hope – walkwithme413

The Taking of Care

Korea: An Unexpected Gift

I’ve just returned from the most beautiful of lands.

Its history, culture, and people have left mind and heart full.

It would be impossible to catalogue all that I saw, heard, and did, but I feel the need to tell of what it was like to be cared for and loved in a way I have not experienced in a very long time.

“The Smile of Silla,” emblem of Gyeongju

To begin, the trip was a marvel in itself. Given that I had resigned myself to a summer of frustrating recovery, the opening up of a portal to Korea was a sweet, unexpected gift from the hand of a Father who always understands.

Changing-of-the-guard, Gwanghwamun Gate, Gyeongbokgung Palace, Seoul

Daybreak at Cheonggyecheon, a revived urban waterway in the middle of Seoul

Making friends, western terminus of Cheonggyecheon

There was not a single detail along the way that He let slip, from the many tiered-logistics of getting there to the very places I would lay my head.

The Secret Garden at Changdeokgung Palace, Seoul

It began when a colleague, who knew of my desire to visit the country where he had spent many years, saw me limping up to campus after my failed hike. “You’re coming to Korea!” he called from the window of his car. “Let’s talk!”

Bukchon Hanok Village with Seoul Tower in the distance

A meeting shortly thereafter with him and his dear Korean wife, where advice and suggestions were proffered, gave me the courage to buy plane tickets and begin to plan.

How many times did “chance” encounters and the radical generosity of others make this trip not just possible, but transformational? Hard to know, but everywhere I went, care preceded me.

Bongeun-sa, an ancient Buddhist Temple, Seoul

It had been many years since someone else had made a hotel reservation, booked a train ticket, or organized a day for me, and yet all of these and more were gifts from my students’ parents, who graciously opened the door to their country and invited me in.

I haven’t always been so good at receiving. Stubbornness and pride are often barriers to accepting what others are so willing to give. This trip, in so many ways, taught me how to let go and say yes.

Moonlight Rainbow Fountain, Banpo Bridge, Seoul

Yes to sleek black cars delivering me to destinations, yes to authentic meals with students and their families, yes to tour guides and time together with friends, yes to recommendations and reservations and respite, all bequeathed with no way of my ever reciprocating.

In the taking of care, I was frequently brought to grateful tears. Living alone, as I have, for over a decade, I had forgotten those little daily loves.

Burial mounds from the Silla Dynasty, Gyeongju

Looking back, I can imagine God’s delight as He watched his earthy angels bless and tend to His solitary child.

It gave me the freedom and bravery to explore in ways I’m not sure I would have otherwise been able to. And explore I did, every moment, every day.

The Presidential Suite, where presidents and diplomats have met & signed treaties, Commodore Hotel, Gyeongju

Since I’ve returned, many have asked about my favorite part of the trip. Given the number of people, museums, markets, meals, and sites that I experienced, this is an impossible question to answer.

Street cats, Gamcheon Culture Village, Busan

What struck me most, I suppose, was history: the story of Korea and its people, their suffering and redemption, the culture of honor and resilience that I only just began to understand. I am frequently moved by what I read, hear, and see.

One day, I board a bus to tour the DMZ. There are passport checks and armed guards and a feeling of sadness I just cannot shake. I’d been listening to several books about the North, and our tour included an interview with a North Korean defector. Bleak.

Statue of Two Brothers, The War Memorial of Korea, Seoul

It’s a clear day. From the observation tower, we can see far into the countryside of North Korea. People on bikes, some in a field, a guard outside of a tower on a hill, a car, a cow. They are so close – it wouldn’t take me long to jog over to where they are, and yet – miles of razor wire, mines, and an unfinished war stand between us.

Who’s taking care of them?

Outside the War Memorial of Korea, Seoul

I think of my students. Each will have to serve at least 18 months in the military before they turn 28. Some, alumni, already have. I study the soldiers who board our bus or guard the gates, wondering if I’ll see a familiar face, worry.

