by jphilo | Jul 2, 2012 | Church Newsletter Columns
Everyone who comes to me and hears my words and does them,
I will show you what he is like:
he is like a man building a house,
who dug deep and laid the foundation on the rock.
Luke 6:47-48
A few days ago, Hiram and I made a quick, midweek trip to Wisconsin to see our son and his wife. The weather was gorgeous, so while the young folk were at work, we explored winding country roads we usually passed by in a hurry. Finally, we had time to investigate the “scenic overlook” mentioned on cryptic road signs ignored during other visits. We parked the car and followed the path, expecting to see a lovely valley complete with a sparkling river, and perhaps one of the large mounds scattered throughout southwest Wisconsin.
Instead, in the distance we could see the famous House on the Rock clinging to the side of a limestone cliff. While I snapped several photos of this feat of engineering, something my dad used to say came to mind. It’s a nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there.
We hiked back to the car and the the sight-seeing road again. But I kept thinking about the House on the Rock as a metaphor for our lives since Hiram left work early because of back pain in late May. One day he was training for a half- marathon. The next day, the pain was so bad, he couldn’t walk. He spent two weeks in bed. He followed the doctor’s orders and waited for the pain to ease. It didn’t get better, so it was back to the doctor for tests, more waiting for results, then a diagnosis, a referral to a neurosurgeon, and finally successful back surgery.
In the weeks leading up to the diagnosis and surgery, we prayed a lot. We talked a lot. We sat on the edge of our own persona cliff, peering into the unknown and asking God plenty of questions:
Why are you doing this, God?
Will Hiram have to live with this pain the rest of his life?
Will he be able to work again?
Be physically active again?
Should I look for a teaching job?
How will You bring good out of our family’s pain and sickness and unwanted change?
The night before surgery, Hiram said, “I’m ready for whatever the outcome is. Whatever happens, it will be good.”
When he said those words, we didn’t know the surgery would be successful. We were still sitting on the edge of the cliff. We were still peering into the unknown. But in those weeks of uncertainty we learned to cling to the promises and goodness of God. The more we did, the more the Rock beneath our precariously placed feet stood firm.
Immovable.
Unchanging.
Ever present.
Through it all, God impressed upon us a precious truth. Our cliff was not a fun place to visit, but upon the firm foundation of the Rock of Ages was and is the best place to live.
by jphilo | Dec 12, 2011 | Daily Life
Small mercies.
Those are the words that come to mind to describe yesterday afternoon. Two other women and I went to Des Moines to visit a friend. Her husband collapsed on Thursday and was rushed to Mercy Hospital where he was diagnosed with a brain aneurysm. He’s been unresponsive ever since.
God, in his mercy, has not yet answered our prayers for healing.
Our friend and her husband have three sons. Just before we arrived, she sent the two older ones back to college for finals week. The family moved from our town to the Des Moines area this fall. So their younger son, a junior in high school, is still adjusting to a new high school and doesn’t have many friends there yet.
Where’s the mercy in that?
Our friend’s faith is strong, but her heart is broken. She is grieving, facing hard decisions during a week when she’d planned to wrap Christmas presents, plan meals, and buy groceries so her three sons could eat their parents out of house and home during Christmas break.
Instead, they face a grim and seemingly merciless holiday.
And yet, her sister’s family was with her at the hospital. Her mom flew from Arizona to be with her daughter. Her boss and her husband’s boss are compassionate men who have shown great kindness. Friends have been visiting, bringing food, giving hugs, praying, laughing, crying.
Small mercies.
Too small for the enormity of the decisions they must make. Too small for the changes they face. Such small mercies cannot be enough, I think. And then the image of the Christ child in the manger comes to mind. So small. So weak. So humble. So poor. The Son of God who would one day bear the sin and suffering and pain of the world.
Small mercy it seemed at the time. Yet, more than enough.
Dear God, by your people, continue to pour mercy upon this family. Give us and them hearts to trust your mercy to be enough and more than enough. Amen.
by jphilo | Apr 30, 2010 | Book Updates
Yeah, that’s me in the back row with the oh-no-what-have-I-gotten-myself-into expression. The other two are my brother and a cousin. There’s another cousin kneeling in front, but I can’t get her to show up. (Sorry Nell!)
When the good people at Discovery House Publishers emailed on April 13 to say they accepted my proposal for Different Dream Parenting: Raising a Child with Special Needs, my response was similar to the one in the picture. It was the day after we returned from our son’s wedding so my energy level and brain functions were nil at the time.
Needless to say, it took awhile for the news to sink in. Once the old brain cells revived, my first response should have been of the whoop-and-holler-of-joy variety. But no. It was more of the what-have-I-gotten-myself-into and why-did-I-think-I-could-write-a-book-on-this-subject variety.
