“But as for me, I will sing about your power. Each morning I will sing with joy about your unfailing love. For you have been my refuge, a place of safety when I am in distress.“
–Psalm 59:16
I’ve been digging through the Word of God and trying to flesh out the concept of joy. There’s a lot to it. Sometimes it’s the only word to express the emotional overflow in a hard-won victory, at the fulfillment of a long-awaited hope. It’s the mark of wholeness, celebration, abundance, and total satisfaction.
But sometimes, Scripture ties the concept of joy to danger, grief, and stress. I’m trying to understand this layer of joy because I think it can be a huge help to me in framing our situation.
Especially in the first half of Psalms, I found a lot of verses that combine the themes of joy and refuge in the same sentence. Joy: the elation and relief you feel when, having desperately needed cover, you have found your shelter adequate.
There’s a song I’ve been playing on repeat over this last week or so as I cling to the refuge visual.
/You can be still
You can trust Him
Even when your world feels busted./
-Jordan Janzen, “You Can Let Go”
My world feels a little busted.
Since Dr. Filart said that an ablation would likely not solve the problem, and he’d like more imaging of my heart. Since the radiologist sent over the report with the words “cerebral white matter disease.” Since I started on an antibiotic to try to clear up a possible pocket of infection in the base of my skull. Since the MRI showed a mass in my neck we didn’t even know was there.
I did pray that whatever was causing my symptoms would show up on imaging. Yeesh.
I’ve mostly responded by calling people and listing the findings. As if rehearsing that list again and again will somehow help it make sense. Or by distraction. Baking show. Survival show. Facebook. Music. Anything to fill the space. The silence. The gnawing awareness that I don’t know what it all means. I don’t want to sit in that awareness. I welcome anything to keep my mind busy instead, even the hum of the CT as I bite my tongue and try not to swallow so they can get a clear picture.
Cody sat me down the other day and told me that I had called my brother, my sister, his sister, and Eva Jeane, but I hadn’t really talked to him. I think…in the same way that I hadn’t really talked to the Lord. I had lightly conversed, I had listened, I had worshipped. But I hadn’t poured out. I was trying to just take in the truth, but a relationship goes both ways. I also have to let out the ache.
Instead, I had tried to satisfy my need to process on the phone, skirting the edges of this uncomfortable emotion, because with Cody and with Jesus…I can’t pretend I’ve got it together and I understand it. It becomes glaringly clear that I’m out of my depth and I’m reaching. Reaching for any sort of way to describe what is happening that puts me back in a position of control over it, instead of victim to it.
I looked at Cody, and hot tears dribbled down my cheeks as I finally gave voice to my dread. What if, instead of growing stronger and stronger, I’m going to have less and less to give to my little boys? What if, after everything Cody’s already given for me, instead of being able to help him, I become an added burden to his load?
Cody gently reminded me that we live with our own little Ebeneezer, and we paused to listen to the happy pitter patter of his feet in the hallway.
“Maybe,” Cody continued, “maybe just like with Benaiah, first God is making it clear that we’re in an impossible situation, THEN He’ll step in and solve it.”
The next day, Cody left me a note on my desk:
“God sees when our beacons are lit, and unlike Rohan, there is no question as to whether He will answer. (Lord of the Rings reference) He will come. He will walk with us through the flames, and He will be – He is – our salvation! Keep your eyes on Him my love.”
Oh Lord,
Grow me from the person who scurries around on the beach of the Red Sea crying that I’m about to die, into the person who stands on the rock, holds up a staff and screams “Stand still and see the salvation of your God!” No Red Sea moment of options closing down and danger closing in is too hard for you. You make a way where there is no way.
“Peace. Be still.” Speak it over me, Lord. Help me yield to the rule of your peace in my heart. (Colossians 3:16)
Tears are just beneath the surface. Not always. Not when I speak clinically. Clinically, it’s a fascinating case. I’m excited to find out what’s next. But as the person who’s living inside the case study, I am frustrated, I’m scared, I’m troubled, I’m weary. I’m emotionally spent.
As we keep finding things, it feels more and more foolish to hope we will be able to return to the life we hoped for.
“Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done.“
–What have you already done?–
You saved Benaiah. He’s okay. We are maybe one scan away from a deep sigh of relief. He needed surgery. He had so many things going on in that fragile baby brain. And yet you healed him, Lord, when all we could do was ask you for help.
You sent phone calls. You put me on people’s hearts and they felt moved to call me and speak strength to me. You see me, El Roi. The state of my heart is on your mind.
