Give Thanks to the Holy One

Hello =). How are you today?

It is a treat to tell you how I am this time: Today is the first day in quite a while that my body has felt solid, like I won't just keel over at the drop of a hat. I had gotten used to feeling severely hollowed out to the point where it was getting hard to remember feeling anything else. Praise God for this reprieve!

Yesterday I had the initial doses of the recommended medicines for the new hormone imbalance. It is a delightful surprise to find them working well this quickly! My body still hurts but it no longer feels like each next step or breath may be more than I can manage. It feels so much better, in fact, that I went on a short walk this afternoon! It was a few blocks - less than a quarter of a mile - but it felt perfectly heavenly. I was excited enough that I had to work at not darting ahead too quickly to catch my breath.

As grand as my body feels today compared to most of the past two weeks, everything has a cost. The new medicines are already aggravating the rash on my hands. Also my body was tired enough after my walk that it seemed best to skip dance class today. If I had gone I certainly would have not been able to move much. I promise you, though, that I would have celebrated each moment that my body was able to stand on its own two feet.

I haven't always been able to stand on these two feet God gave me - not for years as a child, and not for seasons as an adult. When I was living in Colorado there were times when I would weep in church from the fatigue and pain, and from the hurt of being physically unable to stand to sing praises to the Lord. I would rock back and forth in my seat on those days. It didn't seem like there was hope of getting better this side of heaven.

And then God did what God does. He answered prayers in unpredictable and unexpected ways. Eventually He brought me to Portland. Here He surprised me by allowing my body to walk for miles on end during the three visits I made before my move. The sheer pleasure of those walks was almost indescribable! The vitality of all that movement was such a welcome, breathtaking contrast from life at the Rocky Mountain foothills. I prayed to Abba often that upon my move here He would allow me to walk here "every day no matter what."

Of course you know that hasn't happened. I truly treasure the memory of each of those early Portland walks, though. And I haven't given up praying that prayer. God is still God and He still does what He will. I work at keeping mindful of the fact that any day may be *the day* when Abba allows me to start walking here "every day no matter what."

And in the meantime I keep on singing:

Give thanks with a grateful heart
Give thanks to the Holy One
Give thanks because He's given Jesus Christ, his Son.


And now let the weak say "I am strong,"
Let the poor say "I am rich,"
Because of what the Lord has done for us.

Give thanks.

What about you? What are you thankful for today? I would love to celebrate with you!

Ever have one of "those" weeks?

This has been one of "those" weeks. The contrast between how I envision things unfolding and the reality of how things actually transpire is striking. Sunday I was too worn out for church. Monday started like this: I dragged myself through dance class - working hard at not falling over and discovering in the process that my balance and depth perception have faded in synch with my stamina. Rather than being energized as I had hoped I found myself enervated. By sheer force of will I pulled myself through internship hours in the afternoon. God did all of the heavy lifting in session with clients. Even so it was a struggle to make it through my Gospel community small group Monday evening. That night I slept for 12 hours straight. I spent all of Tuesday unwilling and unable to shed my pajamas. Wednesday brought a sense of being slightly closer to functioning. My heart was gladdened to join in morning Bible study two miles from home. Wednesday afternoon I had an appointment with Dr. C. I had called him Tuesday because it felt like my body was hollowed out almost entirely as though there was no margin of energy left to build on anymore. Dr. C spent three hours examining and testing me. As usual we laughed and he cast things in as positive a light as humanly possible. He determined that my body is experiencing an imbalance of hormones and he made changes to my meds to address this new development.

Today I had an appointment to see Dr. H, my chiropractor, who is also the person who referred me to Dr. C last year. Dr. H and his team discovered that the top bone of my spine had been pressing in on my brain stem for no one knows how long. Consequence? Disruption in my brain's ability to communicate effectively with my body and allow my body to heal itself efficiently. Because I was born with cerebral palsy there is a chance that the bone had been pressing on my brain stem for my entire life. Old habits are hard to break. Dr. H was able to adjust that bone off my brain and into proper alignment last year. My body keeps wanting to pull it back out of alignment, however. Dr. H is typically upbeat and positive like Dr. C so I told him candidly about Dr. C's findings yesterday and how my body has functioned in the two weeks since my previous visit to Dr. H's office, including last week's stomach virus. I expected Dr. H to encourage me. Instead he more or less stated the obvious: that my body is not responding well to treatment. My body is not solidifying gains. Each time Dr. H sees me my spine adjusts well before I leave his office, but the next time I come back my body has lost any gain it had made according to his post-treatment assessment. Today for the first time Dr. H looked a little like he wanted to give up. It was a new look for him, though not a look I am unaccustomed to seeing on the faces of doctors.

Truthfully, it is hard for me to deal with my doctors' frustration and disappointment. When I first saw Dr. D in Boulder four years ago she told me that she thought we would have me healthy quickly. She actually uttered the phrase "only a couple of months." Fast forward three years: During our  last visit shortly before my move to PDX last year she apologized to me for having offered that false hope. I had been much more ill than she had initially understood, she said. Then she wished me well and hugged me goodbye. All of my doctors in Colorado hugged me goodbye, actually. When doctors hug you it is a sure sign that you have been unwell for quite some time. Years ago I saw this cute greeting card. A local artist had designed a picture of hundreds of spoons spiraling around a cup of steaming hot coffee and had written beneath that the t. s. eliot quote "I have measured out my life in coffee spoons." At some point during the past four years I hijacked that quote and personalized it to say "I have measured out my life in waiting rooms."

Two weeks ago my daily Bible reading plan began with 2 Kings 15-16. The passage marks another episode in the history of the kings of Judah and Israel where most every one of the kings does what is evil in the sight of the Lord and is punished, typically by a coup of some sort. Verses one through seven of chapter 15 tell the story of King Azariah of Judah (the southern kingdom of the divided monarchy) who, like his father King Amaziah, has the rare distinction of having done what is right in the eyes of the Lord. Nevertheless, Scripture says "the Lord afflicted [King Azariah] with leprosy until the day he died [at the age of 68], and he lived in a separate house...[until he] rested with his ancestors and was buried near them...." How about that?

King Azariah spent a long life contending daily with a debilitating disfiguring disease - a disease that in his culture especially prompted fear, shame, and isolation based on perceived uncleanness. The passage does not disclose whether King Azariah sought treatment for his disease. Ten chapters earlier, however, Naaman, army commander for the king of Aram, had sought treatment and been cured of leprosy through Elisha acting at the behest of the king of Israel (the northern kingdom of the divided monarchy).

