What are you expecting today?

I have had so many different reactions to the Christmas season, or to other "special" seasons over the course of my life. From happy excitement to dread, and everything in between. Are the Holidays tough for you this year?  Have you lost someone dear to you and is that loss making all the reminders of years past especially painful? 

If so, you've noticed that the first set of holidays after the loss of someone you love will be the hardest. The first Thanksgiving, the first Christmas, etc. The bigger the importance of the memory with that person (good or bad), the harder that day will be, so be pro-active in planning what you will do to keep yourself from being at the mercy of this day and this memory. Enlist your support team, and yes you have one. Call them in. NOW.

For the rest of you:

Years ago, I learned a valuable lesson from a friend whose husband was on the Billy Graham team while their children were young. This means he traveled all the time. She made it her practice never to write the days of his arrivals or departures on her main calendar. Why? When her husband was gone, she didn't want to wish away the precious days alone with their children by longing for his return.

On the other hand, when he was home, she didn't want to color the joy of his presence by overshadowing any day with reminders of how short his time at home would be. She wanted every single day to have its own value, whatever it held.

How about you? The holidays can make you uptight and pressured. For children, these can be days that they wish away, longing for Christmas to come so quickly that they miss the days in between. If you can, help them to learn to value every day. However, you yourself may wish Christmas or a deadline were over, just to relieve the pressure that's on you right now. 

Whatever today holds for you, thank our dear Lord for sending his Son to give you peace with him, and bring you the hope of eternity with God. He alone can conquer the holiday blues, tension, shame, and guilt. He alone can lift your heart from the memories and grief that pull you down, bring you permanent relief.

If you are grieving, reach out to one another: ask for comfort, and give comfort. Get outside yourself; not only is that the only way to get perspective on your probliems, it will let God's love flow through you, healing you on the way through.

If you're not grieving at the moment, take a little time to reach out to someone who is. You undoubtedly have someone in your family or circle of friends who needs comfort now. Extend that in the Name of the Lord.

May you be filled with wonderful expectation of God himself and his comfort, no matter what today brings.

All honor to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, for it is by his boundless mercy that God has given us the privilege of being born again. Now we live with a wonderful expectation because Jesus Christ rose again from the dead.

I Peter 1:3

Tracking the miracles

There are large and small miracles happening in your life every day.  Especially if you are having a hard time, you need to keep track of them somewhere. And if you have children in your life, a fun project is to use a recipe-type file box or notebook with dividers, to have everybody be on the lookout for God at work in your lives. Otherwise, it's much too easy to overlook, take for granted, and otherwise forget what our generous God is doing for us.


Several years ago, one of my dearest friends was murdered. I was with her daughter, in the house where she had been murdered, as we had only a few days to sort through her files to find important family documents. How surprised I was to find a folder full of articles, letters, cards, and notes she'd saved over the years.


Busy though I was under those terrible circumstances, I was forced to stop  and take the time to look at this file, because it became clear that I'd found her stash of treasures. These were mementos of thank you's and love notes, praises for jobs she'd done well. She mentioned this file to me once or twice.  She had  made a place where she could see God's hand at work in her life for the days when she felt defeated and broken.


A little jewel in this stash was a note I'd written her years before about a loving gift she had given me, a note I'd long forgotten but that she had saved for the days she needed a lift from her Encouragement File. What an honor to be in her Hall of Fame, to know my words about our friendship could lift her spirits!


Why not start your own encouragement file?  Why not start keeping your own inventory of what God has done and continues to do in your life?  Write or keep reminders of what he has done, to spur your memory, then put it where you can bring it back to your remembrance on your blue days?


If you don't have the energy to file or categorize right now, a shoe box or large envelope will hold index cards, photos, greeting cards, slips of paper that you can save for those rainy days.


If Santa can have a list and check it twice, why can't we have a list of what God has done for us?


O Lord my God, you have done many miracles for us. Your plans for us are too numerous to list. If I tried to recite all your wonderful deeds, I would never come to the end of them.

Psalm 40:5

Uncle Rod and the miracle

This past weekend, my mother's side of the family gathered for a reunion of sorts. For the first time in years, they gathered for an early Thanksgiving celebration together. It was a time of stories and memories. I wish I could have been there, but one of my cousins called and let me join in the party for a few minutes by phone. It was wonderful.


It brought to mind how his father, my Uncle Rod, was transformed by a conversation in the last months of his life. Here's the story:


My mother first started praying for her beloved brother when she was a young girl, and for the next 30+ years, she kept on praying for him to know the God she loved. She wanted him to have the peace in his heart that she had, the comfort in hard times, but he simply was not interested.