Another day, I walk through the Gamcheon Culture Village, where many refugees fled the war in the 1950’s. Now, it is one of the most visited tourist areas in Busan, having been revitalized through various art projects, murals, and sculptures. It’s an compelling contrast.

History is everywhere. I take the subway one morning to its terminus, Dadaepo Beach, and follow a path to the tip of a spit of land jutting out into the South Sea. Amazed to find a set of rickety stairs propped against what looks like an abandoned bunker, I climb up.

Lean out. Wind and rain lash, but I can see up and down the coast and away towards Japan. There are lighthouses, islands, coves. Was this once an active outpost? For a moment, it’s mine alone.

Other days, I happen by statues in the street or find an alley where books and newspapers were sold during the war. There are stalls there now, still active 76 years later.

Juxtaposed to the historic are so many modern marvels.

Haewol Skywalk, where you look down through clear glass to the ocean below, Busan

One of them is the ease of transport. Everywhere I go, public transportation is safe, clean, and affordable. Nor do I ever worry walking alone, no matter the time of day or night. How is it not this way elsewhere? Could we not, here, be as equally committed and welcoming?

Another, and one I avail myself of daily, are the coffee shops on every street and the widely available, lightning fast WiFi. Civilization at its finest.

I’m still sifting through all of the ways I was touched by this trip.

How can I not be grateful for the families and friends who took care of me, grateful for the beauty I got to walk in everyday, grateful, even, for the very injury that allowed me to journey halfway across the world?

Cheongsapo, along Haeundae Blueline Park, Busan

It’s no small thing to be the recipient of care.

I am honored to have been Korea’s guest.

What if -?

I wake one morning this week to cool air, windows open wide.

In my tiny house, I can practically touch fingertips to opposite walls, and all around me birds are hailing in the morning. For a moment, it feels expansive, like my tent somewhere deep in the woods, and I tunnel under quilt, reluctant to let the moment pass.

When I finally drift outside, stand by porch rail, the wildfire sky is pink, pulsing as if alive. It’s a wonder, despite the source.

I’ve had lots of time to think, recently; not the moving-over-rock-and-root kind of thinking, the kind I love and miss; but anchored, centered introspection about where I am and why and how.

There’s a story in the Bible about a woman who has been bleeding for twelve years. Mark writes, she had suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors and had spent all she had, yet instead of getting better, she grew worse.

She’s been ostracized, forced away from neighbor and temple, considered unclean, untouchable. I long to talk to her, to draw close, to ask how she’s managed it for so long.

What’s your secret?

Under the weight of this injury, my muscles soften and my body grows thicker by the day. I want to walk, run, climb, stand on summit, cross rivers, burn my skin red. I’m stuck – like my friend, I’ve bled money and time searching for the cure that ever eludes.

But what if-?

Mark describes what happens next. Desperate, the woman with the issue of blood gambles through the throng, trailing behind the One whom she has heard can heal. If I could just touch his hem, she reasons, maybejustmaybe, all that they say about Him will prove true, for me.

And it does. Immediately her bleeding stopped and she felt in her body that she was healed of her affliction.

And after a somewhat comical exchange between Jesus and disciples – Who touched me? – Are you kidding, Lord, don’t you see this crowd? – Jesus stops everything and focuses on this one lone lady.

Daughter, your faith has healed you, he tells her. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering.

What if-?

What if all those years cowering on the outskirts, being shushed and shooed, ignored, beaten down, drained of hope? What if all of it pointed to one singular encounter with a Savior who was willing to break open her suffering heart and set her free?

I want to ask her, though I’m sure I know the answer: was it worth it? To go through all of that for that one momentous moment, and all the hereafter that followed?

I want to think it that it was. That it is, for me.

What if the moonscape of the last 12 years has simply been leading me into a covenant of greater trust in Him who holds back the crowd for just His beloved one?

