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.

To be useful in affliction...

The chronic pain of RAD, with it's unpredictable tidal waves of intensity, has opened my eyes to the deceptive power of addiction - and for that I am grateful. It's all too easy to condemn what I do not understand or cannot see.

God has graced me with a cheerful disposition; I was shocked when my doctor once asked if I was depressed. Chronic pain does that to you, you know, she added, and I had to admit that she was right. Not that I was clinically or chronically depressed, but that there have been moments when unrelenting pain wears down my resolve and dark clouds circle overhead. I begin adding up the lifestyle changes I've been forced to accept, the ways my disability has affected my relationships with those I love, and a way out begins to look attractive. Consequences are overshadowed by the promise of relief. Only  the sovereign grace of God, the will to persevere, to lean into Christ and push through pain, keeps me from falling into a trap where the grasp of addiction would be beyond my physical or emotional strength to escape.

So I throw no stones. No. Stones. I understand your pain. Take my hand and we'll hold onto Christ, for though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two will withstand him—a threefold cord is not quickly broken.

I was grieved for my friend, a young mother and sister in Christ, when she messaged me last week to say she's been diagnosed with RAD, but she was relieved to know that someone understands what she is going through and encouraged that I will walk through this with her. To know that my suffering is useful - that though I'm not able to do what I've done in the past - there is a purpose that brings me joy.

I thought of this yesterday as I read Piper's No Blessing Like Health — With the Exception of Sickness. Piper identifies suffering as something that in God's sovereignty pastors must endure to be useful to their people, but I believe it's true for each of us - and to be useful in my affliction is grace. It brings joy and cheerfulness that strengthens my resolve and keeps those dark clouds away.  

{Photos: this week from my swing under the sweetgum trees in my Pollywog Creek backyard}