Brain Drain

As I lower seizure meds to change to new ones next week, I'm having trouble putting words together very well. This is bad news for a writer and student, especially during finals.

I had a final written assignment that took more than 12 painful hours, all day Wednesday, and left me feeling like I'd run a race with a back pack of full of rocks for fun. Misery and exhaustion. The textbook was as useless as instructions from a Silicone Valley manual: they would be clear to someone who already totally understood everything and didn't need it to begin with.

You have your unique challenge(s) today, this week just as hard for you. You have your own back pack, your own rocks weighing you down.

God sees us and our individual needs, and reaches down to each of our lives with his extravagant mercy and grace if we let him. We know that sometimes he is most glorified in healing them or taking them away completely--we have all seen miracles. Praise his name for those!

Other times, though, he doesn't take away the challenges; instead he comes into them with us, and shows his strength by working through them, as he is in my life and yours. It certainly isn't easy, but his grace fills our lives. It makes all the difference.

None of this is new. But our memories are short. It's a daily battle to give HIM the back pack.

Three different times I begged the Lord to take it away. Each time he said, "My grace is all you need. My power works best in your weakness." So now I am glad to boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may work through me. Since I know it is all for Christ's good, I am quite content with my weaknesses and with insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

2 Corinthians 12:8-10

Sing a new song

Lately I'm finding new ways to express what God is doing in my life. Blogging and Twitter are new more recent--and wonderful--additions to my life. They are extensions of writing, but in fresh, fun ways, and new formats. Communicating in 140 characters can be challenging, especially if you want to say something meaningful.

I've shared my losses with music here, but there are also less dramatic ones simply related to being a student, and having less time available for other other activities that used to be part of my life. Maybe in the future, when there's more time.

I share it because you have something similar in your life. Something you've had to let go of. But there's also something new or refreshing God will give you to take its place in your life if you look.

I may not sing again with my voice until I'm in heaven. But I can also enjoy right now what God has in store for me through these new channels. How about you?

Sing a new song to the Lord! Let the whole earth sing to the Lord! Sing to the Lord; bless his name. Each day proclaim the good news that he saves. Publish his glorious deeds among the nations. Tell everyone about the amazing things he does.

Psalm 96:1-3

The changing desires of the heart

The side notes I've scribbled in my Bibles have a sort of journal quality that tell me what was going on in my life at the time.

For instance, I've written a date (7/20/97) with no explanation next to Psalm 20:4 "May he grant you according to your heart's desire, and fulfill all your purpose." I also have an arrow across the page pointing to Psalm 21:2 "You have given him his heart's desire, and have not withheld the request of his lips."

These are wonderful verses. I can only guess that the date is for the closing of a house I no longer live in. At the time, it was naturally the biggest event going on in my life.

I was a single mom of three daughters, and we needed a place to live. We did not know until the last minute of closing whether the deal on the other house would go through to allow us to move into the house we wanted, so we truly were praying for a miracle. And our gracious God did grant us the desires of our hearts for that time.

Only as I look back almost exactly twelve years later, does perspective allow me to see how many other pressing desires--prayer needs related to what was going on in my life or the lives of my loved ones--there have been in the meantime.

• Praying through pregnancies and deliveries (with complications and miscarriages) of my daughters and stepdaughter.
• Sitting at the bedside of my seriously ill husband--a husband who was not even married to me twelve years ago.
• The disappearance of my precious stepson, who then committed suicide.
• The murders of my dear friend and my aunt.
• The brain tumor and the ways living with it affects my life.

This is a partial list. You have your own. How important are the current desires of your heart to you? Vital, of course. To God? Vital, of course. Does he grant them all? Of course not.

I'm glad not to have known what was ahead twelve years ago. How gracious God is to grant us the desires he knows are appropriate for us in his season and to his glory. We don't need to know further ahead than today--he does.

