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.

Between dust and flowing water

“Between Times
Paul Tournier, in A Place for You, describes the experience of being in between—between the time we leave home and arrive at our destination; between the time we leave adolescence and arrive at adulthood; between the time we leave doubt and arrive at faith. It is like the time when a trapeze artist lets go the bar and hangs in midair, ready to catch another support: it is a time of danger, of expectation, of uncertainty, of excitement, of extraordinary aliveness.

Christians will recognize how appropriately these psalms [Psalms 120-134] may be sung between the times: between the time we leave the world’s environment and arrive at the Spirit’s assembly; between the time we leave sin and arrive at holiness; between the time we leave home on Sunday morning and arrive in church with the company of God’s people; between the time we leave the works of the law and arrive at justification by faith. They are songs of transition, brief hymns that provide courage, support and inner direction for getting us to where God is leading us in Jesus Christ.

Meanwhile the world whispers, “Why bother? There is plenty to enjoy without involving yourself in all that. The past is a graveyard—ignore it; the future is a holocaust—avoid it. There is no payoff for discipleship, there is no destination for pilgrimage. Get God the quick way; buy instant charisma.” But other voices speak—if not more attractively, at least more truly.”

-Eugene H. Peterson
A Long Obedience in the Same Direction, p.20

In the previous post, I mention a fortuitous coffee-date that I got to have this week, where we closed down the shop and were asked to continue our conversation outside ;)...

At one point in this long conversation, we hit a silly note, referring to a need for a "dating tips" site in regards to the life of a disciple of Christ ("How to keep it fresh when you've been together for 20+ years",  ha!)...  It feels very laughable to have typed that out, but what hit a chord for me is that, especially in this year of transitioning towards the missionary lifestyle, far from family, friends, and often a church Body, I am on a quest to sort out what a mature, fully grounded and steadfast discipleship should look like, apart from the structure that I am blessed to have just because I grew up around established church programs and awesome opportunities to learn from other believers on a daily and weekly basis...

When I look at not being utterly submerged in that in the future, the urgency of personal discipline is unveiled in the most real way I've ever experienced. This is most certainly a concept I've taken seriously all my life, and I was blessed with parents and a church that never for a second let me think that faith is "grandfathered-in", but in my most honest moments, I know that the Christian culture in America makes it very easy to think I know how to feed myself, because there is never a lack of spiritual food at my fingertips, and I have surely fallen into living off of what I can absorb “just  by showing up” before. 

But the beautiful side-effect of living on a precipice is that it mirrors back to me what   should   not   be.   And so alongside this journey towards serving in the Bible Translation process, I am on a journey to live in that vulnerable, chest-cavity-open-on-an-operating-alter kind of honesty, and to rediscover, each day, what intimacy with Christ can look like--and how alive  a "long obedience in the same direction" can be.  One of the most poignant characteristics that long seasons of sickness wrought out in me was the will  involved in submitting my heart and direction, not because there was a mountain peak coming, but just because the One I followed was deeply trustworthy, even if the journey felt ugly and painful.    In the last year though, He has been whispering me into a subsequent understanding of obedience and discipline----dancing me out of a fertile but somber valley, and onto unknown rocks and adventure. I have been praying that my submission would learn how to travel between these heavy and light hearted seasons with grace, whimsy, and praise, and that I would not loosen my grip on Him, depending on the form of the season…  

And may this be contagious. May we, irregardless of our different contexts, see the need to quest forward----for closeness with each other and with Him, for divine passion for what He's placed in us to do and be,  for hearts that would have no rest in or patience for our own nestled apathy, but would all seek the transition between dust and flowing water.

Transition Measured in Books..

I once heard Kay Arthur tell a story about how she sold all her possessions before becoming a missionary when she was younger because she “read in the Bible that ‘where your treasure is, there your heart is also’, and ‘I didn’t want my heart to be stuck in a storage facility somewhere’”J… In person, her delivery was clearly humorous, but I can definitely relate! 

A few weeks ago, I decided that if I didn’t start going through my belongings now to at least majorly minimize, I was going to move to Papua New Guinea in a few months with boxes of things in my family members’ homes that don’t need to be sitting there for years.

So in March, I began with the books! As I swiped at the dust and pages with my fingers and lovingly inspected each one, I realized the books on my colossal shelf go back through a habit of at least twenty years of story-hoarding...   In school, through my most awkward years, books were my escape to incredible places and times, and characters that could understand me more than the people I was meeting in middle school. Though I was mostly a library borrower then, the habit stuck, and I found delight in large vocabulary words and the characters that used them.

College-Mon working
on my Senior Project

By high school, I was a full-fledged Lit-nerd who'd begun the habit of scouring used book stores for the oldest copies of favorites I could find, and becoming an English Major in college only multiplied the "problem" ten-fold! Each semester would bring a new long list to acquire, read, absorb, and analyze, and by the time I graduated, I'd plotted to buy a bookshelf to house "my loves" so they didn't have to live in odd, studious floor-stacks anymore.

When I moved out on my own after college for the first time, I found a used, three-part, mammoth bookshelf that felt perfect and proud to hold them, and when I became a teacher later, I found myself continuing the habit of hitting up used book stores after particularly stressful or rewarding teaching days to mark the momentous occasion J. Later, the well-loved collection even required a fourth build-it-yourself, additional tall shelf! 

So now, as I tried to undertake the minimization of this heap o' books, I found myself quite a sentimental goose over them—over and over again, I found little notes tucked away in the pages, and not the grocery-list kind, but the memory-fiber, weighty kind. I rediscovered a meaningful letter from my village roommate during my time in Ghana in '04, there were cards of encouragement from friends at all different points in my life, and post-its my parents had hidden away for me to find when I was in Italy. There was a lunch-note with doodles my sister and I had passed back and forth over a few days in high school, and some drawings we'd swiveled to make each other smile. Many of the books were given to me as gifts, with heart-words poured out on the cover pages. Some marked epochs in my personal growth, or instantly took me back to seasons of struggle when I'd clung to those pages for comfort.

There was something beautifully cathartic in this sifting process, and when I was finished I had a medium-sized keep-stack, a pile of precious notes, bookmarks, and letters, and several boxes of books to part with! It was fascinating to find that my whole life until this point could be partially measured out in books, and it was also beautiful to learn that these outward shells were not my treasure, but that there are so many deeply lovely memories, lessons, people, and so much unwavering human emotion that I connect to those titles and the words found within them. These things I carry with me, and several oceans won't change that.

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