Tag Archives | Suffering

Jars of Clay

I had a hard emotional breakdown when I received my first insulin pump, at the age of 29. I had been a brittle type 1 diabetic for four years at that point, and the insulin pump was a definite upgrade to the three to four shots a day I had previously been giving myself to control my blood sugar levels. But with the shots, I only had to think about being a diabetic three to four times a day. In between, I tended to slip back into “normal” mode, forgetting my health issues until time to check by blood sugars at the next meal. In contrast, I wore my new insulin pump all day every day. Now that I’m used to it, I don’t even realize my pump is there half the time. But in the early days of using it, I felt its weight against my waistline 24 hours a day, 60 minutes an hour, 60 seconds a minute. That constant reminder that my body wasn’t normal, that I had a life threatening condition, undid me emotionally for a bit.

But God spoke to me clearly through His revelation of Himself to His children. Through John 9, He reminded me that our illnesses aren’t punishments, but conduits of God’s grace to us for the praise of His glory. And through 2 Corinthians 4, He reminded me that the reason God’s glory can be so clearly seen through individuals is tied to the fact that this glory is housed in broken conduits, in jars of clay.

Broken Vessels

I was at Edisto Beach Baptist Church two weeks ago, and the interim preacher told a poignant story of his mother’s last days battling Lou Gehrig’s disease. When she could no longer speak, she’d hold up four fingers. And when she could no longer hold up four fingers, she would blink four times. He knew what she wanted. She wanted him to read to her 2 Corinthians 4.

5 For we are not proclaiming ourselves but Jesus Christ as Lord, and ourselves as your servants for Jesus’s sake. 6 For God who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of God’s glory in the face of Jesus Christ.

7 Now we have this treasure in clay jars, so that this extraordinary power may be from God and not from us. 8 We are afflicted in every way but not crushed; we are perplexed but not in despair; 9 we are persecuted but not abandoned; we are struck down but not destroyed. 10 We always carry the death of Jesus in our body, so that the life of Jesus may also be displayed in our body. 11 For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus’s sake, so that Jesus’s life may also be displayed in our mortal flesh. 12 So then, death is at work in us, but life in you.

That preacher’s story was poignant for me at the time since my own surgery for uterine cancer was scheduled 12 days later.

Clay jars. Broken pots. Earthen vessels. Given over to death.

Light of knowledge. God’s glory. Face of Christ. Extraordinary power.

The contrast in these two lines is the very point.

I had my surgery Friday, and though there was a 40% chance that I had more cancer than the original precancerous cells they found before surgery, tests during the surgery showed I did not. We are still waiting the final official word, but it seems I am cancer free in this area at least. I thank God very much. But my vessel is still very much made of deteriorating clay. I’ve had three abdominal surgeries in 9 months, 5 total counting my two c-sections. My abdomen looks like a gaming board. And, I still have that insulin pump. And I still had breast cancer that spread to a lymph node. I am moving forward, but it will forever be with a limp.

The neat thing in all of this is that God didn’t leave me as an orphan to figure out my illnesses for myself. He didn’t leave me to come up with a strategy on my own to make my peace with it. In my regular reading of the Scriptures, God taught me how to think about my various illnesses and how to hope for a future with them, even if my body was compromised by them. He did for that pastor’s mom as well. He did it for Paul. And He’ll do it for you or your loved one who is wrestling through such things.

We have deep treasures in Christ, but the temple of the Holy Spirit housing these deep treasures is breaking down. Every one of our temples is returning to dust even if some are further along that continuum than others. There’s a lot implied in that contrast between the eternal treasures and the broken down temple that houses them. The contrast itself is important. And though we fight against deteriorating bodies, rightly resisting death as the abnormal phenomenon that it is, it is good to stop and marvel at the eternal light we house IN those deteriorating bodies. The more your body deteriorates, the more the contrast with that light is heightened. The glory of the light becomes clearer, and the path toward death and decay loses its sting. Some call that the thinning of the veil. I feel more settled after it all. It hasn’t been a bad thing in my life. Maybe that’s the real miracle.

Thoughts on Physical Suffering Part 1

I received a diagnosis last week many of you have received before me, one none of us want. I have early stage breast cancer. I also am a type 1 diabetic who was just finding relief from a flare up of juvenile arthritis. While recovering from a divorce and family upheaval not of my choosing.

It all seems a bit much.

