Cancer Support Gear

Well, I’ve finally received all my cancer support gear.

The constant teal peeking out from my winter sleeve reminds me to pray, but it also reminds me of:

fear,

uncertainty,

the unwelcome foreign norm in my family’s life,

that is cancer.

I like the gear, but I kinda hate it at the same time. The plastic bracelets sometimes seem condescending to the voracious upheaval that is cancer... in my little sister. Such a scary combination of words. The gear seems to minimize this new reality. How can I explain the messy mix of shock, relief, anger, hope, and fear that momentarily fades everything else when I look at that teal poking out of my sleeve? The gear doesn’t do it justice. The bracelets are well-intentioned, I know, but are also cheap and flimsy. This disease is formidable. But then again, so is my sister. So is my God.

Like a schizophrenic, I go back and forth between the fearsome cry that chokes my throat when I look at these bracelets and the steely confidence that God is bigger, more powerful and mightier than cancer.

My teal bracelet reads “Kick Cancer for KB 23” while the other bracelet boasts the word “Believe” on a petite silver pendant. Despite my ever-changing associations, I am thankful for those who crafted these out of love and for what I know they are meant to represent.

Community.

Support.

Strength.

Faith.

I can’t help but notice that past all the bracelets sits my favorite James Avery sterling silver ring, depicting a simple cut-out cross. It is superior to the gear in its composition, tenure, and symbolism. It has rested on my finger for many years before cancer, and will likely outlive the teal plastic bracelet on my wrist. The ultimate restoration of our bodies and our souls was finished on the cross that this ring depicts.  Likewise, this "gear" reminds me that our ultimate hope and power lie in more than human support and strength, but in a God who graciously redeems every experience for good.

Cliché perhaps, but true. 

Juxtaposition

Recently, I've been secretly wishing I had picked up a second major in college. If I could have crammed anything else in to my undergraduate experience, I think I would have thoroughly enjoyed studying English. My religion minor provided heavy doses of reading, analyzing, and writing, but now I wish I could have spent time digging into works that are more commonly read than The Contemporary Quest for Jesus and The Great Divorce. Valuable, of course, but not frequent dinner conversation, to say the least.

What a useful thing to be familiar with the beautiful and redemptive themes authors have employed for centuries, knowingly and unknowingly reflecting to the world various facets of God's character and design for creation. Since one way that God chooses to reveal Himself is through the written word, I can't imagine how illuminating it would be to understand every rich linguistic nuance included in the Bible. And of course, my pride would love to catch every intelligent literature reference that crosses my ears and to throw creative literary devices in to everyday communication just for kicks.

But, I didn't study English in college, so I'll comment on one simple but meaningful literary device I do know that I had a chance to relish in Scripture recently: juxtaposition.  Well, perhaps we should call it Holy Spirit-inspired juxtaposition.

I've been studying Isaiah recently, and a few days ago I did a shallow survey of the book to remember what I had read and find out where I was going. The entire book could be summarized by the distinct juxtaposition of Isaiah's harsh prophecies demanding repentance followed by his aggressive insistence on God's redemptive love for His people. It's easy to get lost in these chapters, because it seems to continuously and dramatically shift from one extreme to the other. No lukewarm here in these pages!

I came across two verses so incredibly striking in their difference that each lent richer, fuller meaning to the other when read consecutively.

9:13, 20 The people have not sought the LORD Almighty…On the right they will devour, but still be hungry, on the left they will eat, but not be satisfied.

Ravenous, insatiable, destructive, wasteful, dissatisfied, greedy.

Even though the context is much weightier, I’m reminded of a time or two I've spent sitting on the coach, watching something terrible on television while mindlessly moving my right hand from a bag of processed something to my empty mouth and back again.  I ate without satisfaction, carelessly devoured without curing my hunger.

When was the last time you experienced this sense of incessant dissatisfaction?  Keep that association with all the feelings that go with it fresh in your mind as you switch gears and read the next verse.