May he grant your heart's desire and fulfill all your plans. May we shout for joy when we hear of your victory, flying banners to honor our God. May the Lord answer all your prayers.
Now I know that the Lord saves his anointed king. He will answer him from his holy heaven and rescue him by his great power. Some nations boast of their great armies and weapons, but we boast in the Lord our God.

Psalm 20:4-8

Strength for each day

If you're reading this, perhaps it's because you'd like someone to minister to your spirit for a while. You're taking care of others, and you'd like a rest. Only those who pour out to others constantly need restoration and refilling.

Think of someone totally self-absorbed. I bet THAT person never gets burned out! Not a solution I recommend.

God's mercies are fresh every morning for a reason. The Maker of the universe holds my day in his hands and offers me his care TODAY, specially designed for today's needs.

Let's let the Spirit encourage our weary hearts, letting in God's refreshment and strength, new each day.

But Lord, be merciful to us, for we have waited for you. Be our strength each day and our salvation in times of trouble.

In that day he will be your sure foundation, providing a rich store of salvation, wisdom, and knowledge. The fear of the Lord is the key to this treasure.

Isaiah 33:2,6

Father, thank you for the strength you provide. Help me not to forget YOU as my strength as my day goes on and the distractions of the world pull me away.

God breathes into dry bones

I sat at the bedside of a dying woman last week, and have a good friend who is close to death at this moment. Loss and pain are all around me, more visible than usual. If you're reading this, you may be carrying a heavy load of loss.

Yes, we know our loved is with the Lord, but God did create grief, sadness, and even anger as the normal ways to feel as we adjust to being without a beloved, as long as we don't move into these feelings permanently.

Another way we can feel--or not feel--is dried up, like the bones in Ezekiel 37. Yes, I know this passage is a prophecy about Israel that is at least partially fulfilled with their return to the Promised Land. However, with the richness of God's word, the description of the bones and God's comforting solution surely has the double meaning for us in our dry times.

The Lord took hold of me, and I was carried away by the Spirit of the Lord to a valley filled with bones. He led me around among the old, dry bones that covered the valley floor...Then he asked me, "Son of man, can these bones become living people again?"

"O Sovereign Lord," I replied, "you alone know the answer to that."

Then he said to me, "Speak to these bones and say, "Dry bones, listen to the word of the Lord! This is what the Sovereign Lord says: Look! I AM going to breathe into you and make you live again! I will put flesh and muscles on you and cover you with skin. I will put breath into you, and you will come to life. Then you will know that I AM the Lord."

Ezekiel 37:1-6

Lord, breathe into me, and fill me today with your hope and life so I may honor you in all I do. Thank you that you are with me in all that I do and go ahead of me wherever I go. Praise your name in dry times and full times!

Racing, anyone?

Do any of you have a mind that starts racing sometimes? I have one that can be fine all day, and then start up when I'm trying to fall asleep. Then it's off to the races. I suppose that means it really wasn't fine all day, was it? It was really simmering, festering on worries or frustrations that really were not mine--or need not have been.

I have a God who truly loves me, who more than wants to carry my straggling worries --1Peter 5:7 "Cast all your cares on him because he cares about you"--that ought to cover it once and for all. If I could keep than fresh in my mind. There's the trick.

My father gave me a mental picture once of carrying our burden to the Cross, laying it down gratefully, then going back and poking the burden, checking it, picking it up "for a minute," and then finally carrying it back away until the then time we came to our senses and laid it down again--or if we wised up--for good. Perhaps little by little in our walk, as we can bring it to our mind through the day, at a stop light in giving thanks that our strong and mighty God is working our best in the details of our lives, our minds can shut off.

I note that the more I praise him, the less my mind races. The more overtaken I am with the needs of others, the less my brain can think of my own trivia.

Don't be afraid, for I AM with you. Do not be dismayed, for I AM your God. I will strengthen you. I will help you. I will uphold you will my victorious right hand.

