Whatever He Wants

This is my 100th blog post, which isn't anything special.  But, I was wondering about what I would write that is a good reflection of where my heart is right now (100 blog posts into this journey of learning to love the least) and then I read the post below from Katie Davis.  For those of you who don't know Katie, go here to learn about her life in Uganda with her 13 adoptive children.  I was privileged enough to meet her and her beautiful girls in Uganda in 2009.  God has used Katie's faith...her stories...her heart, to challenge my personal walk with Him.  I hope this honest, raw post speaks to you powerfully, as it did to me.  May we take these words to heart... 

“I am so old. My whole body hurts. I have suffered much,” her eyes shine with joy as she speaks, “oh, I am suffering. But whatever He wants. Whatever God wants!” And she laughs and she laughs.


We sit in our circle in the dust of a slum and we share our hearts and our prayers. Jja Ja Maria, who looks to be a hundred years old and reaches no higher than my shoulders, is the last to share.

Her life, it has been hard. She is in Jinja because she had to flee from the war in the North that tore apart her life and her family. Her son was shot last week by a soldier on the border of Uganda and Sudan and frail, little Jja Ja had made the 13 hour bus ride in the stifling heat and watched as they had lowered her last living child into the ground. The journey had taken almost a week and when she came back she found her grandchildren sick and even though her whole body ached from travel she still took them to the clinic and continued bending over her work so that she could make enough money to put food on the table. Now she is back and we are happy to embrace her and ask about her journey and ask how we can pray for her.

“What ever He wants," she chuckles.

I look at the joy that is spilling out of her wrinkled face and I repeat the words that she has spoken in my head and that doesn’t make sense. She is hurt and she is suffering and she is laughing about it and sparkling with beauty and radiating Joy.

That doesn’t make sense. Not to me. Not yet.

But she already knows what I am just learning. That even this, it is from Him. Even this, it is Holy ground. This thing that I label suffering, it is really Joy.

“Does disaster come to a city unless the Lord has planned it?” Amos 3:6

I live with these human eyes, and with these human eyes of mine I label. I label one thing as good and one thing as bad. I label moments as blessing or burden. And I forget that all this labeling, it is not my right, not my place, not mine to do. To declare what is a gift in my life and what is a curse is to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, to sit in the garden full of abundance and beauty and choose the forbidden. The knowledge of good and evil, that was never intended for me. Could I, like Jja Ja Maria just quit my labeling and say, "Whatever God wants. Whatever HE wants!"

Because God IS. “I AM.” He tells Moses and still today He IS. And if every good and perfect gift is from above, and a Good and Beautiful God can create only good and beauty then these moments that I choose to label as loss and suffering, they are really good and beautiful, perfect gifts?

“See now that I, I am He, and there is no god besides Me; it is I who put to death and I who give life. I have wounded and it is I who heal.” Deuteronomy 32:29

Suffering, pain, loss, shame – all these things I have blamed on a broken world, Satan even. But can’t a broken world and even Satan only give what God allows? Suffering, pain loss and shame are only these things because I label them as such. Because I, a sinner, choose to eat from the tree, choose to turn away from nail-scarred hands and ignore the grace and miss the gift. He is beautiful and everything He creates is beautiful and if I choose to label it suffering I am choosing to miss the beauty that is freely offered me.

On Friday I got a call from Jane’s birth mom that she had gotten her leg stuck in the chain of a bicycle. Five hours later I walked into a hospital room where she lay sedated, her heel bleeding and her tendon exposed, but untouched. The nurse saw my appalled, grief twisted face and shook her head. “God is good,” she whispered. “God's grace...She could have lost that foot.”

“God’s grace,” I thought, and I wondered what if she had? What if the tendon had been ripped clean through and she never were to walk again? What of when she was ripped from my life and left with a woman who doesn’t even care to supervise her and so she lays here hurt and bleeding and so far, far away from me?

What if God’s grace is not when He saves us, but that He saved us.

“Surely, just as I have intended, so it has happened and just as I have planned so it will stand.” Isaiah 14:24

Just as He intended. Even this, planned by God.

And if this is what He intended (and it is), then that means that every moment – the moment when my daughter’s tiny fingers were pried from around my neck, the moment in that hospital room, the moments when I hold babies and watch as they breathe their last and their mothers crumple to the floor and the moment when a dear grandmother hears that her son has been shot, and the moments when the laundry piles over my head and the children bicker and hurts from their past make them do the unspeakable and I don’t even know how to parent – every moment is His grace, a gift. Could I look and say, "whatever He wants, this is my gift for today."

