The Suggestion

Part of living life to the fullest is realizing that everything matters.

 "You get married,

a child is born or not born,

in the middle of tthe night there is a knocking at the door,

on the way home through the park you see a man feeding pigeosn

all the tests come in negative and the doctor gives you back your life again;

Incident follows incident

helter-skelter leading apparently nowhere,

but then once in a while there is a suggestion of purpose,

meaning,

direction,

the suggestion of a plot,

The suggestion that, however clumsily, your life is trying to tell you something,

take you somewhere."

[excerpt taken from Listen to Your Life: Daily Meditations by Frederick Buechner]

That Kind of Week.

It’s been one of those weeks.

I’m sure you’ve had a few of them too. The kind where you dread answering your phone, find reasons to distance yourself from the computer, start avoiding going into stores or anywhere else for that matter.

Plans change, people let you down, stores are out of what you need, your email reminds you of a due date or a decision that needs to be made. Things you thought were solid, become a movable mess. You don’t have the answers. You don’t understand why. So on and so forth, I’m sure you can envision your own days like this.

Why is it that when one “big” thing happens your world may blow up for awhile, sure, but your meltdown then is nothing compared to the one you have with the, say, 100th “little” thing? You were able to brush off or move forward from 99 little things, and then BAM, that next one, that 100, did you in. When a big “bad” thing happens (i.e. breaking my foot), God is at the top of my list to seek out; however, when the little “bad” things (i.e. unexplained pain in my low back) happen throughout my week, my faithfulness to Him is often crowded out and challenged by a gazillion other preoccupying thoughts.

I hit that 100th thing today and it wasn’t pretty. My 100th thing was a very very little thing, but it seemed to open the flood gates to welcome back the other 99 I’d brushed off the rest of the week. I stopped wanting to stand firm, to trust that everything is happening for a bigger plan. I wanted to give in and let myself feel pummeled and broken. Tears flowed, sobs happened, and emotions were being thrown around like a teenage reality TV show complete with the lyrics “when my world is falling apart and I can’t find the light in the dark” (thank you, Miley Cyrus) running through my head. I needed solitude, so I did the only thing one can do in a house of five and four animals: I went for a walk.

My parents live in a valley, twenty miles and a mountain or two outside of town. Our house is surrounded by mountain upon mountain, the sky endless and often breathtaking. I can’t count the number of times that I’ve simply been awed by the grandness of it all. Today’s walk down our dirt road was no different.

It was impossible to escape the brilliance of sunlight coming through millons and millons of trees, shadowing mountains off into the distance. It was impossible to focus on the stream of thoughts muddled in my head each wrestling itself to the top of my emotions, each trying to pull me deeper into a pit of worry and frustration. Instead, for the first time in some 30 minutes, it was impossibly easy to focus on the grandness of God.

My heart wasn’t in thanking Him for the ability to walk today. In fact, it was all but complaining about my ankle and the slow pace I had to keep with all this adrenaline running inside of me. Slow and steady. Taking time. One foot in front of the other. Just like Joshua and the Israelites did back in the day.

I’m not sure how my mind made that jump, but I had the time and there it was.

Joshua, a man with a reputation for believing God against all odds. Joshua, who was picked to lead God’s people into the Promised Land. Joshua, who did what he knew he could not do through the might of the living God. Joshua, who was told in advance, like us, that he’d be able—“As I was with Moses, so I will be with you; I will never leave you nor forsake you. Be strong and courageous, because you will lead these people to inherit the land I swore to their forefathers to give them” (Joshua 1:5-6).

God uses Joshua in so many ways for His glory and kingdom, but today my thoughts drifted to Jericho. (Joshua 5-6)

After so many dramatic events, including a recent parting of the waters of the Jordan River, Joshua was instructed to lead the Israelites on a march around Jericho for six days and then seven more times on the seventh day. No superpowers, no instant demolition, no shortcuts with a simple one time around to knock down the walls. Instead God says do 13 laps and give a good shout, sound the trumpets, and the walls will collapse!

I don’t think that plan made sense to the Israelites, or even to a seasoned war strategist like Joshua. I imagine that by the third or fourth day of marching in the hot sun, one foot in front of the other, over and over, I’d have come up with more than a few grumbles and new ideas on how to knock down the walls too. And by the seventh day, on the fourth lap around, without even a pebble dropping off the wall . . . yeah, I might have felt like I was having one of those weeks, with every step nearing that “100th“ little thing.

My lesson from Joshua today was this: sometimes God directs us to keep walking around walls or stand firm against the same little things day after day, repeating the same old fundamental steps even while nothing seems to happen. Oh, it will. We must never stop believing it will. Just as profoundly as walls collapsing in and a city being taken in a matter of minutes, God will move and work in each of our lives.

But in the meantime, we’ve got to keep walking and keep circling no matter how many times we’ve done it before, no matter how many things come at us, and no matter how many times we’re yet to do it.

It’s in the day-in-day-out fundamentals that we’re challenged the most in our faithfulness. It’s in all of those “little” things that God is able to plant seeds of fruitfulness and faithfulness. My own walk today served to remind me of God's faithfulness and that I, for one, want to be more like Joshua, believing in the grandeur of God against all odds. No matter what kind of week it is.

"Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. 
DO NOT BE TERRIFIED; 
DO NOT BE DISCOURAGED, 
FOR THE LORD YOUR GOD WILL BE WITH YOU WHEREVER YOU GO."

Joshua 1:9

I don't know.

I don't know much.

I don't even know who all is out there reading this or if you think I'm crazy for continuing to write in my Jamaican blog, even though I've been firmly planted in Oregon and the States for four months now. :-)

I don't know why all of a sudden I have all of this time to read and listen to sermons and face my past. I know I'm changing and growing as a result, I just don't know all that God wants to do within me or around me in this time.

I don't know, but I'm confident He does.

For whatever reason(s) He has, I've been on this journey these past months and Jamaica has very much everything to do with where I am right now. . . and where I'm going in the future.

In this moment, my heart is overflowing with things that God is showing me--many of which He's placed in my lap over and over again to get the message to break through.

I don't know that I'll get to share them all--or even that I should!
I don't know if they'll make sense or get into your heart like they've begun to sink into mine. . . I don't know where your own journey has taken you today.

Just as I don't know if I'll end up in Jamaica again.

But I'm believing God. And that, my friends, is so so much bigger than anything I don't know.

Thanks for reading and Lord willing, I'm going to keep on posting some of the many things He's showing me. Expressing them here allows me to reaffirm and apply the lessons in ways I can't begin to explain.

God bless you and keep you this week!

Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever! Amen.

Ephesians 3:20-21

Learning to Walk Again

"The concept of walking is so basic that perhaps you've never considered what walking entails. Think about how simple it is: You don't have to know exactly where you're going; it doesn't require any planning; all you have to do is put one foot in front of the other." 

Francis Chan

Isn't that the truth? (Barring all of you PT trained people out there who can tell me all about the intricate details of the stance and swing phases of gait, how the whole body reacts to make it happen, and like me, notice when something is off whether you want to or not . . .)

Be honest with yourself. Where did you just walk from (or to) before you started reading this? Did you even think twice about how you went from one place to the next? Likely not.

My mom tells me that at 11mos old, I would only attempt to take steps when I thought no one was looking. It wasn't until after I'd perfected the task in those so-called private sessions that I began to gracefully walk all the time, no matter who was present. Even at that young age I liked to present a complete, well put together picture.

Learning to walk at 26 is much different than at 11mos. There's no escaping the public eye and there's nothing graceful or hand-clapping cute about it either. I’ve been a mess!

Doctorate in physical therapy or not, it still came as a surprise that the true first thing, first challenge if you will, in learning to walk again, was actually learning to put my left foot on the ground in preparation of a step. After weeks of training it not to do that very thing, well, it's tougher than you realize. Getting that left foot to the ground involved convincing more my uninjured knee, than my booted ankle, that it was up to the task. Praise the Lord for a quick learning neurological system.

Yes, I'm like my own little PT project.

After getting my left foot to the ground, it was a matter of trust. My body and mind in no way wanted to shift my weight over to that side, even with the boot on and one crutch in hand. What if it hurt? Would my knee buckle? What would happen if I fell again and had to start all over? Why not keep the weight on the good leg, the one we trust? I didn't really need to take a step with the left foot too did I? Fears, fears, fears. . .

After finally conquering a form of the general left, right, left there was a matter of finding a pace. My stir-crazy side was ready for a jog. Truth be told, though, there has been no other but sloooooow; no running, jumping, or coordinated fast walking. (It's pretty humbling when the grandmother-type with a cane schools you. . . over and over again.)

A week in late February marked the first in 11 weeks that I'd left the house without crutch, splint, or boot. I remember feeling completely vulnerable. Walking was, and still is, uncomfortable!! Not the act of walking, necessarily, but rather these fears inside of me. I don't like to show weakness and now there is no longer an easily visible reason why I can't do something, why I’m slow and have a limp, or why I have a death grip on the railing walking down that ramp. I also find myself confronted with uncertainty of what will, could, or should happen every time I go to put my foot on the ground,; afraid that if I’m not paying enough attention, I'll make an unconscious move that will do me in (i.e. jumping down from the bleachers, pivoting to get on to the weight machine).

The same day I was allowed to dispose of the boot, I happened to look back on the weeks surrounding my initial injury in my prayer journal, and the weeks that have followed since. I’ve wrestled; I’ve argued; I’ve laid down my worries and fears only to pick them up and question, and then lay them back down all over again. I've been impatience and full of praise, fearful and trusting, restful and frustrated.

It's been a journey, but in all of it God has constantly reminded me that the walk of faith is no different than the actual physical act of walking. No matter how much you break it down, freak out, or try to jump ahead, walking is walking. It must be done one step at a time.

Really. Let me say it again: The only way to walk, whether by faith or to the kitchen, is one step at a time.

We can get so caught up in the details of the big picture that we lose sight of the fact that God is simply calling us to walk. Just as we’ve unconsciously trusted our bodies from the time we were little to put one foot in front of the other, so must we put our whole belief in God in every spiritual step that we take.

He doesn't call us to be perfect before we try it out. In fact, He wants us to wholly believe that all of those other details (finesse, pace, trust, vulnerability) are safe and blessed in His hands.

It won't necessarily be easy, but we can always put one foot in front of the other.
Come on. Let’s take a walk.