The "Hows" and "Whys"

The "whys" and "hows" rose to the surface yesterday as the reality of this Stage 3b breast cancer hit me square in my soul.  I had an appointment with the surgeon and the exam, discussion, and words spoken was like starting over for me.  The diagnosis felt fresh after so many months, and as she stated that the ultrasound would not give us the whole picture of what was going on in my breast because this cancer is sneaky...... my "significantly smaller" words I had grasped on to with hope, faded.  A breast MRI is needed to see better what is going on.  She did say she could see some outward changes and Joel and I are still thinking the ultrasound must show some change or they would not have said so, but those rational thoughts came later for me.

Grief rose in me and I spent a great deal of time weeping about the reality, the coming loss of both breasts, and the courage I will need for surgery and all that is ahead.  What did my future hold?  Joel was steady and calm and thought it was a good meeting, but I had a meltdown when we got home.

I went back to the "how did this happen when I was STILL seeing the medical radiologist....how did every doctor I was seeing miss the cancer on my skin and the big changes in my breast.  Truthfully, this is such a rare occurrence that even medical people are surprised by it.  That leads up to the why.  Why, God?  Why?!  Empty questions with empty answers.

I must include here that my struggle with grief and fear makes me uncomfortable and at times embarrassed.  Our oldest son tells me that what I feel is what I feel and that is is more than okay.  That anyone dealing with cancer four times in eight years, breast cancer treatments while having 4 surgeries related to kidney stones besides the other health issues I have....well they would have a wide range of emotions.  And that is why I am sharing it all in my current journey with breast cancer.  Because unlike the first one 3 plus years ago, this one is not easy, it has not been given an excellent prognosis, and is just plain scary at times.  Because for many of us we need a miracle!  Because for many of us the future is not easy nor given an excellent prognosis.  I share when God leads me to do so, and I share because I believe someone needs to hear my words.

So back to the "Why God?"  I believe that most of us have asked that question at one time or another.  But.... there are really no answers to that question.  And if we continue to get stuck there we cannot open our eyes to how God shows up in our difficult circumstances.  We have our focus on the problem....and the why of it instead of on God.  It is not that we don't visit there, but we cannot live there.

Today this verse ~jumped off the page and vibrated in my soul.

 "Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.  In all your ways acknowledge Him and He will make your paths straight.  Indeed, do not be wise in your eyes, Fear the Lord and depart from evil.  It will be health to your flesh and strength to your bones."                                                                   
                                                                  Proverbs 3: 5-8

In these circumstances, in the circumstances we all experience at one time or another in our lives, we cannot lean on our own understanding.  We lean on GOD.  We let Him hold us when we grieve.  We take a deep breath and we trust Him.  Daily, and sometimes more than once a day I say something I heard author and speaker Susie Davis say......"I love you God.  I trust you God.  Thank you for my one beautiful life."  When I trust God, when I surrender the hows and whys to Him, I can embrace my one beautiful life........one day at time.....one blessing at a time.  My beautiful life will look different than yours, but when we trust in and lean on our Papa God, we can find the beauty in the midst of any season.  We may have to dig for it, be very intentional, get past the weeping, brush aside the whys and hows, but it is there.  It is there.

Just Keep Loving Others

With Mother's Day just behind us, I found myself remembering a gathering we went to in Minneapolis MN in February of 2018 to hear Judith Franklin speak. She was the personal assistant to Pastor Bill Johnson from Bethel Church in CA and was speaking about God's love, and she was also sharing her gifts of visual encounters and prophetic words with the audience.  Joel had read one of her books and I, another, so we both were interested in hearing what she had to share.

Towards the end of the session, while she was speaking, she suddenly pointed her finger, looking at me, and began to speak.  I actually looked behind me to see who she was talking to, and she let me know it was me she wanted to address.

