Hope Heals

"So its Labor Day weekend, should we go somewhere?   I mean its a long weekend and the only thing at church is that guest speaker, so we wouldn't be missing much.  What would we do with Dean? Would it be too complicated to try to pack up the family for a road trip?  Probably. OK, we'll just stay in town and go to church Sunday, I guess and maybe go somewhere Saturday or Monday? Sure, that sounds good to me"
As you can tell the decision to stay and go to Church this Sunday was nothing we could really boast about. It was out of necessity, almost because it was too hard to do anything else. Its not like George and I can be proud of our loyalty to church or anything. We were totally prepared to skip this Sunday if something better showed its face.  Thank you God for your grace.  I mean it, where would any of us be without it?  We have NO idea most times what You have in store for us.  Forgive us for our worldly inclinations and guide us to a more eternal mindset in our decisions each day Lord.

So there's a BBQ dinner after church today.  I never did call to say if we planned to come and what I would bring. So I made cookies. You simply cannot go wrong with cookies.  And it was a good decision. They only had store-bought desserts, except for mine (toot toot. that was my horn. I am tooting my own horn over here).  I should mention here for anyone who does not know:  A "BBQ" dinner anywhere other than the south is not a pig pickin', do not get excited.   It is what we refer to as a "cookout"  or "grilling burgers and dogs".  Just want the picture in your head to be right.  No pork- just burgers and dogs. Onwards and upwards to the more important part....

We walk into worship and hear:
Blessed be Your name
In the land that is plentiful
Where Your streams of abundance flow
Blessed be Your name

Blessed be Your name
When I'm found in the desert place
Though I walk through the wilderness
Blessed be Your name

Every blessing You pour out
I'll turn back to praise
When the darkness closes in
Lord, still I will say

Blessed be the name of the Lord
Blessed be Your name
Blessed be the name of the Lord
Blessed be Your glorious name

Blessed be Your name
When the sun's shining down on me
When the "world's all as it should be"
Blessed be Your name

Blessed be Your name
On the road marked with suffering
Though there's pain in the offering
Blessed be Your name

You give and take away
You give and take away
My heart will choose to say.
"Lord, blessed be Your name."
Matt Redman



"You give and take away, my heart will choose to say, 'Lord blessed be your name" Job 1:21

Something told me to sit tight and get ready. I wish it would have also told me, go grab some tissue from the bathroom. The next hour would hold one of the most meaningful and powerful testimonies I had ever heard.  If you have time now, go to this website and watch the short film created by this couple. They can explain it so much better than I can because, well, its their story.

www.hopeheals.com

Basically a beautifully 'perfect' Christian couple from the South moved to LA after their dream wedding as 22 year olds.  They had a son four years later and when he was six months old, the wife had a massive stroke.  An AVM that bled into her brainstem would render her helpless and hopeless and in a coma-like state for two months, followed by one and a half years in an intensive brain rehab center.  She miraculously lived and has an amazing story to tell. Please see their story and pass it along, its really beautiful.  They talk about their marriage and how it would never have survived such a tragedy had it not been rooted in the Christian faith.  They talk about the harshness of the reality of their lives with such a diagnosis.  They talk about a lot of things and meanwhile I fight back tears of recollection, tears of joy, tears of the past three years of  my own experiences with my own family so similar yet so different.  I could not believe how much I could relate to this woman.
Most of you who follow me here do not need a reminder of the past three years but for the sake of the sure near virility of this blog (haha) I will include it.  On my son's first birthday my sweet daddy had a brain bleed very close to his brainstem. A scary time for our family and a time that brought forth a lot of unknowns, a few days in the Wilmington ER, many MRI's, doctors visits and phone calls, and ultimately a trip to Arizona for a delicate surgery that no one in North Carolina would do.  To follow that surgery: recovery and more surgeries to fix more problems caused by the bleed.  To this day, numbness and trouble with vision cause daily stress and frustrations for my otherwise healthy and fit, unstoppable and over-active dad.  There is so much good that has come from that situation too and someday I might be able to include it in a post but right now, the "bad" is what allowed me to relate to Katherine.  A lot of people filled our minds with hopelessness during the course of that ordeal, but the Holy Spirit filled our hearts with hope.  Our hearts were filled by prayers and visits from friends, letters- COUNTLESS letters-and emails, calls and acts of kindness.  Meals and more letters.  I can remember a specific visit to mom and dad's house where I just parked it on the couch and pulled out the huge bag of letters and cards and read every one.  So never assume your sympathy cards are thrown away, they keep on giving hope and encouragement each day in times like that.  Just the vision of the sheer volume of the cards was a testament to how special my dad is and how many people loved and cared for our family.
The very next summer the other Superman in my life- my husband George- was diagnosed with Thyroid cancer.  His first surgery was Sept 14th, exactly four days after the one year anniversary of Dad's brain stem surgery.  It would be followed by another surgery about two months later and Radioactive Iodine Therapy in February.  This was all last year, George was a chief resident and had planned to move his family to California and take the Orthopaedics Board Exam in July. This was not part of the plan.  This was a hard three years for our marriage and I do not know how it  would have survived if God had not been right there in the middle of it, dispensing hope after hope in the midst of all the hurt, questions, and chaos.  Then there is little George, our son, our world, our heart, our soul.  God chose this time in our lives to bring him into the world.  There were some very hard days and nights where I felt like less of a mother because I was so busy as I tried so hard to be a good wife and daughter.  God never let me loose sight of the fact that George was a blessing, a "heritage from the Lord, a reward from him. Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are sons born in one's youth" Psalm 127:3-4.

