Dear Friends,
We’ve had a wonderful Christmas season—with more time than usual at home together thanks to the winter weather.
We’re doing the last organizing and analyzing of the year and it will very soon be time to file it away. As difficult as it has been, 2009 was an improvement over 2008 because I got to spend more of 2009 at home. I was at my primary care doctor’s office last week and on checking me over she said, “I don’t think I know what some of these scars are.” So, I preceded to describe them, a map, really, of the last couple years: from little pot-holes of IV and vaccination scars to larger knife-roads for everything from mole removals to liver resection, to a big interstate scar used 3 times for intestinal surgeries. Invisible marks of toxins are on my nervous system (my left foot still largely numb and my left hand still sensitive to metal and cold). The depths of pain, sickness and helplessness seared my mind. I don’t want to go back to the dark times, but sometimes they come to me uninvited. I’m not sure if there’s something more I should learn from them or not. If so, I pray I can learn it through mental exercise rather than having to physically go through it again.
But it was all worth it, of course, to survive to this point. Very well worth it and I am grateful to God that I am alive and here with my family: to hear Shayley play O Beautiful Star of Bethlehem on the piano; to see Charlie conquer the first semester of Anatomy and Physiology, Jordan her first semester of medical school, Jaxon his first “semester” of pre-school and Asa his first semester of life; to enjoy great food and fellowship at my brother’s home; to worship and study with our church family; to play setback around our dining room table with my mom, Shayley and Charlie as the snow fell; to see the joy on all faces as the kids unwrapped presents at my Mom’s on Christmas Eve. These and the regular evenings spent at home eating, playing and working together are the rich moments of this present world.
Yet my mind flickers at times to trials—my own and others. A strange place to be reading this season, but I have found myself reading the little book of Lamentations lately. Set while the Hebrew people are taken away into Babylonian exile, it is one of those dark moments of human existence—human sacrifice, cannibalism, slaughter of children—wide-spread, off-the-chart devastation and suffering. It feels selfish to even compare personal trials to the words this brought, and yet I find myself doing that. Beginning in Lamentations 3:19 it reads:
I’ll never forget the trouble, the utter lostness,
The taste of ashes, the poison I’ve swallowed.
I remember it all—oh, how well I remember—
The feeling of hitting the bottom.
But there’s one other thing I remember,
And remembering, I keep a grip on hope.
God’s loyal love couldn’t have run out,
His merciful love couldn’t have dried up.
They’re created new every morning.
How great your faithfulness!
I’m sticking with God (I say it over and over).
Yes, as prepare to wake up in a new year, I’m glad that God’s mercy is new every morning! I’m glad for a merry, mountain-top experience of late! And yet, this passage reminds me of those in this world who know no hope—those suppressed under merciless regimes, those whose children are starving, those whose loved ones have been taken from them, those children who have no parents, or those who have been abused.
The writer of Lamentations goes on to say:
God proves to be good to the man who passionately waits,
To the woman who diligently seeks.
It’s a good thing to quietly hope,
Quietly hope for help from God.
It’s a good thing when you’re young
To stick it out through the hard times.
When life is heavy and hard to take,
Go off by yourself. Enter the silence.
Bow in prayer. Don’t ask questions:
Wait for hope to appear.
Don’t run from trouble. Take it full-face.
The ‘worst’ is never the worst.
Why? Because the Master won’t ever
Walk out and fail to return.
If he works severely, he also works tenderly.
His stockpiles of loyal love are immense.
He takes no pleasure in making life hard,
In throwing roadblocks in the way.
Stomping down hard
On luckless prisoners,
Refusing justice to victims
In the court of the High God,
Tampering with evidence—
The Master does not approve of such things.
Suffering is universal, but hope also is possible for all. Having experience hope against odds, I pray that I can be part of spreading that Hope.
As usual Shayley got a Christmas gift this year that she didn’t request. Often she does not especially appreciate these surprises, at least not at first. This year it was a globe. Not a fancy globe electronic globe that spouts out numbers and facts, just a simple rotating ball marked off with lines and colors that are land and water and words that are nations and cities of people. In this era, more amazing than how many places we have heard of were how many we have not. I got her the globe because it’s so much easier to understand places that way than on a paper map. And grasping locations encourages us to appreciate the people who live there. (As at the doctor’s office, lines have stories.)
Perhaps my illness has been an unrequested gift, or at least can be used as such, to help me perceive and understand pain and suffering and despair, so that I can better appreciate the people who live there? My hope for 2009 is that I can be less focused on my own stories and more on others’, so I can better serve God and my fellow man and woman.
We will generally plan to move away from our “update” emails and instead ask that you check the 3martins.com blog if you wish. If you want to be notified by email when something new is posted there, you can click on “Email Subscription” on the top right of that web-page.
Again, thank you all so much for your thoughts and continuing prayers.
With love,
Lydeana
