Blog Archives

Exceptional Love

6/26/2018

A number of times in my life I’ve been guilty of withdrawing to nurse my pain, building a ‘wall’ to protect myself from more hurt, unwittingly isolating myself from the healing love on the other side of the 'wall'. I don’t think I’m alone. I don’t know many people who embrace pain gladly, even less who run toward it, but last week I ‘met’ a family who did just that.

I was asked to pray for this family. Laura and Caleb had two lively, healthy sons and had just given birth to a long-awaited daughter. Can you imagine the joy when they learnt they were having a girl!

But as this little girl entered the world they discovered that she had a rare genetic disease and was born with a brain stem but no brain and no pituitary glands. Her life would be a short one.

I’ve tried to imagine something of the grief, heartbreak and depth of pain this little family must have experienced as reality hit. I can never know. What I do know is what they did next.

They wrapped their little girl in a bunny rug and took her home to love her with everything in them, for as long as they had with her. They set about making a list of all the things they wanted to share with her. The list went like this:

Church
Fishing with the boys (can’t you hear the boys saying let’s take her fishing!)
Family photos
Visit to the park
Love and laughter
Lots of cuddles
Manicure/pedicure
Sponge baths
Layout with mum
Visit the zoo

They embraced every moment they had with their daughter in the few short weeks of her life, managing to enjoy together everything on the list, and more. She became an indelible part of the family. She has her place in the family photo album and they created memories with her that will stay with them forever.

It must have made it all the harder to say goodbye. They must now live with a greater hole in their lives because she became part of them, but how much richer is their life for walking through their pain into love. What a gift to their sons. What a gift to all of us who have looked on and been privileged to be a witness to their faith and courage.

C S Lewis says it best in his book, The Four Loves,

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable."

Love and pain are intrinsically linked together. The plant that’s pruned the hardest will bloom the most prolifically. Yet we avoid pain at all costs. That’s human nature – who wants to hurt? We exert enormous energies to side step pain and often our prayers are the greatest evidence of that. Rather than praying for my pain to be removed, I need to pray for the courage and strength to conquer it and grow through it; to allow pain to shape me into love.

That’s what touched me most deeply about this young couple who allowed themselves to be vulnerable and endure the pain for the love that was to be found in the midst of it; to give themselves away in love despite the pain.

0 Comments

The day my world turned upside down

6/19/2018

2 Comments

The year was 1983. It was an ordinary Tuesday morning; or so I thought. We awoke to discover my husband had a spectacularly bloodshot eye. He presumed it was associated with the cold he’d had for a week, but with some gentle persuasion agreed to see the doctor.

The next three days we were sent from one specialist to another until finally a diagnosis. They discovered a tumour touching the brain. Had it entered the brain? Was it malignant? Surgery was urgent, but infection from the cold made that impossible. The chilling reality was that if the infection reached his eyes, he could be blind within 24 hours and if it reached the brain, death was a distinct possibility.

It was three weeks on mega doses of antibiotics before the infection was overcome and surgery was scheduled. Six months, two major surgeries, lengthy stays in hospital and significant times of recuperation turned our life upside down. I needed to keep the family business running, maintain the flow of family life as normally as possible so as not to alarm our children and try and visit and support my husband every day. I had little sleep during those difficult and exhausting months but was wonderfully supported by great friends.

One of those friends dropped a meal in one day and was stunned that I took time to pick and arrange flowers throughout the house. I assured her, it was my lifeline. Somehow the beauty ministered to my soul. When I was exhausted and low, they reminded me that there was life and beauty beyond my present circumstances; they lifted my spirits.

Blaise Pascal said, “In difficult times you should always carry something beautiful in your mind”.

We are hungry for beauty. We look for it in nature, art, music, and architecture, even in furniture, clothing, gardens, and relationships. We were created for beauty and it’s a longing of our soul that nothing else will quench.

But sadly we live in a world increasingly devoid of true beauty. We’re offered glamour as a cheap and paltry substitute, project homes, often lacking craftsmanship and design, beauty shops groaning with expensive ‘outer beauty’ and time-poor relationships that have little strength left to invest in beauty. We either fail to recognise our need for it or convince ourselves that we don’t have time for it.