Isaiah 41:10

Joy in HIS salvation

When I was in college in the 1970s, I wrote a song with these verses from Habakkuk as the lyrics. In those days, I could play the piano and write music. In fact, until the last few years, I could play and compose. I took them for granted, even though I enjoyed them as gifts of God.

Now, only with the right combination of seizure meds can I play, and that is nothing like the old days. Composition may be gone until I'm with the Lord. Bummer having a tumor right in the creative part of the brain. It also hits the auditory cortex and autobiographical memory, so I can't even listen to my own music without problems. There are certainly far worse problems, far worse tumors. I'm simply letting you who love music into my world a bit, to give you some understanding.

Aren't these verses wonderful? One of the ways God's word shows its power is that it was fresh and powerful to me all those years ago, and yet this very passage is all the deeper in meaning to me today, when I have so many new ways to chose to joy in the God of my salvation.

All of you have some losses, somewhere that the fig tree is not blossoming, the grapes are no longer on the vines. We all choose to joy in the Lord or not. He is our strength if we make the choice. And oh! The heights we can reach!

Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior.

The Sovereign Lord is my strength; he makes my feet like the feet of a deer, he enables me to go on the heights [or, he brings me safely over the mountains].

Habakkuk 3:17-19

At peace or in pieces?

Yesterday, I was far more rattled than I needed to be about whether or not I would get some information I needed to meet a deadline. I had completely lost perspective about the importance of getting the task done.

Do you ever do that?

Oh, sure, there were times I remembered the Big Picture, and I was not giving myself ulcers or anything. Part of the stress came from having to trust someone who did not appear to be reliable, someone who had already proven to be unreliable to some degree. Not exactly like asking one of the 2-year-old grandsons to drive the car, but perhaps like asking the 5-year-old granddaughter (who wants to be a fairy when she grows up) to carry a full glass of milk to the table. Still room for too much to go wrong.

Where was my peace? Why wasn't I resting in all the Fruit of the Spirit of the God I worship? How had I managed to lose it in such a short time?

Funny how if this had been a major crisis, I probably would have turned quickly to God, and would have been in the zone of his comfort, peace, and the adrenaline needed for the task at hand. For this minor matter, though, I was sweating it on my own to a certain extent on auto-pilot--and not very well.

A lifetime of following God had left some habits in place. I wasn't mean to my Lab partner. I just kept after her for the info I needed. I did pray for God's help. But I kept staying unsettled inside until the project was finished and uploaded to the website for the professor to grade--with 12 hours to spare. What did all my interruptions do to her day? When her schedule is not as full, I'll have to find out, and apologize if necessary.

How would my day have looked if I had been living according to Philippians 4:6,7?

Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Oh, my powerful Lord, work in my heart today. Fill it with yourself, your peace, your Spirit. Help me to grow in YOU, so that I am not anxious about ANY thing, but in EVERY thing, I can present my requests to you and thank you for what you do. Thank you that your peace, beyond my understanding, WILL guard my heart and mind in Christ Jesus.

Extending mercy when it's challenging

Well, the Fourth of July has come and gone. On that day, we celebrate a line drawn in the sand by courageous men. With their signatures they said, "No more!" to King George and his attempt to control them from afar with unfair taxes and military might.

There are times to say no more to the people in our lives who have been overpowering us--or trying to--when we realize what they are doing to us by their actions. God does not expect us to be bullied or abused--and I speak from experience here.

If you have pain in your past, you may be ultra-sensitive to others intruding onto your rights or your personhood. Understandable. But don't swing the other direction and end up angry and bitter. Don't go from beaten-down to saber-tooth tiger.

Balance is the hardest achievement for any human being. Look at the course of history, always in a state of flux: swinging from one extreme to the other, no matter who the leader is.

The one thing we all want, however, when we have strayed, is mercy. From the people we have wronged, from God, from the government.