Have I been moving so long and so fast that He’s had to sit me down for this season? To pull those pieces of my reluctant, petulant heart that kick and scream like an angry toddler who thinks she knows what’s best?

Summer has always been a time of growth, but I sit here, again, shrinking, day after day, pleading my cause (Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me), tiptoeing around His promises, asking skeptical questions, doubting but wanting to believe.

Like Abraham did. He, too, endured years of waiting on the God who promised.

Paul puts it this way: Abraham dared to trust God to do what only God could do: raise the dead to life, with a word make something out of nothing. When everything was hopeless, Abraham believed anyway, deciding to live not on the basis of what he saw he couldn’t do but on what God said he would do.

I long to meet Him at the hem.

To pray through. For it not to matter if I am ever healed, to say that it was worth it, even if.

To declare, as Habakkuk did, not through gritted teeth but with open, surrendered, triumphant hands:

Though the fig tree does not bud
    and there are no grapes on the vines,
though the olive crop fails
    and the fields produce no food,
though there are no sheep in the pen
    and no cattle in the stalls,
yet I will rejoice in the Lord,
    I will be joyful in God my Savior.

Like a wink, I read the last lines.

The Sovereign Lord is my strength;
he makes my feet like the feet of a deer,
he enables me to tread on the heights.

What if-?

Lessons from a Little

She came to my daughter’s house late one night, a tiny tugboat of a girl, bird-boned and face-scabbed from some yet-unknown less-than-benign neglect.

I’ve been watching her.

From the very beginning, it seemed her arms, her heart were open to whatever new presented itself. She is fearless, sweet, unabashedly inclined to ask for aid.

She’s not the first foster my daughter’s family has taken in, but she is quickly becoming my favorite.

I sense there is a lot I can learn from her.

Stuck in a washer of injury/rehab/recover/repeat, I understand now why the cycle is called vicious, and I desperately crave an exit.

I have to admit the days since being forced off-trail have not been my best.

Days were spent at a Super 8 willing my legs to heal, ordering takeout and coming to terms.

Once at home, turtling in on myself, indulging in obstructive self-pity, railing at God and whatever this thing is that He thinks He’s doing. Wondering, like Saint Teresa of Avila, if this is how You treat your friends, God, is it no wonder You have so few?

Yikes.

But then – I look at this little and see how unbothered she is by her own novel circumstance. She does not protest the food she is offered, the new crib where she sleeps, or the hours she is asked to spend outside.

She is part of the fabric of this busy family, for now, until her own can mend and take her back.

I recently read how Jesus tells his disciples, his friends, that they must count the cost of following Him: “hold no opinions, make no demands, retain no privileges, abandon all cherished sins, worldly possessions, and secret self-indulgences,” as the footnote in my translation reads.

Without reservation or question? Really?

Impossible.

Yet knowing what weak-willed, selfish creatures we are, unable to say no to ourselves, I am not surprised to turn the page and see the very next parable Jesus tells them.

The lost lamb.

He knows our sheep-nature will lead us to bracken, cliff, and hole; but He chases us anyway, lifts us up anyway, brings us back anyway, to start anew.

O Savior, how do you not weary of us?

Like my small friend, maybe it’s time to quietly pick up my cross.

Open my arms and heart, bravely face the changes I never asked for, temper my rebellious and immoderate spirit, ask for the help my Father is ever poised to give.

If this small slip of a soul can fierce the unknown, and do it with such calm and trust, then so can I.

So can you.

O Captain! my Captain! When will this fearful trip be done?

We cannot know nor see.

And perhaps that is best. Had I known I would be back here, injured and alone, so soon after the last time, I’m not sure I could have borne it. Knowing the work ahead, exacting heart work that, apparently, desperately needed to be done.

As quickly as the trial comes, it may, perhaps, just as swiftly, depart. I think of Paul and Silas in prison, singing and praying an earthquake into being.