She said, "I have been looking at you and speaking to you the whole night.  You have a tender heart for others.  You do hold back with it some.  You have a lot of wisdom to teach people.  I could learn so much from you.  If I ever needed a hug I would come to you.  I wish you could be my mother.  I'm your age, but I wish you were my mother.  So much love.  Just keep loving others."

While she was speaking, I found myself arguing with her in my head! I kept thinking, she does not really know me.........And certainly she was wrong about wanting me to be her mother.  I said nothing out loud, but later shared my thoughts with Joel.  He reminded me that God was speaking through Judy and I needed to receive the words spoken over me, embrace them, and step into what God was seeing in me.

It took me time to to absorb these prophetic words that came from an author I looked up to, and I expect I am still in the process of embracing them.  What I have come to realize, though, is that God sees us through eyes of love.  He sees His children and what we can be, desire to be, even what we are..  He loves us and delights in us.  He finds us amazing, and He dotes on us, His children, and sometimes we forget that.

So, how do we see our children?  One of our daughters says that we are our kids biggest cheerleaders.  Still, we can get caught up in the parenting and the challenges that come from raising kids to wholeness, and end up seeing only the negative.  But God........   God truly wants us to see the good.  We don't deny the rest of it all, but God truly wants us to speak over our kids, our grands, our families that which is good and love on them.  He wants us to see the good even while there may be some "ugly" going on.

Too often we are hard on ourselves, so maybe we also need to look in the mirror, reflecting back what God sees.  Maybe we need to see that we are enough, we are good.  Maybe we need to embrace what God says about us through His Word and through the words of others. 

What stands out for me right now in Judy Franklin's words is one short sentence.  "Just keep loving others".  Lately when watching the news, when listening to our elected officials speak hate and division, when social media promotes the negative, this message needs to be spoken.  Just keep loving others.    Maybe when famil,y is saying and doing things we don't agree with, .or we are ourselves behaving badly....... we need to hear it, we need to do it.........Just keep loving others.  

Just Keep Loving Others

Saturday's Scribbles

Good Saturday to you from Springtime in Iowa!  It is a bit chilly, but we are not complaining when north of us the Duluth area has had up to 10 inches of snow just a couple of days ago.  We lived in Duluth from 1972-74 when Joel was forecasting weather for the pilots at the Air Force Base where he was stationed.  Summers were chilly, especially if you went down the big hill to Lake Superior.  Winters could be brutal and long!  It was so beautiful there though.  One of my favorite places to go was down to Superior where you could sit on the slate slabs of rock and watch the endless water.  Our oldest daughter married a guy from the Duluth area and they were married there on an unusually warm fall day.  It has been years since we have been back to Duluth, but we have many fond memories of the times we have spent there.

It is Mother's Day weekend and my mind cannot help but go to the women in my life who nurtured and mothered me.  My two older sisters, eleven and fifteen years older than me, both helped raise me.  Jan took care of me when I was a baby and a few summers were spent with her and her family over my childhood.  I moved in with Jo first when I was 10 and then at age 12 when they became my guardians until I went off to The Lutheran Bible Institute at 18.  I am forever grateful for what they did for me, and for their love over the years.  I am forever grateful for Jo opening her home and her family to me.  Her four kids, close in age to me, became my siblings.  A blessing.

You see, my mom was an alcoholic by the time I was born and battled addiction for many years, becoming sober the year Joel and I were married.  My dad died when I was seven and my older sisters were off on their own so it was just mom and me for many years as she struggled to keep a roof over our heads and keep alcohol from destroying her life.   God gave me a second family and a safe place with my sister Jo when I needed it most.