A pagan officer of a foreign army had been cured of leprosy - and somewhat reluctantly, at that: Naaman initially refused to do what the prophet told him he must do to be cured; his servants eventually persuaded him to follow Elisha's instructions, leading to his healing. The fallen, sinful part of my heart insists that surely an honorable king of God's chosen people could hope to be dealt with as generously as a stubborn foreigner who followed other gods. The part of my heart being redeemed by the Holy Spirit remembers that God is sovereign over all, sending rain on the evil and on the good. Perhaps King Azariah for some reason never sought to be healed of the leprosy that surely kept him lonely, denying him life in the palace and even burial in the family plot. Perhaps King Azariah repeatedly asked God to heal him and God said no. Either way, I've spent more than a bit of time over the last two weeks thinking about the ironic plight of the faithful yet outcast king. When I get to heaven maybe I'll ask him the rest of the story.

In the meantime I'll try to focus on praising God and thanking Him for the innumerable reasons He continues to pour out for me to CHOOSE joy! To count just a few: I am grateful beyond measure for the freedom to worship Him and share my faith in the cross of Christ openly. I am moved to joyful tears when I think of all the years He pursued me when I wanted nothing to do with him. He has never once left me where He found me - especially when I have deserved it most. He has given me the hope of life eternal in heaven and genuine fellowship for the journey here on earth. He thought to pair rainbows with rain, and to allow us all to share in appreciating the beauty of his creation. He knows how it makes me laugh when my dog farts so loud that she scares herself and takes off running. (I get the feeling that He finds that funny, too, though I'm not sure which one of us He's laughing at, truly.) He hears us when we pray. He really listens. And when we don't know what to pray his Spirit intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. He delights to choose us for salvation, the worst of sinners redeemed by his Own innocent blood. Like the old hymn says, "It was Love that took my place on the cross of Calvary, it was Faith - redeeming Faith - that paid my ransom full and free, over sin, without, within, I have the victory through Grace, marvelous Grace, that lives in me!" Praise you, Abba! I love you. Please help me to live like it. Amen.

Stability and Movement

Wow you should see outside today! The Oregon sky is Carolina blue with not a cloud in sight. Everything seems more vibrant, more itself somehow.

One of my girlfriends and I have been talking about what it means to be fully oneself. It seems to boil down to a commitment to be who we were created to be in Christ and as individuals within His body. It is a lifelong process rather than a milestone moment in time. It involves taking risks we would rather not take, feeling and experiencing things we would prefer not to live through, accepting the present as it is, and hoping for things we would rather not be disappointed about in the future, which sometimes feels like the biggest risk of all. It also involves being surprised by joy and overwhelmed by God's loving care along the way, whether those hopes are fulfilled as we had envisioned, answered in some other way, or apparently dashed.

Last night was rough. I barely slept although I was worn out from a long week of trying to slip back into the flow of work more completely. The restlessness in my body was off the charts. It was my first night in a while trying to sleep without pain meds. I had stepped down the dose to a single pill per day, and it was time for me to drop that last pill. It never occurred to me that it would be hard to sleep without the pain pill. Over the past four weeks I have developed what for me is a very effective, soothing nighttime routine. My MD from Boulder would say that I have "excellent sleep hygiene." Apparently there are times when excellent sleep hygiene isn't worth spit.

This morning I had a movement workshop to attend. Cards on the table, I would have blown it off because of being wretchedly sleep deprived if not for the fact that it was session 4 of 5 sessions prepaid months ago. To the workshop I went. I tried to psych myself up by telling myself that maybe the movement would build irrepressible energy in my body and leave me feeling wonderfully refreshed. That idea, also, wasn't worth spit. Halfway through the movement portion of the program my body stopped moving. I just couldn't go anymore. I stepped out the studio door and down the hall to the ladies' room. I prayed a desperate little prayer to God. Honestly, I can't remember at this moment exactly what I said to Him. What I know for sure is this: Lately I have been praying for Him to bring to light any hidden bitterness, anger, resentment, or unconfessed sin in me so that He can clean and bind the wounds and by His grace heal me. When I walked back into the studio and took my place on the dance floor now barely able to move again I felt Him remind me of that prayer and then question me, "Child, you've asked me to deal with all these things, but what about your fears?" It was too much. I began to cry. Not wracking sobs of pain but tears of relief and possibly of shame at having tried to keep hidden from Him once again what He already knows. So by His grace I named the fears He brought to mind, one by one, laying them at the foot of the cross.

I told my Abba, our Abba, that I am afraid that I will not get well. I told Him I am afraid that my health will keep getting worse. I told Him that I am afraid I will lose the movement that He has given me back over the last year, the movement that has brought my heart such sheer delight. I told God that I am afraid that I will never have a family this side of Heaven, and that I will always feel alone. I told Him that I am afraid if I let people see the real me that they will pity me. Abba calmed my heart and helped me surrender those fears - built up over many years, deeply rooted in the scarred soil of an unhealthy youth - in a matter of minutes! It is true what Scripture says about God's perfect love casting out fear, praise Him!

I prayed and cried my way through the last half of the workshop. The fact that I cried silently in public without feeling devastating shame, incidentally, is a minor miracle itself, hard evidence of God's healing hand on my life. In the home I grew up in it was dangerous to cry. Crying even at home but most especially in public - even at funerals - invited punishment, including the infliction of physical pain. Because of the dread of those consequences crying took on the feeling of dying for me. For years it felt as though if I allowed myself to shed a single tear I would be consumed or devoured by all the pent up grief and pain. In those years if I cried a single tear it turned to heaving sobs which left me feeling as though I would never breathe normally again. Praise God, He did not leave me in that emotionally paralyzed place.

Today, having dried my tears but made no effort at concealing them, I had nothing to say during the workshop debriefing when the facilitator asked the group how we had experienced stability and movement in our bodies during the dancing. Having continued my conversation with Abba since then, however, I have arrived at this thought: Jesus Christ is our stability, and God's Holy Spirit is our movement. Nothing I ever do or experience will change Christ's sacrifice for me or my identity in Him. Everything I do or experience has hope in it because His Spirit is continually at work in me, refining me and remaking me so that I am more and more like Him. Jesus cried in public, too, you know. More than once. And when He cried He always talked to Abba, too.