God, who is Good and who is Beauty, and who saved us, even me undeserving, He can only give grace.

And I have a choice. I can let those wounded hands pull me close and I can choose to see the grace in this moment or I can again label, choosing to ignore the gift.

I see it deep in Jja Ja’s eyes, she knows. Even this suffering, He did this. He did this, not because He doesn’t know the ache – He does. He did this, a gift to me.

For the good of me. For the good of her. For the good of us, those who love Him and are called according to His purpose. For the good of all this world and the glory that is His.

And I know in that moment, I can choose to label the ripped open heel and the ripped open family or I can choose to count it as a gift, God’s grace. And the beauty is not in the circumstance or the label but the fact that in His graciousness He is here with me anyway, regardless of the circumstance or the way I choose to view it. The grace of being near to Him in trial, as long as I can chose to see it, is certainly the greatest grace of all.

This is what Jja Ja knows and this is what I am learning. God’s grace is not blessing, earthly reassure, our security or even the security of our children. God’s grace is not that all is “well” and right in my eyes. God’s grace is not when He saves us but that He saved us.

Here I am face to face with Jesus in the dirt and all I have to do is choose to see, accept the grace offered freely. His compassion and His mercy, this Grace, it never fails. Each moment each breath, is a gift simply and only because I get to spend it with Him.

Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed for His compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. Lamentations 3:22-23

Whatever He wants. And I am thankful.

Awakening

"Who would ever know the greater graces of comfort and perseverance, mercy and forgiveness, patience and courage, if no shadows fell over a life?" - Ann Voskamp

I'm reading a book right now called "One Thousand Gifts" by Ann Voskamp.  Ultimately, it's about how thanksgiving can transform a life.  She talks about how awakening to joy and thanksgiving means awakening to pain.  I know...can we just awaken to joy and fullness of life and skip the pain part, please??

But, aren't we only truly able to enter into a place of deep, authentic gratefulness and joy when we have tasted of pain?  Isn't it our experiences in dark places that compel us to throw open wide our arms and lift our face to the sky and soak up the light?  Isn't it our journeying through the deserts of life that cause us to fall by the pool of water and lap it up, drinking deeply?  If my life was always smooth and easy, would I truly have the ability to appreciate it?

I am so quick to give thanks when life is good, when I am comfortable, when I FEEL blessed.  But what of those times when I am feeling my way in the darkness with no light seemingly in sight?  What then?  Am I just as quick to utter thankfulness in the midst of that circumstance?  No, I'm not.  In fact, during times of struggle words of thanks are hard pressed to make their way through my pursed lips. 

Has God changed?  Do my difficulties and struggles mean that God has changed?  Is He not ALWAYS good?  Do I not ALWAYS have a reason to give thanks? Not just to utter the words aloud, but to have the attitude of my heart be joy and thanksgiving?  Doesn't scripture say that "in EVERYTHING I am to give thanks"?

Ann writes...

"Lord, that I day after day after day greedily take what looks like it's good from Your hand - a child gloating over sweet candy..."  I've been a thief, trying to hoard away all the good. "...but that I'd thrash wild to escape when what You give from Your hand feels bad - like gravel in the mouth.  Oh Father, forgive...Should I accept good from you, and not trouble?" 

I am the greedy too.  I am the eager one that reaches out to take all the good I can get when it appears.  But what of the dark?  Rarely am I ever thankful FOR the dark.  But, can I not reach out in that darkness and be thankful in the midst of it?

She continues...

"I awaken to the strange truth that all new life comes out of the dark places, and hasn't it always been?  Out of darkness, God spoke forth the teeming life.  All new life labors out of the very bowels of darkness.  That fullest life itself dawns from nothing but Calvary darkness and tomb - cave black into the radiance of Easter morning.  Out of the darkness of the cross, the world transfigures into new life...and emptiness itself can birth the fullness of grace because in the emptiness we have the opportunity to turn to God, the only begetter of grace, and there find all the fullness of joy.  Darkness transfigures into light, bad transfigures into good, grief transfigures into grace, empty transfigures into full.  God wastes nothing."

He wastes nothing.  And so even in the midst of pain and suffering I can give thanks and find joy because that pain and suffering will not be wasted. 

