Beautifully Challenging

Have you ever noticed our desire to label things?  We like black and white.  We want to understand fully.  We want to know exactly what things are and what categories to place them in so that we can tuck them away nicely.  Neat.  Clean.  Organized.  Categorized.  Well labeled.  

The problem though is that life isn't that clear cut.  We don't live in black in white, but rather we live in a million shades of gray.  We can't label everything because labels require minimal words.  Simplistic terms that fit in small spaces in perfectly neat handwriting.  Terms that declare the fullness of something though limited by language.  Life on the other hand is complicated and nuanced and messy and nothing about it can be labeled in short sweet simple terms.  

One set of labels that we love to use is "good" and "bad."  The shortcoming here is that if we only allow those two labels to categorize things in our lives, then we leave no room for something to exist that can be tough and challenging and uncomfortable and still good.  When we walk tough things we automatically want to say it's bad.  Grief, loss, struggles, anxiousness, grappling with things - we're hesitant to label them as good so they get mislabeled instead as bad.  But the truth is that those things can be good and hard at the same time, we just struggle with the labels because we feel that good isn't sufficient and then in our black and white thought process we go with what we feel to be the only other option - bad. 

This spring has been one of those seasons in my life that could so easily get labeled as bad because good feels like the wrong word to describe it.  It's been a season of deep personal refining.  It's been a season that I feel the Lord forming deep things inside of my heart and soul.  It's been a season of challenges in numerous other ways.  It would be so easy to label it bad.  But the absolute truth is that it's been beautiful.  The Lord has been close and speaking so much.  He's been kind and gracious and near.  He's been present and patient and loving.  It's been beautiful and it's been challenging.  And I refuse to let limited labels assign it as bad.  

When I look back upon this season in my life I want to remember it for what it is and not for what limited labels would like to categorize it as.  I want to remember the sweet times with the Lord and the way that He walked me through it all.  I want to remember what it produced and formed in me.  I want to remember and celebrate that I walked a challenging season and came out the other side absolutely better for it.  I want to remember and celebrate that this season in all of its pieces was beautifully challenging.  

It's May

It's May, which for me means that the last two fingers on my left hand are the tiniest bit numb because of the knot in my left shoulder that has appeared.  I know that's what is going on because this is the fourth year in a row that it's happened.  It's the fourth May in a row that I start to notice less feeling and then realize the knot is back. 

I have not read the book, but friends have told me about a book called "The body keeps score."  It's about how the muscles of your body remember trauma and pain even when you aren't aware.  It's muscle memory.  Whether you acknowledge it or not, your body is recalling the pain of something and choosing to respond. 

This is the fourth May that my fingers have gone numb because my body remembers.  It's the fourth May since I lost my mom.  It's the fourth May that the memories of those days and weeks play like movie scenes through my mind.  Scenes that I didn't press play on and struggle to figure out how to stop.  The fourth May that I become so incredibly aware of what day it is and what that day held four years ago......  

The day I drove north to take care of her.  
The day I took her to the hospital, when I sobbed uncontrollably in the waiting room because they wouldn't let me back with her.  
The last conversation I had with her face to face, completely unaware that it would be the last.  Because if I had known, I never would have left. 

The last phone calls before she took a turn and would be sedated until she passed.

The day I broke down in the hallway in her house as I called to tell my brothers the turn she took.

The days and nights I set alarms to call nurses and beg for information because I was the only one the hospital would talk to.

The days I was obsessed with numbers and stats I previously knew nothing of. 

The first day I got to walk into her hospital room with oil, and through sobs and tears laid hands and prayed and begged the Lord for a miracle. 

When the nurse met me after and asked if anyone had discussed end of life care with me. 

The numerous phone calls when I was asked to sign DNR orders. 

The call from the doctor that said she had maybe a 10% chance of survival.

The call that further complications had arisen.

The conversation with the sweet nurse who walked me through every number that showed she most likely would not pull through.

The conversations with the brothers as we debated decisions about DNR.

The phone call for permission to intubate. 

The mad dash to the hospital to try and see her before intubation in case she didn't make it. 

