Letters from home and long ago

February 19, 2014

True to the way of this world, this week has brought a few more cares and trials along.  In an effort to "lay aside every weight and sin which clings so closely" so that I may "run with endurance the race that is set before [me], looking to Jesus the founder and perfecter of our faith," (Hebrews 12:1-2), I've been reviewing old letters.

Last fall when I ventured across the pond, some of my dear friends wrote me letters of encouragement in a journal, which I also brought with me to Mexico.  I've been rereading these precious words like a thriller novel because they're so full of encouragement that seemed to be written for these days of hardship.  Don't you just love how God inspires ordinary people to write things that will provide encouragement in a myriad of situations?  Such a joy is God's truth that it applies to all situations of life.  These letters addressed to some distant Renee that used to exist what seems like eons ago (every day lasts a year in Mexico, people.  I'm now an old lady.) apply to this frail Renee who can't bear to think about tomorrow, but who prays to God literally to just live through the day, even the next five minutes.

Today, I want to share with you all some encouragement I rediscovered in a letter from my dear friend, Abby.  I love every words of it.


"Dear Renee,

"This entry comes from something I wrote in my journal back in June while at the beach.  I was watching a dad with his little boys.  One was probably around 6 or 7 and the other 4 or 5.  The younger child clung to his dad as they played in the waves, but the older let go of his dad's hand after a few moments.  When they were both holding dad's hand, they were safe from the crashing waves.  The moment that the older boy let go he was unsteady on his feet and was [k]nocked around by the waves.  After a couple times of coming up spluttering, the boy reached for his dad.  The dad's hand was right there waiting for the boy to take it, wait[ing] so that he could take hold of the boy and finally lead him safely out of the water.

"I thought this was a cool picture of how God cares for us even when we try and do it ourselves.  Sometimes we can think that we can take the waves ourselves.  We can't.  We need to hold God's hand and he will bare us up with his everlasting strength.  I want to encourage you, Renee, to hold God's hand while you are here in France.  He will guide you.

"Proverbs 3:5-8 says: 'Trust in  the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding.  In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make straight your paths.  Be not wise in your own eyes; fear the Lord, and turn away from evil.  It will be healing to your flesh and refreshment to your bones.'

"Know that the hand you hold is the Lord your God.  The one you fear and trust.  He will hold you against the waves.  He knows the waves you can handle and he will protect you from the ones that are too big.

"I am praying for you my dear friend!

"Abby"


"He knows the waves you can handle and he will protect you from the ones that are too big."  I love this sentence so much.  I feel as if the waves are battering me constantly, some old, some new.  I haven't drowned yet, but sometimes I wonder if I will soon.  Will a wave come that holds me under until I have no breath?  Or will the water shoved in my mouth with every wave finally fill my lungs?  I've found grace for yesterday and today, but can I make it through tomorrow?  What about the 98 tomorrows that will follow?

How easily have I forgotten the 6,977 yesterdays!  Each of those yesterdays, God was there, sustaining my every breath, sometimes lifting me above the waves, at other times holding my hand through the waves.

And what of the millions of yesterdays before I even existed?  The innumerable saints who have gone before me?  The God who escorted them by his divine hand into their eternal rest is grasping mine with an unrelenting grip!  No, the waves will not overtake me.

En francais:

Oui, je suis horrible.  Je n'ai pas traduit mes mise-a-jours il y a trop de temps et aujourd'hui ne va pas etre different.  Je n'avais pas de temps, et c'est tres difficile de parler en francais.  Peut-etre un jour, je le ferrai.  Peut-etre non.  Mais je suis vraiment desolee aujourd'hui.  S'il ous plait, pardonnez-moi!

"WARNING:

All words spoken in prayer will be taken as sincere, even if they're not."

I've started to think God should just include that warning every time we pray.