When my mom quit drinking, we began to heal our relationship.  She really was an amazing woman who went through a great deal in her life and still, came through it all stronger and better.  She was a great blessing to our kids, who well remember her visits, card games and of course games of yahtzee.  She would come spend a couple of weeks with us when we lived in Montana, Duluth, etc.  One of my favorite things to do with her was dance!  She was an amazing dancer!  We would turn on the radio and dance the two step......oh, she was so graceful in her movements.  We would play yahtzee and Rummy, do crosswords, and she loved to come and scrub my pots and pans until they shined.  I was not so good at that!  We would talk every week on the phone.  She worked until she was 76 as a timekeeper.  She was so smart, and could add numbers in her head so quickly!  When she retired she moved to South Dakota to be near my sister Jan and she lived a full life until the age of 92, playing bingo, going to Bible Study, spending time at her favorite coffee shop every day, and enjoying the family that lived close by.  She taught me how to live through the tough times and how to take life one day at a time. I miss her.

I also need to mention Joel's mom who died in 2011 at the age of 93.  She was a conservative woman of God who was frugal, made most things from scratch, worked hard and loved her family.  When Joel's dad died ~ he was 16, she went back to work as a teacher in the last one room school house that still existed in their county.  (Joel attended a one room schoolhouse from first through eight grade himself!)  It took a few years for Mom T. to accept me, the "city" girl who in her way of thinking, took her "country"boy away from home, but we became close and grew to love each other.

Today I honor all of them and give thanks for them in our lives.  I hope this gives you pause, and has you remembering the women in your lives who mothered and nurtured each of you.  And, Happy Mother's Day!

It Is A Mystery

I have shared the story of how Joel and I were "prayed together" by my older sister who helped raise me and our family friend Marian who worked at our church.  They came up for parents weekend in the fall of my first year at The Lutheran Bible Institute in Golden Valley, MN and while touring the dorms they met Joel.  They told me a couple of hours later that they had "met the man you are going to marry".  I was 18 and coming out of a relationship that had hurt my heart, and I wanted nothing to do with guys.  But they said, "He wants to be a missionary, just like you and we can just see the two of you in a hut in Africa!"  When they pointed Joel out to me, I was surprised, exclaiming, "He is loud, obnoxious and he wears boots!"  They replied, "We will pray about it."  Three months later we went on our first date and we married 18 months after that.

Joel was introduced to the mission field through his second cousin, Rev. David Simonson who was a missionary in Tanzania with his wife Eunice.  He really wanted to combine a life of adventure with his desire to share the gospel and Africa was at the top of his list. When I was 13 I can remember studying the bulletin board at our church and reading about the missionaries we supported....the Grants, with their five boys, who served in Brazil.  (Many years later God connected us to one of the boys, David, who with his wife Deb became our friends!)  I would think about what it would be like to be missionaries in a foreign country.

So, when Joel and I joined as one, the mission field was a dream we had for our future.  As Joel served in the military eight years, then went to seminary and was ordained, we raised our family.  We still talked of the mission field even as Montana beckoned us and our family grew.  In the eighties we looked into the mission field, but we were told by the powers that be that our multi-racial family would be a hardship at that time on the mission field.  We also did some serious talking about our kids having to go to boarding schools if we were in Africa.  Having attended LBI, we knew some missionary kids quite well, and several had gone through tough times leaving their parents and living in boarding schools.  We did not want that for our kids and did not believe that is what God wanted either.  So we stayed stateside, believing that God had closed the door, but that some day we would head out to do mission work......once our family was grown and gone from the nest.

Then sickness became a way of life for me and that dream faded.  It still had it's hooks into us deeply, and over the years we would periodically revisit the grief we felt for never having fulfilled that dream that we believed was from God.

Today I read on Facebook about Operation Bootstrap Africa ( David and Eunice's ministry) presenting a plaque to be placed at the Maasai school for girls that they founded.  It was being placed in David's memory.  He died at the age of 80, after serving as a missionary with Eunice for over 50 years.  He was and is still so beloved by the Maasai that they honored them with land and their home and his burial place overlook Mt. Kilimanjaro.  Their three sons run a Safari sightseeing business in the area.  Their two girls are stateside and Eunice lives in their home in Africa.

