The Sylvr Pen

“A friend loves at all times, And a brother is born for adversity” (Pro 17:17).

Third Provision: A Friend’s Listening Heart

I called my friend Beth, to give her the go-ahead to host the New Year’s party that year, because I and my (then) husband (now long deceased) wouldn’t be doing it.

“Are you all right?” she asked. “You don’t sound right.”

I started telling her how it was. I began in what I thought was nonchalance, but halfway through the second sentence, my mouth went incoherent.

I couldn’t talk! My tongue felt thick and swollen, and wouldn’t cooperate. My lips refused to rightly form words. I sounded like a bad drunk—though I was as sober as you can get! And though the words were somehow stuck, the thoughts were racing at full speed.

So there I sat: awash in postpartum hormones, without funds, job, car, prospects, answers, or family nearby (whom I didn’t even want to know how things had gotten), and winter coming on. And now with my best friend intently listening, my tongue couldn’t find itself to tell the tale!

Fourth Provision: The Chance to “Dump” a Burden

“Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ” (Gal 6:2).

“… Better a neighbor nearby than a brother far away” (Pro 27:10, NIV).

“Sit still. Don’t move,” my friend said. “I’ll be right there.”

She jumped in her car and drove the few miles between our houses, and sat with me, across the kitchen table. Then, at last, with her caring eyes meeting mine, I dumped my burden, right in front of her.

Never underestimate the value of just listening as a caring friend. Beth didn’t have any answers. She didn’t try to give any, then–except to offer a room where baby and I could stay if worse came to worst. She just sat and listened, and encouraged me to spill it all. And cared.

And that was all I needed then. That was just what I needed.

Galatians 6:2-5 tells us to share one another’s burdens, even as it says each person must bear his own load. I had a multi-layer load to bear myself. In so doing, I would develop new strengths. But the emotional overload, the need to lay the circumstances out in view for assessment: that’s the kind of burden that grows incredibly lighter in the spreading around.

Under the weight of my confusion and seeming helplessness, I had let my home go to wrack and ruin. The mess was looking more like an unconquerable Everest every day. But after my dumping session with my friend, I found new strength to attack that mountain bit by bit, doing one little thing, then another—starting right after I waved her goodbye.

All this of course gave no practical solution to my material problems still looming large. But with other eyes sharing the ugly view, I gained a wider viewpoint, and a vague hope of new beginning, of practical answers hiding somewhere, yet not impossible to find.

What I didn’t realize then was that  those practical answers had been lying within me all along. I just needed the right memory jog to pull them out…

[Next two posts: The Provision of Wisdom and Guidance, and The Provision of Remembrance]

First Provision: End of Self

“For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God” (Col 3:3, NIV).

We were in big debt.

We were in marital conflict.

I was getting blamed for things I didn’t even know about. I was getting screamed at by creditors for unpaid “confidential” loans they’d kept secret from me.

The water heater was broken down, with no funds or credit to repair or replace it, and dirty diapers piling up and overflowing the diaper pail. (No way could I afford Pampers.)

Real estate tax was in arrears, mortgage was in arrears, Postman was delivering foreclosure notices I had to sign while he stood smiling.

All the bills were in arrears.

Stranded out in the country, I had no funds, no job (employee glut maxing out my job niche), no family nearby, and no car, since the day  that couple stopped by with my husband to look at the one I’d called my own, though never held in my name, and drove it away as their own.

What I did have was a brand new baby, but no certainty of even heat in the house or power for the pump to draw (cold) water, come tomorrow…

That’s when I came to my end: that horrendous year when all I felt like doing anymore was curling fetal behind the couch, never to come out again…

I didn’t: Curl up there like that. Mother-love kept me from it. Mother-love had blocked me from worse the year before, before my long prayed-for baby was even born. But was it just Mother love?

Second Provision: The Father’s Love

“I have loved you with an everlasting love…” (Jer 31:3)

No, it was Father Love that first checked me from self-annihilation, then later kept me dragging leaden legs room to room to care for that long-desired child I now didn’t know how to provide for. Though in the first case God’s hand had shown itself dramatically (another story), in this second case I still couldn’t grasp the faintest glimpse of it.

But, as time would soon reveal, Father Love was orchestrating a whole series of events that would crack open a door to my deliverance—and more.

And I hardly knew Him, or how to walk with Him, though my wrenching soul did keep crying out to Him.

I was just a shuffling wreck…

Next post:  A Friend’s Listening Heart

One of the most important truths I’ve learned in my stumbling-around life is that God does us good not only in His giving, but also in His taking away. Some of my richest blessing has come from His taking away…

Never mind that I sometimes lose my grip on that truth while I’m going through the loss—or right afterward, in the big hole it leaves. (Later I usually see how I set myself up for “grip-losing” by heart drifting and mind neglecting some vitally important things… More on that later.) After the fact, and over time, I almost always see resultant blessings keep unfolding like the petals of a flower.

What I now want (finally) to do is tell you about how God first began teaching me the blessedness of total dependence on Him for my needs: through the vehicle of loss…

It’s difficult to write this in blog posts. For one thing, it’s a long story which would make little sense without a few details. For another, what reveals God’s hand in it is not just one “Chicken Soup moment,” but a string-of-pearls progression of events—a series of Chicken Soup moments that make up a big, beautiful whole.

So I must tell the tale(s) in installments, and if some run a little long for blog posts, in the future I’ll try to fix that. But now, in order to share “what great things God has done” for me, I’m going to get on with it…

Twenty below zero today!

That’s got to be a record. It’s the coldest temp we’ve experienced since we moved up here into “the sticks” fifteen years ago.

Good day for…

a cup of black coffee (warmer than with cream)

a bowl of oatmeal (first I’ve had this winter)–and forget pouring any cold milk on it!

Good day to

bake

cook a stew that sits all day on the stove and helps warm the air around it

remove laundry from the dryer while hot, burying my face in the each towel, sheet, and flannel shirt still warm from its innards

vacuum around, under and behind the radiators (sitting close!)

iron (What can I find to iron? napkins? a table cloth? next Sunday’s clothes? my underwear?… anything!)

hole up in the smallest room in the house (my study), with a radiant space heater parked 3 feet away from everything (which means right smack dab in the middle of the room, from whence it can send its heat in all directions…

…and write (warming my fingers occasionally over the heater) …or read, or study my Bible or meditate on my selected verses on cards…

(definitely to do:) thank God I have warm clothes and a source of heat and good things to do on a cold day and the ability to do them!

Now for the latest coincidence.

Between my planning my last post on red shoes and my writing it, look what I “stumbled upon” in the blog of a fellow writer! (Then come back and read the rest of what’s here!)

What’s the point of all this? That we should head out to the mall and walk around, pointing out to God, “I want this, and that, and that–and gimme one of those, and…” No, of course not.

However, when my husband read that last paragraph, he grinned and said, “Maybe we ought to try it.”

Consider why God would be especially pleased with granting Muller’s requests: Muller sought first and foremost the kingdom of God. The reason he had nothing to start with was that he and his wife had already given away everything they owned, radically assenting to Mark 10:21 as a way of life. He really trusted in God to supply!