From Bliss to Brokenness

Today’s answers to prayers don’t guarantee a carefree tomorrow.

Patty hesaidwhatks's avatarHe Said What?!

On Monday, November 6, of last year…..yes, 2017 is – as of today – LAST year!!  Anyway, on that day last year our washing machine loudly died.  I mean, the noises coming from the bathroom/laundry room were downright scary.  I remember that date because two days later, November 8, was Aaron’s birthday.  Gary and I met at Lowe’s after he got off work on Tuesday night, where we found our dream machine, got it ordered, and were told that delivery would be on Thursday.

Thursday was the day we were having two of Aaron’s favorite friends over for a birthday supper, so I knew I would be home most of the day as I got things ready.  It was also the day that Aaron woke up in a very wet bed, so it became the day of a huge mound of wet bedding piled near our dead washing machine, waiting…

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Don’t You Remember?

One of the many side effects of Aaron’s seizures and even of some of his seizure meds is memory loss.  It makes me sad to see it sometimes. 

Gary and I took Aaron out to eat the other day.  While eating, I got a text saying that his day group would be re-opening on Monday.  I was sharing with Aaron the names of some of his friends that he would get to see again.  At the mention of one of his friends, Aaron’s face was blank. 

I was surprised because just last week Aaron had facetimed with her.  Yet his forgetfulness was genuine just a short time later. 

As I get older (and older and older 😊), I find myself often saying, “Remember when…?”  Gary and I do this at times, remembering events and situations of the past, sometimes with joy and at other times with regret.

There is an incident recorded in the book of Numbers…the book I am now studying…that has impacted me this week and which I want to, well, remember. 

The children of Israel had traveled for a year in the wilderness.  In chapter 11, we find them complaining about their lack of good food.  They remembered all the variety of foods in Egypt, forgetting their horrible life they lived there as they ate that food.

They begged for meat, so God told Moses that He would give them meat.  Then Moses seemed to have memory loss as he questioned just how on earth God would be able to supply so much meat for so many people.

Are you kidding me?!

Moses had seen miracle after miracle, and he dared wonder how God could manage to find meat in the desert?

Actually, Moses asked God how he…Moses…was to get the meat.  Moses left God out of the picture.

Moses was run down, discouraged, tired, burdened. 

Pretty much like we feel today. 

Here we are, on the first day of a new year, trying to summon hope in the middle of our burdens.

2021 must be better than 2020, right?!

It HAS to be!!

We can’t handle anymore stress in our world and in our homes!

But I think that deep down we all know that we are entering this new year staring ahead at huge problems that still loom large. 

That’s why God’s answer to Moses is a HUGE promise to each of us who know and follow God.

“The Lord said to Moses, ‘Is the Lord’s power limited?  Now you shall see whether My word will come true for you or not.’  (Numbers 11:23)

Another version of what God said was this: “Is the Lord’s arm too short?”

That phrase brought to mind the fact that Pharaoh was said to be the possessor of a strong arm.  Yet God defeated Pharaoh with His much stronger arm.

Remember, Israel?

Remember all the plagues and the miracles?

Remember the exodus from Egypt?

Remember the parting of the Red Sea?

How could they forget?!

Yet I am no different.  How can I so often forget what God has done and what He has promised, to ME?

I have been challenged by others to have a word for this year.  And so my word is:

REMEMBER

Primarily, to remember just who God is and that His arm is strong and is long enough to carry me and help me and protect me.

To REMEMBER God’s past answers to prayer.

To REMEMBER His promises to me in His Word.

To REMEMBER Who He is, and how He never changes.

God’s arm is never shortened, and His power is never limited.

So may I…and all of us…remember.

This new year here in our neck of the woods has begun beautifully.

May I allow God’s beauty to permeate my heart every day in the uncertain times ahead as I…

REMEMBER!

This Gift Has My Name on It!

Gary and I were sitting beside our decorated tree one night before Christmas.  We were not alone for long, as is so often the case.  Aaron soon joined us.  He was, of course, drawn to the presents under the tree.  His observant eyes had seen his name on a gift!