After a few days of wandering around in a “You’ve-got-to-be-kidding-me” type of stupor, I’m starting to emerge with a little more sense of resolution, and by God’s grace, faith. Here are a few random thoughts.


I bought Kara Tippetts’ book, The Hardest Peace. Most of you know that Kara died. Thankfully, so far, my diagnosis is not late stage as hers was. I resisted buying the book at first. But I decided that though I only wanted to hear from those with positive outcomes, I NEEDED to hear from someone who faced the worst and whose faith was steadfast through it.

I appreciate encouragement that centers around resolution and healing. But when divorce loomed over me, there came a point when encouragement from those who had resolved difficulties in marriage didn’t actually encourage me anymore. I had used up all the things I knew to do or pray, but the pending divorce still hung over my head like an anvil. I was encouraged by those, like Dee Brestin and Wesley Hill, who had persevering faith in terminal trials – trials that won’t go away until your physical body does. Between diabetes, arthritis, divorce, and now cancer, my life and body will be riddled with scars until they lay me in a grave, even if that is another 40 years away. I want to hear from folks with persevering faith in long term suffering that isn’t going away.

I’ve been thinking of Elisabeth Elliott who lost her second husband to cancer after losing her first to a spear.  And my friend from Seattle who lost her daughter to cancer and her husband to unbelief.  I remember the godly Christian college teacher with Lou Gehrig’s disease, who lost his daughter and primary care giver in a car accident.  And I think of Joni Eareckson Tada, who was diagnosed with breast cancer as a quadriplegic.  Trial isn’t uniformly measured out in equal portions.  But there is a strong cloud of witnesses around us, living and dead, who have persevered in faith in multiple long term trials.  They encourage us to do so as well. We need them, even though we often would rather hear from those whose trials lasted a year or so and then went away permanently.


One of my biggest struggles currently is coming to terms with, once again, needing to be helped when I would much rather be the helper. I loved Wonder Woman. I want to be the strong, warrior helper coming alongside those struggling in life and faith. I want to finish a book on Jesus’s interactions with women from the book of Luke. I want to write a book that is helpful to those coming out of the spiritual abuse and confusion of Mars Hill Church in Seattle. I want to mentor/disciple women as strong helpers in the image of God. I want to shepherd my children, volunteer at our public school, and so on. I don’t want to need someone to clean my house, bring me meals, or pick up my kids from school. And I really don’t want to say no to opportunities to teach women. But here I am, and I must accept it. I am humbled. I must receive more than I am able to give. I’m not Wonder Woman in this scenario. Instead, I’m hoping she’ll show up at my door from time to time with lasagna and a vacuum cleaner.


I wish I were as tethered to prayer and the Scriptures when I am released from the pressure of trials as I am when trial hangs over my head. I want to be faithful in prosperity. But again and again, it takes the pressure of trial to bind my wandering heart to Scripture. At first, I could only read Psalm 88, that powerful psalm of lament that never resolves. I’ve felt for some time now that psalm in particular was a gift from God for those of us facing the type of situation that causes many to turn away from Him. What if I only had dark, scary things to say to God but thought He’d strike me down if I voiced them?! Instead, He recorded in His eternal Scripture just such a prayer, so that when I am most tempted to turn away from God I instead have language HE HAS GIVEN ME to turn toward Him in despair and fear.

Psalm 88:13-18

But I call to you for help, Lord;
in the morning my prayer meets you.
Lord, why do you reject me?
Why do you hide your face from me?
From my youth,
I have been suffering and near death.
I suffer your horrors; I am desperate.
Your wrath sweeps over me;
your terrors destroy me.
They surround me like water all day long;
they close in on me from every side.
You have distanced loved one and neighbor from me;
darkness is my only friend.

In dark moments, I need grace and mercy that only God can provide. What sweet care of His children that God invites us in those moments to come to Him boldly and confidently, bringing our burden to Him until we experience the peace that passes understanding, the peace that doesn’t make sense in our circumstances, that only He can provide.

Psalm 88 is in the middle of a bunch of other verses well underlined and marked up in my favorite Bible. It’s nestled between Psalm 87, about the joys of life in Zion that makes even the best moments of Israel’s earthly kingdom pale in comparison, and Psalm 89, which is super happy and encouraging, the kind of chapter you read with the dawning of hope in the morning after a long and frustrating night. I have walked around with that favorite Bible in my hand, reading regularly from Psalms, noting phrases that have sustained me in past trial and adding new dates to them as new things hit me now. I hope that the pressure of this trial eases soon, but may I stay as tethered to the Word in good times as I am in bad.