The Waiting is the Hardest Part

I've floundered about what to write next. The past week has been another roller coaster ride. Late last week I thought I was feeling better. I decided to cut back on my pain meds. It didn't go well. I needed soothing. Someone had told me about this hot springs nearby where you can go for a mineral bath and wrap for a very reasonable fee. I researched it. It sounded detoxifying, healing, refreshing, and relaxing. I decided to go for it. It was a mistake.

I have this allergic rash on my hands. It started 4 years ago as a tiny patch of irritation on one finger that would not heal. Over the years it has spread to both my hands. At times it looks like eczema, and at other times it appears more like psoriasis. There are times when it resembles nothing else common, and times when it disappears altogether for a while. My doctors have not been able to agree on what exactly it is or hit on any treatment that makes it manageable for long. At this point all we know for certain is that it is triggered and exacerbated by things I'm allergic to including environmental and food sensitivities.

The massive doses of steroids I had to take for the shingles quelled the rash. The mineral bath and wrap made it rebound with a vengeance. The problem is that the rash is not only painful and unsightly. It is also debilitating. There is a constant risk of infection because the skin is so degraded. My skin deteriorates to the point where if I am bathing and washing my hands every day I am not able to do the dishes, clean house, or work in the yard. My body is allergic to synthetic fibers including latex. Rubber gloves don't work. Cotton gloves work until they become wet or covered with other things my body reacts to, such as chemicals in most soaps and grass. It is a vicious cycle.

The challenge is figuring out how to live my life while managing the rash and its consequences. It is easier now that my body doesn't have to contend with the added complication of altitude sickness. It is also easier now that the systemic inflammation in my body has decreased and I am no longer in overwhelming constant pain or experiencing immobilizing chronic fatigue every day. Yes, I still hurt occasionally and I am often tired. Now, though, the pain passes and with rest the exhaustion abates. I am incredibly grateful to God for those miraculous kindnesses in the middle of this ongoing illness.

I am also confused from time to time about what I am supposed to pray for in this situation. Frankly, God has already given me so much healing that at times it seems downright selfish to want and ask for more. Yet that is exactly how I feel and what I do. The apostle Paul wrote that he prayed three times for God to remove the thorn in his flesh. God's response to Paul was that God's grace is sufficient and His power is made perfect in weakness. Part of me wonders if I have already received that answer from God but have chosen to ignore it in hopes of wearing Him down into giving me a different response. So I focus on what Jesus said in the Garden: If it is possible, take this suffering from me, yet not my will but Your will be done. And I beg God to help me see everything the way He would have me see it. I pray earnestly for me to lead a life that glorifies Him, delights Him, and brings Him great joy. Then I ask Him to delight me and bring me great joy, too. I pray for Him to help me not be so blinded by the hardships that I miss the moments of sheer delight.

One of those moments happened Friday, the day before yesterday. At the end of a long day I was meeting with my supervisor. It was past time for me to take my pain medication and I was hurting but doing my best to carry on and finish the work day well. I told my boss that one of my clients had to take their kids to the vet. He chuckled, regained his composure and asked me to repeat what I had just said. So I told him again that one of my clients had to take their kids to the vet. This time he laughed out loud and asked me if I heard myself. I said yes, then spoke the sentence more slowly and realized my mistake. He and I both laughed until we had tears in our eyes spilling over. It is difficult to say which one of us needed that moment of mirth the most. Within the last two weeks a member of my supervisor's immediate family has  been diagnosed with advanced inoperable cancer. God knows. And He knows what we need to keep moving forward through the muck of this sin-sick world. I keep coming back to Gitz' take on joy: the unwavering conviction that God is in control and has blessed me to be a part of what He is doing, not despite my circumstances, but because of them.

So I do my best to follow her lead and Choose Joy. And in the meantime, while I wait on the Lord, I revel in praising Him for His goodness and mercy, even as I pray for more of it to be lavished on me. I pray the same for you, His Beloved, wherever you are as you read this. As a matter of fact, I pray for you every day. My prayer thus far has always been the same: That God would bless you and draw you closer to Him through our time together here. If there is something more specific that I can pray for you, will you please let me know? It would be such a privilege and a pleasure to lift you up before Our Father, in the name of His Son, and by the power of His Spirit! You can reach me privately at imanikesi@gmail.com or post your requests publicly in the comments section here.

Letting Go and Hoping On =)

I saw my family doctor, Dr. C., this week before returning to work. It was a most encouraging visit, despite the fact that the pain is worse than it has been yet.

I told the good doctor I needed him to reassure me that I had been really getting better before this latest episode. I also told him I needed him to be frank with me about what I must to do to maximize my body's opportunity to be well. He responded generously to both of those requests.

He was affirming and encouraging about all the positive changes he's witnessed in my health since I began seeing him last year. He admitted that the shingles are essentially the opposite response he would have expected my body to have to the immune boosting medicines he started me on recently (and has since discontinued). However, he graciously allowed for the reality that my body fairly often has paradoxical responses to medicines, and he reframed the shingles in a positive way as much as possible. He said they are an echo of an early childhood illness so perhaps this is another step closer to peeling off the layers of illness and restoring my body to health.

We talked at length about what my health was like in Colorado, and especially my acupuncturist's initial diagnosis (which she shared with me two years into treatment) that I had been suffering from a "near devastation of yang," or my body's ability to make new energy, and basically was close to the point of multiple systems failures. Dr. C. reminded me that when we began working together my index (the naturopathic system's measure of illness in the body) was almost as high as it can possibly be. And that was despite three years of really excellent medical care in Colorado (where I was gently and thoroughly tended to by a DO, an MD who also specializes in Ayurveda, and my acupuncturist, who is a Doctor of Traditional Chinese Medicine). Dr. C. helped me reflect well on the progress my body has made in returning to being more physically active over the last year in Portland, and the fact that lately my index had been quite good.

He also very gently said that overextending myself could have contributed to my body's inability to suppress the shingles virus. He expressed concern over the emotionally and physically draining nature of the counseling work I do. We talked about how the type of work I do eventually may not look like traditional counseling, but that the traditional paradigm is where I am committed to work now. He encouraged me to cut back and slow down as much as possible in the short run.

