / 3 Comments

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I’ve made it one year knowing that there is a tumor growing in my body.

The Lord has sure given me grace for this year. And…I carry the awareness that it is there, hiding just beneath my skull, of uncertain nature and uncertain trajectory, surrounded by delicate structures, buried too deep to biopsy, and risky to treat. It has been challenging work to unload that awareness and focus on other things.

This month at my follow-up, one of the Mayo Clinic surgeons offered to operate, so I now have the opportunity to remove it while it’s still small, rather than treat it with radiation down the road. We got the surgery on the schedule and I have a little less than a month to walk through anticipating that. On December 6, the surgeon will begin his work. Mine begins now.

Doing the research and walking through this decision was a struggle. There’s a lot we don’t get answers on until the operation is over, and I’m the type of person that likes to know what to expect.

The fear living in my heart has a really hard time with not knowing the future. It looks at unknowns and says, “I bet this is heading somewhere where you don’t have what you need.” It stresses about what to gather and prepare, but never feels quite secure, even when I’ve prepared all I can. It aches for the things that seem to be going well in other people’s stories.

Fear sings in incessant rounds of “what if” and “if only.”

But peace says, “The most important things are not if’s.”

Oh, what mercy, that peace has broken into the conversation.

I am absolutely floored that, in the wise and careful hands of a God who cares deeply for me, a tumor is actually what dials up the volume so that I will notice a battle where I have been getting slaughtered, and get desperate enough to grab onto the strength I need win.

“You take what the enemy meant for evil and you turn it for good, you turn it for good.”

-Elevation Worship, “See A Victory”

I had some freeze, despair, pull my hair out moments working through both my initial diagnosis and this new round of options and information, but now I think this hard thing, in God’s capable hands, actually gets flipped into the training ground where I learn to take up the fight. Perhaps this is where I finally say,

“ENOUGH! I am done yielding my thoughts and heart to the anxious toil of problem-solving things I can’t control. I will take hold of the peace that is MINE and I will fight for all I’m worth to keep it.”

“You will keep in perfect peace
    all who trust in you,
    all whose thoughts are fixed on you!
Trust in the Lord always,
    for the Lord God is the eternal Rock.”

–Isaiah 26:3-4 NLT

“Peace I leave with you; My [perfect] peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Do not let your heart be troubled, nor let it be afraid. [Let My perfect peace calm you in every circumstance and give you courage and strength for every challenge.]”

–John 14:27 AMP

In his discussion of Ephesians 6, MacLaren’s Expositions says this:

“The quiet heart will be able to fling its whole strength into its work. And that is what troubled hearts can never do, for half their energy is taken up in steadying or quieting themselves, or is dissipated in going after a hundred other things.”

My heart is a lot of things: driven, busy, hopeful, productive, vigilant, and determined, but oh, how rarely it is quiet.

And yet that is what the Gospel does. Meeting Jesus, believing who He is, and taking hold of what He has done for you produces a quiet heart. At the beginning, and every time you sit at his feet after.

“Then Jesus said, “Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.”

–Matthew 11:28 NLT

“And let the peace that comes from Christ rule in your hearts…”

–Colossians 3:15 NLT

Oh Lord,

The load is too big for my shoulders. I cannot bear it. I am a mess – a tightly squeezed mess trying to look and feel like I have all of this managed. Cody’s migraines, Benaiah’s brain, my tumor. Too many. Too many problems to respond to and keep track of all at once. Too many emotions. Too many possibilities. So little control.  

And I’m exhausted.

Can you take over? Please flood my heart with your peace and Let. It. Rule.

You are my peace (Eph 2:14). No data or insight or prep will be sufficient. It has to be you. That’s where my security lies.

You don’t miss one detail. You have kept us from missing it when we needed to intervene on things. Help me trust that you’ve had us all along, and you still have us now. You are faithfully leading us step by step. I’m in the dark about what’s coming, but you are not.  You are over the disease that stalks in the darkness (Psalm 91:6, 9). This surgery scares me, but I feel warning about leaving the tumor.

And I trust your leading. I trust your timing. I trust what you allow.

It is okay that the things that are challenging for me are a struggle. I’m learning. Help me to humble my heart and respond to the things you bring to the surface when it’s frustrating and stressful. You love me and you’re working on these things in me. I will keep needing your grace to encourage my heart, your mercy for my failures, and your righteousness to stand on instead of my own.