Last but not least, I have received great help by way of my “ebenezer” stone at the foot of my newly remodeled farmhouse. I can’t put into words the deep stress I’ve felt over the last three years trying to figure out how to establish and pay for a home for my boys and I after the loss of our life in Seattle. But God did it! He sold my house in Seattle (through the help of friends) and worked out the details to turn my grandparents’ moldy 1930s farmhouse (with original windows and rat infested walls) into a truly lovely home. I know it has been God’s kindness and watchful care of my family that established this home. So I inscribed “Ebenezer” and “I Samuel 7:12” on a fake stone and put it at my front steps to remind me every day. I don’t want to forget both my anxiety during that season and God’s great care to work out details I could not imagine on my own. And now I get the point of “ebenezer” stones. That marker of God’s past faithfulness has helped my heart find confidence in this new trial. Instead of my previous suffering making me question God in this new round, reminders of His past faithfulness make me watchful for it anew. This is a gift of His grace! 

I appreciate your prayers for healing, but I also really appreciate your prayers for confident faith, for myself and my loved ones, that expects to see the goodness of God in the land of the living as He has shown Himself before.

Tis grace has brought me safe thus far,
And grace will lead me home.

John Newton

The Powerful Peace of Prayer

When I was 36 weeks pregnant with my first son, I went in for a regular checkup only to find out my baby was in fetal distress. Within a half hour, I was being prepped for an emergency c-section. Any who have experienced a similar situation know that you lose autonomy over your body as hospital folks start their process of prepping you for surgery that doesn’t end until they cut your baby out of your stomach. There’s certainly no time to ask everyone to step back and give you a breather so you can collect yourself.

As they strapped me down flat in the operating room, with my arms spread wide in the crucifixion position, I was filled with anxiety and bubbling nausea. I looked up at the anesthesiologist and whispered, “I don’t think I can do this.” He said, “Ok,” and proceeded to inject something into my IV. In about thirty seconds, it seemed that I could do it after all. Nothing had changed in my circumstances or position on the table, and yet, it seemed everything had changed with the calming of my anxiety. At the birth of my second, I asked for that magic injection right off the bat, and I never encountered the same feeling of acute distress.

Last week, I was faced with a bubbling up of overwhelming anxiety that reminded me of what I felt at that first c-section. “I don’t think I can do this,” I said to myself, trying to not run screaming from the room. I have learned in those moments, though, the amazing power of prayer. I sent out a text message to a few friends I knew would pray fervently for me. I prayed as well, though it was mostly incoherent mutterings, the type Paul mentions in Romans 8. Sure enough, in a while, I felt less anxious. It wasn’t that my circumstance changed but that God lowered my anxiety level so that I could deal with it.

This is not Christian rocket science.

Phil. 4:6-7 Don’t worry about anything, but in everything, through prayer and petition with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.  And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. 

James 5:16 Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is very powerful in its effect.

We often look to prayer to change circumstances, but I’m becoming daily more convinced that the incredible power of prayer is how it changes us to be able to faithfully walk hard paths God has for us. I often want my circumstances to change, but, wow, it is truly amazing to find a peace and confidence that, though no circumstance has changed, you won’t be destroyed by things you once thought would tear you apart.

 

 

On the Gospel According to Glennon

The Gospel According to Glennon. That’s the title of an article I read about Glennon Doyle Melton in Elle Magazine last week, and I haven’t been able to shake the deep grief, the soul lament, I have felt in its aftermath. Glennon began her public platform as a Christian blogger at Momastery. Her blog turned into a best seller book, then into a second best seller that detailed her fight for love with her husband who had previously cheated on her in what was, at times, a highly dysfunctional relationship. It ended with them renewing their vows on a beach, each having put in the work to save their marriage, but by the time the book hit bookshelves, Glennon was on her way to breaking up with her husband and entering a gay marriage with soccer star, Abby Wambach, with whom she seemed to fall in love at first sight.

Glennon has connected with many women I know and love—many to whom I’ve ministered, and many who have ministered to me. She teaches a gospel, a type of news that feels good, to a staggering number of thirty to forty year old wives and moms. They are our sisters and our friends. I imagine a number are readers here too.