When the staff gently let us know that she was actively dying before the final moments when I held her hand and my brothers sat in the room as her heart gave out.   And when I had to ask that the ventilator be turned off because she was gone. 

Waking up in the wee hours of the next morning and coming to terms all over again that she was gone.   

Those days and weeks play in my mind whether I press play or not.  And so my fingers are a little numb because my body remembers those weeks.  My body remembers the pain, the trauma, the decisions, the enormous loss.  I know I could never forget, but it's wild that the body remembers and keeps score. All because it's May. 

My soul longs for more......

As I sat in my bed this morning and spent time with the Lord, a song began to play and immediately I was taken back to a time in my life and a moment in my relationship with the Lord.  Do you ever do that?  Do you ever hear a song and are immediately transported to a moment?  There's so many songs that when I hear them, if I close my eyes it's like I'm in a different place and time.  Usually rather significant places and times.

This morning I closed my eyes and listened to Rita Springer sing "You Are Still Holy" and all of a sudden it was like I was sitting on the floor of my room in my first apartment in South Africa in 2007.  It was warm outside, my windows were open, the curtains were moving a bit in the breeze, and as Rita sang I soaked in the presence of God.  In a nearly tangible presence of the Lord.

As I sat and let the memory continue playing in my mind this morning, I then began to think of other moments in my life that I felt like the Lord was almost tangibly present with me.  As I sat and tears began to form, I let memory after memory play through my mind of the those kinds of times.

The times I walked from my apartment to the church office in Pietermaritzburg.  The same stretch of sidewalk I took nearly every single day for two years.  I can picture it so clearly with the jacaranda trees overhead and the uneven cracked sidewalk underneath.  And all the times when I walked that sidewalk feeling alone in my world, only for the Lord to nearly physically walk beside me to let me know that no matter where I was, He was there.

The memories played of me sitting awake in the middle of the night in Durbanville just days after I moved back to South Africa.  Awake from jet lag and having tear filled hard conversations with the Lord about my life.  And yet again He showed up.  With a presence I felt like I could almost touch.

I can't remember exactly which way around the world I was flying, where I was going or where I had been, but I can picture a window seat on a dark quiet plane.  Just me and more tears and a journal.  And the Lord.  The sweet sweet presence of the Lord.

As I let the memories play through my mind this morning I was moved to tears at the graciousness of the Lord in my life.  The way He has always met me when I needed it.  The times that He came even closer when I needed even more.  The way He's always been present and forever will be.  My heart is overwhelmed with gratitude for the way He walks with me.  And my soul longs for more of it all.

It's been five months

It's been five months since I moved back to America and my watch is still set to South Africa time.  I can't bring myself to change it.  I know how silly that sounds, but there is something about that small act that makes my heart ache.  There's a lot of small things that make my heart ache when it comes to bi-continetal living.

Last week I got to do something that I hadn't been able to do yet, I spent the day with my nephew on his actual birthday.  He turned five on Thanksgiving.  Things like that make my heart full.  Living on the same continent and in the same time zone makes some things so much easier.  And for those things I am so incredibly grateful.  But five months in and there are still so many things that make tears sting my eyes when I think of the country that I called home for the last two and a half years.  Mixed in amongst the joy of life near loved ones and things that I missed for so long is a smattering of grief and tears for the things and people that are now so far away.

I get asked on a regular basis if I still miss South Africa.  It's so hard to explain.  This has been such an interesting and tough season to walk through.  This move is exactly what I wanted and what I think was the right move.  I feel like God has been with me every step of the way and I would choose it all over again if the choice were in front of me.  That however does not mean that it has been easy.  Reverse culture shock and the grieving process for what had become life is just tricky.  I feel like I'm still adjusting to the pace and schedule and what life is currently.  I'm still figuring out what groceries I prefer to buy and where my go-to places are to shop.  Weird that I lived in this exact city for nearly six years and yet I'm not sure what and where to shop anymore.  Strange how much this place and I have changed over the last few years.

