The Sylvr Pen

She was sobbing, her face blotched red, her blond hair gone wild, her body slumped. She was sitting on my porch bench, her head bent low over tear splats darkening the blue-painted floor.

“That’s all I wanted…,” she choked out between sobs. “I always thought…”

…always thought it would be just like her mom and dad for them, “till death us do part,” grow old together, never such betrayal, such wrenching pain.

And we sat on that bench together, and prayed. Well, I did the praying, the talk part, and it was anything but eloquent: “Lord, [hesitation]… Lord, we don’t know what we’re doing…”

Then the stress of all the pain and confusion and bewildered crying “Why?” gave way, from sheer exhaustion, to broken, mixed-up grief-laughter. And we grief-laughed and friend-prayed together a near incoherent prayer for help amid “we-don’t-know”s…

A giant pilgrim step from where we were an hour or so before, us sequestered upstairs—right beside my prayer window, in fact, but we weren’t sitting there praying, we were wrestling off a violent attack of utter unbelief.

I’d mentioned God, something about God, and she had answered in dead tone, “I don’t know if I even believe in God.”

I gasped. These words from her mouth! It stunned me, knocked me into silence, where no answers hid, no clever theology or gospel re-presentation or trite truism. I was just there, I had to leave it where it was right then, that instant agnosticism, born of her own shock, disbelief at the death blow to what she’d believed a lifelong certainty. This couldn’t be happening, so what was reality?

Somehow in the talking out, the dumping down on the bedroom floor, all the bruising, breath-stealing pounding of the necessary echoing the thing had to do in her head, her heart, before actuality could push its way through… Somehow, slowly, half-inch by half-inch, she dragged one thought up to the next, and God wedged Himself into the chaos, and so, by the time we were back downstairs and out to that porch bench, her heart was praying along with my inarticulation…

And she survived—that cruel day and a lot of other cruel days and weeks and months to follow. But more than survived.

Fast forward years. We were driving home from hearing Joni Erickson Tada speak—speak from the wheelchair she spends her life in, since that diving accident drove her down, down, from her ho-hum Christianity to the pit of such despair she’d begged her best friend to smother out her life… then up, slowly up, to the glow of joy in Christ that shown out now around her from the epicenter of her smile, all over that audience.  

We’d visited that place not long before, and heard Jill Kelly speak: of her own world getting brutally “wrecked,” how it drove her to the Jesus she’d have nothing to do with before… And we’d seen another smile then that kept glowing unrepressed like sunlight, despite the ongoing tragedy…

And I asked my friend, When in your life did your faith grow most? 

And I think you can guess. Same kind of time as when mine grew, when my world crashed.

God lets life break us. Then picks up the pieces. And puts them back together, but now in a stained-glass window, that His light shines beautiful grace through. He knows what will grow faith. 

It’s about Him: He’s the author and perfecter of our faith (Heb 12:2 NIV).

*****

Linked to…

Just keep holding my hand, Lord. Just keep leading me to what You’ve prepared ahead.

He went ahead of them, into the wilderness, making the way plain, opening up impossible routes, providing all they needed, leading and tending, like… a good shepherd…

Like the Good Shepherd Phillip Keller writes about (in A Shepherd Looks at Psalm 23) – who goes ahead to “prepare a table”(land) for his sheep – who checks its provision, cleans its water springs, removes poison weeds, spreads around nutrients they’ll need.

He goes ahead of me into the wilderness of vision loss, clears the way and makes it smoother, opens up possibilities I never considered, distributes strengthening evidence of His presence there ahead of time, preparing and supplying things I’ll need.

Yesterday’s post talked about some of them. Now, here’s more:

He prepares me by bringing to my attention blind-person examples, models for when my vision dies.

First and closest: My sweet and spunky mother, who, legally blind at younger age than I, whipped through stores so fast, finding things from memory, that I struggled to keep up with her! I never heard her moaning around about her vision loss.

Then there’s Helen Keller, brought to mind each time I use that mug (last post).

Next: This blind quilter, whose interview video someone emailed me before I learned I’d lose my eyesight.