I mourn because I believe the gospel of Jesus Christ really is the best kind of news, even though this good news of Jesus is precipitated by the bad news of our destruction when we follow our own way. I mourn because though the path is narrow through belief in Christ, the destination is incredibly good for all who are in Christ. I mourn because I know SO MANY WOMEN struggling to persevere in overcoming faith in hard situations who found Glennon an encouragement to do so. I mourn because Glennon seems now to encourage women toward the very opposite of the hard path to which God calls us.  To cheers and accolades, she has walked away from the hard thing, followed her heart, and rejected an orthodox understanding of Scripture.  I’m unable to fully articulate the weight of discouragement put on the backs of those I know and love fighting for faith in hard situations when a former encourager heads in such a way.

After days of sadness in the wake of reading the article, I woke up yesterday, not sad, but angry. I wasn’t angry at Glennon, but at Satan who again … and again … and again … and again, at every generation throughout all time, figures out a way to sell us the same old lie. That God doesn’t mean what He said. That what He said isn’t really the best for us. That trusting what God says in the Bible will actually destroy our souls. Satan wants you to trust yourself, or Glennon Doyle Melton. But whatever you do, don’t trust God. Don’t trust the Word He sent us. Don’t trust His revelation of Himself to us through the Bible. There is good news to be had, but it is not found by trusting God’s words. It is a very old lie, and none with any awareness of Scripture should be surprised to see it surface yet anew. Satan may be persistent, but he is not very original.

Ecclesiastes 1:9

That which has been is that which will be,
And that which has been done is that which will be done.
So there is nothing new under the sun.

We see the first iteration of this lie of Satan in Genesis 3.

3 Now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, “Indeed, has God said, ‘You shall not eat from any tree of the garden’?” 2 The woman said to the serpent, “From the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat; 3 but from the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden, God has said, ‘You shall not eat from it or touch it, or you will die.’” 4 The serpent said to the woman, “You surely will not die! 5 For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

Satan first temps a human with this lie to distrust God’s explicit instructions in Genesis 3, but it has been his Go To Lie ever since, generation after generation, culture to culture.

That thing you thought God was saying? That’s not what God really meant. Those dire consequences He warned you about if you disobeyed? They aren’t real consequences at all. In fact, instead of killing you, disobeying God will bring you new life. Trust yourself. Trust your instincts. Follow your heart.

For thousands of years since creation, THIS has been Satan’s lie. And this is the lie that Glennon Doyle Melton and what Elle Magazine calls a “roving wolf pack of acclaimed authors turned motivational speakers and ‘aspirational spirituality’ practitioners” are teaching a generation of disillusioned Christians.

From Elle

Melton’s fans took the news in stride; the bloodbath never came. “You deserve it, you Love Warrior, you!” wrote a reader from South Dakota. Another wrote: “I just don’t have a ‘Love’ emoji big enough for this.” In the two days following Melton’s coming-out post, her hug line only grew.

You deserve it. You deserve to make some choices to serve yourself, even if they contradict the Bible. You deserve to do what’s good for you, even if the Bible specifically says, “That’s not good for you!”  But God is jealous for His glory and adamant on the righteousness of His standard, not because He wants us to be cosmically miserable, but because He and His kingdom are GOOD.  My friend Anne Kennedy has well diagnosed the root discrepancy between Glennon’s aspirational gospel and the actual good news of Jesus Christ.

Jesus isn’t about your personal self actualizing, self fulfilling, self focused love. Love doesn’t win when it’s you that you love the most. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that Glennon, for all her ‘in loveness’ with Wambach, is most devoted to herself. She is the pearl, and she has sold everything to keep it.

It makes initial sense for us as individuals to centralize ourselves in our own story with our aspirations as its central theme.  But God’s Word teaches us that the true path to self-fulfillment is exactly the opposite.  “They that lose their lives will find them,” Jesus taught us.

Even secular Elle Magazine seems to understand aspects of the problems in Glennon’s gospel of self:

All of this has led to a new charge against her: that she is sugarcoating divorce and its aftermath. “As someone who actually walked that, it’s bullshit,” says one of my divorced friends. “It just seems reckless and irresponsible, because there are so many women following her like sheep.”

“She puts a knot in my stomach,” says couples therapist Michele Weiner-Davis, whose latest book is called Healing From Infidelity. “I can’t count how many times I hear women quoting her when they come into my office. On the positive side, she wants to empower women. But the fact is, most people don’t do divorce all that well, especially when children are involved. She’s strengthening their conviction that they need to get away from their husbands, instead of learning to work through challenging issues. Sometimes you have to be a warrior to stay.”

