Not Telling

Father,

Whatever You're up to, I know You're not telling.
But in the not telling
Be God.

You have every right.

All that's gone on
in the middle of the night
in the middle of the day
in the middle of my life....

Interrupting and disorganizing and deconstructing
everything...

All that was threatened....
My most precious treasure,
feverish and anxious and sometimes screaming
Looking me straight in the eye
And demanding that Gramma make it stop,
And not understanding why Gramma let's them hurt her so....

The crazy, "today you can go home but actually you can't"
psychotic game of it....

Not my bed, not my schedule, not my life...

All of it.
You have every right.
Because I've given it all to You.
Over and again I have.
It's all Yours.
I say it, I sing it, I mean it.

So whatever You're up to, I know You're not telling.
But in the not telling
Be God.

My God.
My Yahweh.
You are God and I am not.
And I love You.
I hated this. Almost every part of it was wretched.
But I love You.
And You are God.

So whatever You're up to, I know You're not telling.
But in the not telling
Be God.

Your exhausted, abandoned daughter,

Ruth Anne

Relaxing in the Clarity

I confess to coming close to the end of myself on the stress meter this week.

The intensity of the past three weeks, camped out beside the hospital bed of one very small, completely treasured little girl, watching her struggle for breath at times, scream with fear and discomfort at times, sleep feverishly at times....

Watching Kristyn struggle through, trying hard to care for herself and the child she's carrying while so beautifully, consistently ministering soothing words and presence to a frightened two year old.....

The sudden turn of events last Sunday, when we thought we were heading out of the woods, only to be faced with surgery.....

The added chaos of getting sick myself, locked away for 36 hours from the very ones I desperately wanted to be there to help, feeling helpless and alone and unable to force my body to cooperate with what absolutely needed to be done....

The sense of how long I'd been away from my responsibilities at home, and the knowledge that others were having to carry my load, knowing that, upon return there would be lots to dig out from under in terms of meetings and tasks and people to see.....

The anxiety, the unpredictability, the personal disorientation, the homesickness, the exhaustion.....

By Wednesday, it was all starting to feel so far out of my control, so far out of any zone I could contend with whatsoever, that the first waves of panic began to roll in.

What is that? It seems it sneaks up on me, always. I'm doing great, standing strong, and then, there it is. Fear. All the what ifs? All the worst case scenarios, playing themselves out like demon movies in the tired shadows of my numbed out brain. It's like I forget everything I know and start to run on everything I feel. It's as if I can't remember who I am or Whose I am. It's like my "real life" self gets swallowed up in the "crisis life" self, and I'm not even me any more.

I sat in the car that afternoon, and I couldn't drive. I'd finished a meal and was supposed to head back to the hospital. But I had to wait. Not yet. I couldn't drive safely just yet. Not with this white hot flash of unspoken horror rising up from the gut and grabbing at my throat.

They're not pretty, but experiences like these can be defining moments. Times when the rubber, or maybe it's all my preconceived Christian niceties, hit the road. Hard. And only what counts actually counts.

There's a clarity in coming to moments like that. A blue-light focus that gathers all the fibers of illuminating anythings from every corner of my life and bundles them together in one pure spot of brightness and truth.

"The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love," Paul wrote to the Galatians (5:6).

"The chief purpose of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever," wrote Augustine.

"It's all Yours", I breathed into the car.

And these simple truths came to me in the moment at the end of myself. And it was enough.

Enough to remind me that no matter where I was or what I was doing, the best demonstration of my faith is my love. And no matter who was near and what they needed, I could still bring glory to my Father and enjoy Him in all His intricacies. And no matter what was going on and what may or may not be within my control or be what I did or did not desire, ultimately and forever, I had given everything all to Him, and He had every right to do anything - anything - He pleased to do with me and my life and everything that matters to me.

It wasn't an immediate lifting. More of a gradual clearing away. Over the next 12 hours or so, as I continued to pray and meditate and clarify (with the help of some good questions from a friend), I felt myself relaxing, breathing, being me again. I could relax into the clarity of what was most important to me.

Quite frankly, I do not like what God is doing in my life this past little while....not the circumstances of it anyways. But without hesitation, I love being loved and led and carried and shaped and pursued by this completely unsafe, out of the box wild and holy God I know, who meets me in the clarity of the end of myself.

The Abby Road to Recovery - Past 48 Hours

This will be a quick, mostly information, kind of update on how we are all doing on the Abby Road to recovery :).

Abby continues to do well, although her progress seems so slow to us. I will let Kristyn give all the medical details when she gets a chance to blog. Which brings me to the next thing.