Dr. C. also said that he can see me possibly being quite healthy in another year's time. I am trying to hold that lightly and not turn it into a hard and fast rule, a "should" or a deadline. I had been praying over the weekend about how I spent a year in Colorado before I got sick, and then spent three years trying to heal but fighting various issues - like altitude sickness - the whole time. Compared to those four years, one year of healing turning into two years of healing with a few setbacks doesn't seem too bad. The reality of the situation is that none of us is promised tomorrow, anyway, you know?

So, in light of all that, I made some tough decisions.

I talked with my supervisor. We agreed to leave things with my client caseload where they are for the next several months, then reevaluate. I truly believe that if I need to cut back further my supervisor will work with me on doing that. If not I believe God will make a way for me to walk away on good terms to a new situation that will be more healthy for me. At the moment I am carrying what amounts to the minimum load typically allowed.

I talked with the woman in charge of the jail visit program I volunteer for weekly. She has asked me to come on our regularly scheduled day for the next two weeks to give her the opportunity to line up some guest speakers. After that I will drop back to making only one or two jail visits per month for the foreseeable future. I love going to the jail and will miss visiting often.

I emailed the woman to whom I report about the volunteer domestic violence counseling I have been doing locally. I will stop seeing clients for now. The demand for counseling has increased recently. The program coordinator told me when I last saw her several weeks ago (before I got sick) that they will soon be bringing in two new counselors to meet demand, so my absence shouldn't be very disruptive. Most of my clients were one-time visitors who came in to decompress from crisis mode to survival mode. I doubt many of them will return soon. I did have one client coming regularly. I offered to do transitional sessions with that client if it would be helpful.

These baby steps may not sound like much but for me they are huge. Before I became a Christian I found my identity in achieving. After I became a Christian I'd like to say I found my identity exclusively in Christ. The truth is that I probably found it in serving as much as in Him for most of the past 11 years of our walk together. Part of that, I suppose, is rooted in the home I grew up in having been dominated by a person whose primary love language was acts of service. Although my primary love language is words of affirmation (with quality time an extremely close second) it is frequently through serving that I express my love for God, my friends, and my church, because in my home of origin that was the main way love was received. One of the bigger challenges of this latest health issue is that it has forced me to not serve for a while, and now to commit to serving less than I have recently enjoyed doing for the foreseeable future. It hurts me that I am not able to continue making the allergen-free communion bread for my congregation every Sunday, for example. It pains me to have to stop counseling survivors of domestic violence and to be less frequently in contact with incarcerated women who may not have anyone else coming to visit them in jail, let alone helping them work on issues important to them as they strive to avoid repeat offending. Honestly, though, there is more to it. I think the part of me that wrestles with trust, attachment and abandonment issues was on some level worried that stepping back from service would prompt Jesus to step back from me, as though He would register the change as a decrease in my love for Him and respond by withdrawing His love from me the way a human being might tend to do. Thank God that's not how He works. It's one thing to know that nothing can separate us from His love. It's another thing to experience it firsthand. There is not a doubt in my mind that these steps toward cutting back are answers to prayer. And that means that they are as much His as they are mine.

The most recent Bible study I've been doing is Beth Moore's new study of the book of James, called "Mercy Triumphs." It's a wonderful study, maybe particularly challenging to me in some ways currently because of its emphasis on works - "living it" - being evidence of true faith. This blog is one way I am striving to live out my faith while my physical activity is limited. My goal for the blog is to glorify God and hopefully encourage other people to draw closer to Him as I do the same. One of my other favorite points of the Bible study has been James' emphasis on every good and perfect gift being from our Father in heaven. Beth Moore makes the point that in the original Greek text the translation is closer to "every good and perfecting gift." In other words, every good thing from the hand of God that makes us more like Jesus Christ: Always in relationship to the Father and the Spirit, fully surrendered to the Father's will. Lord, may it be so! Thank you for this perfecting gift of illness and healing. It is certainly not a gift I would have chosen, Abba, but may it be to me as You have said, in the mighty name of Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit I pray!

Thank you all for allowing me to process this journey God is taking me on here with you. Thank you for helping me to let go, and hope on =).

The Things it Hurts to See

I've floundered a bit trying to decide what to write to you next. Until this morning, that is. I've delayed writing because the pain has been worse this week, or perhaps my ability to cope with it is slipping. Either way, I have hurt more and rested less, though most nights I have passed out cold from the pain and awakened 10 to 12 hours later to discover that it is still with me. Still at every turn I am comforted by God's grace and humbled by His faithfulness even in the smallest things.

It has been daunting to think of going back to work this week. The plan had been for me to attend a weekly staff meeting yesterday then work a full day today. Honestly, I was a little resentful. My supervisor had asked me last week to return to work this week. I wasn't feeling ready. I thought it was somewhat arbitrary and hardhearted of my supervisor to make that demand when he couldn't possibly know how I would be doing at this point in the healing process. I fretted a good bit about whether returning to work too quickly would send me on another downward spiral. Then I did what I always do: I gritted my teeth and tried to play through the pain, ignoring my better instincts and resigning myself to the fact that suffering may be a prominent part of my life, period.

Can you hear that? All the sinful self pity in that stinkin' thinkin'? It is almost deafening to me now, yet I marvel at how I miss it every time it starts. It's like a radio left on in the background. I don't even notice it until something jolts me out of the fog. Then suddenly I hear how grating it is. If it's that irritating to me I can't begin to imagine how odious it is to God.

God, who has been so gentle and compassionate with me in this little trial. God who has given me outstanding doctors and money to pay for their services and the medicines they prescribe. God who has given me amazing friends who support me and pray for me despite my sinful, self pitying ways and my vision too often turned inward.

God got me up and bathed and dressed and down the highway yesterday in time for that two hour staff meeting. God gave me the freedom and grace to tell my supervisor during the meeting that it was not going to work for me to return to work today. God softened my supervisor's heart and inclined him to allow me to have today off, and more - to leave yesterday's meeting early when the pain overpowered me.

And because God has a sense of humor (no, the Sense of Humor, the one that started them all) He had me reread the emails from my supervisor when I got home from that meeting. You know what I discovered? It wasn't my supervisor who said I should return to work yesterday. It was me, myself and I, binding myself to another "should" of my own design. The fact of the matter is that my supervisor had actually gone out of his way to say that if I felt returning to work this week would be too much too soon I could delay coming back until next week. In my highly craptacular quest for martyrdom I apparently saw fit to overlook that kindness completely. Consequently I did no small amount of worrying earlier this week, using plenty of energy that could have been directed to healing or Bible study or prayer about anything else besides how miserably unrealistic it was for me to have to return to work yesterday (the topic of an excess of my prayer time this week).