40:31 But those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.

Victorious, energetic, refreshed, fearless, persevering, strong.

In contrast, this verse reminds me of the first half marathon I ever ran.  With much surprise, I felt fabulous the entire race.  Steady, strong, and consistent, I finished faster than I guessed I would, and was laughing and enjoying myself with friends minutes after sprinting through the finish line of the 13.1 mile course.  (Don't worry, it's only been downhill for my racing since then).

Likewise, remember the last time you felt a similar mix of steady strength, power, and endurance.

Of course, these associations do not do justice to the exegetic meaning of these verses, but engaging our sensory memory highlights the difference that seeking and hoping in God makes in a life.

The context of the first verse is Isaiah’s confrontation of the Israelite’s wickedness and stubborn refusal to move towards God. 

The second verse follows God’s proclamation to Israel that her sin has been paid for, promising to tenderly care for his people as a shepherd cares for his flock. 

In general, it's good to be cautious before extrapolating any kind of cause and effect prescriptions from Scripture.  Relationships are more complex than a mere cause and effect equation, and it follows that our relationship with God is as well.  Still, it's difficult to deny the strong associations we see within those two verses and in their juxtaposition:

Refusing (or forgetting) to seek God reaps a harvest of destructive dissatisfaction.

Consciously moving our hope to the Lord, or putting all our eggs in "God's basket," so to speak, reaps a bounty of graceful strength.

God mercifully extends grace somewhere between chapters nine and forty, probably many times between chapters nine and forty, and therefore at least one lane of reconciliation’s two-way street is complete.  For the road to actually connect God and His people in full restoration though, the Israelites had to respond.  In verse 31, we see the imperative on hoping in the Lord and accepting God's offer of redemption as our step towards full reconciliation.

My hope is built on nothing less
Than Jesus' blood and righteousness.

Indeed, hope in Christ is what constitutes the world of difference between those two verses and consequently the difference in us and the harvest we reap.


Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. Whoever sows to please their flesh, from the flesh will reap destruction; whoever sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life. Galatians 6:7-8

Final Thoughts on Reading Lolita In Tehran and Author Azar Nafisi

If you could invite any character or personality to Thanksgiving dinner at your house, who would you invite? 

I am certain you have heard this question before and until recently, I frankly thought it was dumb.  How could you pick only one person?  And wouldn't it depend on your mood?  Who else would be sitting around the table?  Should your answer be considerate of your other tablemates?  What is the criteria for choosing?  Someone who is funny, interesting, smart?  Someone who you have a lot of questions for or someone who would have a lot of questions for you?  How could you choose only one person?

After reading Half the Sky by Nicholas Kristof in the fall, I decided he was my guy.  You may have heard of his New York Times column focused on a vast spectrum of globalization and humanitarian concerns.  Regardless of political leanings, you cannot deny he is daring, insightful, whimsome, and brilliant if you have ever read him.  A few days into the revolutions erupting across the Middle East, I just happened to catch mention of him on the ground in Tahrir Square in the middle of the action as I walked by the television.  "Of course he is," I audibly vocalized to myself.  Whose desire for knowledge, story, and inspiration would not be satisfied by hosting him at your table?

Having finally finished Reading Lolita in Tehran, I've discovered another must-have guest in the book's author, Azar Nafisi.  The Thanksgiving question must allow for at least two personalities to be invited to the table, right?  I know I've written  about this book in one of my earlier entries, but in sum, it's fabulous.  Read it.  Read it if you like history, literature, culture, freedom, dreams, psychology, or courage.  You'll reap a harvest from what has been sown into these pages.  Instead of my words on the book and the subject matter, I've transcribed some incredibly articulate and enlightening snippets straight from a Q&A with Nafisi included at the back of the "deluxe edition" of the book.