In the city last week I was overwhelmed with the acres of concrete, steel and hard lines. Many streets are so narrow that sunshine never reaches street level over the high-rise buildings. I wonder if this is part of the reason that society in general has become so hard … road rage, greed, selfishness, depression and abuse … so rife in our cities.

We've lost touch with beauty ... with nature ... with the very essence of what our soul longs for.

There’s healing beside a mountain stream, the lapping of waves on the beach or a quiet wander in a garden or the bush. There’s healing in nature, in a beautiful piece of art or the strains of music that touch our soul. Beauty has a way of stilling our hearts and minds, it deepens our breathing and restores peace.

And when the mind is quietened I often find an answer to a problem I couldn't see before or the problem loses its importance all together.

Last Saturday my granddaughter and I filled lots of pots with pansies, some for her and some for me. We are looking forward to enjoying their happy faces over the next five months. It’s a small way to remind us to stop amidst the busyness and make time to connect with beauty.

Beauty is always around us, we just need to be intentional in looking for it.

Pot some pansies or polyanthus to put at your door
Schedule time in nature every week, make it a priority
Visit an art gallery
Take time out to absorb yourself in music that you love
Walk along a beach with a friend and let the beauty soak into our soul
Set a beautiful table for dinner tonight, best china and linen … flowers and music
Think of a way to add beauty to someone else’s life
Make something beautiful to share
Teach your children/grandchildren to love and embrace nature
Burn a scented candle and let the fragrance calm you
Introduce someone to your favourite place
Actively look for beauty hidden in your every day.

2 Comments

Only one

6/12/2018

2 Comments

Immediately I walked into the room, his smile captured my heart. Despite the limitations which had robbed him of a large part of his life, he was warm and engaging. I don't know his name and know very little about his life except that finally he’d found a place where he was no longer rejected, but loved and cared for.

He caught me by surprise when he asked me to take his photo. I’d been warned not to take photos because these men hated being treated like sideshow exhibits; their leprosy tended to do that. I hesitated and he asked again. What ensued was one of the most memorable and beautiful experiences of my time in Africa.

This man had never seen a photo of himself and the excitement and wonder on his face as I showed him the image on my camera, I will never forget. It stunned me that something so small could bring so much joy. His excitement bubbled over into the bed either side of him and they wanted their photo taken too. By the time I left that Leprosy ward they had all seen their own image, mostly for the first time. I walked away humbled to have been able to give that gift but knowing I had been given a far greater gift.

I wish I could share those photos with you, their character-filled faces and their deeply penetrating eyes; they looked at me as few people do, hungry for connection.

The memories of that morning in the Leprosarium came flooding back last week as I continued my daily wander through the gospel of Luke. It’s been a slow meandering read, a verse, a sentence and sometimes just a phrase a day. I began in November in preparation for Christmas and last week I reached chapter 17, verse 11!

Ten men, exiled to a refugee camp outside the city wall, strange bedfellows, Jew and Samaritan, thrown together by adversity. It’s strange how tragedy unites us against a common foe; suddenly what divides us becomes of little consequence compared to what unites us.

They stood at a distance, shame and despair hung heavy on their shoulders, but in their eyes a glimmer of hope. Somehow they’d heard that this man, Jesus, was a healer and he was passing by on his way to Jerusalem.

“Master, Jesus, Have mercy upon us”, they cried out over the buzz of the crowd. And it seems Jesus didn’t hesitate, although not quite as they’d expected. “Go and show yourselves to the priests”.

It may have been faith, hope, or just plain what-have-we-got-to-lose that sent them off, but along the way they were healed.

We all want the answer now, the instant healing, but that's rarely God's way. The 'healing' usually comes along the way, as we navigate the problem or the difficulty or just continue on the road of life in faith or hope. Transformation takes time and ultimately that's God's plan, his bigger picture for us.

Along the way, they were healed.

In that moment, one man allowed the reality of what had just happened to turn him around and send back the way he’d come, to find Jesus. He was overwhelmed and threw himself at Jesus feet in praise and gratitude. I can only imagine Jesus' joy as he looked into the eyes of the Samaritan man, gently lifted him to his feet and said, “Your faith has healed and saved you, go on your way”.

I wonder what Jesus was feeling as he asked, "Didn't I heal ten men?" Most likely they were caught up in the excitement of being restored and anxious to be cleared by the priests to return to their former life, without a passing thought for the man who healed them.