She took him to hear Billy Graham and fantastic preachers. He fell asleep. She gave him Bibles and wonderful, well-written books. They went unopened.  She prayed for God to work a miracle in his heart, but outwardly nothing happened.  Rod would tell her he wasn't such a bad person--and he really wasn't a bad person. He would say he really didn't need that much forgiveness.


Finally Rod was 46 and facing open heart surgery. My mother knew she wanted him to live forever with the Lord more than she wanted him to survive the surgery, and her prayer was different this time.  Instead of pleading with God for Rod's to come to know the Lord, her prayer and her heart was changed. Now, she truly believed that God was going to bring Rod to himself at last. She sensed a voice behind her saying, "It will be done."


Within days, Rod called my father. Rod and his family lived in a remote area on a ranch that was far from a main road. He told my dad, "The strangest thing happened. A man came by the ranch, and I was so glad to see him. I invited him in for a cup of coffee, and he said yes. We sat and talked about many things, and then we started talking about God, and that I needed to believe in him."


My father asked him, "What do you think about what he told you?"


Rod: "I believe it."


Dad: "Do you know what that means? You're a believer."


Rod: "I am?


Dad:  "Do you know who the man was?"


Rod: "No, I ran after him, to ask his name, and I couldn't find him. I asked the neighbors, 'Did you see that man?' and they said, 'What man? We didn't see anybody.' I even described him to people who lived farther away down the road, and nobody knew anything about him. No one had seen him come or go."


In the remaining months of his life, Rod was a different person. He talked openly of his new faith and about God's mercy toward him. Whether the man he'd had a conversation with was an angel or the Lord himself, we will have to wait to find out. At the age of 47, while riding his horse, with his cigar in his mouth and his boots on, he suffered a massive heart attack, and went to meet the God he had just become acquainted with.


My mother's prayers have never been the same. After seeing the difference between pleading with the Lord and believing the Lord, she has never gone back.


How about you?  Do you have a miracle to believe God for in your life? What's holding you back from trusting him fully?


For you are great, and perform great miracles. You alone are God.

Psalm 86: 10

God's choreography

It's easy to forget that our Lord holds our times in his hands. We go about our lives, taking for granted God's tender and infinite care. But now and then we get a glimpse of it.

A few days ago, I had such a glimpse, and it will be sufficient to remind me for a long time that the God of the universe tends to the smallest details of my life, just as he does with yours.

I was in a local hospital, preparing to leave after a wonderful outcome to a cardiac catherization.  My arteries are pristine. Hooray! This procedure does require that a tube is inserted through the femoral artery in the upper thigh. A collagen plug is inserted into the artery to close it after the procedure, which will be absorbed over time, but which is a little challenging to keep in place at the beginning, until it starts to heal. 

This is the one part on the healing process that takes the most care afterwards. You have to lay flat for several hours, which I had done, and you must be careful getting dressed, which I had also done.

My husband and I prepared to leave, eager to get home, and we waited for the nurse to come and release us.  Then she came into the room and told us she had a new patient, and would have to stabilize of him, but would be with us as soon as she could. 

Of course, we had no choice but to wait. A fair amount of time went by. We watched TV, shuffled around, chatted, and hung out.

Then I coughed. It was a big cough that I wasn't prepared for. I felt this ripping feeling in my groin, and a lot of pain in my leg, and a flooding feeling. Something was VERY wrong.

Quick call to the nurse. She came immediately and knew what to do, applying as much pressure as she could to the femoral artery, and she essentially became a turniquet for me. She kept me from bleeding out with her bare hands--no time to put on gloves.  The charge nurse and other staff came in and brought in what looked like a torture device that would apply pressure for the next many hours to let the artery stabilize without throwing any blood clots (an ultrasound the next day verified this). 

I had gone from stable to life-threatening in one cough. God, of course, knew that the cough at home or in the car would have meant the nurse would not have been there to save my life. 

This was one of the opportunities to see God's choreography of timing. Just because there are countless times we do not have a clue what's going on behind the scenes, I urge us all to treasure his care, his protection, and his grace.

He provides it extravagantly to each of us. Never lose track of it, dear one. He is guiding your steps, especially when it seems unlikely.  You never know when he is orchestrating you, protecting from something as mundane as a cough.  Trust his timing for those times when you don't know you need protection.

Psalm 3:3 "But you, O Lord, are a shield around me; you are my glory, the one who holds my head high."

P.S. So the next time you're stuck in traffic, or delayed in a meeting, think about what might be going on in God's choreography that you may never know. He just could be protecting you, shielding you from unseen dangers. His timing is not ours, and he is never off schedule, even when we think we are being inconvenienced. Praise his name!

