Thanksgiving shouldn't end

Since Thanksgiving shouldn't ever end, I guess it's not too late to share a post of Angie Smith's I found in the (In)Courage blog.  It really inspired me on Thanksgiving - click here to read it.

An excerpt:

I've felt called to spend some time studying gratitude in an effort to work on my own negative tendencies and the Lord recently gave me an amazing glimpse into Scripture.

In Luke Chapter 17, Jesus is traveling to Jerusalem when He hears ten men with leprosy calling out to Him in desperation. Most likely, they didn't expect a response, but they were used to announcing their ailment whenever anyone walked by.

Jesus did respond, and He instructed them to show themselves to the priests. It says that as they walked, they were cleansed.

The Greek word for cleansed in this passage is "katharizo," and it means "to cleanse by curing."

After they are healed, one of them recognizes that he is not leprous anymore (the Greek for healed in this passage is "iaomai" which means to be cured) and goes back to thank Jesus.

So all of them are not leprous anymore but only one has returned to thank the Lord.

Upon falling at Christ's feet, Jesus tells him to "Rise and go; your faith has made you well." (Luke 17:19)

I was intrigued by the fact that while the rest of the Greek words refer to healing of a sickness, only the leper who returns is told that he has been made well.

So what is the difference?

Actually, quite a bit.

The original meaning of the word "well" in this passage is "sozo," and it means more than a physical healing.

It means that in the Biblical sense, the man was saved.

It seems gratitude is an intimate part of our salvation. This doesn't mean that our salvation is earned by it. But it does challenge us to think about how we are living it out that gift every day.

I want to encourage all of us to fall at His feet in gratitude, if for no other reason than that we are "sozo." Loved from before the beginning of time.

Let's be like the leper who returns in shameless gratitude, spilling out our thanks as we lay at His feet.

After all, He has made us well.

Speaking of Angie, her book is coming.  Have you preordered it yet?  I have.  It's called I Will Carry You: The Sacred Dance of Grief and Joy.  So. Excited!

And one last thing... her latest blog post brought me to tears...  Permission to Hope.  Start from the beginning of her story over at her blog if you're unfamiliar.  In a nutshell, she has three beautiful little girls and when she was pregnant with the fourth, they found out she might not live until birth.  She ended up living for a couple of hours and they named her and loved her and then lost her.  Angie is pregnant again, and here's the highlights of what inspired me and quite honestly, resounded in my heart and soul because I've been there... I hope her words can touch you too.

It has been really difficult to go through this again, and I really covet your prayers as we face our fears. I know that the Lord is trustworthy and that I can believe in His goodness but it's not easy. Yesterday I spent a long while crying on my closet floor as I processed the fact that I need to pull out my maternity clothes again. I think I am reliving things in a new way as I sort through the things I wore with Audrey, tucked away in a corner I haven't really faced. I have the kind of memory that can smell perfume across the room and remember sitting next to my third grade piano teacher while pounding out a horrific version of the love theme from Romeo and Juliet. She said I was really good.

She lied.

Turns out she was in love with my father (yes, we let her go shortly after gifts starting arriving for him...my mom was not about to eat the cake she sent). That was my last attempt at piano, and I assure you that the human race is better for it.

I remember little things people have said, the way hospital soap fills a room with anxiety, the exact expression Todd had on his face when he told me he loved me for the first time. It's locked away in a little vault that opens with trigger points in my life.

Unfortunately, trigonometry, driving directions, and Spanish never made it into the vault.

I honestly feel like that's one of the reasons I love to write so much. It can get all tangled out and if I can just get it on paper it unravels a little and helps me connect the dots. The hard part about that is that I can't run from it when it's right in front of me. I have to dig around in my closet, past the wedding dress, past the girl's linen dresses, and into the corner I have not wanted to face. I opened a vacuum-sealed bag of maternity clothes yesterday and I could feel her again. I screamed at God because I wanted her back so badly I ached. Todd came and found me there, face-down in my pain, clothes spilled all around me.

"This is the sweater I was wearing when we found out. This is the shirt I almost returned because we got her diagnosis and I knew I wouldn't ever be big enough to wear it. This is a nursing gown I never got to wear, this is the dress I bought for the photography session..."

They are just clothes, I know.

But they were a part of my life with her.

I needed to have a little meltdown. I've been moving along as if I could get through it without feeling this, and I can't. I'm just not going to bother to try anymore because it isn't going away. I really want you all to know that I have struggled in my walk recently. It isn't that I don't believe or trust in the Lord. I do. I just haven't been as disciplined as I should be with my quiet times and spending time in the Word. It isn't like me to retreat so much, and I finally realized yesterday that there was a part of me that just felt like going it alone because the last time He let me down.

Is it false thinking? Absolutely. No question Satan wants me to be convinced that I am better off on my own, trusting that doctors and logic will sustain me. I confessed this to the Lord, and I confess it to you all. Many times I have shared about my spiritual life, urging you all to be disciplined and faithful, and I owe it to you to tell you that I have just not been there in the last several weeks.

Truthfully, I have not felt permission from the Lord to write on the blog because I knew there was a disconnect between what I wanted to say to you and what I felt. I know He wanted me to focus on Him, and sometimes that means stepping away to get my priorities in check. I don't want a ministry if I'm being hypocritical or false. So, all that to say, I am working to get back in my groove... :)

I want to believe that this time is different, and I do feel a peace about everything. The night before my first appointment (I even switched doctors because it was so hard to think about going back to mine) I started letting my thoughts get away from me. I pictured the room, the gel, the screen. My heart was pounding and I pleaded with the Lord to give me a sign of hope. Lord, you don't have to tell me the baby will be fine, and I don't expect you to. But would you just let me know You are there? That you haven't let go of me?