You sent your words: Acquainted with grief (Isaiah 53:3). Strength to strength (Psalm 84:5-7). Promises of your understanding and compassion for me as the waves hit. Promises of your new strength to survive the next wave when I already feel bowled over and spent from the last one.
You gradually marched out the information so that I can absorb it a little at a time. It is not hitting me all at once, but at a pace I can tolerate.
Before I even asked, Dr. Gottschalk had an ENT he really, really trusted and asked me to go to THAT one. The one who just removed a malignant tumor from his friend’s throat. When I scheduled this new patient appointment with Dr. G, and he got the office staff to move it up from February, it was just to deal with my asthma. I can’t get over the perfect timing that it was all in place when this new round of symptoms hit. To have the doctor that walked through Benaiah’s entire journey with us, now set up to take care of me as the appointments multiply and the information floods in. Incredible. I was not prepared, Lord, but you were.
I’m already set up with weekly therapy appointments. I don’t have to wait until it gets too rough and then try to think about adding another appointment to the schedule. It’s in place. I’ve got a space to talk and process and work through both what we’ve already been through and what’s coming.
You have worked on our behalf, you have heard our cries, you have seen our grief, you have promised your strength, you have prepared the way. It is mine to walk in it. But your fingerprints are all over this.
–What do I need?–
I will ask you. Please, Son of David, have mercy on me. With a word, with a touch, with a thought in your mind, all of my problems would be no challenge at all for you to clear away. Creator, you could totally restore me. I believe you. Please heal me.
“Jesus answered, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but that the works of God should be revealed in him.”
May the reason I’m sick be so that You get glory. So that the work of God may be revealed in me. And don’t do it in the shadows. Show your strength in my weakness. Give me victory that could never have come from me. Use my story to overcome arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of you in the minds of people (2 Corinthians 10:5). Through me, teach them who you are, that they may come to love you and trust you.
Please, please, make this mass removable, and may it bring relief when it’s removed. Please no radiation. Please no chemo. But not my will but yours. If you ask me to walk that road, strengthen me with the understanding of the incredible greatness of your power for me, the one who believes you (Ephesians 1:19). The same power that raised Christ from the dead? Sickness doesn’t stand a chance against it. My enemy doesn’t stand a chance against it. You can solve dead. You can surely solve everything short of that.
As I look at my erratic heart rhythms, my weary soul, my damaged mind, and my dwindling strength, Help me still to love you with all that’s left of my heart, my soul, my mind and my strength. What little I have, may I give it all to you.
Show me what you are asking of me. Strengthen me to give it. Move me to love you deeper and to humble myself to receive and receive and receive from your love. Oh how I need it. Ground me in it. Help me to stand.
May that love overflow into waiting rooms and doctor’s offices. Help me to see and minister to the needs around me rather than being absorbed in my own concerns.
Help me to exercise discretion with my thoughts: which ones I pick up and hold onto, which ones I lay aside. Give me the wisdom and self-control to choose to dwell on only that which will serve and strengthen me. Give me the trust and the confidence to let tomorrow’s troubles wait, to refuse to suffer them early.
Help me to count it all joy. Give me your joy, your endurance, your strength, your humility.
Give Cody your peace. Comfort his heart. It is so painful to watch someone you love face scary possibilities and be helpless to fix anything about it. I hate that he’s going through that again. Thank you for this husband you guided me to and gave to me in your grace. He is one in a million. Make me a blessing to him. When I feel afraid that I am a burden he will come to resent, remind me your truth, that I am your gift to him. And give to him, through me, Lord.
Help me to trust you with my whole heart and to relax in your goodness – like I do in a beautiful cabin, snuggling by a fireplace and enjoying the giant windows that look out on a violent storm. When I start running through that daunting list, help me to draw it in my mind: the clouds, the lightning, the rain, the wind, the flood. Then, to draw a window framing it. Because the storm is real, but I am inside. You are my adequate shelter.
Give us the joy and relief that is ours because we rest inside your protection. We can watch the storm ramp up and ramp up and appreciate how solid you are and be fascinated by the contrast of the outer chaos and the inner calm. That it’s an impressive storm, but we are safe in it.
“Taste and see that the Lord is good. Oh, the joys of those who take refuge in him!”
“As pressure and stress bear down on me, I find joy in your commands.”
“Because you are my helper, I sing for joy in the shadow of your wings. I cling to you;
your strong right hand holds me securely.“
“He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might, He increases strength.”
“Do not gloat over me, my enemies!
For though I fall, I will rise again.
Though I sit in darkness,
the Lord will be my light.”
dig deep | draw close 