There is a reason Be Thou My Vision is one of my favorite hymns. Left to my own devices, even with two eyes working, I so often see things wrong. Abba, forgive me. Lord, hear my prayer. Please teach me to see everything the way You would have me see it. God, direct my focus. Let me always seek Your face.

And in this humbling realization there is grace, too. This week I signed up for one of those online Bible reading plans where you read through the whole Bible in a year. I love doing Bible study, but the sad truth is that unless I'm currently in an ongoing study I rarely make time to be in the Word every day. After praying about how to steep myself intentionally more in the Word the lightbulb came on and I signed up for one of the plans offered through BibleGateway.com. Yesterday's and today's Old Testament readings have highlighted the life of King David during the era of his monarchy. They have chronicled his successes in battle and his compassion for his friend Jonathan's family in the midst of all those victories. The next chapter after the moving account of David's compassionate outreach to Jonathan's crippled son is the story of David's sin with Bathsheba, culminating in the murder of her husband, Uriah, a dedicated soldier for and faithful servant of the King. I don't think it's a coincidence that today's New Testament reading is the story of the Prodigal Son, following immediately on the heels of the parable of the lost sheep and the parable of the lost coin.

How gracious of God to communicate to us clearly and repeatedly that He understands our failings and always stands ready to forgive our repentant hearts! He knows full well how prone we are to sin by worshiping our own twisted hearts and lifting up our own selfish desires, even riding high on seasons spilling over with His love. Praise Him, He knows. Yet He persists in loving us, in pursuing us and drawing us to Him with cords of love!

You know what comes next:
Be Thou my vision, O Lord of my heart
Naught be all else to me, save that Thou art
Thou my best thought by day or by night
Waking or sleeping Thy presence my light
Be thou my wisdom and Thou my true word
I ever with Thee and Thou with me, Lord
Thou my great Father, I, Thy true son
Thou in me dwelling and I with Thee one
Riches I heed not nor man's empty praise
Thou mine inheritance now and always
Thou and Thou only first in my heart
High King of heaven my treasure Thou art
High King of heaven my victory won
May I reach heaven's joys, O bright heaven's Son
Heart of my own heart whatever befall
Still be my vision O Ruler of all!

Great Expectations

I've been thinking a lot - and possibly not praying enough - about expectations lately. Not just the major goals we set for ourselves, like Gitz's Life Goals displayed in the right hand column below, but the smaller goals we set sometimes without realizing it. They're expectations we're barely conscious of most of the time. The ones that shape us in ways we can't or won't clearly see.

My favorite TV show is called Being Erica. I describe it as "Canada's best Sci-Fi time travel relational comedy drama." It's about a 30-something woman with a long list of regrets. She meets a therapist who gives her the opportunity to revisit each regret knowing what she knows now rather than what she knew at the time the events originally occurred. I love that because it strikes me as an apt metaphor for one of the ways we grow and heal. We allow our perspective to inform our judgments, to shape and refashion our "shoulds."

When I first got sick five years ago I was angry with myself. I thought I should be healthy. Then I thought I should recover within a certain amount of time, or I should be able to keep doing X or Y and not surrender the active lifestyle I had enjoyed in the past. I fumed about how I should be able to get through the day without pain. Most days I couldn't avoid pain anymore. The track I was on to finish my master's degree in two years suddenly unraveled, leaving in doubt if and when I would be able to complete the coursework let alone return to full-time employment.

I found myself remembering an earlier transition in my life. God was leading me to make major changes career wise and I had not a clue what each next step would be. For a while I stood still, baffled as to which way to go. A dear friend of mine kindly suggested that it's hard for God to use a parked car. In that instance she was entirely correct. The thing is, though, a part of my brain took that piece of situationally applicable wisdom, generalized it to all things in life, and internalized it as one major "should": "I should be active if I am going to serve God."

Well, you can probably guess what comes next. Lately my car hasn't just been parked. For all intents and purposes it has been up on blocks in the front yard. This is like the part in the pilot episode of Being Erica where Erica loses her composure at a family gathering and storms out of the room crying, "I am suffocating under the weight of your collective disappointment and disapproval!" It feels stifling to be unable to meet the expectations my own sinful nature sets for me about the type of life I should be living. That, after all, is really another way of saying the type of life I deserve. In reality the type of life I deserve is eternal punishment for my rebellion against God. I should suffer unending separation from God for my sins.

But the cross undoes that should, and all the other shoulds, too. It frees us to live apart from human expectations - our own and others' expectations for us. It liberates us to live secure in God's love. His only expectation for us is that we should choose to accept His grace and love poured out for us, to be reconciled and brought into eternal fellowship with Him and one another. Isn't that a beautiful expectation?

Years ago around the time my friend and I first talked about my car being parked God let me know that I would move to Portland. At the time I mistook that little bit of divine revelation as a wild thought that just popped into my head. I was living on the other side of the country and had no desire whatsoever to move to the Pacific Northwest. Well, it's a long story but there's no doubt anymore that God was letting me know I would find myself living in Portland one fine day. So here I am, close to a decade after the itinerary was initially published, wondering what comes next. Honestly, I didn't want to move here. Even after it was clear that God was leading me I was resistant to leave the Rocky Mountain town I had come to love. It was the first place I'd ever lived that truly felt like home. I had a solid support network and great doctors. But when God says go it is best to get moving. My doctors all thought my health would improve here. I won't lie to you. It has taken no small amount of work to keep that hopeful prognosis from becoming a giant should. Whether my health gets better or worse, though, God is holding me tight. Each day I pray that He will help me live a life that glorifies, honors and delights Him and brings Him great joy.

My life is what He will make of it. What I need to do is not limit Him by my shoulds or anyone else's shoulds, for that matter. He can heal me this minute if He chooses. He can also give me grace to live abundantly and choose joy, unhealed. My only expectation, in the end, is that He will surprise me time and again with wonders I never could have dreamed. If this past week has proven anything it has proven that!

True Confession and Fresh Perspective

Good morning. This is the day that the Lord has made! Let us rejoice and give thanks =).