Friends, multiplying joy and dividing sorrow.

Prayer, working, as Spurgeon once observed, as “the slender nerve that moves the muscle of omnipotence.”

Pick me up, our toddler girl gestures with chubby arms aloft.

Pick me up, Jesus, because I’m just not sure I can do this again.

Yet I have to believe that You believe I can.

Try Try Again

Last summer, I blew up attempting a long walk I had been planning for a year. It’s time to try again, but I will posting blogs on the backpacking platform The Trek should you wish to follow along.

If you go to my latest post, and scroll to the bottom, you can subscribe there. It looks like this:

I think it helps the algorithm or some such thing, so thanks in advance.

So much has happened in the months since last summer.

I’ve learned so much about doubt and fear, ebbs and flows, aging and hope. Suffice to say, if my hip holds, I’ll likely have lots of time on my hand to process and pray.

The youngest and I used to start the first days’ miles on the Appalachian Trail by quietly thanking God for getting us to wherever we were and interceding for friends and family. It felt like a sacred discipline, a foundation for the path ahead, before his boyish exuberance would scatter the wildlife and fatigue made us cranky. (Okay, made me cranky – he seemed uniquely hardwired for resilience and joy).

I wouldn’t mind some prayer over this trip. Let me know how I can be praying for you.

I’d like to say see you in August, but only God knows when I’ll need to pop out of the woods. Until then:

I stand upon the mount of God With sunlight in my soul; I hear the storms in vales beneath, I hear the thunders roll.

But I am calm with Thee, my God, Beneath these glorious skies; And to the height on which I stand, No storms, nor clouds, can rise.

O, this is life! O, this is joy! My God, to find Thee so; Thy face to see, Thy voice to hear, And all Thy love to know. ~Horatius Bonar

Ten

On the evening of our final end-of-year meetings, our school community gathers to celebrate. It’s been a sweet year, one marked by fewer, smaller conflicts, where our credo We will know your boys and love your boys rang spectacularly true.

I looked forward every day to seeing my students, trying to teach them skills, sharing laughs at table, cheering them on.

That night, our Head of School shares a list of milestones, and my name is read (along with his own) to commemorate 10 years of service to our school. It is, of course, cliche to say It does not seem possible, and yet, here I am.

Ten years.

Though my brain ages, I am able to command it yet to think about those first few months, ten years ago.

Shattered raw from my son’s accident, I moved into the space he had inhabited only years earlier. It was grace to be able to work alongside his former teachers, gaze at his old team photos, find his name etched in pencil on the bottom of a drawer (naughty boy).

Say his name to those who knew him.

If I were to do the math, in those ten years, I have taught hundreds of students, known thousands more.

They are men now, boys no more.

Forever 22, my son will never meet these brothers of his. Never rove his old haunts, stand at fence on the new turf field, give an alumni tie to the next class of boy.

On this day, the 28th of May, the wind swirls as I write. Seeds soar through the air outside. Papers blow to the floor.

It feels like change.

What is ahead, I cannot know.

This world – this shining, heavy, glorious world – is not my home.

It was never his.

If we are lucky, alert, we may catch a glimpse of what is to come.

Not ten years, but an eternity.

He’s waiting there now.

Snakes and Stones

A new song brushes by on Pandora this week, and the first line wrecks me, a perfect mirror of the pain and frustration marking the past month.

Tired and I am angry at the nature of it all
Fighting just to find myself a breath

After scrapping all year to heal from last summer’s injury, I was ready to try again to perhaps be the first woman to hike the 115 tallest mountains in the Northeast in one continuous footpath. At least give it a try.

I was feeling pretty good, actually, most of the year.

I’m able to get back on the trails that I love, covertly start a second Grid (shh).

I spend time with the littles, joy at my son’s engagement, teach the sweetest bunch of middle school boys on the planet.

All along, in the back of my mind, is The Hike. A metaphor for overcoming: injury and age and the steady drip of the world.