“Look!!” he exclaimed, “this gift has my name on it!” 

His childish delight made us smile.

His childish delight is, in fact, a gift to us.

Yet there are other aspects of who Aaron is that we would not describe as a gift.  Maybe more as a burden?  An annoyance? 

We know that God gave us Aaron, and he is indeed the whole package.  It’s just that some of the contents of that package are not what we would have hand-picked. 

Am I being too blunt here?

This reality of God’s gifts to me carries over into every area of my life.  Gary and I had been married for five years before we had a baby…Aaron.  We prayed for a baby.  God gave us Aaron.

Do I really trust God in this answer to our prayers?

So many times in my life I have prayed over some matter…some decision…some issue.  But sometimes God’s answers are not what I would have chosen.

Oh, they may seem wonderful at the time but later the gift might turn sour. 

What happened?

How easy it is, then, to play the guessing game.

Maybe if we had moved there instead of here.

Maybe if we had joined that church instead of this church.

Maybe if we had raised our children in this way instead of that way.

Maybe…maybe…maybe.

Yet if I am walking with God in obedience, and I am praying for direction, I must trust that the way He leads is best and for a reason.

Good reasons, always.

But not always easy.

I must reach out and take God’s gifts to me with trust.

The children of Israel knew that God led them miraculously out of Egypt.  No one could doubt that.  But then it wasn’t long before they disobeyed God.  Even the manna God provided to them became a source of discontentment and complaint. 

Soon the Israelites were comparing their present lot with the life they used to have in Egypt, creating more unhappiness and grumbling.

I do that, too.  I pray…I take God’s gift of an answer…and then when things get hard, I fight the tendency to complain and to compare.

If only I had what they have…lived where they live…got to go where they go…blah, blah, blah.

Such a trap!

This morning, I read the answer to this dilemma in my life:

“Let all who seek You rejoice and be glad in You; and let those who love Your salvation say continually, ‘Let God by magnified.’  (Psalm 70:4)

I must keep my eyes on God in every area of my life. 

My gladness and contentment is in God alone, not in the events of my life – good or not so good.

So, when I reach out and take God’s gifts to me, may I not focus on the gift so much but instead may my eyes stay on the Giver of the gifts. 

That’s easy to do when the gift is fun and happy.

But I must understand that some gifts are not fun and happy.  Some are hard and sad. 

Yet on each gift, I see the tag.

To:  Patty

From:  God

Thank you, God, that every gift from You is good and perfect.  You didn’t say they were easy and fun. 

Help me to trust You.

“Look!  This gift has my name on it!!”

Hovering God

A good word for this year, and especially for the upcoming days of uncertainty for believers politically.  This is from the book I am reading as I study the book of Numbers.  God appeared to Israel as He hovered over the tent of meeting as a cloud by day and fire by night.  When the cloud or fire moved, they moved.  It required a great deal of trust, especially when God didn’t move for long periods.  Like Israel, we want to see God move and when it appears He isn’t, then it’s easy to become discouraged and to lose hope. 

“There were days when they could see that they were making progress, but at other times they may have been puzzled because nothing was happening.  Why the tiresome delay?  For most of us, at some time or another, life has its bewildering waiting times.  The evidence of God’s continuing care appears limited, even absent.  The Puritans spoke about ‘the soul’s winter times’, when everything appears cold, bleak, and barren.  We wish God would speak to us more clearly about why we are going through such dark days, when it is hard to hold on.  BUT WAITING TIMES ARE NOT WASTED TIMES.  When the guidance we look for is just not there, we must calmly renew our confidence in God; ‘such a resolution can never go to hell with thee’, said Thomas Goodwin.  There is some wise purpose in life’s bleak experiences.  GOD IS STILL PRESENT.  ‘Moses approached the thick darkness where God was.’  In the desolate years of late-seventeenth-century persecution, John Flavel urged his contemporaries to ‘exercise the faith of adherence when you have lost the faith of evidence.’  (Raymond Brown)

God knows what He is doing…and if our road ahead is hard, God still knows what He is doing. 