Last night as I started thinking and then praying about what to write today I got so excited that it was hard to fall asleep. It was the beginning of a shift in thinking and knowing that puts things more correctly in perspective.

This whole week has been steeped in little miracles straight from the Father's hand. It has been delightful to revel in that with you, to give Him glory and credit and thanks. The thing is, I hope I would do at least as good a job of rejoicing in God's goodness and lavish love if the week had gone differently and I were now writing to you blind in one eye and physically scarred for life. Had that been the outcome it would not have diminished His boundless compassion one bit. The truth is that even if He never did a single kind thing for me during the course of my lifetime He already gave me the greatest gift in the history of the universe. Long before I was born He felt the rift of sin between us, and He chose to heal it. He chose to leave heaven and come to this fallen, broken world. He chose to live a life free from sin, though he faced pain and temptation like we all do, and though He had to live as an impoverished illegitimate man in a patriarchal society all about genealogy. Although He dreaded doing it, He willingly went to the cross and was executed like a common criminal. He did that all so that He could share His righteousness with me and with you, and bring us into healed relationship with Him for all eternity. He loves us that much.

So if He had opted not to intervene in my situation Easter week, if He had allowed me to go blind and be permanently scarred, I would still hope to sing the praises of His love and goodness. I would still hope to trust in His character and await the day when we will finally meet face to face with eager anticipation.

But He did choose to act mightily and in astounding ways on my behalf this week. So I've been praying about why that is, and I think it has to do with His reframing my perspective of the past.

This week of blogging began with the clear understanding, at long last, that He created me to need and as a consequence, to receive. There's a reason that lesson came at the beginning. There's an old, old wound that needed cleaning out and dressing to heal properly.

From the moment that my mother conceived me in love and in sin, I heard her heartbeat. I heard it every day until my premature birth. I heard it in the hospital with me, and when I was released to her care I heard it every day as she fostered me for three months before I went home with my adoptive parents. When I didn't hear her heartbeat anymore, I cried. I grieved, actually. Did you know that babies grieve? I learned that in a developmental psychology class. It makes sense. I just had never really considered it. Anyway, my adoptive father said I "would not stop screaming" for the first two weeks I lived with them. He said he didn't think they would ever get me "to shut up." They found a way.

In the family folklore one of the favorite stories my father would tell with pride was how he and my mother decided that they would keep me in an empty room on the back of their house so that I would "learn to entertain [my]self and not need attention." There was a nursery in their house. It was outfitted with the usual baby things. The nursery is where I spent the night. During the daytime I was in a room with plain white walls. A room empty of anything except a baby monitor and the wind up swing the adults would place and leave me in for the day. My parents made it a point not to respond quickly when I cried. That would have defeated the purpose.

That set the stage for at least two significant developments I can see in my life. One, which to me reads as clear evidence of God's redeeming hand on everything, is that I have a rich imagination and can turn anything into a game in a heartbeat. If you've ever seen the movie Amélie - one of my all time favorites - it's a little like that. Two, I learned that needing is risky, usually hurts, and frequently goes unanswered. Someone once observed that people who struggle with mental illness are often convinced of the following assumptions: the world is an unsafe place; I am inherently unacceptable; and, I am unworthy of love. Looking back I can see those lies of the enemy at play in my life. They set me up to collaborate in making much of the misery that used to follow me everywhere. I allowed them to lower my expectations a lot.

An unintended consequence was that they deformed my perception of God. My family identified themselves as Christian. I have no idea what it meant to them to say that, though. There was harsh talk in our house about "church people." My father hated Mother Theresa. He called her "that nosy little nun" and said he couldn't stand how she was always getting involved in things that were none of her business. When my mother was dying several people referred to my mother as "the most Christian person I have ever known." Before she got sick she talked with me about God at least once. Somewhere she had gotten this little bottle. It was frosted plastic and fit in the palm of her hand. The cap was robin's egg blue, and dainty metallic lettering across the front of the bottle said "Holy Water." One of my legs was mangled when I was born. The doctors told my parents I might never walk. Eventually I learned to limp, and my parents had me fitted for a series of painful metal leg braces designed to stretch my leg to a normal length and position. I wore the braces all day and slept in them at night for years. All they did was hurt. Other than my level of pain nothing changed. By the time I was seven I didn't have to wear the braces anymore. My parents had given up on them making a difference. My mother had found the bottle of Holy Water.

She locked us in her bedroom and swore me to secrecy. She said we were going to ask God to heal my leg. I don't remember if she prayed before she put the holy water on my leg. I only recall that around the same time she had given me one of those little charms with a mustard seed inside it, with that quote from the gospel of Matthew about how if you have faith as small as a mustard seed you can say to a mountain "Move from here to there," and the mountain will move, nothing will be impossible for you. When God didn't heal my leg I thought I must not have believed right, or maybe I displeased Him somehow. A short time later when my mother got sick with the cancer that would eventually kill her I tried very hard to believe that He would answer my prayers and let her live. I didn't have much hope that God would do that, though. My expectations had already been lowered. [Years later when God did heal my leg through surgery following a painful accident I was so far removed from Him that I couldn't see His hand at work. Actually I only made the connection between that early prayer and the eventual healing just last night. Sometimes I think He must be fascinated by my ability to continue adding 2 and 2 together, getting anything but 4 as the answer, but I digress...]

Those two experiences - God opting not to heal my leg instantly, and God allowing my mother to die - left my immature, confused mind with the impression that God must be no more interested in meeting my needs, loving me, or showing compassion to me than my parents were when they kept me isolated in that stark empty room. It was a little worse than that, though. If my mother was one of the most Christian people in the world and God let her suffer that excruciating illness and death despite her prayers for a miracle, I figured He would really hurt regular people like me. A child's mind makes those kinds of leaps.

I believe this week has been about God cleaning out and binding up those old wounds so that they can heal completely. About three of four weeks ago I began praying to the Lord that if there was any hidden anger, bitterness or resentment in my heart He would bring it to light and heal it. If you've never seen shingles, let me just say, they look pretty darned angry.

God in His sovereignty could have opted not to intervene in this latest illness. Instead He chose to show up in unmistakable ways. He has surrounded me gently yet powerfully with his love to a degree that cannot be missed or denied. And I think He has done it to raise my expectations, because my lowering them had limited how He could relate to me.