Then.

It starts as an ache in my shoulder, travels down the muscles of my back. A nagging there-ness that begins to shout the moment I put on a pack.

Sparing no attention to rehab my wretched hip, I had neglected other places that were bent on rebellion. The pain is constant, a reminder that the time to leave is short and I can’t leave, I won’t, until it does.

Not this time, I tell myself, and try everything available to excise the growing knot hellbent on shipwrecking my plans. Chiro, deep tissue massage, reps with rubber bands, a tennis ball.

I go back to the stories that have always brought me hope.

Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him! (Matthew 7:9-11)

How. Much. More.

And yet – though I know it can’t be true – it seems that all I get are snakes and stones.

I love the forest. It is a place where I can be, silent, away. Away from other weighty pains, where it’s okay to be alone.

Can I trust, at home, my own tired soul? Not good with empty time, I fear I could be a danger to myself.

And then, just when it seems my shoulder starts to calm – bread! fish! – I cannot even. Attention drawn away from its constant demands, my hip reverts back to its old treacherous ways. It would be hilarious if it wasn’t just so darn sad.

Can these dry bones live?

I wonder and worry. Will these compound setbacks be a dark night of the soul, leading me to oceans of deeper trust – or will they send me spiraling?

I realize I have a say in the matter, and who wants to willingly spiral when it’s surrender that is necessary?

So I try. Remember all the fish, all the bread from seasons past.

Number present blessings. Pray and cry and pray some more. Banish those doubts and disappointments to the empty tomb and roll back the stone.

God’s plans are rarely linear.

I do wish He were predictable. So much of the last decade has been anything but.

But what I can count on, what is as unmistakably as granite solid as the mountains I crave, is Himself. His presence, provision, and care.

So I wait here in limbo, knowing that his howmuchmoreness will one day win.

What will this summer hold?

Ah, Sovereign Lord, you alone know.

A Better List

It’s been a while since I’ve had the time or inclination to write, but today, as a wintery mix falls and my car sits idle in the driveway with its check engine light on, again, it feels like a need.

The haste with which Christmas came and went felt cruel. Though it happens every year, it seemed particularly thus this time.

The hopes and fears of all the years: they are a weight I can’t shake, a long list of assaults that sap my faith.

Frequent injuries that linger long. Brain fog. Mice in the walls. A Judas car. Loneliness. The pounds that creep back on.

The very socks I pull on this morning. His socks, the one who left too soon, who loved this season, his family, life itself.

The elastic crackles as I pull, and I realize there are some things that just go, no matter how hard you want to hold them tight.

Maybe I need to look up, not down.

There was another list I started to keep this season, inspired by something I read on the Bible app earlier this month. Apparently, there are more than 700 different names for Christ in the Bible, and author Robert Morgan writes that “each one meets the various needs in our own lives… (and) discloses the many layers of his relationship with us.”

I start to count.

Compassionate One. Fuller’s Soap. Redeemer.

Every morning, as I sit at desk, I journal names.

Promise Keeper. My Delight. Lord of Power.

I circle the number, every day.

My Shepherd, 29. The Lord My Banner, 51. Commander of the Angel Armies, 105.

As I count, two birthdays arrive, my own and the newest little.

Everlasting Father. Bridegroom. Master. King.

In less than a month, when Christmas finally arrives, I’ve hit 383.

Alpha. Omega. Lion. Lamb.

Look up!

Do you not know? Have you not heard?

That hip, those mice, your son.

Why do you complain, O daughter? Why do you say, “My way is hidden from the Lord; my cause is disregarded by my God”?

The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. (Isaiah 40:27-28)

He is your Strength, your Champion, your Great Reward.

Faithful One. Rock. Abba Daddy.

Always close, always listening, my very breath. Immanuel. God with Us. Never Leaver or Forsaker. Life itself.

I can’t stop counting, and neither will You, Meeter of My Every Need.

