THE PROBLEM WITH PRAYER

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It's a topic I both love and hate to discuss, mostly because it's so nebulous.  And yet…it’s also powerful and life-altering and sanity-preserving.  Corrie ten Boom said, “Prayer is the slender thread that moves the hand of God,” yet she watched her sister die a horrible death in a concentration camp.  How could she believe so firmly in prayer when her own pleas had failed to save someone she loved so fiercely?

Some of you might remember Dotsy, a friend I met over the Internet when her daughter Googled microcystic adnexal carcinoma (MAC) and discovered my blog.   After months of correspondence, we met for the first time last summer, both post-op, both with scarred faces, both so grateful to be past the hardest part of our MacJourneys.

Except that Dotsy's journey is still ongoing and it has just taken an unexpected turn.  She went in this week for some pre-op exams before further reconstructive surgery and the doctors discovered something suspicious in the area of her initial tumor.  A biopsy was taken and results should be in soon.  When I heard Dotsy's news, my first impulse was to pray.  Drop everything and pray.  My second impulse was to get others praying too—first among them, my choir.  She's been our prayer project since last year and we're committed to "our Dotsy."  In the days before her check-up, we'd put this short video together for her as a cyber-send-off.  Needless to say, our prayers have redoubled since Dotsy's disconcerting news reached us.  (Click on this link to view the short video we made for Dotsy.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhvcbRRTpe8

"Prayer is not overcoming God's reluctance, but laying hold of His willingness."  Martin Luther

Opinions about prayer seem to be as strong as they are varied.  Some call it a hoax.  Others call it wishful thinking.  I even had a student who considered it tantamount to mass hysteria.  To be honest, there were many years in my own life when I doubted that prayer had any effect on the concerns that mattered most to me.  My misgivings hardly made me unique.  There is something so mysterious and unpredictable about prayer and God that I'm sure there are few believers who haven't, at one point or another, wondered whether it really "worked" or not.

Several years ago, I read a book by Dutch Sheets called “Intercessory Prayer.”  (If you're a student or former student and would like a copy, let me know...I'll be happy to buy one for you.)  I don't agree with everything he writes, particularly in the latter portion of his work, but his definition of prayer as it relates to God's partnership with us is brilliant, Biblically sound and absolutely logical—mystery, inscrutability and all.  Prayer doesn't bounce off the ears of a deaf God.  Prayer doesn't temporarily distract us from the pain of real life in the real world.  Prayer isn't the invention of overwhelmed humans faced with challenges larger than they could tackle alone and seeking, through intercession, to "pass the buck" to a fictitious higher power.  No—prayer is His endowment in us of the ability to effect the course of life in this world.  He is still the sole ruler of Heavens and earth, His plans for us beautiful and redemptive (and more often than not derailed by the free will we so carelessly use to hobble His best for us).  But He also gave us the supreme responsibility and honor of releasing some of His power in this world through our prayers.  Some of them won't get answered in a way we recognize, some of them will go unanswered for years, and some of them will leave us baffled, angry or confused, but every prayer we say is counted and important--another opportunity for us to partner with God in promoting His plans for this agonizing planet.

"We must begin to believe that God, in the mystery of prayer, has entrusted us with a force that can move the Heavenly world,and can bring its power down to earth." Andrew Murray

My favorite prayer image is from Revelations 5: bowls of incense, which are the prayers of the saints.  Our prayers don't float up into a void and dissipate.  They're collected in golden bowls.  They amass.  They build in power.  And then they are released.

Some of Dotsy's prayer warriors.

But what about Dotsy, you might ask.  She has been bathed in prayer since the beginning of this ordeal and now is facing another interminable wait for results that might shake the foundations of her world.  What about another friend of mine who, after years of trying to survive a debilitating illness, now is waiting to find out if she has breast cancer too?  What about the lost children whose parents pray day and night to be reunited with them?  What about the woman who is about to be assaulted and screams for God to protect and spare her?  I wish I had answers for every circumstance that is painfully incomprehensible.

"Prayer is weakness leaning on omnipotence."  W. S. Bowd

When things get muddied, I always choose to focus on what I know, and this I DO know without a doubt: prayer didn't spare me (we must all bear life in this broken world and the consequences of the sin others inflict on us as well as our own).  Prayer didn't built a magical wall around me that shielded me from hurt.  Given my history, I can attest that strangers can inflict the kind of pain that cripples in invisible ways, that those who are supposed to protect you can do more harm than good, and that cancer doesn't spare people devoted to God and sometimes even strikes twice.  But prayer—your prayers—steady and full of faith—made the unthinkable bearable.  They were a stronghold in the quicksand.  A sliver of light in the most oppressive darkness.  A shred of companionship in the loneliest of ordeals.  We don't know yet if they yielded long-term, recurrence-free health and they certainly didn't dissolve the scars of my youth, but they gave me that undefinable surge of hope and strength and emotional healing that can only come from something as simple, powerful and unfathomable as prayer.