Ok, so now we have established the fact that I could relate on so many levels to this woman and her husband.  For many of the storms they weathered, I could relate.  We share the same number of years on this earth, a southern heritage, a marriage rooted in faith,  a move to LA, brain stem complications, a diagnosis my spouse did not ask for or deserve, and finally a young son who needed care (and a lot of it) in the midst of these things.  I was so humbled by their story.  They had the most beautiful things to say about hope.  She said she was blessed enough to wear her "issues" on the outside and be a mirror to everyone else's issues they keep on the inside. She said, "Who doesn't have issues with beauty, even though their faces are not messed up? Who doesn't think they are a bad mother sometimes, even if they have two working legs and two working arms to care for their children?" She said so many things and I only wish I had recorded it or at least written down the Bible verses she quoted.

As I look back, the past three years have been a test of faith for our family, and me in particular.  In a way its all been so packed in that I have not had a chance to fully digest it all.  This service was for that purpose. God spoke to me about all he has done in our lives, our marriage and our family.  He said to me, "See how very blessed you are, and share it with whoever will listen".  I am very blessed and I know that its not only because my daddy survived brains stem surgery or my that my husband is now cancer free after only one short year of struggle and hardship...No, thats not the main blessing in all of this.  I do count those things as blessings, I do.  No one can say that I don't thank God every day for these miraculous outcomes BUT! the thing I take away from these life experiences is  not the outcome, however, it is the journey. The golden nugget I take away is to have hope in the midst of hopelessness.  To trust God in all things, to count it all as JOY, to keep on keepin' on and trust God to give me the courage to take the next step.  To take each day as it comes to me, not to worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow has enough worry of its own.  To see and hear the story of this couple really brought it home. I love the fact that we only just started to call this church home, and three weeks after our first Sunday Katherine and Jay came to give their testimony.  And remember our conversation at the beginning of this post? We considered not attending because we would not "miss much anyway".  I can say that I KNOW God wanted me in this room, wanted to give me this gift of recollection of my past three years.  Don't get me wrong, I do not think that the "Suffering box has been checked off" (a borrowed phrase from this couple) but I DO know that I am prepared to trust God in whatever he has for me.  And if I ever forget that, each of you has my permission to tell me to refer back to this post and remember this message.

This service spurred an interesting conversation between George and I that evening as we lay in bed. We both thought our move to LA would be a challenge in the faith arena. We thought it would be harder to cling to what we know is right, harder to find God in this big city. We thought, LA is so worldly that we will have to shield our eyes and ears and hearts from so much.  It turns out we just need to open our eyes and ears wider still to what He has to show us and teach us.  LA, in all its "worldliness" just has more abundant opportunities for the gospel to ring clearer and clearer still.   In the first sermon we heard at this church the point was made that God is everywhere, we just have to look for him.  That has been so true for us here.  We have both been amazed at what God has shown us in this big "worldly" city.  He has shown us that this small house is all we will ever need, nothing bigger or more grandiose is necessary. He has shown us that in regards to style and clothes, be yourself and anything goes.  He has shown us that as we look for a church not to look for numbers or a "peer group". All we need to recognize is that the Holy Spirit is at work and the "peers" will come to us.  I love that he brought us all the way out here to the busy crazy city of LA to learn these simple life lessons.
So "when the sun's shining down on me, when the world's all as it should be, on the road marked with suffering, though there's pain in the offering"
BLESSED BE YOUR NAME!




www.HopeHeals.com                    www.HopeHeals.com                www.HopeHeals.com