I agree with you about me. What mercy and grace you choose to give to me, I will receive happily, for I sorely need it. And where you allow it to be challenging, I will agree with you that I am ready, because you have equipped me for it.

In the past 4 years, I’ve watched my husband and both of my little sons rolled away from me and into an OR. These years have held a heavy, unfolding story of brokenness with little reprieve before we duck back under for another round. I feel my weakness and my weariness often. And I long for relief and resolution. When I’m hit hard, I so quickly think of relief as the place I must reach, somehow, someway, if I’m going to survive this.

But pain is where I press into you and find you sufficient.

You are the steady, strong, unfailing supply no matter how long my time in the deep lasts.

You are the place I must reach for, and you are reachable, when relief is not.

It’s when the fight takes us past where we ever thought we’d be walking, past the last of our endurance, when we collapse and still it keeps hurting: that darkness is where we learn that we want relief, but we don’t need it. And that is a powerful secret to uncover.

When you learn that even though you’re uncomfortable, you do have what you need, right here in the dark, you become something to contend with. Because someone who has found their bearings in the deep places is much more difficult to mislead.

If you’re waiting in the dark, too, I want to encourage you with this. I think our Faithful Teacher is in the business of leading us through the valley of the shadow of death in order to build us into sure-footed followers. We are becoming people who don’t fear discomfort or lose their nerve when it gets confusing, because we are learning to trust our Shepherd.

He is shaping us into the kind of people who can face down dire-looking circumstances and trust that He knows the way to lead us to the other side, and that what our enemy intends to ruin us, He will use to build into us.

One more thought. For you, the one who is doing battle in the dark:

“Finally, be strengthened by the Lord and by His vast strength. Put on the full armor of God, so that you can stand against the schemes of the devil.”

–Ephesians 6:10-11 CSB

It has helped me to remember that we don’t take up armor so we can stand against our enemy’s strength. We’re not warned about his strength here; it is so inferior to our Almighty God, there’s no power contest happening. But what we are warned about is the devil’s schemes: his attempts to get us off-center and worried that this vast strength will fail us.

In whatever you are facing, let me be a voice reassuring you that it will not.

So be strengthened by it. When you’re discouraged and stressed and out of steam, be strengthened by the One who will never fail you, by the One who is all you need in the dark.

Because He is light itself.

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“I will praise on the mountain, And I will praise you when the mountain is in my way.

You’re the summit where my feet are, So I will praise You in the valleys all the same.

No less God within the shadows. No less faithful when the night leads me astray.

‘Cause You’re the heaven where my heart is, in the highlands and the heartache all the same.”

–Benjamin William Hastings/Hillsong, “Highlands (Song of Ascent)”

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Frayed: grace to help us when we split under pressure

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“You see, we don’t go around preaching about ourselves. We preach that Jesus Christ is Lord, and we ourselves are your servants for Jesus’ sake…We now have this light shining in our hearts, but we ourselves are like fragile clay jars containing this great treasure. This makes it clear that our great power is from God, not from ourselves.”

–2 Corinthians 4:5, 7

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We’re in the second stage of language learning here in Papua New Guinea. Instead of going to either the classroom or a teaching session out in the village, we’ve been cut loose to learn as much as we can by being with people in their daily lives. Sometimes this means helping in their gardens, washing clothes in the river with them, visiting their homes, or going on a walk and talking with whoever we meet on the way.

One difficulty I ran into last week was this: men and women usually spend their days apart.

Where Cody can pretty freely come and go, it takes a little more legwork and planning to set up a safe way for me get those same experiences. I was brainstorming and doing my very best to meet all the expectations I felt, but one day, my plan fell through and my heart sunk with it.

Cody had a long hike with the men planned that day and with my Plan A out of commission, several people would have had to change their whole day in order for me to get the language time I’d been hoping for. I got disillusioned with how unfair and complicated this process felt. I cried, hard. I miss the structure. I miss our teacher laying out our lessons and making sure everyone was right where they should be. I miss the freedom to just hop in my car and go where I need to go. I miss my mom!

The next morning, one of the sweet ladies here offered to watch Abi for a few hours, and I took the opportunity to reset. I could accomplish all kinds of language study, but if I’m driven by a fearful, panicky, proud heart…what would it be worth?