Whatever your frustrations with the mechanics and outcomes of prayer, K.E.E.P  P.R.A.Y.I.N.G!  We'll never understand it all, and there may be times when we want to throw in the towel, but as someone who has received the kind of peace that can only have come through the prayers of believers who cared enough to intercede without guarantees or manuals, I can only urge you to pray.  As Jesus urged His disciples, “Pray and don’t give up.”

“Prayer can never be in excess.” C. H. Spurgeon

And if your prayers, in the next few days, include Dotsy and my other friend (unnamed by request), I'd be even more grateful.

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Some photos of the past couple of weeks: choir, the first costuming day for the school play (Nov. 13, 14), and a dinner at my place.

PAIN WITH A VIEW

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A year ago this week, I entered the hospital in Ann Arbor for my tenth (and hopefully final) de-cancering surgery.  I marked the anniversary last weekend by taking a quick, overnight trip to Switzerland with my dear friend, Mari Ellen.  It started out wonderfully—a beautiful autumn day, a charming (and affordable) Bed & Breakfast nestled in an alpine valley with a breathtaking view of the surrounding mountains…

(That's our chalet!)

The small town of Kandersteg is as Swiss as they get, and that mountain rising up behind the chalet on the above picture was our destination that afternoon.  Now, I’ve come to realize that the reason the Swiss have built cable-car lines along the sides of their steepest mountains is that climbing them in any other fashion is tantamount to “suicide by effort.”  Sadly, that realization dawned only after Mari Ellen and I had decided that we’d tackle the impossible incline and call it our challenge for the day.

The path was narrow, uneven, sometimes treacherous, and consistently so steep that we often used our hands AND feet to make the ascent.  By the time we’d made it a third of the way up, I was doing my best impersonation of an asthmatic heifer running a marathon and trying very hard to fill my lungs with thin mountain air.  We took a breather at the foot of one of the giant cable-car pylons, ostensibly to enjoy the view, and I wheezed, “I don’t think I can do this,” while gazing disgustedly at the small distance we’d traveled.  A minute later, we were at it again, clawing our way up the 3-kilometer cliff that passed for a walking path.  I can’t remember the last time I was so physically challenged.  The climb was endless, the altitude was debilitating, and though the views were stunning, they paled in comparison with the colored dots dancing in front of my eyes (oxygen deprivation is a dangerous thing!).

But we made it.  After over an hour of interminable effort and dogged determination, the path flattened a little, then widened, then became a paved road that lead blessedly DOWN to an azure alpine lake, fed by glaciers, and magnificently lit by the mid-afternoon sun.  The view was almost too much to take in as we sat…and breathed…and absorbed.

I received two emails, this week.  One from my friend Dotsy, a fellow MAC-sufferer who will be having her second facial surgery this month.  And one from a new friend who somehow found me online.  She received word yesterday that the surgery that was supposed to heal her of cancer didn’t.  It’s back, and her immediate future holds more surgery, chemotherapy and radiation.  Both of these women are strong and hopeful.  Both have a faith that will be their fiercest ally during the challenges ahead, and both have no idea yet of what their “mountain” will truly entail.

(Swiss chalets are horticultural masterpieces.)

I was writing to them yesterday and struggling to conjure up something meaningful to say.  How could mere words possibly make a difference, given the enormity of what they face? In many ways, their battles against this disease are much more taxing than mine was, which leaves me with little other than prayers to offer…except that I am a survivor.  I’ve been there, climbed that, and now have the “view” to prove it.  That alone, even without words put to it, carries a victorious message.

Thinking back on my Swiss excursion and the many times when all I could say was “I don’t think I can do this,” I realize that my defeatism had a lot to do with the fact that I knew nothing of what awaited at the top of that mountain.  I knew nothing about the distance still to be traveled to get there or the condition of the path ahead of me.  I wonder how different the experience might have been if someone had been standing at the summit with an eye on the azure lake and a hand held out to me, saying, “It’s worth it.  I can see it.  You’re over halfway here.  Come on—you can do this!”

On this anniversary of my tenth surgery, I am reminded of the responsibility we have, as survivors, to stand at the top and call down to those still struggling to the summit.  Whether they’re emotional, physical, or spiritual, the mountains we’ve conquered are not ours to own, but ours to share.  We might not always want to revisit the pain we’ve suffered or the crippling we’ve endured, but if we don’t offer them to others as a testimony of God’s sustenance and love, our fellow travelers may not have to courage to find their way to the top.