So, was our dream inspired by God?  It would not be the first time we strongly felt God lead us somewhere only to have the door closed later.   Whether we closed the door (with not wanting our kids in boarding schools) or whether God closed the door, it closed.  There is mystery wrapped up in it all.  Our mission field has really been mostly just "preaching to the choir".  Those who already know and believe.  It has taken place on American soil in such places like Montana, Minnesota and Iowa.  Certainly not as adventurous as we imagined!  And yet, I know that Joel has touched the lives of so many as they have let me know over the years.

Back to dreams and desires.  I remember a few years ago I told Joel I thought he should go to Africa to see David, visit his ministry and see the places that have always drawn us.  He told me, "I can't go.  I am afraid if I go.......I won't want to come back."  Yes, the dream runs deep within.  We have done what we could to further missions in Africa from our home in the USA knowing that missionaries need our support.

We believe that God works all things together for good to those who love him.   He has blessed our lives in so many ways over the years.  He has blessed Joel's ministry and the years of serving.  I believe He used Joel and hopefully me, to help others know Christ, and have a close relationship with our Lord.  I expect that one day, when we get to Heaven we will have questions about this unfulfilled dream that has held a piece of our hearts for so many years.   For now it is a mystery and we work hard to put it to rest and live our lives here.......in the good ol' USA..... trusting that God is guiding our journey as He always has.

Faith May Be Spelled R I S K

Yesterday I listened to stories shared by pastors who have been following God's lead......in obedience they have taken risks not knowing what the consequences would be.  One pastor shared that he and his wife were called to a Presbyterian church outside of Denver.  During his time there they started to see miracles happen in their congregation.  They were not praying for miracles, nor sure that they believed healing was still for today, but God came uninvited and began to heal people.  The pastor decided he better learn as much as he could about healing and miracles since they were seeing them manifest in the church. He studied and prayed and decided one Sunday that out of obedience to God he would speak about healing to his congregation and call the sickest person forward for prayer.  The woman came forward and he prayed for her.  She "fell out" in the Spirit and lay on the floor.  When she rose up from the floor, she was not healed.  No healing, but Holy Spirit touched her soul.  This event eventually led to over 2,000 of the 5,000 members of his Presbyterian church leaving.  The experience was too far out of their comfort zone and beliefs and they left because of it.  This pastor obeyed God and the results looked catastrophic, but as time passed, people came to the church, received salvation and became part of the congregation.  The risky move was costly, but God had a plan and the pastor felt he had to obey, no matter the cost.  Healings continue on in their church today.  Sometimes faith is spelled R I S K.

I also listened to a man talk about the results of his own obedience to God.  He and his wife ministered at a church in Aurora Illinois, one of the top ten most violent cities in America.  Gang murders were epidemic.  This pastor worked with the gangs and decided that for every one person murdered, they would go down to that area where it happened to pray and minister to the people until three came to know Christ.  They were letting Satan know that he did not reign over this city.  The police chief actually called the pastor to ask him what they were doing because crime was dropping in the areas where the members of the congregation were praying and speaking to those in the neighborhood.  Were they fearless in their quest?  No.  They were not fearless, but they chose to trust God and be obedient to what they believed God was calling them to do.  The risk they took brought people to Christ.

I cannot help but think of a young girl who at age 6-8 began to pray for God to "let me be a missionary to the babies in Africa".  When she was 13 she talked her dad into taking her to Uganda to spend time ministering there in an orphanage.  Through this deep desire to help the babies in Africa, her parents began a non-profit to work with orphans in Uganda. International Voice of the Orphans was established.  This young girl, now a young woman, moved to Uganda and began working with children with special needs and The Gem Foundation was established.  A home that cares for those with the most difficult medically fragile needs.  Now, just a few years later, Emma  and her now husband Josh are building a the Gem Village where medically trained staff and house parents will care for the least "desirable" little ones in Uganda.  They have stepped out in faith, trusting God and being obedient to His calling on Emma's life.  They have held babies as they took their last breath, they have suffered sickness and hardship themselves, and at this point are in need of prayer for their 9 week old son who is in ICU in a Ugandan hospital.  He is very ill with pneumonia and a bacterial infection and in need of healing.  They have opened their hearts to God's calling that began when Emma was a young child.   Faith is often spelled R I S K.

