Growing Pains

I recently read this on Lauren Chandler's blog. Lauren is the wife of Matt Chandler, the pastor of the Village Church(posted a video by Matt a couple weeks ago) who was recently diagnosed with an aggressive form of brain cancer.

When I was younger I experienced growing pains in my legs. I remember tossing in bed trying to fall asleep, wrestling with the pain. It hurt.
Things really haven't changed all that much. Growing still hurts. And I still wrestle with it.

"Be patient," says the Lord, "I am growing your roots strong and deep." So strange to feel seemingly conflicting emotions at one time: comfort of knowing the Lord knows and is in control but also a "soul sigh"....a things-are-going-to-sting-for-a-bit-sigh.

He won't let me settle for shallow roots. He knows as soon as a stiff wind blows through the plain that I would be uprooted, lifted from the soil and taken away. He loves me more than that. I don't rejoice in the painful discipline, however, I rejoice in the fruit that painful discipline brings. Obedience leading to joy.
"My child, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor be weary when reproved by him. For the Lord disciplines the one He loves, and chastises every son whom He receives." Hebrews 12:5-6

Father, You desire truth in the inmost parts. And, I must truthfully say that this discipline hurts. This growth isn't as joyful in the process. However, I trust You. I believe You are good and that You do good. I believe that You love me and therefore discipline me. You draw my roots further and further down, breaking hardened earth and pushing back dirt lacking proper nutrients. You beckon me deeper to rich, fertile soil that I may be an oak of righteousness, a planting for the display of Your splendor. Lord, sustain me in the growing, in the stretching, in the groaning. You are good and You do good.

Happy New Year/Decade!

What a year and what a decade. This year I have been learning how good and faithful He always is. It is me that changes, and my wavering affections and emotions. God constantly and consistently loves me and shows me His glory and power. He constantly calls me to joyful obedience.
This decade I graduated elementary, middle, and high school and am now a junior in college. Dated boys, made lots of new friends, grew distant from some and close to others, played on multiple sports teams, broke both ankles, moved out of the house I grew up in, laughed far more then I cried, but the biggest and most important changed happened when I learned what it meant to follow Christ. Nothing about this decade has stayed the same. 10 years ago there were no blackberrys, no iphones, no facebook, no twitter. No wifi, no GPS systems. No tivo or blue ray. No red box or crashing economy. But I find great comfort today in knowing 10 years ago God loved and forgave me, today He loves and forgives me, and 10 years from now He will still love and forgive me.
Who knows what the next 10 years have in store? It seems much scarier then these last 10 years because I always knew what was ahead. After elementary came middle school, after middle came high school, and after high school came college. I always knew the step ahead of me and never really had to walk in blind faith.
Honestly, I have no idea what I'm going to do come 2011, but the Lord does. He knows exactly what I'm going to do and who I'm going to do it with. He knows every little detail about my future. I know I can make plans, plans that involve eventually getting married and starting a family but who knows what God has in store. Men plan but the Lord prevails.
He is never late. He never forgets. And He is never wrong. So I am called to trust Him. I'm both excited and nervous because part of me wants to stay. Stay where I know, and where I can clearly see whats next. Change is hard, but change is necessary and is a reminder that the only stability in an unknown and unpredictable world is a God who is crazy, madly, and deeply in love with me. Who has redeemed, rescued, and promised hope for the future.
Lord I pray that as I welcome in a new decade, I would find resolve in a love that is unchanging and unconditional. May I rest in Your grace and Sovereignty in my life like never before.

Kate McRae

Kate McRae. A precious blond-hair blue-eyed 6 year old that is desperately fighting for her life. This is the background of her story written by Kate's mom:

Monday June 29th, 2009 was supposed to be a day filled with summer fun. The kids and I were going to the water park to celebrate summer. However, I noticed that a slight tremor in her right hand that she developed over the past 2-3 days had notably worsened. We decided to take her to her Pediatrician, just for safe measure. Her Dr decided to get a CT of Kate's head, to rule anything out. We proceeded to Phoenix Childrens Hospital for a stat CT of her head. At 5:30 I, Holly, Kate's mom, was taken into a room alone and told Kate had a massive tumor on the basil ganglia portion of her brain. The world stopped for us that day. I called her dad and through sobs told him to come to the hospital quickly. Our journey had begun. Kate was directly admitted to the PICU. One minute thoughts of the water park the next our child is critically ill in the PICU. We would have never chosen to be a part of this journey with childhood cancer, but it was chosen for us, and our sweet Kate. She is now in the Phoneix Children's Hospital undergoing treatment for this disease.