Sometimes, dear sisters, you have to be a warrior to stay. And I’m not talking just about a hard marriage recovering from a husband’s unfaithfulness. [We must note that Glennon had biblical grounds for divorce in that situation.  But she consciously renewed her vows after his infidelity, which puts her in a different category.  She made a covenant commitment to her husband TWICE.]  I am talking about the thousand different ways we are called to live out our created purpose as ezer daughters of our ezer God, strong warrior helpers of THE STRONG WARRIOR HELPER GOD. We women were made in God’s image in a particular way, created to persevere, protect, advocate for, and suffer with others in hard things, particularly in our covenant relationships, things that Glennon at first seemed to champion. The really beautiful thing is that God didn’t just create us as women in His image to do hard things, but through the true gospel, through Christ IN us, who died FOR us, we are equipped to do these hard things – hard things that Scripture teaches us we need to obey.

Persevering in covenant relationship.

Treating others the way we want to be treated.

Obeying the limitations God puts on who we can have sex with.

We can do hard, self-sacrificing things because God did it first for us.  It’s His self-sacrificing warrior love that cost His own life that we might gain ours. And He also does it with us. We aren’t out there self-sacrificing as warriors for our families, our friends, our communities, and our churches alone. We have One who comes along side us in aid, called our paraclete in the Greek, our Comforter/Counselor/Helper in the English. The Ezer of all Ezers indwells us and equips us, that we may stick with the hard things in our lives and persevere through them.

I understand why women resonate with Glennon. I really, really do. She tapped into true concerns in many women’s lives, and for a season, encouraged them to stay in the hard things, mourn what was wrong, and fight for what was good. It would be a mistake for any Christian leader to discount that. But understand that the solution she chose in the end, to “follow her heart” even as it lead away from the Bible not towards it, doesn’t actually solve any of the heart problems. What we need is the grace that only God can minister to our hearts to do the hard things to which He has called us.  We need to avail ourselves of the means of grace through which He promises to minister it – the preaching and reading of His Word, prayer, baptism, and so forth. Dear sister, walk with the Spirit. Read and trust God’s Word. Press into Him as He convicts you from it. Believe God. Trust His revelation of Himself to us. And let our Ezer God equip us to be ezer women, fighting for all that is right and good as He has revealed to us in Scripture.

Satan seeks to devour our generation as he has every one before us, but the Spirit is strong and our eternal end secure. We can trust our God, and we can trust His Word to us.

** Here are a few resources that have meant a lot to me when I have been struggling to persevere in hard things.

The Life We Never Expected by Andrew and Rachel Wilson

Washed and Waiting by Wesley Hill

A Chance to Die (on the life of Amy Carmichael) by Elisabeth Elliott

These Strange Ashes by Elisabeth Elliott

 

A Woman’s Cruciform Love

Tonight on Facebook, I read an update on a friend’s life that left me sobbing. I won’t share the details, but it echoed the stories of several women I know. Fighting for faith as they persevere in trial, just to be abandoned in the middle of it by the one they thought was in it with them. For several friends, the abandonment has been by their spouse, a most bitter betrayal when you are already fighting to endure in suffering. But some have been abandoned by siblings, parents, churches, or friends. The friend tonight wasn’t bitter, but she was grieving deeply. And that, friends, is the difference in worldly love and cruciform love.

Cruciform love. Love in the shape of the cross. My online news and social media feeds don’t much understand cruciform love. Sometimes I don’t think too many Christians do either. Who doesn’t get bitter when their spouse emotionally divests from their relationship in the middle of the terminal illness of a child? Who doesn’t get bitter when the friend or family member you thought was on mission with you decides they just don’t care anymore? So when I stumble across cruciform love in the middle of betrayal or abandonment (and what other kind of love could possibly endure such a thing?), I take note of it.

Cruciform love feels the sting of betrayal. Cruciform love doesn’t deny the existence of pain but faces it head on and walks through (or limps through) it anyway.

Luke 22:42 “Father, if You are willing, take this cup away from Me—nevertheless, not My will, but Yours, be done.”

Hebrews 12:2 … who for the joy that lay before Him endured the cross and despised the shame …

Jesus faced his suffering head on and felt its pain deeply. Love in His image hurts, which is why most of us avoid it like the plague.