I asked the Lord to help me accept that part of learning this culture is taking it in stride when a plan doesn’t work out. Part of learning to be faithful is looking for how I can be faithful with what I can do, rather than stressing over what I can’t.

I’m adjusting to a lot of new limitations. And I realize that leaving campus for these language-learning experiences has become, to my heart, a need. An idol, that when threatened, pushes me to distress. I saw that there were pressures I was allowing to influence my choices and forfeit my peace.

I was fearful of falling behind in language. I hate how it feels when I struggle to understand. We do have a really important message and I want to communicate it clearly. But deep down, I think it’s more about my fear than my good intentions. It’s important to me to feel at home, and I’m just plain afraid that I’ll struggle to settle in and I’ll burn out if I don’t get this language down. So there I was, grasping for control and fighting like crazy to set us up here, when the Lord pointed out to me one startling fact:

I had placed my hope for successful ministry and life here on adequate language learning instead of throwing myself upon His grace and strength. Somewhere along the line I decided again that this is up to me. And so, I was blowing a fuse instead of begging for help.

In that moment, I saw all over again that I am a fragile clay jar. And this is by design. It helps to make it crystal clear that any power, gifting, or ability that shows up in my life comes from Christ alone. I am not the savior or the solution to anyone’s need; I am just the stained and battered envelope bearing a message of inexpressible joy:

Help is on the way. You’re going to be okay. Not because I’m here, but because HE is. And look at what He was able to do in me, in spite of all the places I split under the pressure.

Oh Lord,

Please help me to shift my hope to you and you alone. Help my stressed-out heart yield to the rule of your peace. Teach me to surrender the things I am so desperate to control. You have not just set me aside to make sure Cody learns all that he needs. You have different things to teach us, and I am positioned perfectly to learn what you have decided is most important. Make me a humble learner who is willing to learn what you are teaching, rather than rejecting it because I had something different in mind.

As I was looking over our instructions for independent language study, I noticed this breakdown for how to spend our time:

5% – Plan

50% – Participate

20% – Process

25% – Practice

Man, if only 5% of learning depends on planning, I can still learn a ton when the plan goes out the window. Maybe more than if the plan had worked. And I think great learning versus great stress depends on whether I trust the teacher.

You’re changing me. You’re teaching me that YOU are the point, not me. You are freely giving your light and your strength – sending them into my desperate need. I am frayed, but you are unphased, intact, perfect as ever, able to withstand every pressure.

You are the only source of a steady heart. The only thing on earth that can hold us secure through shifting, through trouble, and through our own inadequacy. Lord, I praise your name for who you are and for what you are doing here and now in my life. Lead me as I form my plans for this day, and lead me still when I must take brave steps into unplanned territory.

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This High Priest of ours understands our weaknesses, for he faced all of the same testings we do, yet He did not sin. So let us come boldly to the throne of our gracious God. There we will receive his mercy, and we will find grace to help us when we need it most.”

–Hebrews 4:15-16

Worry, Hurry, Scurry: on living in a quiet place of rest

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“Only in returning to me and resting in me will you be saved. In quietness and confidence is your strength. But you would have none of it.

You said, “No, we will get our help from Egypt…So the Lord must wait for you to come to Him so He can show you his love and compassion…Then you will destroy all your silver idols and precious gold images. You will throw them out like filthy rags, saying to them, “Good Riddance!”

–Isaiah 30:15-16, 18, 22

This week I have felt like this hamster. I worry and hurry and scurry in seven different directions. I stop in the middle of one thing to go work on something else. I am weary and frazzled and I am not alone.

Just today, I left the office to put Abishai down for his nap to the sad goodbyes of the adults we left behind asking if they could take one, too.

It’s good work, but it does not hold a good place in my heart if I have allowed it to rush me along until I am irritable. nervous, and fidgety. 

Something is off when my tasks feel so pressing that I cannot take a quiet moment to remember that my God is handling things quite capably, he is ready to help me when I ask, and I can go about my work from a place of patience and quiet confidence instead of rushing around like a mad woman and being so thrown off by the things that interrupt or derail my idea of how this day should go.

How draining or how life-giving the same task can be often depends on the state of my heart as I approach it.

All along, I could be resting, instead of craving those moments when the work finally stops so I can, too. All along I could be settled in God’s sure strength and his good plan. But how quickly I become impatient and rush off to craft my own solutions. How easily the words, “No, I will get my help from…” escape my lips.