In our personal lives…in our lives in God’s kingdom…in our family lives – we must trust God and obey Him and leave all the rest up to Him.  I believe hard days are ahead for Christians.  But I would by far rather be following God today than to follow any other person or cause. 

Thank you, God, for reminding us at this time of year that You are Immanuel…GOD WITH US.  We really have nothing to fear.

Broken Lights

Aaron followed me into the dining room the other day.  I wasn’t paying attention to him behind me as I worked on our Christmas village. 

“Mom, look!” Aaron said.

I turned to see him staring intently at our little tree that is full of my Grandma Holly’s handmade ornaments, made with love so many years ago.  This was a pre-lit tree, but as so often happens, those bulbs had long since burned out.  I had replaced them with another strand of lights but left the unlit lights on the tree – hidden, so I thought, by the new lights. 

“This light bulb doesn’t work!” Aaron exclaimed.  And as his eyes roamed over the tree branches, he pointed out other broken small bulbs. 

“Here’s another one!” he said.  “And here…and here…and here,” he continued as he pointed to each one.

Aaron had gotten close enough to see the broken, while standing farther away, I could only see the soft lights of that new strand that worked.

I am studying through the book of Numbers.  Now that book doesn’t exactly stir excitement in one’s blood, but I have learned that in Bible books we usually consider to be dull there are amazing truths from God…golden nuggets that shine brightly!

The setting of Numbers is the wilderness of Sinai where Israel wandered for 40 years on their way to the promised land.  They should have gotten to the promised land much sooner than 40 years, but because of their sin God made them travel for 40 long years. 

They were a broken nation full of broken families.  Broken by sin…by their willful turning from God.

But look at the VERY first verse:

“Then the Lord spoke to Moses in the wilderness of Sinai in the tent of meeting…”

God did NOT give up!  God spoke to His people through Moses.  Again and again, God reached down to those stubborn people and spoke.

“Now when Moses went into the tent of meeting to speak with Him, he heard the voice speaking to him from above the mercy seat that was on the ark of the testimony, from between the two cherubim, so He spoke to him.”   (Numbers 7:89) 

“Moses had so much to talk to God about and, as the long journey progressed, each new day brought its fresh load of pastoral concerns, unreasonable complaints, arrogant accusations.  Yet, desperate as he was to talk about his problems, Moses was overwhelmed with a priority greater than speaking.  The Tent of Meeting became the place of attentive listening.  Moses heard the voice…And He spoke with him.”   (Raymond Brown, The Message of Numbers)

The place where God spoke was the mercy seat, the place of forgiveness of sin.  Sin blocks our communication with God, but at the place of forgiveness we are once again receptive to the voice of God.

Oh, how broken we are today! 

A broken nation…broken families…broken people.

No election, no Supreme Court, no political party can ever fix this mess we are in at this point in history.

Sin, national and personal, has blocked our ability to hear God speak.

But at this time of year, this Christmas season, we see hope for each of us.

Hope came in the form of a baby…God’s only Son…given to this old dark world to be the Light of the world!

“And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.”  (John 1:14)

The word “dwelt” means to pitch a tent.  God sent Jesus to live among the people…to pitch His tent much as the tent in the wilderness. 

This is how much God loves us and how much He wants to fix our broken.  We meet Him at the place of forgiveness where we confess our sin and trust His Son to be our Savior. 

Like Aaron, when we look closely we see all the brokenness of this world.  We see lights that don’t work.

But when we allow Jesus to forgive and to redeem, we step back and see that He is indeed the light of the world.

THIS is the message of Christmas! 

Jesus is our only hope today. 

He alone can fix our broken mess.  Please come to know Him today and listen to His voice in the place of forgiveness. 

The Nail Trim

Dad showed me such love in the simple deed of trimming my nails when I was young. Now it was my turn to show him the same love in the simple deed of doing the same for him in his weakened state.

Patty hesaidwhatks's avatarHe Said What?!

I remember climbing on my Daddy’s lap when I was a little girl.  He was sitting in his chair near the fireplace, with his shelves of books on one side and his end table on the other.  His newspaper was on the end table where he could eventually read it at the end of a busy, tiring day on the railroad.  His Bible was also laying there within easy reach.  He read his Bible often as he sat in his chair. He was always ready and willing to listen to my questions about what the Bible said about this and that, especially as I got older.