There is overwhelming sadness and betrayal in this world. There is overwhelming sadness and betrayal in my little Facebook feed as well. The temptation again and again is to harden ourselves to it. We don’t just get angry at sin, we get angry at sinners. When our love is thrown back in our faces, we batten down the hatches and take down the sails. We will endure, but not vulnerably. We ride out the storm by locking ourselves in. This seems the way of survival. But it is not cruciform love. Cruciform love doesn’t protect itself. It loses its life. Praise God though that Jesus affirms such loss as the path to finding true life (Matthew 16:25).

Cruciform love is the gospel lived out. It is the essence of imaging out our God to a lost and broken world.

Luke 6 32 If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them. 33 If you do what is good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners do that. 34 And if you lend to those from whom you expect to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners to be repaid in full. 35 But love your enemies, do what is good, and lend, expecting nothing in return. Then your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High. For He is gracious to the ungrateful and evil. 36 Be merciful, just as your Father also is merciful.

In this post, why do I emphasize the cruciform love of believing women? I have watched men live out cruciform love as well, but they are not the ones that share with me the private stories of pain in their lives the way many women do. Also, there is a particular vulnerability in our gender related to our creation in the image of God as ezer. The term reflects both God’s strength and His care, His protection and His compassion. And caring leaves us vulnerable. It left God vulnerable too, hanging on a cross exposed to a jeering crowd. And instead of anger or bitterness at the betrayal of the crowd that had cheered Him as Messiah just a few days before, He prayed in the midst of their jeering cries, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” This love at His most vulnerable, exposed moment is cruciform love.

I want to give a shout out to the women I see living out such love, but I note they are not much for shout outs. They love this way because they are convinced they ARE LOVED this way. And what other response could they possibly offer?

I John 4:11 Dear friends, if God loved us in this way, we also must love one another.

I John 4:19 We love because He first loved us.

Instead of a shout out of affirmation, I will offer simply an encouragement. Sister in Christ, though the world despises cruciform love and projects weakness onto those who believe in it, know that it is the gospel playing out in your life. The pain of your circumstances tempts you to harden yourself, except that you know Jesus loved you vulnerably even when it hurt Him deeply. And so you stay engaged as you can, loving those who can not return it. Bless you, sister, for you encourage me in Christ.

Dying to Self in the Age of Self-love

I am going to be raw and honest in this post. And I hope I’ll be a little bit encouraging too. I am emerging from a brutally hard season in life. But even as I emerge with my feet on more solid ground than I’ve felt in a long time, I still face a life that was not the one I envisioned as an earnest Christian teenager in youth group and then Bible college. I don’t like to talk about the details of that season publicly, because despite my freedom to share myself, public writers must grapple with the effects of their story on the others in their lives who haven’t signed up for publicity and don’t benefit from the sharing. I feel free to share privately things that I won’t share publicly and have worked to be upfront and honest with those whose ministries intersect with mine. I am at peace with how I’ve been able to work that out so far.

The bottom line for my life is that I am looking toward a life of persevering in some very hard things for the long haul. And no amount of peeling off layers of myself to get to my core heart is going to rescue me from the twists and turns my story has taken. But don’t hear fatalism in that last sentence. Like the woman diagnosed with terminal breast cancer, there is a precious jewel hidden in the layers of suffering and self-sacrifice with what seems a permanent blight on one’s life.

I have several of these blights on my life physically, which I will use to talk about lessons learned from spiritual and emotional blights as well. I have been a type 1 diabetic for over twenty years. But this year, for the first time, I showed the first signs of damage to my eyes. In conjunction, my body showed symptoms again of ankylosing spondilitis that had previously gone into remission. So I started up the first line of medicine, the easy one with the fewest side effects, that had pushed it into remission the last time. But the doctor called me Wednesday. Blood work showed problems. I will likely have to discontinue and start another one that has even more side effects. (And, yes, I see a chiropractor, talk with a naturopath, and eat a mostly gluten-free diet.)

It’s becoming natural to think of dying to myself as I face more and more physical issues that evidence the fact that my physical self is truly dying (though not any time soon). It’s actually helpful that, unlike a hard marriage or family relationship or ministry commitment, I can’t escape these physical symptoms. I can’t run from them, so I have to face them head on and figure out how to live abundantly in light of them. And that learning has equipped me to persevere in the other issues in my life that I could run from if I did not feel constrained by God’s instructions through the Word.