Thank you for all the ways that You are You.

Hope of the Ends of the Earth.

Good Girl

I didn’t want to write this post.

In fact, I’ve been waiting the last few weeks, hoping, praying that I wouldn’t have to, wouldn’t feel that I must.

But no amount of walking the neighborhood, no matter how loudly I call her name or how many times I look at the door, scour the woods, despite the signs I tacked to telephone poles or the pictures I posted on Facebook, the chasing down of false leads or speaking to strangers, I have to finally admit: she’s gone.

My sweet, constant, loud, fuzzy sidekick has disappeared.

Yes, I know – she’s just a cat, a pet and not a child. That is a truth I wish I didn’t know as well as I do.

And yet…

I got my good girl the summer of another disappearance, the summer the one I had trusted with my heart broke covenant and walked away.

Though I didn’t know it at the time, the tiny kitten we invited into our home would become a timekeeper for whenever I thought back to that awful summer.

How old is she?

How long have I been alone?

Children aged and flew; I sold our too-big house, got a job, came to terms, felt the wounds slowly scab.

Through it all, at the end of the day, there was always one face waiting for me when I opened the door.

She moused the house and chased chipmunks in the yard. Hid under the bed when the grands came to visit, destroyed more couches than I care to admit, woke me up when I wanted to sleep. She insisted I brush her by falling underfoot, endured the scissors when her long fur clumped. Her favorite perch was atop the couch, eye-level with me as I watched or read, absent-mindedly scratching her ears as she purred. She was a sucker for an empty box.

She was a good girl.

I try not to think about the scratch marks I find on the porch stairs, the lone tuft of fur.

What took you? You must have been so scared.

I try not to look at her silly toys.

The treats she no longer needs.

Yes, I know.

I know she was just a pet.

But she was my pet, the one live thing that has kept company with me all these years.

She was a love. My good good girl.

The Necessity of Clouds

About a week ago, I saw a window between duty and the many appointments dealing with my injury.

Impulsively, I packed up the car and set out early one morning to drive to the Gaspe Peninsula, a place I’ve long wanted to explore.

I’m so glad I did. So much beauty packed onto one spit of land, it wasn’t possible to see it all in one short week.

So many trees!

And seals that howled like wolves.

The largest colony of Northern Gannets, squawking and tussling like my middle school students.

Rocks everywhere, grand and common.

Ocean, gulf, river, lake: water in all its diverse forms.

Did I mention trees? The stunning variety of them, their sweet shade, the heady, pine-y scent; spontaneous gratitude would often erupt in my soul for God’s gracious gift of trees.

Every day, I tried to walk a little further on the local trails until, at last, I felt ready to tackle an actual mountain.

Standing proudly on the tip of Gaspe in Forillon National Parc, Mont Saint-Alban, at 285 meters, was a little over a five mile loop, much of it on the International Appalachian Trail.

Seemed like as good a place as any to kick the tires.

Rain pelted my windshield as I parked at the trailhead, waiting for a break. Yes, I wanted to see the views promised in the trail description, but I also longed to see if my damaged soft tissue was healed enough to propel me up the mountain.

Muscle memory took over as I exited the car and practically danced – cautiously – toward the summit and the observation tower at the top.

Perhaps, upon discovering that my legs did, in fact, still work, a view would be nice after all. I willed the misty clouds to part at every outlook.

When I reached the top tier of the tower, they did, in part, recede, affording me some of the most elegant displays of the entire trip.

And that’s when it hit me.

Without the clouds to frame the landscape, the tip of the Gaspe, the cliffs and trees and sea, would have appeared flat, dull. It was the clouds themselves that revealed the beauty.

For the rest of the trip and thereafter, I started paying attention. Cataloguing.

Confident in my restored limbs, I tackled Mont Jacques-Cartier.

Found other paths.

Everywhere I looked.

Veil in sky or vapor over field.

The clouds were the show.

Integral, insistent.