 
But when I was little and would climb on his lap, I remember the gentleness that he showed.  In the early years he smelled of pipe tobacco and smoke…..that subtle odor that comforted me.  I can still…

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Our Thanksgiving

I don’t know if I’ll ever catch up with my blogging.  I’m so far behind that I haven’t even shared Aaron’s birthday pictures, and his birthday was nearly a month ago!  Oh well.  Life is busy and full, plus I just think I’m not as quick in many ways as I used to be. 

Enough of that!

I last wrote about Aaron’s increased seizures, and our son’s COVID diagnosis.  Thankfully, Aaron hasn’t had a single seizure that we’ve heard since that blog!

 Andrew has recovered from COVID and is exploring job opportunities since his racing furlough. 

Our trip to Texas for Thanksgiving went well.  Not perfectly smooth, but then is that ever the case?  God blessed us with safety and mostly good health and lots of sweet memories.  I’ll share those memories with pictures galore, so here we go!

Kyle and Andrea’s house was so warmly decorated for Christmas! 

Aaron did plenty of talking, as always!

And lots of laying on the floor petting these cuties.

Not the sock, Siggy!

He was pleased as punch to give Andrea the Thanksgiving picture he had colored for her.

And very surprised to receive a gift from Andrea’s boss at MD Anderson, who has taken a special and very kind interest in Aaron.

Our Thanksgiving Day was spent at the home of Kyle’s parents, Kent and Marie.  What a beautiful home and hospitality! 

Kyle loves goofy faces!

Aaron was nervous and sometimes grouchy in these new surroundings but soon he found his comfort zone – adorable Jax and Jill!

We are thankful for time together with family and friends.  Thankful, too, for all of God’s precious blessings, and for His comfort when we missed those not with us. 

May each of you be especially blessed as we remember God’s goodness, especially His great love that we next celebrate at Christmas.

Thanksgiving!

I want to wish each of you a very happy and blessed Thanksgiving! 

We made it to Houston!

I just wanted to share with you a picture of Aaron with his sister, Andrea.  Aaron colored that picture in his day group and was very happy to give it to Andrea.

I wish you all a very blessed day in whatever form it takes. 

May we all remember to count our blessings and keep our minds on the Giver of them all. 

Sunrise…Sunset

I love early mornings at my desk in the room facing west on our upper level.  I have taken scores of sky pictures from the windows in this room. 

It is dark on the mornings I sit there with my Bible open.  But always the sun eventually rises, later this time of year. 

Yesterday the view outside those windows matched my heart. 

Heavy. 

The sky laden with clouds.

Aaron had a seizure a couple hours earlier.  His seizures have been more frequent lately and I wonder why.  Will this mean an increase in one of his seizure drugs and then all that goes along with that?

Our son 10 hours away tested positive for COVID this week.  When it went to his chest, I wanted to be near him in the way that only a mother understands.  Then he got the call that he was furloughed from his job. 

And he can’t join us for Thanksgiving.

We plan to travel to our daughter’s for Thanksgiving.  Should we go?  The virus, you know.

Heavy.

Even the partial early Christmas decorating I’ve done this week doesn’t create the needed cheer in my heart.

But I read Psalm 24:1-2:

“The earth is the Lord’s, and all it contains; the world and those who dwell in it.  For He has founded it upon the seas and established it upon the rivers.” 

The sun DID rise, obscured by clouds though it was.

God has an order to this world He created.  He’s promised that to us.

            “While the earth remains,

                        Seedtime and harvest,

                        And cold and heat,

                        And summer and winter,

                        And day and night,

                        Shall not cease.”    (Genesis 8:22)

God also has an order to my life. 

I am not a pawn to random chance or karma, but I am under the steadfast and certain predictability of the God Who created this world, and all that is in it.

I prefer this sunrise:

And this sunset:

But I trust the God Who holds this world together (Colossians 1:17).