I often think of prayer as a comforting thing.  You can talk to the infinite holy God and he listens!  You can pour out your anguish to an ever-listening ear who can do something about it!  But I forget all too soon who exactly he is.  He's the God who sent his only Son to die on a cross for rubbish like me.  He's the God who consumed Nadab and Abihu with holy fire for getting a little fancy with the incense.  He's the God who commanded Hosea to marry a prostitute.  He's not confinable, but he reigns supreme over everything, and his ways are radical.  His ways are certainly not my ways, they're higher and much more humble.

I'm sitting here looking at my life right now and scratching my head,  How on earth did I get here?  And why am I even sticking around?  I think the answer has everything to do with that prayer warning I mentioned above.

You see, more than a few times over the years, I've read an amazing story, or sung an inspiring song, and thought, "Why doesn't God seem to my as close as he did to the person who lived or wrote this?"  And then I'd get the brilliant idea to pray and ask God to make him the most precious thing to me, whatever the cost.  I just forgot to mention in my prayer the fine print, excluding everything I hold dear from that "whatever the cost" phrase.  And I didn't pray this just once, I prayed at many, many times.  I had no clue how heavy those words would weigh into my life later.  Even if I didn't mean them all, God took them oh-so seriously (and the scary thing is I'm only nineteen).

Without getting into too many of the grubby details, my life's pretty tough right now, with no signs of getting easier within a bearable amount of time.  Put on paper, my trials look smaller than they feel.  Living at work, having no social life whatsoever, working over fifty hours a week, having just about zero fellowship, feeling so, so, so, alone, attempting to raise kids coming from difficult backgrounds with people who have different parenting principles.  The list goes on.  Put in such definable terms, I find it easy to imagine grace when I separate these circumstances from myself. The person going through all this just has to cast themself on Christ and boom! joy will abound and they will conquer all the giants staring them in the face.  It's just so easy, trials are no big deal.  Trust God, it'll all be better!

But when it comes to living every day under all of these weights, grace looks a lot different from the imagined flowing cheerfulness and strength.  The grace given looks a lot less like Superman and a lot more like the ragged dogs that wander around down here looking for trash to eat.  It's a grace that allows me to see my utter helplessness in all of this and pushes me to cry out to God to make it through the next five minutes.  It's a grace that dries my many, many tears and helps me get back up on my feet to receive the next blow.  And I honestly don't think that last sentence is an understatement, because it feels like as soon as I've come to a place of faith to face the next day under this set of circumstances, a few more complications are added.

For a while, I was, quite frankly, mad at God for this.  My life's already hard.  Why did he have to add another thing?  And then another and another?  I was only timidly sure that I could live with all of those burdens, and here's a new and even heavier one!  But thinking about it a little more, I'm a little more at peace with this pattern.  I can't help but think that God is actually delaying the added trials until I've wrestled and found his grace for the original ones.  I am most definitely constantly breaking, but I've not yet broken.  It's a beautiful balance of pain and grace.  Just enough misery that I am so aware of my need for God and so full of worship for his sustenance, but never enough hardship that I collapse.  My hands are increasingly raised in praise, but never thrown up in despair.

Every day, I'm living those prayers I prayed.

"Jesus, be my all!"

"Fashion in me the same character found in Christ!"

"Make me a servant for your glory!"

The words sounded so sweet, so noble; the realities are so bittersweet, so lowly.  But the grace given.  Ahhh, it's so much richer, so much deeper than anything my comfort-saturated soul could have invented through imagination.

So, when you pray, offer it all, even though you don't really mean it.  God will take you at your word and when your prayers are half-forgotten, he'll begin to answer them.  If you're anything like me, you'll watch with initial horror as your treasures are tugged from your tight fist, but you'll rejoice as they're replaced with unspeakable beauty and unending grace.

And don't say I didn't warn you.

NOTE:  I wrote this sometime last week, when things in my life were really hard.  And then, after I wrote it, they, no surprise, got even harder.  And I just believe it's worth saying that, even as troubles pile miles high in your life, if your hope is in Christ, the sweetness of fellowship you will gain with him through trials is worth all of the painful sacrifices. Though my life is harder than it was when I wrote these words, God's grace is still sweeter.  Sweeter than my trials, sweeter than the comforts lost.