We've been rather "offline" in the past two days due to my unfortunate encounter with a 24 hour flu bug. This put us into a "wow do we ever need help now" mode and Grandad plus Debora plus Kim have helped to step in and cover off the bedside care until Gramma was back in the game. We're good to go now, but are sorry for the delay in updating.

The length of our hospital stay is certainly causing a degree of physical drain. Kristyn is also "fighting" a cold, and that plus carrying a baby, plus all the stress of the past two weeks...yeah, it's taking a toll.

However...here's what's amazing.

Kristyn remains calm and strong in the midst of everything. She's more than willing to take her breaks when offered, and is doing her best to eat well and drink lots. She is a stellar Mom even in the most challenging of situations.

The medical care we are receiving is top notch. We have so appreciated how calmly and professionally things have been explained to us. Our nurses are amazing, even to the point of asking Abby which colour of Dora shirt she'd like to see the next day. The answer was, of course, purple!

Progress is happening. It seems slow to us and we are tired of doing this, but we are headed in the right direction.

Abby's colour and disposition is good. She's naturally leery of new people who come to the bedside, not trusting what exactly will be done to her. But even at that, she is down to the routine and knows how to lift her arm for the temperature and offer her leg for the blood pressure cuff. She's got her own security thing going on, involving the exact placement of Black Kitty and Pink Kitty and Teddy and Monkey and whoever else is sharing the crib at the moment.

You have all been so wonderful. The cards and gifts and food and physical presence and e-mails....all of it is so very important. You are respecting the quiet we've asked for, and that is helping so much. You keep asking for ways to help, and honestly, mostly we have everything we need. But we are more than open to asking any of you for what else we might need as we go along.

God is here. He's so here. This little corner continues to be a very holy place. We feel so loved. We feel the healing happening. We're tired, but sustained as promised.

Please keep praying. We need you.

Ruth Anne

A Not So Gentle Irony

Abby is getting better. The immediate crisis is over. Time to sleep. Time to eat. Time to think. I ponder the observations of my friend Anne.

I look around at the new universe we inhabit. High hospital crib, surrounded by poles and machines and gadgets, from which follow tubes and wires connected to a wee, precious body. On the other side, "our" side, a collection of mylar balloons has begun to congregate. Pictures and cards have begun to fill up the doors of the cupboard that holds all our early possessions, at least in this universe. The fold away cot is folded away right now, and the large green lounge chair has been rolled into place to give Gramma a chance to put her feet up for a bit. At least until the next request for water, or a tummy rub, or something to eat, or the movie stops.

This is our world. This is my work.....right now. The other work in my other world has come to a screeching halt....for me. Not for all the wonderful, gifted people keeping the machine moving. The work, the ministry, continues well and strong. But for me, who I am and what I do.....I am not there.

It takes a lot to get me to stop working.

And just now, anyone who knows me well, has snorted. Or let out a scarastic, "Nnnnno." And they are well justified. It's true. The combination of my workaholic tendencies with my sense of calling or drivenness or whatever it it is that makes some of us so confoundedly devoted to what we do, makes it really, really hard for me to sit down and not do what I do.

So when, last Sunday evening, the doctors in K-W were saying Abby needed to be transferred to London, and given Kristyn's current status as a functioning single parent, there was no question in anyone's mind that I was coming along.

So I did. I'm here. And it takes me away from my work. And Abby, sic or well is very much "a lot" in my life. So in a matter of an hour of being told we'd be transferred, I was packed and had sent off the first of several download e-mails to our very gracious and competent Elders and Staff, and other volunteers, making sure that all I normally would have been doing this week got done by someone else.

Which is ironic. Because they're doing it.

Back home at Highview, as I said, gifted staff and volunteers are, among other things, very efficiently percolating along towards the beginning of a band new series called "Together We Can". It's a four week exploration of the imperatives of community; the absolute necessity for us to work together in order to accomplish the mission God has given us. Teams are, as we speak, pulling together to make sure we learn how and why we need to submit to each other and empower each other and forgive each other and heal each other.

And there's the irony. It's what I'm having to do, right now. Even though, when this series was first mapped out way back last May, I had expected I would be in the thick of things, I'm not. Instead I have been reassigned to the side of a hospital bed. And guess what I'm learning? Guess what I'm being required to do?

Submit to the whole thing, to those who have taken my responsibilities from me for now, to not being present in the portable, to not being there on Sunday morning. Submit to what God is doing in and through my family, in and through my heart.