Whatever the news, national or personal, I am certain that God is in charge.

I don’t know or even understand His plan.

But I’m not to trust the plan.

I’m to trust the Planner.

So I will…through heavy clouds or blue skies.

Sunrise and sunset will not cease.  And neither will the loving control and care of the God behind it all. 

What A Mess!

Aaron and I were in the middle of watching an episode of The Waltons last night when he pushed the pause button and got up from his chair.  He went to the kitchen and soon returned carrying a huge bag of popcorn.  We’re talking huge in the sense of Sam’s huge.  All I envisioned was Aaron putting his hand into our community bag of popcorn, grabbing a few pieces, and then putting his hand up to and partially into his mouth. 

Germs!!  My mind could see all those little, microscopic germs being transferred into our huge bag of popcorn.  YUCK!

I stopped Aaron in his tracks, told him to pour some popcorn into a bowl, and over his grumbling he went back to the kitchen to do what I had said.  It wasn’t long, though, before I heard this:

“Mom, can you come here?  I need some help.”

Did he ever!  When I walked into the kitchen, there on the floor was a big mess.  Aaron had spilled lots of popcorn on the floor.  Mom to the rescue!  Aaron got the broom, and we were soon able to clean up the mess.

All around me today I see messes.  So much upheaval is in our country and the world today.  People are suffering and worried and angry.  I wish the messes we see were as easy to clean up as Aaron’s popcorn on the floor, but we all know that’s not the case. 

I read and studied Psalm 22 this morning.  I agree with Dale Davis, who says that David is speaking of his own suffering in this Psalm and yet goes “beyond his suffering and into the suffering of Another.”  David’s suffering also spoke of the suffering of Jesus still to come.

Certainly, the suffering of Christ for us is the greatest gift ever given.  Yet it’s also  in David’s earthly anguish that you and I as followers of Christ can find great comfort as we navigate this dangerous world in which we now live.

I, like David, can look behind me in my years of following the Lord and I can see His faithfulness to me.  I have no reason to doubt that He will remain faithful in the days yet ahead.

I look around me and I feel the chilling wind of change…change that is not good for believers.  I see how the world’s perception of Christians today has become warped…how we appear by liberal definition to be bigots and racists and haters.  How if we don’t jump on board with radical agendas and unbiblical lifestyles then we are not welcome to live in their world. 

The description that David gives of his persecutors sounds eerily similar to some of our accusers that I see on the news today.  He pictures his haters as bulls who encircle him and open their mouths wide at him; as lions who are tearing and roaring; mad wild dogs who have closed in on him; evildoers who surround him.

Remember the looks on the faces of the rioters when they hurled insults at those who attended White House events this past summer?  We’ve seen and heard that same spewed hatred over and over, aimed at pro-lifers and conservatives and Christians in various settings. 

I never thought I’d see the day when moral values are demeaned and blatant ungodliness is held up as the national standard.

But it is here, and it is now.

What jumped off the page to me this morning as I read Psalm 22 is this:

“But You, O Lord, be not far off; O You, my help, hasten to my assistance.  Deliver my soul from the sword, my only life from the power of the dog.  Save me from the lion’s mouth; FROM THE HORNS OF THE WILD OXEN YOU ANSWER ME.”   (Psalm 22:19-21)

David was already in the middle of great trouble.  The picture is of him being actively mauled.  But in the midst of being attacked, David asserted that God answered Him.

God doesn’t always remove my attackers, in whatever form they come, but He DOES hear me and answer me.

David learned that he may have felt forsaken but in reality, he was not.  God was there in every scary moment. 

And so He is with us and He WILL continue to be with us.  He will surround us while we figure out how to function as the minority in our culture today.  He will answer us from the horns of the wild oxen!

David knew that though he felt forsaken at times, God was there with him.  And God is with us as well. 

“For He has not despised and He has not detested the affliction of the afflicted, nor has He hidden His face from him, but when he cried to Him, He heard.”   (Psalm 22:24)

God knows.  God hears. 

I will praise Him and I will share Him with others. 

I will stand strong for truth.

And some day, in His timing, He will clean up all this mess.