When will I see that all the other things I turn to only steal my worship and waste my time? May I learn to see them as the useless detours that they are, leading me on an uphill treadmill to nowhere until I collapse, out of breath and defeated.May I gain the wisdom to say to them “Good Riddance! My only hope is the Lord!”


Lord, teach me to return to you and find my rest. You are the one who is patiently waiting to meet my needs. You are right there with me, ready to guide my every step, ready to set me in a place of quiet strength, unhurried, unworried, because my eyes are set on you. 

I am often scurrying off to my own version of Egypt in a panic to guard my walls and build alliances. 

But this is what you say:

“Unless the Lord builds a house, the work of the builders is wasted. Unless the Lord protects a city, guarding it with sentries will do no good. It is useless for you to work so hard from early morning until late at night, anxiously working for food to eat; for God gives rest to his loved ones.”

–Psalm 127:1-2

Lord, lead me to a place of calm and teach me to live there, where I can say “The Lord is doing his good work and he is using me, but he does not require me to worry or scurry in this situation in order to do what He has planned with it. So I will rest because I trust in Him.”

In Isaiah and in Psalms there are echoes of a gift held out to an anxious people desperate for relief. A gift that is still constantly offered and often turned down because we are too busy and too worried trying to control our world, force outcomes, plan perfectly, and do God’s job.

But He does not weigh us down with heavy burdens and task us to keep up with an impossible pace.He asks us to let him take our burdens, trust him to carry our cares, and slow down enough to remember who it is we serve and what He is capable of.  

Our God holds out the gift of rest and patiently waits for us to take him up on it. 

See that sleeping baby? He’s on the same hike we are. He could be working just as hard, too, but it wouldn’t get him any further.

What a great reminder God gave us in little kids, who constantly outdo us in their willingness to relax and trust someone else to carry them. 

Heavenly Peace? when there’s no rest for the weary

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“Then Jesus said, ‘Let’s go off by ourselves to a quiet place and rest awhile.'”

-Mark 6:31


I like this verse. Can I get an “amen” for the take-a-break verse? Let’s go off by ourselves to a quiet place and rest awhile. Good. plan. Jesus. 

He’d been serving all day. He hadn’t eaten. The people were non-stop. It was time for a pause. He got in a boat. He sailed away. Up to this point, I’m tracking with him. Yep, follow Jesus’ example. When you get too tired of the people, go get some rest so you can have a fresh start! 

But then.

Then the people figured out his plan and ran ahead to meet him on the other side. I read the verse and my insides wailed for him. 

No, no, no, no, just give the man ONE SECOND, you needy, annoying people!!!

But that is not how Jesus responded. 

This chapter in Mark is famous. It’s the one that describes how Jesus took one boy’s lunch and fed 5000 families. But I think there’s another miracle in this story – one that happened so swiftly and so subtly it’s often overlooked:

“Jesus saw the huge crowd as he stepped from the boat, and he had compassion on them…”

-Mark 6:34

The needs were so constant he couldn’t even get a meal in. They followed him everywhere on foot, so he arranged to travel by boat to get away from them. He wanted a quiet place and rest. He got a crowd of people asking for more. 

He stepped off the boat, recognized his plan was ruined, and in that moment of realization, his heart cared for them more than it cared for his break. 

The Greek translates it this way: “He was moved in the inward parts to feel compassion for them.”

He moved toward them. And not just outwardly. 

I often do what is necessary externally, but pull away on the inside. I sigh and shake my head and move toward the needs before me, but with a frustrated and resentful heart. It was not so with him.

Jesus didn’t plan to endlessly meet needs. He recognized that he needed rest. He chose to pause ministry and step away to recharge. But when that pause was interrupted – he was willing for it to be. When the boat ride was all the break he got, he took it and moved on, without a fit, without any harsh words. And with a gracious heart, he turned toward the people and the work before him, instead of back to the idea of the rest he had been hoping for.

Lord,

Work this miracle in me. Give me wisdom to plan for rest, but grace to receive the work I’m given when it comes unexpectedly. Train my heart to accept the boat-ride breaks with thankfulness and to readily feel compassion for the people you place before me in those interruptions that make me want to retreat.

Help me to see that, in the same way, you are moved with compassion for me. 

After all, this time of year is all about remembering how glad I am that your heart decided to move toward my need.