Leaving Room for God

    In my recent study of Romans 12, I was struck by the phrase, "leave room for God's wrath". I am not feeling particularly wrathful at the moment, but the leader's point that taking vengeance for ourselves means we think God's is not complete enough made me think--do I leave room for God to work? When I decide to be the one to supervise my loved ones' spiritual growth, am I leaving room for what God is trying to do? Do I think the way God is working in their lives is not enough? Not complete enough? Not fast enough? Am I like those people who gather and gawk after an accident, blocking the way of the people who know what to do?
    When Tracy was living with us, we had the opportunity to be the onlookers who bring the warm blanket to keep the injured comfortable until better help arrives, but we had no power to repair the internal damage. That would require skilled help. God's help. The power of addiction is not in the substance, it is in the spirit. So we gave God room to work. The 450 miles between Kalispell and Billings seemed adequate.
    And I am beginning to see what God is doing in his life. Tracy is recognizing the hand of God guiding his circumstances in Billings. He is praying and seeing the answers. When we no longer provided the blanket, he began to see that God was the one looking out for him all along. He thanks us repeatedly for getting him to the place where he can reap the benefits of sobriety and I am glad we were able to help, but the best way we can help now is to continue to stand back and let God do His thing. He has, after all, been pursing prodigals since Eden. Far off to the east, towards Billings, I'm beginning to see Son-light.
    
    
   

God and Gandalf

     I have posted only a few of the messages the Holy Spirit has given me through these months of difficulty with our son. The rest are recorded privately elsewhere for my own remembrance and contemplation, as if they were love letters from the Lord--which they are. Sometimes the words come to me unasked, so foreign and unflinching that I know they are God's and not my own. But there have been other times when I have asked for guidance, then wonder if the words that come into my mind are the Spirit's or mine. But lately, as Reed and I face the possibility of moving, I know exactly where these latest words originate--Gandalf, from "Lord of the Rings".  It is the scene where Gandalf is trying to get Bilbo to show him his mysterious ring, the ring the whole trilogy is about. Gandalf says, "I am not trying to rob you, I'm trying to help you."
     I know there is a a lot of symbolism in "Lord of the Rings", but I am really bad at symbolism. However, I do not need to understand symbolism to know why the Lord is hammering this message into my mind. I have been thinking about moving as if God was trying to rob me of blessings, when in truth I know, even if it is not what I want, He is trying to help me. Why would the God who has disproportionately blessed me all these years, suddenly turn against me? God is no robber and it is slander against His character to think so. It is also hurtful to the One who has so faithfully loved me.
     When our son's addiction and all the accompanying chaos began, I told the Lord I needed him to be as real to me as the things I could see, hear and touch, that I needed specific guidance, and He has been faithful to provide it. But when it came in the form of words, it was a little too real for this Baptist raised, God-only-speaks-through-the-Bible, Christian. When I talked to my pastor about my confusion about whether the words were from the Spirit or my own thoughts, he reminded me that the source was not the measure, the message was. As long as the words aligned with scripture, I should heed them. It doesn't matter if these latest words are God's or Gandalf's, the message is clear--the God who loves me is not trying to hurt me, He is trying to help. This is not the first time God has had to pry my hands off a good thing so he could give me something better, so it is only reasonable to trust Him. Thanks for the reminder, Gandalf.

Destination Weddings

     My son and his wife recently went to Belize for a destination wedding. Between the airfare, accommodations and a resort that charged a fee for everything but the view, they spent $5000. I don't remember even hearing of destination weddings when we married in the 70's. The location was the bride's hometown, usually her home church. Occasionally the wedding might be held in the groom's hometown. Of course, having just been in Bible college, most of our friends were having fairly low budget weddings. But we still had a destination--sex. That was the place we had waited all through our year long engagement, all our lives actually, to get to. When the anticipation on your wedding day is that unexplored three letter country, what sets the moment apart is the sex not the scenery.
    A couple who climbs out of the same bed in the morning to get ready for their wedding day, might need something special to rev up the romance. But when you are giving that once-in-a-lifetime gift to the person you have just committed to spend a lifetime with, you are not looking at the view. Not that a pure wedding night was common practice when we got married, living together was welcomed as if it had just been thought of. I knew couples who stayed pure until the night before their wedding and then "faltered at the finish line." I am not saying that we were not tempted. We had lots of time alone and unsupervised, but what stopped me was knowing that not doing sex God's way might screw up our future sex life. I did not just want our first time to be special, I wanted our future times to be special too.
     For a number of reasons, we had an incredibly low budget, low key wedding. I really did not care about the colors, decorations and ceremony. Several things went wrong on our wedding day: two car accidents, one of them our volunteer photographer, our car broke down, the pastor was almost hit by a falling tree branch. But one thing went right, we did sex God's way, and have been blessed with a sex life without guilt and without shadows of past lovers. We have also been blessed to stay at some beautiful resorts in some desirable destinations both for work and for leisure, for far less than $5000. Our wedding destination was to do it God's way and our final destination is heaven. Outstanding accommodations may get five stars, but heaven's fill the universe.

