September 1, 2011
Dear friends and family,
We are back in a life at once familiar and strange. We were greeted at the airport by a bevy of beaming faces, which have since multiplied into an astounding river of warmth and welcome. The joy has been mutual.
Slowly, we are rebuilding the semblance of a new life. The profusion of boxes from Seattle and the Union Church basement mirror the disorder within, as we merge two seemingly disparate existences. Each day reveals the extent to which we are both changed and still the same. Boxes contain the shrapnel of a former life, many of the contents strange to me. There is an odd sense of dislocation to this unpacking of things not seen since our lives turned. God is calling us to make it new. Nothing is the same. We live in a new city, among new people, in unfamiliar streets. I drive clutching a map.
I had not expected it to be so difficult, especially amidst the true joy of reunion. And I am, after all, the champion of all movers. Seven homes and two countries in nine years. Thirty homes and seven countries in forty years. Every few years my feet itch.
I have not written because I have been ashamed to say it: the details have done me in. How is it possible that the inconsequential – the television cable, the appropriately voltage-d appliances, the acquisition of cell phones and uniforms, the paperwork, the visa applications, the birth certificates, the curtain measurements, the bookshelves, the filing, the local bank accounts, the memberships, the interviews of helpers and drivers, the random lost and missing pieces – how is it possible that these silly statistics, these sheer configurations of circumstances and arrangements of objects would do me in?!
There is unending misery not too far from my doorstep. Even in my own life I have negotiated far rougher terrain. So much more, the insult to my pride and the wounding of my heart that such Sisyphean activity be my undoing. While I am well-versed in the complications of two-thirds world living, somehow this time the challenges loom more mountainous and steadfast in their purpose to disarm me of my fortitude. I am exhausted by it. While hardship reliably pushes me deep into God, these mountains of minutiae have often obscured Him from view. In the past three weeks I have found myself more frequently on my knees, more commonly tearful, more significantly irritable and more generally graceless than perhaps I can ever remember.
Steve, in turn, quietly struggles with his new body. He too must swim hard to stay afloat of the mess, but with far fewer reserves. He watches me work with anguish. Months of laying aside therapy in service to transition mean that we have no real measurement for progress. Honestly, we do not see it. Each day brings some new form of frustration. Today the masterpiece: Steve was turned down for medical insurance. What we thought was a mere formality of paperwork turned out to be another road block, another exercise in patience, in faith.
I have heard many stories recently from Christians who have been called by God into something, and follow with both obedience and anticipation only to encounter unexpected hardship and a puzzling sense of God’s absence. They endure in a state of confusion and longing for the certainty they once felt. The same drama has played out in my own life countless times. A favorite quote from The Screwtape Letters by CS Lewis never fails to encourage me in such moments. Screwtape, a junior devil mentors a still more lowly apprentice and counsels him on how best to tempt a new believer away from the faith. In one of his letters to Wormwood, he writes:
“He (God) wants them to learn to walk and must therefore take away His hand; and if only the will to walk is really there He is pleased even with their stumbles. Do not be deceived, Wormwood. Our (the Devil’s) cause is never more in danger, than when a human, no longer desiring, but intending, to do our Enemy’s will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.”
Favorable circumstances and warm feeling are not exclusive evidence of God’s goodness. As a photograph from a hospital ward in Ethiopia reminds me, God is good all the time. I rest, not always feeling, but always knowing this to be true. Whether Steve heals more or not. Whether we obtain insurance or not. Whether circumstances begin to flow or whether they continue to obstinately thwart.
Church has been a sweet reprieve and a reminder of His overwhelming grace and provision. To know by our very presence God’s faithfulness in accomplishing the impossible, is to find the food my soul seeks. Each week we are humbled and amazed by the stories of prayers spoken over us for months, answered now. It is no mistake that as a church we are studying the book of James. I have been reminded in the last few weeks to consider trials joy, to persevere and also to remember God’s good character in the midst of hardship. Yet again the community of faith both upholds and instructs.
Time and again, I find the pathways out of darkness are the twofold disciplines of gratitude and service. While immersed in the details, I can give thanks. Once freed from them, I can serve. In all things, I can hope.
I continue to feel beckoned toward hope. It is not always easy to hope when the evidence is lacking, when the miracle slows. But my spirit does not yet let me rest in acceptance. The limb of faith grows ever more precarious as we teeter beyond what is reasonable. The spirit, like the body, fatigues as we move beyond the halfway point of the two year recovery period.
Please pray with us for Steve’s continued recovery, for patience in the details and for endurance in this new phase.
With love, perseverance and hope,
Michelle