And finally, this video clip from Philip Groening’s 2006 documentary Into Great Silence, which I stumbled upon by “accident” shortly after I learned what was wrong with my eyes.

As I watched its beginning, it struck me that the old monk on the right, making his way down the corridor, moved like a blind person, feeling his way with some sort of light cane, holding his left arm out as if to avoid collisions. That caught me, so I kept watching, as the clip became an interview with him, in which he spoke of his blindness as a gift from God for which He thanked Him often.

Unfortunately, in this version the Monk’s French is translated into German subtitles, so I could only get fragments with my weak and faulty memory of high school German, but I found an English translation here, at What a Blind Monk Sees.

Specific to me, at the time, and right now, these thoughts he expressed:  

I often thank God that he let me be blinded. I am sure that he let this happen for the good of my soul…  One must (never) part from the principle that God is infinitely good, and that all of his actions are in our best interest. Because of this a Christian should always be happy, never unhappy. Because everything that happens is God’s will, and it only happens for the well-being of our soul… God is infinitely good, almighty, and he helps us. This is all one must do, and then one is happy.” 

Yes. 

“Oh, go with me into the fog, and hold my hand…”

I pray it, thinking of coming clouds, blurring vision more and more, till at last it’s lost to me…

And I stop, awed. 

That I can ask such, of such as He, the Creator and Ruler of a universe so vast we can’t find its ends, only find ourselves microbes invisible in its greatness, and Him greater still…

that I can ask, and know He will do it…

it’s beyond fathom, beyond expressible thanks…

And I do know He’ll do it, because I know Him,

because He’s already done more! He holds my hand now, already going ahead, already gone before…

Long ago, He began preparing a table before me in the desert I’m entering…

 with quirky delights, signs of His knowing, love notes of assurance of His Presence, pre-providing…

He gave me a coffee mug…

I drink from it now as I pause my writing. (And is it “coincidence” that Husband just brought me coffee in it, this mug, not knowing my just-typed words?)

Twenty-eight years back, before we married, it sat on his shelf, and neither of us knows where it came from. But I know why it was there: for me for now. My Maker knew my eyes’ inheritance, knew I’d come there, drink morning coffee, little thinking its quote would apply so strong…

He gave me a song…

My long-favorite hymn: “Be Thou my Vision,” pouring out my soul desires—my song in the night, my prayer to the God of my life…

Right after hearing the diagnosis, right the next Sunday, just two days later, that song, uncharacteristic in that church, rang forth first, and we sang it with all the congregation. And we looked at each other, Husband and I, and tears brimmed, but not of sorrow. Of knowing… Of new meaning…

He gave me a ride…

And another, and another—provided them ahead of time. The neighbor phoning—who’d never called in sixteen years, offered transport before she knew I’d need it. Before I knew.

I hop in their car now when they pull in the drive, spend three or four sweet fellowship hours, traveling where I’d grieved I could not drive, before I realized I didn’t need to…

He gave me a way…

to read His beloved love Word…

I stumbled upon the website. I learned the Braille alphabet in ten or fifteen minutes! (Really! Try it!) Then…

Just yesterday I found a ministry providing Braille Bibles, free by God’s gracing through people…

and, before that, stumbled on another site, a blind man’s blog, where he wishes on keyboard he’d learned to read Braille before he totally lost his sight—so much faster and easier that way…

And though Braille instructors, defunded, grow scarce and scarcer, I’ll learn as Colonial children learned sighted reading, with just this one best Text.

And all that Bible memorizing He’s moved me to do by passages make the learning easier, faster…

There’s more. And more. But this post grows too long…

Thanking God this morning…

~For coffee mugs that say things profounder than I know,

~For Mr. Braille and his ingenious invention,

~For the growing number of techy gadgets for the blind,

~For the inclinations, drives, desires, and songs He pre-placed in my heart,

~For the encouragement from others as examples, and the hopeful inkling that He might make me that for someone else. (But more about that tomorrow.)

 *****

A razzle-dazzle day!