My dad has been a great encouragement to me. He has chronic heart failure, and we almost lost him last March. But he recovered enough to get out of the hospital, and after a day at home, he drove back up to his farm to sit in the office and “tend to business.” He bought a Gator (a farm utility vehicle like a golf cart) to drive between the tractor shed and the Quonset hut, where he restores old tractors. His hip has been bothering him, and he moves slowly. But he moves, one slow step in front of the other. He gets 10% done in a day compared to his prime years, and I fully expect to find him slumped over a tractor one day. But I applaud him for his perseverance. He models for me how I want to face both my physical limitations and my emotional ones.

Sometimes, obeying God is hard. Many days, submitting to God’s laws feels restricting. It is one thing to honor our faithful God by faithfulness in relationships when the relationships are easy or affirming. But God is faithful to us when we are faithless (2 Tim. 2:13). He persevered with us when we turned away from Him. Jesus followed through on doing the right thing at great cost to Himself.

But that sounds … hard. And herein is the great paradox that Jesus Himself taught us.

Luke 9:23-25  Then he said to them all: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it. What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit their very self?

This is a true statement from Jesus. God doesn’t need me to affirm it for it to be true. But it is true nonetheless, and I can attest to that from my own experience. And this truth encourages me to persevere, stumbling physically and emotionally at times.

There is great talk of self-love in Christian circles right now, the kind of self-love that promotes a perceived circumstantial happiness. When I hear of Christian bloggers or authors or even just professing Christians in my own private life diverging from orthodox Christian faith or values because it is “too hard,” I feel a depressing weight on my shoulders. Their quest for happiness outside of orthodoxy demoralizes me in a way that a combative atheist never could. They demoralize me in a way that even my own particular burdens of suffering do not.

I opened up the psalms Thanksgiving morning, in the calm after prepping before thirty-something family members descended on my grandmother’s newly remodeled home into which I had just moved. It was Psalm 19, and David’s words resonated deeply with me as I contemplated yet another “Christian” author/blogger finding themselves in a way that was markedly divergent from an orthodox understanding of Scripture.

David reflects –

7 The Lord’s Instruction is perfect,
reviving one’s very being.
The Lord’s laws are faithful,
making naive people wise.
8 The Lord’s regulations are right,
gladdening the heart.
The Lord’s commands are pure,
giving light to the eyes.
9 Honoring the Lord is correct,
lasting forever.
The Lord’s judgments are true.
All of these are righteous!
10 They are more desirable than gold—
than tons of pure gold!
They are sweeter than honey—
even dripping off the honeycomb!
11 No doubt about it:
your servant is enlightened by them;
there is great reward in keeping them.
12 But can anyone know
what they’ve accidentally done wrong?
Clear me of any unknown sin
13 and save your servant from willful sins.
Don’t let them rule me.
Then I’ll be completely blameless;
I’ll be innocent of great wrongdoing.
14 Let the words of my mouth
and the meditations of my heart
be pleasing to you,
Lord, my rock and my redeemer.

Dear friend who is struggling with a weight on your shoulders, one that may seem lighter to bear if you walk away from God’s instructions – DON’T BUY THAT LIE. It was the first lie ever told, and it remains Satan’s great summary temptation. “God’s instructions are a limitation. They will keep you from all you are meant to be.”

No, it is not true. Embrace the path of suffering in obedience to God’s instructions. Lose your life. Let go of yourself and your expectations. And trust God to meet you in it, redeem your story, and give you a place of import in His larger story. As you lose your right to your story, you emerge in a much greater One, and what you will find is WORTH IT.

If you are wresting through such a losing and finding, I highly recommend Tim Keller’s The Freedom of Self Forgetfulness. It is subtitled, The True Path to Christian Joy. I loved those meditations, and I can give testimony of their truths.  Wesley Hill’s Washed and Waiting was also a great encouragement to me as I wrestled with these truths.

I have walked a hard path, and I continue to walk a hard path. But God gave me manna to sustain me at the hardest points and has blessed me abundantly even through the taking away of things I thought I couldn’t live without. He has proven Himself to me, and He has proven the goodness of His words. When others encouraged me that I was not constrained by God’s instructions, I found instead abundant grace and help when I felt convicted that I was. But it requires faith to stay in that process. I can not produce such faith in you. And you can’t produce it in yourself. Lean into the One who can, and may you look back in future years in praise of the One who turns stones into bread, water into wine, and loss into life abundant.