There was a time of great hope during my pregnancy with Audrey, when an ultrasound seemed to conflict with her diagnosis. A few weeks after we learned she wouldn't survive we were surprised to see that many of her original diagnoses were not what they thought. That evening we went out to dinner for my nephew's birthday and I photographed Kate asleep with a balloon in her hand. I posted the picture and said that when I saw her I knew that we were doing the same thing; against all odds, we were holding on to hope. I actually wrote about this event in my book because it was such a pivotal moment for me, and the picture of Kate is featured in that chapter. It was a symbol that the Lord used to remind me that He was with us and that we had permission to hope.

When the sweet technician did my scan a few weeks ago, she had the screen turned away from me. Todd could see it and he was trying to make out what was happening. We knew it might be a little early to see a heartbeat so I had prepared myself that we might not get that reassurance. Just after she started, she said "148 beats a minute!"

Oh, Jesus. Thank you. Thank you.

She continued to look at the screen while I looked at Todd. All of a sudden she giggled a little under her breath.

"Well I can't say I've ever seen that before! That is so funny. Look at this, Angie."

She started to turn the monitor as her words filled the gap in the room. She shook her head warmly and continued, having no idea how it would bless me.

"It looks like the baby is holding a balloon."

I stared at her and then I took a look for myself and indeed, it was uncanny. I felt a peace come over me when I saw it because I knew He had done it for me. He hasn't forgotten how much it hurt me and He knew I would understand Him. I felt my eyes get hot as I thanked Him for letting me sense Him so strongly in a moment I needed to believe He was there.

She repeated herself and I nodded.

He isn't so big that He can't find His way into an exam room. I couldn't wipe the smile off my face as I agreed with her.

"It does look like the baby is holding a balloon."

I let out a 2 years-long sigh and finished the sentence in my head.

And so are we, Lord...

So are we.

Amazing, no?  These words touched my heart because I, too, get attached to smells and items and anything.  The smell of certain plastics immediately take me to the operating room.  Putting on a hospital gown for an MRI sends my mind to laying in a hopsital bed, 9 years old, watching the rain fall out the window.   I can't wear certain items of clothing because of the grief I felt in that shirt or with that bag.  I can't drive by certain places without chills shuddering up and down my spine.  Certain songs take me to the times I have been laying on the floor screaming at God or curled up in a ball in my closet, sobbing into a pile of clothes, struggling to catch my breath.  I have meltdowns all the time... usually in a longing dispair for what isn't, what cannot be.  But you know what? God has been there every single day through all of it, and He's been beside me through every hard time, to see each tear fall.

He was there about a month ago when I had just failed a nursing paper, I was in over my head in school and life, and Jonathan was taking a class that made him only come over a couple times a week.  (He's usually here every day.)  Then, I had a day of appointments.  A new pain psychologist helped me realize some things.  The appointment was a good three hours long and just emotionally draining.  I need to get my life down to a quota, not stress my tolerance.  She told me that my pain - physical and emotional - is always going to be there.  If I do less to handle it, if I am deconditioned, the painful thing or the physical pain is just going to hurt more.  She told me to take pain out of the equation and no longer make pain the determinant of what I do or don't do.  She told me life is like an airplane and said my life is turbulant, and the plane is coming down.  She asked me what to do when the life masks pop down from the plane ceiling.  All of a sudden the light bulb went on.  I remember exactly the soft tone of voice I had when I slowly said, "I put mine on first before I help others."  That was it.  I'm killing myself trying to save the world when my own "life mask" isn't on.  And then I saw my liver doctor, which is usually emotionally painful.  She's told me in the past that she had a patient with my condition, and after she got pregnant, she advised her to abort the fetus because the pregnancy and birth would kill her.  That has always stuck with me, but this particular day, we discussed the genetics of my disease and how it's thought - although no one knows to what extent or how - to be somehow genetically composed.  She said my children would have a small chance of having liver problems, and even my sister's children or if my mom would to have more children, were to be slightly at risk.  So then of course, I immediately feel guilty for tainting my entire family's offspring (even though no such offspring exist), and I also start getting sick to my stomach because although I'd risk my life to carry a baby and bring her into the world, even a small chance of passing on this hell I've lived through is without question just not going to happen.  I would never, ever wish this on anyone, God forbid my own children.

So an hour long drive home got my mind in a mess of stress and fear and exhaustion and something set me off later that evening (no idea what...) and I literally went into a crying hysteria that lasted about 3 hours.  It went into a full blown nervous breakdown.  My mom came into my room twice to try to calm me down, and I know it upset her to see me like that, but I guess that's what moms do best.  Eventually I texted Jonathan who was in his class and told him to come over ASAP because it was an emergency.  I'd never in a million years ask him to do that, but I knew if I didn't get my strength to me soon, if I couldn't sob in the only arms who could stop the tears, I wouldn't get out of this fit that was suffocating me and stabbing knives in my stomach.  I'm not even sure I should type these next words because it makes me look so lame and pathetic, but when I'm at my absolute worst and cannot find the words to talk to God, his arms are just a little longer to reach God and bring Him to me.  Jonathan connects me to my hope, and until I'm strong enough to hope on my own and learn to trust God just a little better... until my crippled legs straighten and my broken hands heal, he's the only one who can pick up my broken pieces and place them in God's hands.

That's what true love is, and that is what the grace of God means to me.

How thankful are we for the love of God, the grace of God, the mercy He has for His broken ones.  He wants us to hope in Him.  Even if we don't feel like hoping anymore, even if we can't see the hope.  It's there.  Hope is a powerful, powerful thing.