I've been through loss and illness and pain like many people - more than some, less than others. People with a secure base of God's love in their lives handle those things differently than I've handled them. They handle the trials with an expectation of God's steadiness through it all. In my life as a Christian over the last 11 years I have worked hard to cultivate an expectation of God's presence, but deep down I only expected Him to make the excruciating bearable. I limited Him by refusing to allow for the possibility that He might restore the wonder and joy and love in my life, and that He might dare to increase it because that's Who He is!

I'm sorry, Abba. Thank you for forgiving me. Thank you for never once leaving me where you found me. Please keep loving me the way You want to love me. Please help me love You the way You deserve to be loved, and to see You for who You really are. Amen.

Sing with me now, y'all:

He is jealous for me,
loves like a hurricane
I am a tree
bending beneath the weight of His wind and mercy

All of a sudden
I am unaware
of these afflictions eclipsed by Glory
and I realize just how beautiful You are
and how great your affections are for me

So heaven meets earth
like an unforeseen kiss
and my heart turns violently inside of my chest
and I don't have the will to maintain these regrets
when I think about the way
He loves us, oh how He loves us
how He loves us all!

Spoiled Rotten (and the beat goes on...)

Ever have one of those experiences that rock your world and leave you feeling like things couldn't possibly get better? Tuesday night when Dr. P brought me that elusive medicine was one of those times for me.

Today topped it.

Today was my follow up visit with the specialist. She originally wanted to follow up yesterday but no appointments were available so we set it for today.

I expected the doctor to stain and dilate my eyes again, leaving me not fit to drive. It was a little tricky finding a ride for lunchtime in the middle of the work week. I found this wonderful service called Noah Medical Transportation out of Vancouver, WA (check them out at www.noahmedicaltransportation.com if you ever need help getting to non emergency medical appointments). The regular taxi companies wouldn't touch me since I'm contagious, but Noah is set up for just this sort of thing. That being said, there might have been some misconception about what shingles are: They draped the back seat of the cab in protective sheeting like they were prepared for something to come shooting out of me on the ride. That made me smile. The driver could not have been more prompt, courteous or kind.

Despite that, truthfully I was nervous on the drive to the clinic. My eye and face hurt more today than they have during this whole episode. Last night was rougher than the night before, too.

But I was all prayed up about the appointment, and blessed beyond measure to know that so many people were praying for me. The two doctors who saw me today came into the appointment understanding about the delay in getting the medicine started, and the change from the first choice of medication to the alternate drug. Unfortunately there was a miscommunication about dosing the medicine. I've been taking the prescribed dose for the first choice medicine, not the alternative drug I ended up on. I've been taking half as much medicine as I should have been taking.

The doctors seemed a little unnerved about that. They prepped my right eye and took a look. They were shocked at what they saw. Even with half the dose of drugs there is far less damage in my eye than they would have expected to find on the full load of medicine. Is that not a miracle?! I told them it was the answer to lots of prayers.

Thank you all. Praise God.

Ever since Sunday when I awoke with the shingles this line from a hymn we sing at church has been running through my mind, "Oh praise the One who paid my debt and purchased me with righteousness." I've been singing it constantly, sometimes to myself and occasionally aloud. This afternoon waiting for the Noah cab to pick me up and carry me home I was definitely singing out loud. Because it was such a lovely sunshiny day I also mixed in some John Hiatt, but mostly it was praise music I was singing. (Well, even JH's stuff is sung in praise and with thanksgiving to God when I sing it, truly.)

I wish you could have been with me on that sidewalk in the sunshine. I felt like you were, really. It was so joyful. Even though my face is an angry shade of maroon red today. The sores can't hide the joy. Gitz defined joy along these lines: the unwavering conviction that God is in control and has blessed me to be a part of what He is doing not in spite of my circumstances, but because of them. No way to contain joy like that today! While I was singing this guy walked by with what looked like everything he owned in this world strapped to his back. He gave me high fives (both hands) "for being sexy as hell." I think he has some sort of ministry of encouragement going, like Barnabas would have if he lived on the street in downtown PDX. The guy bounded on down the sidewalk and high five'd an elderly gentleman in a crosswalk. Just one hand for the older man, though. Guess whatever he was vibing didn't have that "as hell" quality to it. I went back to singing....

Another day helping "Keep Portland Weird." Another day to praise the One who paid my debt. Thank you, Jesus. Thank you, Lord!

Awash in Grace, Swimming in Joy

Good morning. It's Wednesday in Portland and down comes the rain. Yesterday was sunny and 60. It was an emotional rollercoaster of a beautiful thing.

Yesterday afternoon was my appointment to follow up with an eye specialist about the shingles that now stretch from my nose to the top of my forehead, all the way around my right eye.

The reason I went? When I was in the Emergency Room Easter Sunday the physician examining me peeked into my swollen eye, remarked that she didn't see anything (using nothing but her own two eyes and her glasses), and that if I had shingles in the eye I would probably know from the pain, but I should follow up with a specialist Tuesday or Wednesday as a precaution. Apparently shingles in the eye can lead to permanent vision loss. Blindness.

So I went to the appointment expecting them to take a slightly closer look and confirm that my eye was in the clear. That didn't happen. The three doctors who examined my eyes under several stains and dilation all noted multiple lesions on my right cornea. Not to worry, they said, so long as I started drops immediately my eye would probably heal fine. They wrote me prescriptions and told me they wanted to see my today. Meaning that a lot was supposed to happen between starting the medicine hopefully by 5:00 PM yesterday and today. Well, there was no appointment available today after all, so I'm checking back in tomorrow, but you get the idea of how serious they were about it being "imperative" that I start the drops 'immediately." Yesterday was big on emotionally charged "I" words.

Now, I had only one eye working yesterday, so one of my girlfriends had kindly volunteered to cart me around. Note to you all: If you are facing any sort of potentially weird and/or stressful situation it helps to have your girlfriend who is actually on the comedy club circuit as your wingman. I didn't know when we left the appointment how important my friend's wit and wisdom would be.

So we wheeled our way homeward, swinging by the local pharmacy to grab the meds. The local pharmacy doesn't stock that medication, however. None of the local pharmacies do. By the time it was apparent that none of them carry the prescription the doctor's office had stopped answering their phone and turned on the voicemail that instructs patients how to reach the on-call physician. So at 4:45 PM I began what became a series of about 11 calls to and with the on-call doctor.

