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!