My encouragement to you?  Speak of the treacherous paths and looming precipices you’ve known, tell the story of your climb, the tale of your survival.  And when you’ve reached a place that is beautiful and stable and “breathable,” call down to those who follow and tell them of the strength that comes from surrendered weakness, of the peace that comes from vulnerable faith.  Tell them that you stumbled.  Tell them that you wanted to give up.  Tell them that you were bruised by doubt and battered by despair…but that you made it.  You.  Made.  It.  And the view from the summit of survival?  It’s priceless.

(Many more photos of the Swiss adventure are posted on Facebook!)

THE CRIPPLING OUCH

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In my mind, I’m a world-class body builder who can bench press a VW bug.  My biceps are so large my arms can’t hang straight and my six-pack has morphed into a twelve-pack.  That’s how buff I am.

All fantasy, of course, but it sure would have come in handy a week ago, when a fantastic Christmas present from my mom demanded that I drive to France and move a LARGE piece of furniture to Germany with the help of only one other person.  I lifted, I pushed, I pulled, I twisted…and I did something nasty to my lower back.  The onset was slow in coming, but once the full-fledged damage made itself known, my average morning commute from my bed to my couch went something like this:  “Ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch and oh-please-make-it-stop OUCH!”  The only position in which I was comfortable was flat on my back.  Everything else, whether it demanded moving a fraction of an inch or driving a mile, was excruciating.  I briefly asked God if I could go back and repeat any of my surgeries rather than be put through this much greater discomfort, but I think He dismissed the plea as the ramblings of a pain-killer-warped mind!

Pain.  C. S. Lewis called it “God’s megaphone to reach a deaf world.”  I think it was Bon Jovi who called it “a burning fire that screams your bleepin’ name”!  It’s a constant in life.  From our first stubbed toe to our last pulled muscle, from our first broken heart to our last wrenching loss, pain is inevitable.

I’ve been receiving emails lately from BFA students who have graduated in the past few years.  The pain they describe is something much less tangible than what I’ve been living with since last Tuesday.  Theirs is a pain that can’t be remedied by eight ibuprofens a day and a strategically placed hot pad.  It’s a pain that found me speaking, at five a.m., to a young woman I love.  At the time of the call, she was sitting in the rain on a rock beside a dumpster outside her dorm, utterly bereft and convinced that she would not make it through the torturous transition into adulthood.  The emails, the phone calls…they all point to the same certainty that the pain will never ebb, that the wrenching will never ease, that the lostness will never find a sense of recognition.  I’ve known that dark abyss.  I’ve wallowed in its misery and clawed at its slick walls and come to the same debilitating conclusion these former students have reached—that life will never get better, that joy will never return, that wholeness will never be mine to grasp again.

From the bottom of the abyss, there is little perspective and even less ability to envision a brighter future.  Our vision is crippled by the impossibly tall, hostile walls of fear and helplessness as they narrow inexorably and threaten to crush us.  We long for healing—for that miraculous moment when the darkness will swirl away like coffee down a drain.

Healing seldom comes in a burst of miraculous wholeness.  One of the biggest mistakes we can make is to hope for something that sudden.  I think we sometimes assume that a gradual healing isn’t healing at all, but that an instant wellness is proof of God’s intervention.  I disagree.  And my spasming back and weak legs, this week, reminded me of that fact.  For days, it was all I could do to fold myself, wincing and cringing, into my car for the short drive to school.  In class, if I dropped a board marker, one of the students had to pick it up for me, and if I stood from the piano stool too fast, I had to grasp the edge of the instrument until the screaming pain in my back and leg subsided.

I got home from school today, intent on plopping down on my heating bad again, and was inserting my key in the front door when I realized that I’d made it out of my car without mumbling idle threats to rusty vertebrae and pinched nerves.  I realize AFTER the fact, that for the first time in a week, I’d walked down the steps to my apartment without having to pause and allow my back to rest.  Looking back, I’m not sure when the change happened, but it did.  It did.

The lesson here?  It’s very simple, really, though I temporarily lost track of it in my post-furniture-moving pain.  It’s a truth I’ve been repeating to pre-graduation seniors ever since I’ve been at BFA.  The bad days will make themselves known in unmistakable ways.  There’s no need to waste time looking for those.  But those small inklings that things are getting better?  Those tiny brightenings, those almost insignificant and random acts of kindness we might miss because we’re so overwhelmed by grief?  They’re much more difficult to see than the darkness, but so much more important to acknowledge.  So if you’re one of those people whose pain is so overwhelming that you can’t fathom it ever getting bearable, would you please consider these actions?

1.  Allow more time to pass before concluding that your life will always be this way.

2.  Make it a regular exercise to acknowledge the smallest of good things that have happened to you each day.  Write them down to give them more weight.