Not all of us are called to such risks, such boldness, but we are all called to be obedient to God's calling on our lives.  We are called to step out in faith and do what Jesus did.  We are all called to live our lives for Jesus and often that requires us to put aside fear or our own desires, for His.  It requires us to trust Him.   You may not be called to Africa, but you may be called to care for a neighbor, or lead a Bible study, or ask someone to join you on Sunday morning.  It is a matter of listening for the Holy Spirit's prompting and being obedient in faith.  Even if it is spelled R I S K.

Saturday's Scribbles

Good Saturday to you from our corner of the world.  It is going to be 70 degrees today with partly cloudy skies.  Last Saturday it snowed all day!  Welcome to Spring in Iowa!

Speaking of Spring it is so nice to see everything so green.  The trees are budding and some of the flowers are blooming.  Our neighbor has a apple tree that blooms every year and we are blessed to enjoy it from our living room window. When we lived in the Philippines we had such a variety of flowering bushes and trees to enjoy.  In fact, Poinsettias grew into huge bushes of beauty there year round.  Amazing!

Speaking of amazing, this has been a crazy week for me.  Monday I saw the Urologist and he removed the stent in my left kidney.  Tuesday I saw the Dermatologist for an autoimmune skin disorder that has flared up.  Wednesday I had labs.  Thursday morning I had an ultrasound on my right breast and Thursday afternoon I had a back molar extracted at the N.I. Dental Surgery clinic.  Friday more labs.  Exhausting!  BUT lots of good news!  I no longer have any stents and that means I am getting up only 2x a night instead of 5-7x.  More sleep!  I also do not have to go back to the Urologist for 4 months.  Yippee!  The Ultrasound showed that the area they had looked at last fall in diagnosing the breast cancer has gotten "considerably smaller" in the radiologist's words.  Praise God!!  This is such good news.  The challenging treatments are working and we can now move forward with the next step.  The tooth is now out and that healing has begun also.  My body is pretty beat up and tired, but the good news is being celebrated!

I think I have been reading and watching too many murder mysteries lately!  The other night Joel heard me having a long conversation about solving a murder!  Yep.  It may be time to set aside the mysteries for awhile!  Ever since I was a kid I have enjoyed reading mysteries.  I began with Trixie Belden books and Nancy Drew mysteries.  Throughout the years I learned to read "light" mysteries and avoid the gruesome kind that gave me nightmares.

All the snow and then rain caused a levee to break in Davenport Iowa.  The Mississippi River quickly flooded the downtown of the city and is 23 feet above flood stage.  Worst flooding since the early 90's.  Nature has so much power.   Over the years I/we have experienced fires, floods, tornados, earthquakes, and typhoons.  Thankfully we have come through them all unscathed.  It has all made us cautious and respectful of nature's power.

Last night Diane Sawyer had a special on 20/20 about the amount of screen time adults and children add in to their days.  In a day and a half, 36 hours~ a typical family they observed spent anywhere from 5 to 14 hours on their screens.  The adults were on the low end and the kids the high end.  A lot of time was spent on video games.....the youngest son spent over 7 hours playing a video game.  Joel says he remembers when he noticed the change.  One Thanksgiving a few years ago our family all came to visit and he walked into the living room to see that everyone was on their phones.  TV on, they sat scrolling on their phones, and adding in to any conversation periodically.  I know I spend too much time on social media.  Although we did not watch the whole special with Diane Sawyer, it was very enlightening and actually a bit depressing.  So much good comes from having such great technology, like texting, photo sharing, etc......and of course so much bad too.  It is about finding balance I guess.

Balance..........we need it in every area of our lives, don't we.  Whether body, soul, or spirit, balance is necessary to keep us centered in peace and wholeness.  May your Saturday be filled with balance.......