The one who trusts {Psalm 84.12 memory verse}...

This disease isn't going to get better, my pulmonologist explained at the end of my annual visit with him earlier this week, but I don't need to see you again for a year...unless you begin to deteriorate.

Really? I thought. He'd been so encouraging earlier - telling me that the c-t scan and pulmonary function tests I'd had the week before showed no progression of the autoimmune lung disease. In fact, it hasn't appeared to have worsened in the three years since my diagnosis. This makes me very happy, he said. Did he really have to end the visit with talk of deterioration?

Throughout the hour drive back home in the cold drizzling rain, I fought to keep that joy-stealing word from taking root. It's a battle I wage still as I cling to the truth that it's the LORD who orders my steps and has numbered my days.

As January comes to a close, so does Psalm 84, with the exhortation that the blessings in this life come from trusting in the One who created and ordained my days before there was even one. 

For you formed my inward parts;
you knitted me together in my mother's womb.
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works;
my soul knows it very well.
My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed substance;
in your book were written, every one of them,
the days that were formed for me,
when as yet there was none of them.
Psalm 139:12-16, ESV

Have you been memorizing Psalm 84 with me this month? If you have, I'd love to know it. I have a gift for you.

No good thing {Psalm 84.11 memory verse}...

Here's the problem with holding onto that verse: I don't always know what's good {for me}, and I'm completely incapable of walking uprightly on my own.

God doesn't make it difficult for me to know how to walk uprightly - in obedience to His commands and within the boundaries He has established in His Word and written on my heart - but it's a walk I'm powerless to make outside the blood-bought shield of grace and the mercies of each new day. 

...for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins.

Romans 3:23-25

Still Saturday and I {LOVE} Sunday::to gather as believers to worship God together...{Psalm 84.10 memory verse}

When I wish for more from myself {Psalm 84.9 memory verse}...

Once upon a time, I was an expert multi-tasker who could keep multiple plates spinning - even after crohn's disease and the emergency surgery that removed half my colon {I actually changed out of my hospital gown into something more appropriate and was wheeled across the parking lot to the hemodialysis center I administrated so I could host the previously scheduled open-house}. Even while raising three busy boys, homeschooling, pregnancy in my 40's, and the full-time care of my bedridden mother. These days, it's a good one when I can keep one plate from crashing into irreparable pieces. 

So when there are long gaps in posts here on Pollywog Creek, please don't worry that I've slipped back into those recent blues - I simply have more going on in my life than I can manage and blogging is pushed to the bottom of my to-do list. 

In the meantime, there are three more verses {after this one} for me to memorize over the next 8 or 9 days. If you are memorizing Psalm 84 with me, I pray that these verses are speaking to you as much as they are encouraging me. I often wish I had the physical and mental energy of days past - when I could give my attention to and accomplish more in a day - but I'm so grateful for the shield God uses to protect me from myself and that desire to be and do more than what He desires for me. 

In a season of weeping for those who weep {Psalm 84.8 Memory Verse}...

I can't remember another season quite like this one. 

The deaths over the past week of five precious souls - from the unborn and six to eighty-seven - and those who loved them most here on earth consume my thoughts and prayers.

Every night, I fall asleep whispering their names in prayer. 

Thank you, LORD, for hearing us and for comforting those whose hearts are broken as they walk through the Valley of Weeping.

Selah

To wait...{Psalm 84.7 memory verse}

There are hills yet to climb and miles to go, but there's been strength to get me where I am and I know there will be strength to get me where I'm going.  

It's a promise. 

Teach me, LORD, to wait for you.

Still Saturday::a valley of weeping {Psalm 84.6 memory verse}...

Though scholars are not in agreement about the meaning of this verse, the word "Baca" means "weeping," and "valleys" of weeping and hardship are most certainly part of our pilgrimage from this world to the next. 

Thursday began with the news of the sudden death that morning of one of my oldest and dearest friend's six year old grandson. Within the hour, another very close and precious friend asked for prayer for her daughter who had just received the news that the baby she was carrying in her womb no longer had a heartbeat. That afternoon, a sweet young mother in the lifegroup my husband and I lead shared the results of her young son's MRI revealing his need for a second brain surgery. By the end of the day, the seventeen year old grandson of an older friend from church was killed in a motorcycle accident. 

It's been two days of weeping with those who weep when I open up Psalm 84 to create the memory verse photo for verse 6, and there it is - the Valley of Baca - the Valley of Weeping. But as we weep, we can make this hard pilgrimage a place of springs. We can surround our hurting brothers and sisters and stand with them in the "rain" of God's love, goodness, comfort and grace until we reach Zion - where weeping will be no more.

{I highly recommend a series of posts that my beautiful and courageous friend Nancy Franson wrote about her pilgrimage through the Swiss Alps. They are largely centered around Psalm 84.}

I'm linking today with Sandy...

Forgetting to breathe {and Psalm 84.5 memory verse}...

The winter days here on Pollywog Creek have been muggy, gray and gloomy - not the cool and sunny days we {and the snow birds who migrate south} have always known winter to be at the edge of the tropics. It's been a reflection of a grief I've been wrestling to shake.

The new year holds hard transitions before me, and my heart has been heavy with grieving the changes to come that taunt and mock my here-and-now joy.