When others have wronged us, we want justice. What do we hear from the youngest child? "It's not FAIR!" It wasn't fair for Jesus to die for the wrong things I've done, but he didn't bat an eyelash. He just did it.

How do I react, then, I who have received God's mercy, when the lab results worked on so diligently on a recent NATIONAL HOLIDAY with my lab partner (who shall remain nameless), when these results were hijacked by this partner? When this partner has decided to work on another academic subject, and keep them in her distant computer when the lab report is due in 20 hours, and I am missing crucial information, and am thus unable to complete my report?

I'm sure all of you have something similar in your lives. Someone you counted on has let you down. You worked hard, trusted them. You'll have to work with them again. But, guess what. People fail. They make bad decisions. God alone is faithful.

God alone is faithful. Every day. Praise his name.

The unfailing love of the Lord never ends! By his mercies we have been kept from complete destruction. Great is his faithfulness; his mercies begin afresh each day. I say to myself, "The Lord is my inheritance; therefore, I will hope in him!"

The Lord is wonderfully good to those who wait for him and seek him. So it is good to wait quietly for salvation from the Lord."

Lamentations 3:22-26

P.S. My lab partner came through at 4:00 this afternoon (thinking she had sent it at 1:30--but not remembering to attach the file), after many pleading phone calls and emails. The phone turned out to be in the pocket of her jacket, left in her coat where she had been on the 4th of July...

OF COURSE I received the information in time. But I agitated, fretted, and caused both of us needless concern due to my uncertaintly and distrust of when she would get it to me. (I need to re-read some of the posts on this blog before I dare write another.)

Bottom line: I'm not always quietly waiting for my salvation, my partner's going to let me down sometimes according to my timing, but the LORD is faithful all the time.

Being willing to accept grace

I'm compulsive. I bet many of your reading this are, too. On one of the early days of grad school, the director of the school greeted the group of us students with the following:

"Congratulations! You have now officially diagnosed yourselves. You are all compulsive. To make it this far, you all had to push past barriers, challenges, and whatever else kept everyone else out. You all had the drive to keep going. Most successful people are, to some degree, compulsive." [note: we're not talking about the more serious form of obsessive-compulsive disorder that drives people to wash their hands until their bleeding, re-check locked doors, etc. I'm talking about an obsessive personality type that tends to take things more seriously than necessary, to be driven beyond a normal level.]

Those of us who are the c-word, have our own distinct drivers. Or many of them. Maybe seeing wrong spelling on signs? It's versus its? (It's all over!) Housework, paperwork, cleanliness? Details of some type.

For me, a big one was academic. In high school, I would wake up at night for months, realizing I would get a B in Algebra 3. This was my only B in high school.

[Please, hang in there, those of you who struggled in school--this gets better.]

I only share this because it gives you context. I applied for my new program, thinking I'd be breezing through as usual. Then I started taking these summer school classes. Within the first week, for the 7 units of classes, I needed more than 30 hours to do the work. I had to go to the Special Ed Department to get an Accommodation Certificate for my brain tumor.

I may still be compulsive, but I don't have the brain to allow the quickness to whip through like I used to. If and when I have surgery, there may be even less. I am finding that if I get a B or a C in these classes on the tests, I'm succeeding. I may not be an A student for the recall of information anymore. I have to let go of my former standards because they are no longer attainable.

However, and this is a big however, all that above is based on what I can do. I have a big God. He offers me grace be more than satisfied with myself and my grades, just as he shows it to you. And his grace is sufficient. Sufficient means=as much as is needed. I can choose to see my grades as coming from God himself, and not as giving up.

I write about my silly little life details because they are just like yours. Believe God's grace is as much as you need, today, my friend, and it will change your compulsive drives. If someone as driven as I am can shift gears and become a grateful B--or C student with whatever help it takes to get there, then surely you can lighten up somewhere in your life.


My grace is sufficient for you. My power works best in your weakness. --2 Corinthians 12:9

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. --Hebrews 4:16