Ration #1 from Crisis Survival Rations: God is with me

For those of you who are wondering what rations are, here is a sample, taken directly from my book Crisis Survival Rations, available from Amazon.com. You'll find a link on the left. I have distributed more than a 1000 copies of this book all over the world since 1996, mostly as gifts to friends or friends of friends  who have been suffering. I'd like to see it get into the hands of those ministering to hurting people, because so many have told me how much it gave them hope through their desperate times. Here is the first of the 52 in the book:

Now Jacob...went to a certain place and stayed there all night, because the sun had set. And he took one of the stones of that place and put it at his head, and he lay down in that place to sleep. Then he dreamed, and behold a ladder was set up on the earth and its top reached to heaven...And behold the Lord stood above it...Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, "Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it."   And he was afraid and said, "How awesome is this place!"

Genesis 28:10-13,16,17

That place was awesome, not because it offered any comfort or beauty, since Jacob had only a rock for a pillow. It was awesome because God was there.  God is here, with me in my place of suffering, persecution, and grief.  He will allow me to stay here exactly as long as I need to be here.  The pain here makes me want to rush away as quickly as my feet will carry me, but He is here, in this place.  Maybe, if I can remember that, I can stay long enough to grow, or heal, or learn what I need to be His person in that other place where I live in the easier times.

Almighty God, thank you that you never leave me on my own to endure suffering.  You are here, even when I do not know it. You are the same God, who was with Jacob, and every other believer before or since. You have not changed, and you do not change now. Thank you for your presence.  Help me not to miss anything you want to teach me today while I am here.

The power of presence

A week after my daughter's 13th birthday, I received the call no parent ever wants to receive: "Your daughter has a mass in her chest," the doctor said. We had to make an appointment for the following day with a pediatric oncologist.

The first fifty times you have the say the words, my daughter has a mass in her chest, you have to adjust to hearing your voice crack, and feeling a dull silence on the other side of the conversation.  Telling Marianne and her sisters without terrifying them any more than necessary was one more challenge to face in a few hours.

That afternoon, after calling the oncologist, I also called my friend Vicki.  Within minutes, Vicki was at my house, and for the next two hours, she sat with me.  Here I was in one of the lowest moments of my life, not knowing what was ahead for my child; how deeply powerful it was to have my friend's presence with me, simply being with me in her calm, loving way. She didn't need to say anything. She was God with skin on, in that room with me.

She cried with me, she held me in her arms, and she knew that sometimes pain can best be shared without platitudes or verses. Sometimes just sitting with someone is the most healing gift a person can give. 

God used Vicki in my life that day to come alongside me in my suffering, and let me know I was not alone.  He would always provide comfort. He always has.  

Many people hold back from reaching out to another person in pain because they don't know what to say or do. If they can tolerate just being in the same room with the pain, they may have the best gift to give with the eloquence of their presence, and no words at all.

Then they sat on the ground with him for seven days and nights. And no one said a word, for they saw that his suffering was too great for words.

Job 2:13

P.S. The link to Marianne's blog is on the left: The Wall Bloggers.  The mass was on her thymus, which was biopsied extensively several months later in a major surgery that was a terrible ordeal for Marianne.  The mass turned out to be benign, praise God, but there were changes set into motion from it that left us all different. I'll leave her to tell her own stories. She is now a wife and mother, and a wonderful woman of God. I'm honored to be her mother.

In the midst of the storm

Here in Colorado we are in the middle of an extended storm. Actually, multiple storms have collided with each other from different directions, and they've hit us one upon another. The roads are so dangerous to drive on that schools and businesses are closed for all but the most essential of services.

Sounds a lot like the way the storms of life hit us, doesn't it? If they could only come one at a time, we could manage them so much more easily. But they tend to pile up in the most inconvenient of ways, and they get stalled over our hearts and lives.

While snow storms bring misery and danger to those who are driving on icy roads, or dealing with power failures, they also bring joy to skiers, or to the children who have a day off with sledding and snowman-building.  The very same snow can bring an avalanche to those trapped in it, as well as life-giving water to those who will benefit from the rivers carrying down the melted snow in the springtime. 

We know our loving God can and will use the our struggles for good when we are suffering. Knowing this does make our pain more bearable. The same God who protected the disciples in the midst of their storm-tossed lake with Jesus will protect us in the midst of our own tempests. 

And please, while you're suffering, don't ever try to discount your crisis because you've compared it to someone else's. Jesus told us not to compare ourselves to others for a reason. Your life is the only one God is interested in when he's dealing with you.

As a therapist friend once said, "How many shotgun blasts does it take to count? Isn't one enough?"  If you heard your problems described to you by someone else, you'd have compassion on yourself. Your heavenly Father certainly does, so get into his perspective, would you please?

Our God offers you a place to hide in his loving shelter when you need to, and you are no coward if you take his offer of protection and mercy when you need it. Take it now, until your storm is past.

Have mercy on me, O God, have mercy! I look to you for protection. I will hide beneath the shadow of your wings until this violent storm is past.

Psalm 57:1