I think back to Africa.  To the mother walking barefoot on the hot ground, sweating baby strapped to her back, heavy bundle of provisions on her head, alone because death had come knocking at her doorstep for her husband.  And she smiles so big, all her beautiful white teeth showing, her eyes glowing.  And it must be that her suffering and her pain are the very things that make her grateful for the bundle of love radiating heat on her back, for the weight of the food on her head and for the hot ground beneath her feet.

Oh Jesus.  May the dark places on my journey not keep me from thankfulness.  May I open up my hand for whatever You have for me to receive - WHATEVER.  May my response to You at all times be heartfelt praise.      

The Rest Is Noise

It has been one of those weeks.  We've had a stomach virus at our house this week.  It's always made worse when mom has it. :)  My patience is thin and my capacity is lessened.  My poor kids.  I had my two youngest home from school with me today after a night of all of us being sick.  They were hungry and the thought of having to make them food literally sickened me.  But, they had to eat so I pulled a can of chicken noodle soup out of my fully stocked cabinet.  I opened it, dumped it in the pot and turned the sink on to fill up the can with water.  I stirred it and set it on the stove.  In a few minutes it was done and I pulled a few other things out of the fridge, filled some glasses up with water and lunch was served.

I grabbed some medicine out of the cabinet, popped a few pills and went and laid on the couch while my kids ate.  A while later I picked up my laptop to do some work so I wouldn't get too far behind.  All the while, I was inwardly (okay, and outwardly too!) complaining.

But then I started thinking about some of my neighbors in other parts of the world.  I started thinking about what their day would look like if they were sick and their kids were home from school hungry.  I walked myself through each step I had taken at lunch time today and pictured what it would be like for them...

My neighbor in Africa would wake up sick and weak, with lessened capacity just like me.  But likely she would wake up that way every day due to lack of nutrition.  Her children wouldn't be home from school for a day because they had a 24 hour virus.  Her kids would be home from school because she couldn't afford to send them  or because they were seriously ill and too sick to go.  When her kids told her they were hungry, she couldn't just wander over to a fully stocked cabinet and get them food.  She'd have to look in their eyes and say "We don't have any.  Let's go try to find some".  If she happened to find some food to cook, she'd have to walk a long distance (perhaps miles) to fill up a container of dirty water to boil to cook.  She'd have to collect wood for a fire.  She'd take her children with her while she searched for what she needed, likely carrying the little ones on her back the whole way.  What took me five minutes to do would very well take her half a day at the very least.  And if she was lucky enough to feed her children, they would be hungry again soon after. 

While I take my medicine for my poor little tummy ache, she lives with her pain.  I open my laptop from the comfort of my couch and do work that provides me with more income in a month than she'll ever see in her lifetime.  She doesn't know where her next penny or meal is coming from. And yet...I complain.  God must want to sigh and hang his head at me sometimes. 

I am SO stinking comfortable in my life.  Even after three years of God prying my eyes open to finally see the poor and vulnerable...I still find myself so wrapped up in ME.  Yuck.

I look around at all the things that I have and all the ways that I protect myself from even the slightest discomfort and I'm sick all over again.  I was listening to Tom Davis speak this weekend at a justice conference and he was talking about how we RUN from vulnerability.  We view vulnerability as weakness.  We numb ourselves from grief and pain.  We make it so that everything in our lives is protected and stable.
We have life insurance, home insurance, car insurance, our kids wear helmets every time they get on anything that moves...it's Protect, Protect, Protect.  Shield ourselves from anything and everything that might cause us pain.

And yet, God doesn't ask us to protect ourselves.  In fact, He says the opposite.  He says to get vulnerable.  He says to give up everything we have to follow Him - including our safety and comfort.  He says we may not have a place to lay our heads at night if we follow Him.  He says we might be asked to sell all our possessions and give them to the poor.  He actually PROMISES us that in this life we WILL have trouble - it's not if, but when!

And yet, I go about my days far from dependent on God.  When we have SO much stuff in our lives, our need for God can tend to slide away.  I heard someone say this week that we don't pray for our daily bread because we have cabinets full of it.  We know where our next meals are coming from.  There's no need to ask for it.  Wow.  Isn't it God who gives us the ability to work so we can earn a living and put bread on our table?  At the end of the day, isn't everything we have a gift from God?  When will I start living fully in the realization that God will always, always give me what I need and that I can let go?  I can hold the blessings in my life loosely and recognize that there may come a day when some of them will be gone.  And it will be okay.  Because at the end of the day, God is always good.  And He has only asked two things of me - to love HIM with everything I've got and to love people like I love myself.  The rest is noise.