Dr. P (let's stick to initials since I didn't get her permission to blog about this, but you'll see why I just can't not share) first returned my call at 7:20. She consulted with the lead physician who had seen me earlier, and promptly called me back. She said it was "critical" that I start the medication last night. She would prescribe an alternative to the notoriously unavailable first choice. She promised to call back as soon as the script was in. When she called back it was to tell me that she had discovered that none of the local pharmacies carry the alternative. She said she had reached out to 2 or 3 of her colleagues and they were all working to find any medicine - first choice, second choice, even a sample - to get me through the night. Half an hour later she rang back to say that they had located one bottle of medicine, she was picking it up (in NW Portland, far from where she lives in SW Portland) and she was driving it out to me (in NoPo) since my eye was swollen shut. It was after 9:00 PM when we finally met face to face for the first time. Dr. P had paid for the prescription (which was very spendy) out of her own pocket. She allowed me to repay her with a personal check, although she doesn't know me from Adam's housecat. She seemed far more concerned that I start the medicine than that she get paid for it.

Is that not overwhelming? It hurt to cry last night because of how swollen my eye was, but there was no getting around it. I was absolutely undone by God's grace poured out through Dr. P who went to such lengths to get me the medicine, through her colleagues who had collaborated with her after hours in finding it in the first place, through my friend who had driven me to the appointment and helped me run down numbers for all the pharmacies we could think of in the area and kept me laughing as much as possible in the meantime, through my family doctor who had checked in with me on how things were going to offer encouragement along the way, and through every single person praying me through the afternoon and evening.

Now, if I'm honest, my preference yesterday in the moment would have been for the first pharmacy my friend and I stopped at on the way home to have handed me the prescription and sent me off on a nice, quiet evening full of rest. If that had happened there would have been no anxiety, no excruciatingly fervent prayers for help and patience and trust in the turmoil. And the experience of God's loving presence and lavish provision - or, more correctly, my perception of those things - would have been wildly diminished.

But God loves us enough to make sure we can't miss it. When we let God love us the way He wants to love us there can be no doubt. He doesn't leave room for it. It may not come in the way we would prefer to receive it, but it is utterly unmistakable for anything else. And 10 times out of 10,  though it isn't in the way we would have chosen it to be it is so much more than our limited hearts and minds could have imagined otherwise.

Praise God from whom all blessings flow
     Praise Him all creatures here below
Praise Him above, ye heavenly host
     Praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost.
Amen!

And I'm typing this with two eyes open, by the way =)....

The First Post

Hello out there! Thanks for clicking by =). This blog is inspired by the incomparable Sara Frankl, a/k/a Gitzen Girl, who - during her short life - taught me much about what it means to "Choose Joy."

Imani Kesi is Swahili for "faith born during difficult times." It seemed a fitting name given Gitz's inspiration of this blog. She came into my life a few years back when my health seemed to leave town in a hurry. When people ask me what happened my short answer is usually that my odometer rolled over and all my warranties expired at once. Like ripples rolling out from a single stone thrown into a pond, the challenges have kept coming since then. If I'm honest, not one of them has been something that I would have imagined. You don't go from being an active 30-something to feeling like you're about a hundred years old overnight, at least not typically. Apparently it's quite an easy transition if your thyroid and your adrenals conspire to take down your immune system, leaving you with allergies galore and resulting chronic inflammation and pain. Through it all, God has been so gracious to me. This blog is about His grace, and how He has used that grace to transform me.

I'm writing this with only one eye. Today the other one is swollen shut. Yesterday, Easter Sunday, I awoke with shingles. Never had them before. Getting an education in them as we speak....

The shingles were a surprise. Things had been going well lately, at least relatively speaking. After three years of restriction from all but the most basic physical activity, I had finally been not just cleared but flat out encouraged by my doctors to get moving! I had begun dancing several times a week. Now, if you've never been inactive for a few years you probably are picturing fluid, graceful movements or rhythmically robust movements. Don't picture that. Instead, think of the Tin Man moving again after his first few spritzes of oil. That was my dancing. After a few weeks it transformed to Tin Man With Heart =).

Then two weeks ago I caught the crud that everyone and their dog has had lately. Because over the past few years my body has demonstrated a frightening efficiency for converting crud into pneumonia, my family doctor ordered a week's bed rest to try to prevent that from happening again. I was alright with that. Of course it is a disruption to take a week off of work, but if you can do it you do it and say "Thank you" to everyone who plays a part in making it possible. Friday was the first day it felt like the crud might really be subsiding. Saturday I was downright hopeful of returning to work today. Yesterday, Sunday, the shingles hit.

Easter Sunday.

And you know what? Jesus was right there with me the whole time. Not once did I feel alone. Of course, Jesus used countless friends near and far to love on me throughout the day. But even in those stretches of time with no texts, emails, or calls, He was holding me close. He helped me respond in grace to people who were less than gracious, like the intake nurse who insisted that I am too young to have shingles so that couldn't possibly be what was all over my face. Or the ER doctor who could not understand the questions I asked about how to take care of these infectious lesions in light of the fact that I have another skin condition currently limiting the chemicals, including soap and hand sanitizer, that I can use on my hands. Part of responding in grace is learning to accept people where they are, rather than insisting on bringing them where we would like for them to be. That's been a hard lesson for me, I think because I've been so resistant in the past to receiving God's grace.

I've been a Christian for 11 years. It has taken most of that time for me to allow Abba to soften my heart enough for His grace to penetrate it to the core. My whole identity had been bound up in not needing anything from anyone, primarily because I come from a home and a background of abuse and neglect. It amazes me how that early stuff tends to stick. Even when you can't see it anymore, odds are it is lurking somewhere, maybe disguised as something else like "independence" or "self-sufficiency."

A few years back (during the initial wave of my illness) I located my birth mother, who had been 36 when I was born. You want to hear something funny? In her file with the adoption agency she described herself as "fiercely independent." Isn't that eerie? It's inter-generational, that brokenness that compels us not to need.

And it's sin.

For me to refuse God's grace - poured direct from His hand, through the loving, helpful hands of others - is for me to usurp God's place. It is to deny that He created me to need, and, as a consequence, He created me to receive.

Alright, Lord, here I stand with arms wide open. Years ago when I was on my knees sobbing asking You what You wanted from me You told me that I hadn't let You love me the way You want to love me. Forgive me, Lord. Love me the way that You want to love me.

Bring it on!