Allow myself to receive the love and help, the empowerment from others who are bringing food and sundry items and their familiar wonderful faces to the hospital, a whole city away. Let others empower each other to accomplish the tasks of this weekend, and the weekends that lie ahead.

Forgive whoever is annoying me at the moment, all the tedious, difficult things I'm trying to work through, some still waiting when I get home, some overwhelming and huge that have been in my face in an obnoxious way for the past 9 months or so.

And heal. Be part of Abby's healing. But more, to continue to let this circumstance be part of God's work in my broken soul. To let His Spirit guide my thoughts, my choices, my actions towards healing in me.

Ironic. I'm not a part of it, but I'm totally living it. I'm not there to execute all the well laid plans, or interface with the people I love and am called to serve. I'm not there to teach or listen or check things off lists, to lead meetings or send memos, or comfort or cheer on or reign in, or any of the things I normally do to make sure we as a church keep moving forward.

But I'm here, in this hospital universe of tubes and sick babies, living it all.

Throughout the past 9 months, when the first wave of horror hit our family, and then throughout as other, different but awful events have continued to hiss at us, threaten us, people keep asking. "How do you do it?"

I don't. Not by myself. I can't. Not by myself. I can't face the life I'm living right now alone. I need you.

I'm not sure how long I'll be off "work", but I guess in a way I'm not "off" anything at all. I'm certainly not away from your love, that is clear. I'm not away from your support, that's for sure. And I'm not away from all that God wants to keep on showing me, doing in me, leading me towards.

Highview, I love you. It's been an over the top crazy year, hasn't it? Good thing we have dedicated Elders, compassionate and gifted people, and a very big, very powerful God.

Thank you all. I am humbled by your grace, and this chance to know for sure that Together We Can make our way through anything that comes against us.

The Holiness of the Last Place I Want to Be

It's the third day of March, in the morning, and I keep bumping into God. You'd think it would be classed as a "bad day", and it is, but it's not. You'd think this would be the last place I'd want to be, and it is, but it's not.

I am sitting in a hospital room beside the bed of a very sick little girl who is probably the one person in my life that hurts me most to see suffer in any way. I have just sent off to a place of badly needed rest, her mother, my daughter who is 24 weeks pregnant with my grandson, and who is probably the person in my life I least want to see stressed. I miss my husband, in another city, who is the last person in my life I want to be away from. And also in another city, another drama, not this one, but affecting us all, unfolds without me, mercifully, frustratingly. Away from friends I badly need. And I badly need a shower.

And yet, or maybe because of it, I keep bumping into Something, Someone bigger than me, bigger than this day.

God is gentle in the hands and face of a nurse who explains things carefully and warms up the stethoscope before listening to Abby's chest.

God is lavish in the provision of a first class hotel room, courtesy of Ronald McDonald House who was full this night (for just one night, but oh it had been such a long, brutal day).

God is loving in the voices of Staff and Elders, and others, who willingly release me to care for my family, even though it adds work and stress to them.

God is nourishing in the gifts of snacks - including Skittles for me and chocolate cookies for Kristyn - from friends who packed a life saving bag of goodies. And nourishing in another way with the many e-mails and offers to help that so many have promised.

God is hilarious in the grape that got away, and rolled under the curtain beside the big boot of the Amish father visiting his little girl in the next bed, while we waited with a mixture of dismay and glee to see if he would stomp on it.

God is well organized (in a wonderfully omniscient sort of way) in having the next four sermons already assigned to other teachers at Highview.

God is precise and intimate in providing a VHS copy of the Aristocats - Abby's favourite right now (because of the kitties, of course) and her own special TV on which to watch them.

And God is tender, so tender, in His whispers over my shoulder as I lean over the railing, gazing into the face of an at-last-asleep, excruciatingly beautiful little girl with the oxygen tube, and the chest tube and the IV tube, and all the wonderful, awful wires and hissing and beeping things.....

.....Aching for a chance to trade places with her.

And I swear I hear Him say, "As much as you love her, and would be willing in a heartbeat to take her place, I love her more....and I did. For her. And for you."

Here in this room,
The last place I want to be,
Turns out to be a very good place
A very holy place
For my soul to bump into God.

One Treasure At A Time: Thim

She's my girl.

At least in the sense that this is the child Ken and I sponsor through the Hot Springs program offered at Highview. Her name is Thim.

I admit to shamelessly "claiming" her after our first visit there last winter. When it became clear that we were going to be able to go ahead and connect with Asia's Hope to partner with Hot Springs, and when it seemed clear that the best way to make this as personal and meaningful and effective as possible was to set up sponsorships, I claimed Thim. The rest of the team who was there got first picks too, actually. It seemed only right. We'd met them, afterall, and our hearts were mashed to pieces. Being able to choose a child to sponsor from ones who are actual flesh and blood to you means a lot.