Kate underwent a craniotomy with tumor resection on July 3rd, 2009. They unfortunately were only able to remove 50% of the tumor due to it's location in the left temporal lobe of her brain and the fact that the tumor had wrapped itself around major blood vessels to her brain. Kate experienced right sided paralysis immediately following surgery. She has since regained much of this, however right sided weakness still continues.

After a few days of waiting the pathology report was in, Kate was diagnosed with a very malignant, aggressive brain tumor called a supratentorial primitive neuroectodermal tumor or sPNET. Our hearts were shattered. Dreams for our little 5 year old daughter put on hold to battle this monster. Long term prognosis and outcomes weren't encouraging so Kate has been put on a study that is showing a little more promising outcomes, hopefully a better chance at survival and less long term side effects. She is currently undergoing the Head Start 3 Study out of Los Angeles but doing it at Phoenix Children's Hospital. The study involves the initial brain surgery, 5 round of very intense chemotherapy with possibility of a subsequent brain surgery and then another round of chemo with a stem cell transplant. We are hoping to avoid radiation after transplant. Kate is also in physical therapy and occupational therapy and has been released from speech therapy.

We believe strongly in the power of prayer and the ability of Jesus to heal our precious daughter. Whether He does this through modern medicine or simply a divine touch, we aren't picky. We are asking others to join us on this journey and fervently pray for our Kate. The road is long and unbelievably hard. We have 3 children, all who are intensely affected. Olivia is now 7, Kate is 5 and Will is 4. Please keep all of us in your prayers as we try to walk this journey of childhood cancer. Thank you. (As of September 29th Kate was readmitted to begin her 3rd round of chemo. She will be hospitalized for the entire round.)

My heart literally breaks for Kate and her family. Kate "celebrated" her 6th birthday on December 27th. Birthdays for a 6 year-old should mean parties, friends, cupcakes, and laughter instead of hospitals, vomiting, morphine drips and IV's. Kate is sick, but not forgotten. She is immensely loved by Her creator.
The faith and perseverance Kate's parents have displayed through this has been a witness and a living testimony of God's supernatural love. This is not the path they (or anyone for that matter) would choose, but they know where their hope lies and they cling to the Ultimate Healer. They believe and know God is good and loving and faithful and all-powerful. The gospel is hope, and the Lord is strength.

“Do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand”. Isaiah 41:10
“He works out everything in conformity with the purpose of HIS will”. Ephesians 1: 11

This was a particularly powerful update from Kate's mom on Christmas eve:
Instead of tucking all 3 of our kids in tonight, calming them down due to the anticipation of tomorrow. I will just be tucking one in. Into her hospital bed. Hoping she perks up, instead of calming down. Praying her fever comes down. Praying her mouth sores diminish. Praying her heart rate slows down. Praying the blood cultures grow nothing. Praying that even now every last cancer cell would be destroyed. Forever.

The one thing that remains true and constant even tonight, even amidst our present pain, is the reason for Christmas. We could be celebrating at home. Enjoying family and the traditions the season brings. Or we could be in the hospital fighting for our daughters life. I am just so thankful that Christmas means Jesus. And that does not change even when our circumstances do. He came and brought salvation. And one day there will be no more pain, no more tears and no more cancer. Praying Kate gets to experience the later here on earth and will get to experience many more joyous Christmas' in the years to come.

it's about the Cross

"The beginning of the story is wonderful and great but its the ending that can save you and that's why we celebrate...it's about the cross, it's about my sin, it's about how Jesus came to be born once so that we could be born again. It's about God's love nailed to a tree, it's about every drop of blood that flowed from Him when it should have been me. It's about the stone, that was rolled away, so that you and I could have real life someday. It's about the cross." Go Fish

Those lyrics are from a song by Go Fish that's somewhat cheesy but the lyrics are powerful.
Let us not forget that Jesus was a baby born to die. His birth was about the promised Messiah, but also about a covenant which was broken that He came to restore.
It's about the cross.

Mere Christianity

Very few authors have influenced, strengthened, penetrated, challenged and shaped my faith more than C.S. Lewis. His writing either sings to you or he doesn't, but boy does he sing to me!
I will examine some of Lewis's other books another day but here are some of my favorite excerpts from Mere Christianity. This is the stuff I thought I already knew. But I didn't-not really, not clearly.

"God made us: invented us as a man invents an engine. A car is made to run on gasoline, and it would not run properly on anything else. Now God designed the human machine to run on Himself. He Himself is the fuel our spirits were designed to burn, or the food our spirits were designed to feed on. There is no other. That is why it is just no good asking God to make us happy in our own way without bothering about religion. God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing."

Lewis says that Christian's believe an evil power has made himself (for the present) the Peace of this World. Lewis then asks is this in accordance with God's will and says "if it is, He is a srange God...and if it is not, how can anything happen contrary to the will of a being with absolute power?"
Therefore, we can come to the conclusion that God created things with free will. Free will means those things can go right or wrong. Free will makes evil possible.
"... Because free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having. A world of automata -- of creatures that worked like machines -- would hardly be worth creating. The happiness which God designs for His higher creatures is the happiness of being freely, voluntarily united to Him and to each other in an ecstasy of love and delight compared with which the most rapturous love between a man and a woman on this earth is mere milk and water. And for that they must be free...of course God knew what would happen if they used their freedom the wrong way: apparently he thought it worth the risk. Perhaps we feel inclined to disagree with Him. But there is a difficulty about disagreeing with God. He is the source from which all your reasoning power comes: you could not be right and He wrong and more than a stream can rise higher than its own source. When you are arguing against Him you are arguing against the very power that makes you able to argue at all: it is like cutting off the branch you are sitting on. If God thinks this state of war in the universe is a price worth paying for free will -- that is, for making a live world in which creatures can do real good or harm and something of real importance can happen, instead of a toy world which only moves when He pulls the strings -- then we may take it it is worth paying."

"We believe that the death of Christ is just that point in history at which something absolutely unimaginable from the outside shows through into our own world. And if we cannot picture even the atoms of which our own world is built, of course we are not going to be able to picture this. Indeed, if we found that we could fully understand it, that very fact would show it was not what it professes to be — the inconceivable, the uncreated, the thing from beyond nature, striking down into nature like lightning. You may ask what good it will be to us if we do not understand it. But that is easily answered. A man may eat his dinner without understanding exactly how food nourishes him. A man can accept Christ without knowing how it works: indeed, he certainly would not know how it works until he has accepted it."

We are told that Christ was killed for us, that His death washed away our sins, and that by dying He has disabled death itself. That is the formula. That is Christianity. This is what has to be believed.

"...repentance, this willing submission to humiliation and a kind of death, is not something God demands of you before He will take you back and which He could let you off of if He chose: it is simply a description of what going back to Him is like. If you ask God to take you back without it, you are really asking Him to let you go back without going back. It cannot happen."

Lewis' genius is his humility, his self-forgetfulness before truth. Mere Christianity is so powerful because it's not about Lewis' faith, it's about THE Faith.

may He be enough

found this video through John Piper's twitter:

http://fm.thevillagechurch.net/blog/pastors/?p=363

Wow. Matt says he's grateful that the Lord has counted him worthy..and now in this area where it's not a big win he gets to show that Christ is enough.
"I will bring them through the fire, refine them as silver is refined, and test them as gold is tested. They will call on My name, and I will answer them; and I will say, 'They are My people,' and they will say, 'the Lord is my God." Zechariah 13:9
Matt is saying this as a man who will likely lose his life-that nothing in this world is better then exalting Jesus as Lord.
"Taste and see that the Lord is good, blessed is the one who trusts in Him!" Psalm 34:8

Blessed. Blessed is the one who TRUST in Him. Do I really believe that? So much of the time I feel like I'm a pretender. I welcome the sunshine and exalt the name of Christ when life is easy. I want the benefits without the cost. I am a consumerist to the core.

But what is it that I'm afraid of? 1 Corinthians 15:54-55 says "Death has been swallowed up in victory. Where, oh death, is your victory? Where, oh death, is your sting?" When we swallow something, we digest it and it fuels us- making us both bigger and stronger. So if death is swallowed up in victory, essentially this means death becomes part of victory, making it bigger and stronger. Victory will become more meaningful, more overwhelming, because we have known loss.

Oh me of little faith.

Simple Joys

10 simple things I am thankful for:
1. conversations that ignite uncontrollable laughter
2. the smell of a fire pit
3. sweatshirt hugs
4. interacting with people who are authentic and bring a different perspective to life than I do
5. running outside in Chapel Hill and seeing all the Christmas lights
6. diet coke
7. cats...because they remind me how much I LOVE dogs (sorry if you're a cat person!)
8. the immediate rush of walking into a warm house after being outside in the cold
9. snuggling with salpal
10. for passion and purpose