After a few calming breaths and some positive self-talk, the panic subsided, at least until I printed off the chapter summary that was part of the original proposal. After reading the plan written last December, panic returned, along with self-doubt. I felt as poorly trained and utterly inadequate for the task at hand as I had each August of my twenty-five year teaching career.
But over the next several days, God calmed me down, patted my head, and held my hand. Every Bible passage I read was about how God prepares his people for his work. Every book I opened contained valuable resources. Visions of experts and parents I’ve met in the past few years – many since Different Dream was released – came to mind.
“Write them down,” a voice whispered inside my head. “Make a plan.”
I started a list of people, books, websites, and organizations. In minutes, the list was two pages long. Their expertise matched many of the subjects to be addressed in my book, though a few holes remained. In the next few days, previously unknown experts appeared on my radar screen. The timing was uncanny.
The voice in my head was clear and insistent. “You’re not in this alone. I’ve spent my life preparing you to do this. You take the logical next step and leave the rest to me.”
Living by faith. Writing by faith. That’s what I’ve gotten myself into.
Let the adventure begin.
by jphilo | Feb 1, 2010 | Daily Life
Despite my best Pollyanic efforts to remain positive about winter, a gloomy chill engulfed me last week. Our cold, snowy, icy, and foggy winter, which came early and shows every sign of planning to stay late, is the obvious culprit. But to be honest, I can’t wholly blame this glum funk on external circumstances.
Part of my Gloomy Gus mood is self-inflicted. In the dark of this cold winter, I’ve been chaffing against the quiet, ordinary tasks God has given me to complete. Day after day, He calls me to be faithful in the non-flashy, by myself stuff – writing blog columns and book proposals, collecting tax documents, answering emails, preparing for speaking engagements, and organizing things for church. Big days in January were the ones when I took Mom to the library to check out books by authors with careers much more successful than my own.
Which points to the crux of the matter. Much of this winter’s discontent is due to flat book sales. For weeks, I watched Different Dream’s Amazon rank sink lower and lower. Nobody emailed to order signed copies. The ones in the local book store were gathering dust. And all three January speaking engagements were postponed because of weather, eliminating any hope of book sales from that quarter.
Through it all, God whispered over and over, “Trust me. Just wait and trust me,” which I did, only because there’s nothing to do in the middle of January except wait for things to improve. The trusting part was harder. But once I realized the other option was to trust myself, which experience has taught me is risky at best, I let the book sales thing go and left it all in his hands.
What happened next? A few books sold on Amazon, the book store called and asked for two copies for their store and a stack to take to some conferences over the next few weeks. A woman wrote a review for her special needs newsletter, and a Detroit radio station asked for an interview. None of which will catapult sales into the stratosphere, but all of which remind me of truth in the winter of my discontent: God is at work in even the small things. He calls me to faithfulness in more small, non-flashy tasks on this winter day.
I look outside and see a frost-covered tree branch shaped like Gonzo’s nose. The thought of the Don Juan of Muppets and his flock of hens makes me smile. The gloom lifts a little, and I tackle the small things once more.
by jphilo | Dec 8, 2009 | Walking Down the Gravel Road
Even though snow is never my weather-of-choice, except on Christmas Eve when a maximum of 2 inches of snow can settle upon the landscape to create a picturesque scene for 24 hours only, the dusting of white stuff that greeted me Monday morning, put me in a philosophical mood.
I had just wrestled a new pair of gorilla treads onto my tennis shoes, and the tracks they created made me think of all the places I’ve been in the past year. One year ago, I was walking on a motel treadmill in West Virginia before delivering my son to the PTSD outpatient clinic. This week, Allen is in Wisconsin speaking at an organic farming conference. What a great distance he’s traveled, what a great distance our entire family has traveled, in the last 365 days. What a great God has guided us into this future we never expected.
I passed our garage, marveling at God’s faithful and unexpected work in our family, and a hole in the edge of the path I’d shoveled caught my eye. There was another hole about 3 feet beyond it, and another and another, all three feet apart, connected by what looked like a miniature mole tunnel, until the tunnel reached the corner of our garage.
I’d heard about mouse tunnels in the snow, but this was the first one I’d seen. I imagined the mouse busily excavating, then poking his head out for a breath of air, a progress check and a course correction. Then, down again to bravely plow through the darkness, until he found shelter from the storm.
This picture doesn’t do Mickey and Minnie’s tunnel justice and the thought of mice camping in my garage sets my teeth on edge. But for a few moments, I identified with the mouse. After years of dark tunnels with small comfort and few answers, after infrequent breaths of hope, little progress, and a multitude of course corrections, we have found sweet shelter and joy in God’s amazing healing and strength.
Call me a softie, but tonight there’s room for Mickey and Minnie in our garage…but if they get in the car again, they’re dead meat