One of the hardest parts of this season is attempting to explain to someone what it's like.  Attempting to put into words the chaos that I feel on a daily basis.  Trying to shed some light on the back and forth of emotions.  It's all a bit tiring when you're not completely sure where you belong and where home really is anymore.  It's an odd feeling to have home in multiple places and yet not feel completely at home anywhere.  I've done this multiple times now and still so hard to put into words.

So it's been five months.  And my watch is still set to South Africa time.  I'm sure one day I'll change it, but not yet.  For now it makes my heart ache just a tad too much, makes my eyes sting a little.

Warts & All

I recently stopped by the pharmacy and in as quiet of a voice as I could get out, while not making eye contact so as to not fully show how ashamed I was, I apologized to the pharmacist for the gross nature of my visit and then proceeded to ask for medicine for a plantar wart.  A wart.  I have a plantar wart.  Ewww!  I tried to ignore it for a while thinking maybe it was just some sort of odd callous, but I have now been forced to come to terms with the fact that I do indeed have a plantar wart on the ball of my left foot.  (No worries, you can continue reading, I won't be including any pictures of warts)

This morning as I sat in church I thought about my wart.  I thought about how ridiculous it is that plantar warts grow inward.  The root is hidden deep inside your foot.  The "seed" (even that sounds gross) is in the very deepest heart of the wart, then comes the wart itself, and all of that is covered by layers of calloused skin.  Could this wart be any more difficult to get rid of?  Could it have possibly set itself up any better to be able to hold on for dear life?

So why was I thinking about my wart during church this morning?  I was thinking about it because I realized that I don't just have a wart on my foot, but I've got warts on my heart too.  The kind of warts that have deeply embedded themselves and then put up protective layer after protective layer to ensure that the wart lives on forever.  You may think this a gross analogy (and it is) but when it comes to some of the things that we have let implant and grow in our hearts, they are the grossest of all.

Too often we allow something small, let's call it a seed, to embed in our hearts.  Over time that seed begins to grow and produce habits in our lives, let's just call that the wart, the ugly part that we can see as a product of the seed.  And then simply because we are human, we begin to build walls around our ugly parts so that no one can see or even call us out on them, let's call that the callouses.  

When I spoke with the pharmacist the other day (bless his heart for not treating me like a filthy outcast with my talk of warts) he explained the process to me for removing the wart.  He explained that over a couple of weeks you have to use a specific type of acid and pumice stone to remove the layers of callous to start to expose the wart.  Only then can you work on getting the wart out as well. And you have to be careful to get the "seed" too or else this thing will grow back bigger and better and force you to start the process all over again in an even uglier and more painful fashion.

How many times have we identified something in our heart and begin the process of pulling down the walls so that we can expose and deal with the root, only to grow weary and stop?  Only to decide it was too much work or too painful?  Only to feel like we are the only ones that could ever have had such an ugly thing in our hearts and instead of being brave and asking for help we allow the shame to build yet another layer of callous on top of it all and convince us that it's ok to just let it stay there under the surface and somewhat out of sight?

The thing with plantar warts though is that they may not grow super ugly outward, but the longer we leave it, the bigger it grows inward.  The more healthy flesh it invades and the harder it will be to cut out.  Eventually it will become so large inside our foot that it will start to cause pain and eventually even discomfort in our daily tasks.  And though it may not be too visible on the outside we do still run the risk of infecting others with the virus that we are so casually walking around with.

Sadly the Lord is pointing out to me some warts on my heart lately.  Warts that I've left for too long.  Things that I've allowed to take deep root and setup their calloused walls to hide the ugly truth.  And whats even worse is the fact that I think I've infected some others with the ugly things that I've so casually been walking around with in my heart.  Luckily there is a Father that doesn't desire to leave us in ugly.  He doesn't desire to let is sit where we are.  But rather He desires to meet us where we are and help us to extract the ugly even out of our hearts so that our hearts can be soft and pliable in His Hands.  The extraction process may be painful, but the decision to leave things alone will eventually cause more pain that we can bear.  Thank you Father for not treating me like an outcast with my filthy talk of warts, but rather showing me and explaining in detail how to remove the calloused layers and expose the seed so that it can be dealt with.