The physical therapist straps two-pound weights on my ankles, and half way through her prescribed routine that stretches and strengthens the muscles and ligaments around my surgery-scarred knees, my heart begins to race and I realize I'm forgetting to breathe. 

A month ago, shortly after the last surgery when pain was at it's worst and it was all I could do to hold onto the walker and move from the bed to the chair, I'd listened to Mark Talbot's message on suffering: 

Losing perspective in suffering is stifling; it is like forgetting to breathe. More particularly, we Christians can forget that we are never alone, no matter what we are undergoing, because God is with us, just as he was with those saints who have been in similar straits before. Sometimes we are especially prone to forget when we are dealing with some chronic disability of our own or of one of our loved ones that seems to just be going on and on, with no end in sight. We need then, especially, to be reminded to breathe in the word that God has breathed out for us (2 Timothy 3:16–17).

The Scriptures record a lot of suffering because God’s people have never been free of it, not even from the kinds and degrees that can overwhelm God’s most stalwart saints. Indeed, when Job’s suffering seemed to him to be neverending, he actually accused God of keeping him from catching his breath (see Job 9:18, NLT). Yet his story finally conveys that, as awful as his situation was, much of what he needed to hear was something like this: “Breathe! Don’t panic! Slow yourself down! Don’t take everything to be as it seems. And don’t irrationally conclude that things will never get better.”

Mark Talbot

As Talbot suggests, I begin to breathe - breathing out laments and breathing in grace. God is good and He is with me. I breathe deep, word-soaked breaths and my heart is slowed and strengthened for the journey.

Because He is good {and Psalm 84.4 memory verse}...

I stepped far out of my comfort zone when I accepted the invitation to speak. Sure, I was a competent and confident administrator and head nurse, but I was an inexperienced public speaker who'd momentarily forgotten that she was also terrified of the spotlight.

The day long seminar on renal failure was designed for university students and professional nurses, and included speakers from various health care disciplines. Each of us was assigned approximately one hour to cover our area of expertise and answer questions from the audience.

At first, I was honored to have been asked to speak. Having trained small groups of nurses and technicians, I was comfortable with the material and didn’t think teaching a larger audience would be too challenging, but as the seminar date approached I began to panic. Frantically, I offered up a series of “Lord, save me from this and I’ll do anything for you forever” pleas for mercy, and secretly hoped for a case of laryngitis or the flu – anything that would excuse me from the commitment.

New in my walk with Christ, I had yet to learn the discipline of acknowledging the Lord “in all my ways.” I’d been “wise in (my) own eyes” and accepted the invitation to speak without seeking God's wisdom. Meeting me where I was in those early baby-step days, the Lord lovingly graced me in abundance. “I’ll give you every penny of the honorarium, Lord, if you’ll just get me through this,” was my final plea, and that’s exactly how it happened. My knees may have knocked as I stood behind the podium, but I was relaxed and self-assured in my presentation that day. Sunday, and the opportunity to place my speaker's fee in the offering plate, couldn't come fast enough.

Over thirty years later, the Lord rightfully expects more from me. He’s more inclined to let me fall on my face when I step out in my own foolish wisdom and feeble strength and make plans and commitments outside His counsel – not because He’s less kind or loving, but because He is good. I’d never know the peace and joy of trusting Him if He always rescued me from myself. And that is abundant grace, too.

Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths. Be not wise in your own eyes.

Proverbs 3:5-7a ESV

{Slightly edited from the archives.}

I {LOVE} Sunday::to sing for joy {Psalm 84.3 memory verse}...

How lovely is your dwelling place,
O Lord of hosts!
My soul longs, yes, faints
for the courts of the Lord;
my heart and flesh sing for joy
to the living God.
Even the sparrow finds a home,
and the swallow a nest for herself,
where she may lay her young,
at your altars, O Lord of hosts,
my King and my God.

Psalm 84:1-3

To know by heart {Psalm 84.1-2 memory verses}...

All the heart really knows — is what it knows by heart.
Ann Voskamp

{I'm using Scripture Type to help me memorize Psalm 84 this month. Just 12 short verses. I'll add verse 3 tomorrow. I want my heart to know it.. I'd love to have you join me.}

Patsy Clairmont Interview, Part 2, Freedom...

In How to Study Your Bible, John MacArthur recommends reading an entire New Testament book every day for 30 days. It's a method I adopted several years ago to study the book of Ephesians, and it was life-changing. 

On the first day of this new year, Patsy Clairmont wrote on her Facebook page that her goal is to read the Book of Philippians every day this month, and she encouraged her Facebook and Twitter friends to do the same. 

I should have included the following with yesterday's questions, but I didn't, so I'll give it a post of its own today. 

Patsy, I know that you are reading the Book of Philippians every day this January. Has there been a verse that has really jumped out at you - that has been particularly meaningful to you - as you read through Philippians every day? 

If you've ever been a prisoner, (and I have as an agoraphobic), you can't help but be impressed that Paul's book on joy, Philippians, was written while he was incarcerated. I think my favorite verse is in chapter 4 verse 4, "Rejoice in the Lord always. And again I will say rejoice." There's something about the word "again" that really encourages me. So many truths slip our minds and it is a safeguard to have them repeated.

Patsy talks about that agoraphobic season, the freedom she experienced in Christ, and the importance of knowing and memorizing scripture in this wonderful short video: