Humira Shots, Haircuts, and Wedding Dresses, Oh My!

So, once again it’s been a long time since I’ve written! This year continues to be one wherein very little is “normal”, and in some ways not writing about it but just experiencing it has been the best way to process it. However, God always seems to bring me back to a place where I must recall that putting words to difficult things takes the power out of them… We name something, shed light on it, and invite Community into it, and suddenly the fear-swirl that comes with it must diminish. When I’m silent with something for too long, there is a temptation to see it as bigger than me, and what’s worse, that creeps into the feeling that it’s bigger than God, and the lie that we’re alone. I end up folding, thinking that speaking about things equates to whining, but that’s just a trick to make us feel judged, petty, small, and guilty, when Christ’s real perspective is one that caters to little children crawling up in His lap with little-children-worries.

The funny part is that these emotions seem to come out with the “wrong” triggers! Sickness itself was so bad. This last flare-up was so strong, so altogether crushing, that maybe there just wasn’t time to feel things as they happened, and now, months after the worst of it, the tiny things are the button-pushers.

This past week I had to cut my hair off. The rounds of powerful medicines we had to use for this flare-up made it rapidly fall out, and by the time this month came around it was clear that it wasn’t salvageable and that I was going to be a short-haired bride afterall. Not what I’d always dreamed of, but also NOT a huge deal; it’s definitely just hair! But somehow the no-choice-in-the-matterness of it all shook me up more than I expected, and on the happiest of girly days—when I got to go pick up my wedding dress and do the first fitting—I started to weep. Maybe these tangible things exist to put form to something we wouldn’t be able to process another way. Lost tresses and the way they change my face force me to move forward, to take a deep breath and chose bravery in the small stuff, leaving loss behind and pursuing confidence again after feeling tossed around by feisty circumstances.  

And I have been given the BEST support team for this stuff… two brothers and a sister that came along for the chop, and didn’t make me feel silly in any way, a mom that wiped my tears at the bridal salon, a pappy that nuzzled the words “you’re beautiful” into my cheek, and a fiancé that has only gushed delight, excitement, support, and anticipation at a lifetime of seeing each other grow and change.

A few days later, we needed to administer the second “loading dose” of the new “biologic” medication (given in my arm this time, instead of the initial 4 in my belly – see the pic!). This one is replacing the Remicade that was causing the hairloss, exhaustion, and brain-fog. We’re really hopeful that this is the one we can stick with for many years to come, and are praying that as it gets in my system, I will become able to wean off the steroids again and remain on only 1-2 medicines! It’s awesome to be able to give myself the shots (it’ll be 1 shot every 2 weeks now), and to no longer have to plan around intravenous infusions every 8 weeks! This medicine still suppresses my immune system, which potentially still limits where Johnny and I will be able to serve with Wycliffe in the future, but that “limit” no longer feels scary, and I stand firmly on the knowledge that no medicine will wrangle any limitation on God’s will.

So change pummels forward, but good things are afoot. Smiling today at the oddity of this summer, and thankful for all the ways this body is calming down. 

Mourning a path and gardening willingness

This is the week I was supposed to move to Papua New Guinea. ..Was supposed to get on a plane and leave everything behind but the relationships sending me, all my family and friends tethering me with love to this place. ..Was supposed to fly in multiple stages across datelines and timezones to a mountainous land throbbing from the ground with groans of longing for the Word in their languages...

I feel it pulse under my skin, everything put on hold, a twelve-year process prolonged into waiting once again.

And there is deep sadness in that, sorrow that some weakness in my physical body could explode into such severity now, and delay me from this work that I have felt my Lord tug at me about for more than half my years. Maybe it’s the steroids, but I find myself weeping often now, grasping to grieve for the scariness that November in the hospital was, for the confusion caused by getting so close to launching into Language Survey and then hearing God’s clear “No, still not yet.”

But that’s not quite it, maybe not quite true enough. I find myself grieving for the ifs. It’s too soon to know, but I find my soul reaching for answers about what things can be like once I’m in remission again——will it be possible to be a surveyor still, or will I need to do less physical roles in the Bible translation process? Will the Third World ever open up as an option again, or will these medicines (immuno-suppressants) be God’s tools of redirection, bringing me to work in a country I didn’t expect?  If it can no longer be Papua New Guinea, why did God spend all that time moving me in that direction, researching these people and their languages, investing in this Survey team, and creating a passion in me for the work He is doing there?——the questions can go on an on, but even they only scratch the surface, as it's more complicated than that. I can SEE God weaving together intricate stories that require more complexity, more ambiguity and waiting on Him than I'm comfortable with, but His results are always better than I can dream up, and the answers to those questions aren't the point..

Maybe more than this, then, I am grieving for how I can be so fully sold, so completely the property of my Jesus, and then still find willfulness in me that—in a tiny corner of my most honest and bare soul—hopes for my vision of things, my understanding, more than I fling myself at His feet to do whatever He pleases. Because He is most concerned with the conversation. There is no doubt that He will win. There is no doubt that all will hear, and He is mobilizing everyone who is willing to form the lines that will march forward with His healing, His breath, His salvation for every tribe and tongue. But more than just this end result, He uses every sorrow, every delay, every fog-enshrouded question mark, tear, and crumple to draw us and everyone around us into His lap, and to cultivate in us every good thing that cannot be there without whatever furnace He has brought us to. His sovereignty demands that I redefine everything—that if He allows it, that I should then call it Good, and open up my whole being to being drenched by that fire so we can continue on our way, refined and sharpened, and not consumed (Isaiah 43:2). He is fiercely committed to exacting every small rebirth of ferocious trust in us that will come from changing our plans, that will come from a million little deaths during our lifetimes, a million little lettings-go, even when He authored the direction of those plans in the first place (John 12:24). He loves me enough to forge an evermore iron-clad trust even when that process hurts.

So this week I grieve with my ribcage cracked open. I unlock that chamber so alter-flames can lick this heart with fiery tongues, can lap up disappointment and fear of loss, can dress every physical wound and every veins’ ache, can let in every EXTRAVAGANT joy that God has placed in my life in this season and every need that is before me right here, remembering that trusting Him is worth immeasurably more to Him than ministering for Him in any particular way. One will ALWAYS lead to the other (trust and love leading to ministry and worship), but He will zealously continue refining my trust until I am a closely-knit-to-Him shadow, turning on a dime, pouring Him out in the most unexpected ways and places, following His dancing Image more closely and with more abandon than I did before. Amen.