The Cost of Free and Easy

    I am so glad I was mostly grown up before free love and easy divorce became popular. When I was in seventh grade, there were only two in my class from broken homes. Friends with kids in school now say it is a rarity if even one child's parents are not divorced. Not that I am unthankful for the time in which I live. The higher standard of living. Bigger homes. More cars. Lattes, and the money to afford them. I love easy access to information that cell phones and computers provide. And communication is especially important because so many people no longer have home phones, or homes for that matter because of, what used to be called, free love and easy divorce.  The appeal of sex without strings and marriage without commitment overruled the prophets of the time who warned that the consequences would be women living in poverty raising children with no fathers. What even they did not know was that some of these fatherless boys would grow up to become mass murderers. Easy divorce and free love have broken up the family, which is the second most civilizing influence in the world. The transforming power of Christ is the first. Free love has cost millions of unborn babies their lives and now it is taking the lives of many more innocents through fatherless boys grown into monsters.
     What we call "free" school lunches are actually paid for by the taxpayers. Free community dinners, by donors. Every free service was provided by someone else, even the view. God provided that one. What used to be called free love was really just easy sex and we are paying for that, some, even with their lives. We wanted freedom from moral constraint and, even the mention of, God. But the price of that freedom has been high. I am not sure we can afford any more freedom.

So Long, Sola

     We actually got Sola before Maynard, but we still considered her as our emergency-back-up-cat. Female cats can be standoffish bordering on antisocial. Of course it was hard, even for a cat, to be distant when camped on the foot of our bed. Maynard loves us, Sola let us share her bed. As a bed buddy, Sola was a replacement for Cisco, our poofy-tailed pal who formerly held that position. But Sola didn't have Cisco's joie de vivre nor Maynard's stoner zen. Instead she had a really annoying meow. The pathetic sound she made as a kitten didn't go away, it just got louder. She could ignore us, but we couldn't ignore her high volume howl. Eventually, she didn't want to be ignored and responded with loud purring to two handed petting. Two hands meant there was no possibility of multitasking. That is what all cats secretly want, undivided attention--possibly worship.
     If the fact that Sola had been more demanding lately, indicated a health problem, she was dying her whole life. Alex, who let her out yesterday morning and found her dead in the yard when he came home that afternoon, was upset because he was housesitting for us and because he had known her from the time she was born. Before we even decided to get another cat, I remember Alex watching TV with the kitten snuggling against his leg under a blanket. Sola was the lone offspring of one of the feral cats his family fed. She was the only one in her litter, hence the name. Sola is short for solamente, the Spanish word for only. As her personality developed, we surmised she might have had siblings--but killed them.
     I worried Sola would grow up scraggly like the other feral cats on my sister's property. They were the feline version of dingoes. . Two months later, Tracy brought her home to me for Mother's Day and two months after that, Maynard followed Tracy home from Leisure Island. In a short time we went from hoping Maynard found another home to being willing to fight to the death for him. In Biblical terms, Sola was definitely the less-loved-Leah of the two cats, but cats leave their mark in your life. Sometimes they are claw marks, but you find yourself missing them nonetheless. So long, Sola.
    

No Shortcut

Dear Sufferer,

I have been meaning to write you this letter for a while. There is no shortcut to what the Lord will teach you through your chronic disease, but I thought it might help to know some of the things I have learned through my chronic migraines. One of the first things I realized when I found out migraines were going to be uninvited guests in my life, was that there is a reason God gives us limits. Before migraines I could push myself and my body would keep on going, but my mind would not. I would get tired to the point I couldn't think straight and, because of my mother's mental illness, think that I was becoming like her. Scary. In God's mercy He gave me a physical limitation so that wouldn't happen. I'm sure you have already realized that God has given you your limitation for a reason and, whether you have discerned that or not, I would encourage you to look for the mercy behind it.