I'm not sure why Thim caught my attention that night. Perhaps she stands out because she has uncharacteristically curly hair in a gene pool of mostly poker straight locks; all beautiful, but Thim's was caught back in two braids. I actually never saw her with it loose.

She's a very composed young lady. Seems mature for her age, and a little on the shy and quiet side. It was an interesting dynamic, being there last October, both of us trying to make our way through the relational and cultural weirdness, and all the while, both of us very aware that I was her sponsor.

There's no word for "sponsor" in Thai, so they just say the English word, only it's with an elongated last syllable. So it sounds like spon-SORE! The children are very aware that they have sponsors and that the sponsors are making it possible for them to be at Hot Springs, and go to school. Sponsors are highly honoured. Believe me. They have your pictures and they know your names. There was one morning when I sat on the girls' bunks and they brought me the picture albums you've all sent. They wanted me to tell them as much about you as I could, as they could understand.

Then Thim shyly brought me the little album I had sent. And quietly, carefully, I tried to tell her who all the people were in the picture. My family at Christmas, in front of the fireplace.

There was this weirdness for Thim and me. She didn't cling to me like the younger girls did. She didn't try to push her way in and claim her space as my special girl. She was certainly friendly and warm, and enjoyed herself at the zoo and hammed for the camera like the rest of her brothers and sisters. Still, her shyness and the "you're my sponsor" weirdness actually seemed to make for a little bit of distance. At least, that's how it felt to me.

I was glad I got to be there when Thim was honoured for her academic achievements. It was at the retreat at Wiang Pa Pao. A number of the children were acknowledged for the awards they had earned at the end of the last semester. (The retreat was held during a school break.) And Thim had come in first in her class with a very impressive grade point average. I loved being able to praise her for this. Suradet was sure to tell me, in front of her, how proud he was of her.

Next time. We're about ready to buy our tickets for next time! There's a small team heading out at the end of April, and then another solo trip for someone else in June. Our connection with Hot Springs continues, and I am so glad others want to come and meet our kids.

So next time, with Thim.... I hope we can know each other better. I hope that because I've been there before and we know each other's faces better, we can keep working on this. What a strange thing it is to love people you can barely talk to.

I have her letter on my fridge. Before I left she wrote me a letter and I have no idea what it says. But it's on my fridge.

Thim, I coming back. Soon.

The New Ordinary

Driving home in the rain tonight, I got that weird sense of how familiar and normal this stretch of road is between my Wednesday night meeting and our house. I do it every week. I barely have to think of where I'm going. It's a very ordinary part of my life.

There are all kinds of things like that. Sleeping in my bed. Watching TV with Ken. Sitting across the table for a breakfast with a friend. Working on this week's sermon. Preaching this week's sermon. Ordinary events of my life that I do in the realm of the astonishingly familiar.

It's not that I'm bored. Quite the contrary. I find my life to be full of the abundance Jesus promised. Even within the realm of what I call ordinary, there are various and sundry daily adventures that would keep me quite happily occupied for the rest of my life.

But they are known to me. Things look, feel and smell like I know them.

And it would never even occur to me to even think about this, except that for little slivers of my life, I am completely and totally taken out of the familiar and deposited into a time and space so different, so not what I know as ordinary, that it messes with me some.

So I was thinking of Thailand as I drove home in the rain, on the right side of the road, with left hand steering wheel, and English signs, past mounds of still melting snow past the University of Waterloo, after eating a mildly spiced potato and bacon soup in a restaurant that wasn't outside. I was thinking of the spicy smells and the persistent humidity, and insane traffic, and very large spiders in the bathroom, and trying to bend my mind around the Thai words, and the beautiful faces of people I miss so much who live so, so far away.

One of the "stresses" of the cross cultural experience is how out of your zone you feel when you're there. Nothing, nothing is what you expect it to be. Everything is different. Everything is not ordinary, even the ordinary things.

But I wonder if that's part of what God uses to catch my attention. With my senses on high alert my soul is open wider. While I'm there, it's open to all the new experiences and all that I need to hear and learn.

But the cool thing is, it says more open, even when I'm home...driving in the rain on the way home from my Wednesday night meeting along the ordinary way. And actually, nothing's ordinary any more.

Keep me open, Father, to all the new ordinary ways you want me to be.

Tomorrow we book the tickets for the next trip in May.