3.  Every couple of weeks, look back.  See how bad things were a while ago.  Consider what small progress you’ve made—however small it is (like me getting out of my car without pain for the first time) and be grateful for that.  I still can’t put on my pants without someone shoving a cattle-prod into my spine, but I can lean into my bathroom mirror to apply my mascara without hitting the ceiling and yelping—that’s progress.  It’s not full healing, but it’s PROGRESS.  And that’s cause to celebrate.

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Some pictures of a recent Sunday afternoon tea...

TWIN BIRTHS!

 

THE C-WORD

Change.  In most communities, it’s a word that inspires anticipation of adventures to come.  Obama supporters made of it their mantra during his presidential campaign and there’s a Korean student at BFA who still screams “We want change!” on occasion—a sort of political Tourette’s syndrome—though he knows nothing of the man or the agenda behind the slogan.

(Change illustrated here be successive generations of siblings.  Last year,
Bear and Erin frequently dropped by.  This year, I hope their younger sisters will too!)

I woke up well over a week ago with change stirring in my mind, and though it has been an integral part of my entire life as an MK and then a missionary, I must admit that the notion terrified me.  MKs usually respond to change in one of two diametrically opposed ways:  craving it or dreading it.  I’m afraid I’m a card-carrying member of the latter category.

I won’t go into details yet about the changes that might lie ahead of me.  All I’ll say here is that even considering the C-word sent me careening headlong into a sort of emotional tailspin in those initial days—the knot in my stomach, the tears just below the surface, the middle-of-the-night moments of panic were all symptoms of my reluctance to face C-H-A-N-G-E.  I finally realized that my fear held more rebellion than terror.  I didn’t want my life to be different, and the thought that it might have to be brought out the foot-stomping four-year old in me. 

You want to know how much I despise change?  I’ve lived in the same apartment for 16 years.  The carpet is well over 25 years old, threadbare and inhabited by generations of “nasties.”  The rest of the place is infested with so many spiders that I’m considering forcing them to pay part of the rent.  It’s located at the top of a ridiculously steep road, which means that snowy weather turns my morning commute into an extreme sport.  There are widening gaps in my bedroom ceiling and the fake-wood linoleum in the hallways is buckled and gouged

But it’s home.  It’s familiar.  It’s predictable.  It doesn’t CHANGE.

After a few days of wasting my emotional energy on futile “buts,” I fell back on my usual habit of seeking reasons to be grateful.  It worked with two forms of cancer, so why not apply it to potential change too?  It’s my way of disarming the fear and minimizing its influence over me.  God knew I would come to that conclusion at the beginning of this past week and He orchestrated enough “positives” to convict me.  He even brought my mom to town for some company on the road of discovery.  Here is a very short summary of reasons to be grateful for change.

I’d feared, with last year’s graduation, that some of my most beloved students would quickly drift into new lives after they’d left here.  On Thursday, I received a custom designed apron from Squirt, Bear and Erin with our picture on it and a caption that read, “Poop on long-distance!”  Yes, our roles and dynamics have changed, but our lives are still indelibly marked by each other, even with an ocean between us.  Change is clearly not a terminal condition.

I found this small wall clock at a flea market a week ago.  It was so dirty it was gray, its glass opaque with years of accumulated muck.  I bought it for a steal and brought it home, quickly cleaning and “oiling” it and discovering beauty beneath the layers of dust.  Not once did I feel guilty for inflicting change on my new prized possession, because the change actually restored its grace and worth.  Change can be cleansing and beautifying.

 

At the beginning of this school year (ie. two weeks ago) my high school choir consisted of 30 girls and 6 guys.  Not exactly a viable balance, particularly when split into four vocal parts!  As we began to practice, I realized that only about 10 of the students had ever sung in a choir before—and some of the others were so new to music that they didn’t know what clef to read notes from.  And then a massive recruiting program began (spurred on by the promise of homemade cinnamon rolls).  In no time, our male population had grown to 13.  The first few practices were rough—really rough—but in one short week, we’d nearly mastered two songs and begun on a third.  To my astonishment, this merry band of musical misfits was producing pieces of such accuracy, nuance and musicality that I couldn’t help but marvel at their transformation.  Change sometimes holds unexpected and beautiful surprises.

Donnie graduated seven years ago.  He was one of those students who carved out a significant place in my life.  As his mom and dad are temporary dorm parents these days, he returned to Germany this week for the first time since he graduated, and we were able to spend hours and hours together catching up on the intervening years.  Has he changed?  Yes—in ways that sober, excite and convict me.  Somewhere in those seven years, he found himself and did some healing and developed a constructive dream for his life.  I had him speak to my choir for a few minutes one day, and he floored me by referring to me as his spiritual mother.  For a woman who will not have children, it was a significant statement, especially coming from the productive, wise and insightful young man he has become.  Change, even in others, can be so very rewarding.