We so often denigrate the clouds in our lives. The times when the sun is shrouded and our lives are marred by frustration, confusion, and pain.

But what if -?

What if those times are necessary, to help us truly see and appreciate and know?

Perhaps we don’t value a thing until it is lost, for a season or forever.

I want to look with new eyes.

To not despise those cloaked things.

It is said my King will one day return. It is said He will come with clouds.

Should I be found here, waiting, when this occurs, let it be with a heart full of gratitude for the times with and the times without.

The Divine Conductor

I’ve been thinking a lot about turtles lately.

Actually, for some reason, they seem to be thinking a lot about me.

Ever since I got home from the hike I had planned for this summer – an attempt that ended in a catastrophic injury (okay, perhaps hyperbolic, but it’s been a real bummer) – turtles have been showing up everywhere.

My biggest little gives me a picture of one she made out of stickers. She had a whole zoo to choose from, but this is the one she picked:

Multiple turtles have been using my yard as a cut through to the marsh behind my house. Big and small, they galump across the grass, seemingly oblivious to the mosquito cloud engulfing their head, until they eventually hit the woods.

I’ve had to rescue turtles who freeze crossing the road, caught glimpses of ones who made it over without intervention, others who flatly did not.

The largest one was the snapper I argued with the day before my hike ended. He appeared unreasonably determined to turn into traffic and unwilling to accept that my trekking pole was sent to save his life, biting and scratching at it until he at last complied.

I’ve had a lot of time on my hands. Too much time, in my opinion, trying to figure out where I am and how I got here, a prisoner of my own recovery. From under this heavy carapace, I look out into a world that has become too expansive for my broken frame.

How easy it would be to turn on God. To blame Him for this injury, these thwarted plans, this wretched “wasted” summer, this limping around an empty house looking for something meaningful to do.

But that is not His way.

As His children, we need His Father-ship. We need, I need, His comfort, compassion, wisdom, and hope.

Holding on by my fingernails, I search His word for anything that will get me through the day.

To a hungry soul, every bitter thing is sweet. (Proverbs 27:7)

Yearning to walk, even a short, painful trip to the mailbox is a delight.

Lord, to whom else would we go? You have the words of eternal life. (John 6:68)

Icing, stretching, visits to the chiro: I do my best to steward my recovery. Even so, when and if I am healed on earth, my body still remains in a constant state of decay. This (glory!) will not be true in my forever home.

Blessed are they whose strength is in You…As they pass through the Valley of Baca, they make it a spring…they go from strength to strength. (Psalm 84:5-6)

The Valley of Baca was a place of drought, hardship and tears that pilgrims needed to pass through on the way to Jerusalem. I, too, can traverse this valley, taking courage from Him, building my resolve, until even the driest of sands becomes a pool.

And my all time, go-to favorite:

I would have lost heart, unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the Lord In the land of the living. (Psalm 27:13)

Though we are never assured a suffer-free life, He does promise nuggets of goodness along the way.

Ease is not our lot.

Difficult forges the fight in us. Who needs to overcome green meadows when it’s a battlefield that lies ahead? Muscles are molded in the gym, not on the couch, even when the only muscles I seem able to mold at this moment are metaphorical.

For now, if I can’t go out to the beauty, I’ll bring beauty inside.

There are grands to play with, friends to visit, meals to plan and distribute.

If I can’t move my body, I will work on my brain. Reading, writing, prayer, puzzles: there is still so much rich I am able to do.

Slowly, slowly, slowly, I drag this shell across the yard.

We must trust the hand of the Divine Conductor, who orchestrates our circumstance, the rests as well as the notes. We cannot see what He sees, so it does no good to beat at his baton.

He knows everything about the when and how and where. (Isaiah 28:29)

I didn’t choose this wilderness, but I’m okay knowing He is with me in it, cheering me on, until, one day, it ends.

Press on.

Korea: An Unexpected Gift

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