Snow, already! Last night drifting down in swirls, sideways gusting past bare and not-yet-bare tree limbs.

Still clinging tight there, come morning, still powdered over ground,

and twinkling on rooftops.

And light glinting bright off branches hung with frozen droplets.

This being sheep-story day, my mind drifts, snowlike, to memories of sheep and snow…

…

They are standing in the pasture. So pristine, they look, so lovely white against the green-brown grass.  Snow begins to flutter down mist, then flakes, then gathered clumps, lacy mini-sheep afloat. The fluff builds up on rocks and fields, and voila! the sheep change color, right before my eyes—seemingly! But not. Suddenly, I’m seeing them for what they really are.

Goodness!  They aren’t white at all!  Just a creamy sort of color, tinged with yellow patches and dull gray shadows, and horrors! brown around their lower portions. And blotches and blots of charcoal-black.

They looked white twenty minutes back.  What happened?   Nothing—except an altered standard of comparison.

What’s my standard of comparison?  My worldly background?  My earthly surroundings?  The motley sheep next door? (I can manage to look pretty good if I line myself up beside any of these.)

Or is it the pure holiness of God?

There’s a white purity I can never achieve! Not I.  But He says He can.  Though my sins be scarlet dark, He says He can make them white as snow.  Not just so they look snow white when no snow falls into juxtaposition—but that they really are just as clean, deep through.

Thanking God for the truths of Isaiah 1:18 and 1 John 1:9. 

And praying, Lord God, let me not grow white-smug at any time. Always be near, and give me a mirror, so I can see your purity and my sinful dinginess, side by side in humbling comparison. Give me contriteness, and keep me drawing near You, that You might cleanse every tiny blot and blemish and ugly little stain before they grow and spread and shame your name. Make me purer than I can be, good Shepherd-Caretaker of my soul.

[Thanks to God, also, for this sheep-and-snow picture that shepherd-Husband long ago noticed and pondered in shared words.]

For years, I pasted it on the first page of every blank book I was about to use for journaling: a little list of resolutions.

They look tame enough at first glance. But three or four of them are really radical!

Yet I set my face like flint to carry them out, and wow!…

I look at them now and think how they grew me, strengthened me, built faith. The radical ones, mainly. But I include all the first seven (and number ten) because, really, they worked together:

I resolve…

1- to rejoice in the Lord daily

2- to take time each day to [pay attention to] what He has to say to me [It’s there, clear, in scripture, and I know it!]

3- to write down some note of it, however brief

4- to respond to what He says, in words (through prayer) and through obedient/believing/trusting actions

5- to look only to Him for my needs: physical, spiritual, and emotional; then seeing what He provides through man and/or circumstances as just that: Him providing

6- to “not be utterly cast down” if I stumble in these resolutions, but to quickly correct my thinking and redirect my focus to the real Meeter of all my needs [I borrowed this approach from Jonathan Edwards’ own resolutions—really valuable!]

7-  to give thanks to God in all things…

and…

10-  to look at my circumstances, daily, as blessings from God, as steering, correcting, and teaching mechanisms and as means to make me more equipped for understanding and ministering to others.

The Radical Resolves are the highly emphasized above, underlined and bold.

(Because I need to be bold with them.)

What makes them radical is our (my) bent not to live life this way. We obey the easy and convenient commands and not the ones that don’t fit with how we already do things. And why not? Because we aren’t really trusting God, but other things instead. We too often run everywhere else first for aid and advice, and to God only as last resort.

Faith is trust, and who or what I trust is the one I look to for help, comfort, wisdom and direction. And the advice I trust (read: have faith in)—that’s what I will follow.

Talking about these things is easy.  In the doing of them, there lies the adventure!

And I promise, it is an adventure.

All these thoughts and words are stirring me…

to print out a fresh copy of these old resolutions, kept in a computer file,

to paste it onto the empty front page of my present journal,

[If you, dear reader, want to do the same with these, feel free to do so.]

to re-resolve the actions

and to do them!

This was how I learned (and am still learning)… to practice the Practice of Faith.

*****

Related: Hard/Easy Faith