I wonder what proportion of God’s answers to my prayers go unnoticed and unacknowledged? There’s no doubt I’m quicker to ask that to wait with anticipation for the answers and receive them with gratitude. I wonder if somehow as followers of Jesus we can become complacent and lose the wonder of waiting on the answers … the excitement of seeing God at work through our prayer?

Maybe as we see prayer, not as something we do, but as a relationship, the giving and receiving will take on new meaning. I want to have the same hunger for connection that I see in the eyes of my 'friend' with leprosy … and I want what Ken Gire calls, "a splash-of-cold-water-in-the-face" awareness of God's answers and the overwhelming gratitude of the Samaritan.

Note: To share the photos of the patients in the Leprosarium would betray their privacy and trust so the photos included in this blog post come from the hospital of which the Leprosarium is a part. Its a place where some of the world's poorest and neediest come face to face with the love and compassion of Jesus, mirrored in the hands and hearts of the staff who care for them. It's a place of refuge and healing for the rejected. It includes a Fistula hospital where hundreds of young women are restored and walk out into a new life. It is a place of hope and tangible love.

2 Comments

Sounds of silence

6/5/2018

1 Comment

It was one of those exceedingly frustrating moments. I’d set aside a day to walk from Fisherman’s wharf in San Francisco Bay to the Golden Gate Bridge. I wanted to capture the iconic sights that had never been more to me than notations in a geography book. I wanted to celebrate being there amongst them, but I also wanted to wander down the back lanes and around corners that don't feature on the tourist maps.

I loved the vibe of Fisherman’s Wharf, the solemnity of Alcatraz and the elegance of stately Victorian homes along the way. My camera was throbbing with images by the time I finally caught sight of the great golden bridge in the distance. I got the long shot, the wide shot and then I clambered under the bridge and lined up a stunning shot that was to be the shot of the day. And my battery died. And I didn’t have a spare.

To say I felt frustrated would be an understatement. I caught a bus back the next day. It was a brilliant sunny day and I had a freshly charged battery and a spare. About 10 minutes before the bus arrived at the bridge, a fog descended, as it is prone to do in San Fran, and as I alighted the bus, the bridge was shrouded in a cloak of white.

We live in a charged up generation. We charge our mobile phones, iPads, laptops, cameras, landlines and rechargeable batteries. Without recharging they become useless.

I must confess for a large part of my life that was me. Spent and in need of recharging but too busy to stop. There were children to raise, a business to run, parents to help and ministries to be involved in. Recharging was something I didn’t have time to contemplate or did I fear not being busy? Did busyness have a purpose in my life? Did it help me feel valued and useful? Was it my badge of honour?

What I was doing was good and valuable but I came to realise that unconscious self-fulfillment was the issue that kept me constantly busy, always available and frequently exhausted.

It was during a two year Christian Counselling course that I was given the opportunity to come face to face with my busyness and see it for what it was, self-serving rather than other-centred. What a painful, confronting and humbling experience that was. I’d love to be able to say that having become aware, everything changed. Sadly not. It merely became the first step on a very long road.

One of the hardest parts of travelling that road was learning to stop and be still. When the noise, the activity and involvement ceased, the silence was deafening. It was excruciating.

Two verses of scripture become my lifeline … “Be still and know that I am God” … “be still and know”. I would come to know God in the silence in a way I never could in the constant busyness. It reminded me of life. There are some friends whose company you enjoy and you chat and have fun together and then there are the one or two with whom you feel truly known and they do too … you can sit together in silence and its good, very good. It's the knowing that makes the difference.

Then there’s the word’s from Isaiah “In quietness and trust will be your strength”. Now I guard my times of stillness and silence jealously. They add untold richness to my life and prepare me to give myself in ways I never could have done before. They’ve become my grounding space … my quiet centre.

The word ‘still’ comes from the Hebrew word meaning to ‘let go’ or ‘release’. Let go of my agenda, my control and the pressures of my life. Release them. Its in those moments God has my attention and I can hear him whisper, “Glen, will you do this for me?”

Come sit with me in the stillness and hear the sounds of silence.

1 Comment

Exceptional Love

The day my world turned upside down

Only one

Sounds of silence

Author

Archives

Categories