Another thing I had not been good at before migraines is listening to my body. There are times when God wants me to push through the pain, treat it as best I can, then ignore it and go about my business. But there are also times God makes it clear that I am to lie down and rest. On those days, when I try to walk around, my head throbs until I lie down. It does not take a lot of spiritual insight to figure that one out. Tracy was only four when my migraines started, preschoolers can be pretty understanding about mommy not feeling good. Tracy used to bring me his softest teddy bear to use as a pillow thinking it would help my head feel better. It didn't help my head, but it sure made my heart feel better.

The third thing is learn about your disease. That is much easier now than it was 30 years ago when my headaches started. No one knows how your body works better than you. The first five years of migraines, I saw my family doctor who tried me on a number of pain killers which increased my nausea and didn't decrease my pain. Between that, I used a Tylenol/Mountain Dew/ice pack combo which could bring my pain level down from an 8 to a 7 or even 6, but I would have asked for a referral to a neurologist in those first few years instead of suffering if I had known that was the specialist I needed to see. To this day, I can't stand the taste of Mountain Dew. I have also tried chiropractic, acupuncture, massage, various supplements, Botox and seeing a specialist in Seattle. Acupuncture helped for a few weeks, the rest of them didn't help at all. Be willing to try new things, but don't let a health practitioner tell you something is helping when it's not. And don't feel you need to follow every suggestion your friends and family throw out. Just because it worked for __________ doesn't mean it will for you. Frankly, I find it a little insulting when someone offers a simple suggestion, as if I would have endured headaches for decades because it never occurred me to go for a walk or some other cure they heard about. I don't say that, of course, but I try to keep that in mind when I suggest remedies for non-migraine health issues.

The best thing about suffering is that it helps link me with others in pain and with Christ. The Bible teaches there is an intrinsic value in suffering that I don't fully understand. But I do know that the day after a migraine so severe I was kind of going into shock, cold, clammy skin, shaking, I watched "The Passion", and when it depicted Jesus's hands shaking as he stood up to be flogged some more, I knew some tiny part of what that felt like. And it was the darkness of depression years ago that helps me identify with Christ's cry of being forsaken. Anything that makes me identify with Jesus is a good thing, however uncomfortable it feels. I know God is using your illness to mold you into Christ-likeness, and that is easier when the clay doesn't fear or fight the process. I hope this is an encouragement but, like I said, there is no shortcut.

Connie

What We Really Need is Soul Control

     Every time there is a mass shooting, there is public outcry to do something, anything, to make them stop . Many cry out for gun control, as if another law will make guns magically disappear. If this were true, the cities with the strictest gun control would be safest against armed criminals when, in fact, just the opposite is true. See Obama's Illinois, for example. It is like believing the Oklahoma City bomber could have been deterred by a "No Parking" sign. Those willing to break laws about murder will not worry about whether their weapon is legal. The problem is, whether it is a bomb, gun or steering wheel, it is not what is in the hand that makes a killer, it is what is in the heart and mind. There are no laws that can change what a person thinks and believes. We can legislate the penalty for taking human life, but we cannot force anyone to value it.
     We especially can't do that when the same legal system allows babies in the womb to be dismembered alive. A few weeks ago our local newspaper had a front page article about Whitefish, Montana welcoming a clinic that provides abortion. It was the same provider who shut her clinic in Kalispell after the trauma of an act of vandalism. Immediately below that article was one about a school shooting in Kentucky. Some chastised the editor, I thought it was brilliant. As a religious man and a conservative, I think he placed it there because the two articles are related. One leads to the other. If unborn human life has no value, what difference should a few years make. As tragic and horrible as it is to shoot children in their school, it is not as violent as vivisecting the most innocent humans in the one place where they should be most safe--the womb. Maybe the sociopaths among us are not the aberrant thinkers we paint them to be. They just carry society's accepted disrespect for God and the people He created to its natural conclusion. Maybe they see clearly what the enlightened pretend they do not, that the birth canal does not change human worth. Either life has value or it does not.
     We need to find ways to make schools, churches and public gathering places safer, but gun control only makes those places safer for criminals. The only way to change anyone's heart and mind is through the transforming power of Christ. What we really need is soul control.