On her book...
"In terms of my own perspective on the book and whether things in Iran have changed, I have two things to say.  One is that my purpose in writing this book was not to talk about just politics.  What I really wanted to investigate was how people cope when they live under an oppressive reality.  How do they create for themselves open spaces through their imaginations?  That is really the main theme of the book - imagination's role in opening spaces, in resisting tyrannies of both politics and time."

On defining fiction...
"Every great work of fiction not only reflects the themes and the events that it explains but it also, at the same time, resists and questions them.  Fiction explores not just how reality is but how it could or should be.  The whole structure of the novel is democratic.  I think that fiction is based on what has been called "Democratic Imagination," because it is multi-vocal."

On writing and reading in general...
"Now, I believe the whole point of writing and reading is to learn about things and people that you don't know... for me, writing a book always becomes a journey of discovery... and for readers, when they open a book, there are two faculties, two miraculous faculties that the act of reading and writing depend on, which form the basis of the imagination.  The first one is curiosity.  We read because we want to know what we don't know.  Both science and literature have that magic about them, that idea of discovery.  And the other great thing is that as soon as you enter this world that is both familiar and unfamiliar and you set out on this journey of discovery, then you discover empathy.  Empathy is as much an integral part of writing as curiosity is, because this is the only way we communicate as human beings... Stories put us inside the experience of others and make us feel and see what we have not felt or seen before."

On the veil...
"The question of the veil in a country like Iran is not whether the veil is good or bad.  The issue of the veil is that the veil should be a symbol of faith.  And as such, every woman should have the right to choose whether she wants to wear it or not.  For [my grandmother] the veil was a symbol of faith, but if every woman was forced to wear it, whether she believed in it or not, then it would become a symbol of force and a political symbol of the state. "

On home...
"I understood that the only way I could keep my home with me was by preserving it through memory- because no one has the power to take away your memories- and through maintaining a connection to its language and literature."


Dr. Nafisi, if you're reading this, please know you are cordially invited to my family's 2011 Thanksgiving celebration.

A Swinging Pendulum on Multiculturalism?

Legal freedoms and constraints in response to multiculturalism have been hot button topics in Europe for some time now.  As with most cultural trends, it is beginning to stump us Americans as well as people of drastically different cultural backgrounds live life together in the diverse larger metropolitan areas of our country.

"We have been too concerned about the identity of the person who was arriving and not enough about the identity of the country that was receiving him," French President Nicolas Sarkozy stated publicly last month.

Woah.  This is quite a different tune from the laissez-faire focus on absolute tolerance we've seen over the last few years.

In this same vein, the following article reveals a surprising shift in liberal European popular and political thought when it comes to issues of the veil and other religious expression:  Multiple division:  Is the sun setting on multiculturalism?

Check it out to keep your finger on the pulse of this issue.  It won't take long to feel the ripples here from a pendulum swing across the Atlantic.

Just for Fun

I often second guess myself for blogging.  No clear vision guides me, so my cynical side worries this is nothing more than a time-consuming production to get attention or garner praise.  Perhaps it's worse.  Maybe I'm just blabbering away without any aim or objective.  "Just talking to hear your brain rattle," I can hear my mom saying.  In the end, I simply enjoy writing and believe my motives are cloudy, but not sinful.

The truth I keep coming back to is that writing helps me.  Others' writing helps me and my writing helps me.  I rarely remember sermons or lectures, but I remember books, blog posts, and pages from my journal.  I really have no idea what Jeromy said before he proposed or the first time he said the L-word, but I remember well-timed and insightful cards, letters, and emails that remain tucked inside books and stowed away in secret places.  I like the permanent feel to writing that ensures you the ability to circle back and review, inspect, and ponder a little more, as if slowly moving it over, around, and upside down in order to take one more small step towards fully grasping the idea, emotion, or call.  Writing allows you to see, read, and hear all at the same time, and I like that.

A little more scientific in nature, Covey in The 7 Habits describes writing as a "kind of psycho-neural muscular activity which helps bridge and integrate the conscious and subconscious minds."  Indeed, the uniquely combined use of the mind, nerves, and muscles is what "distills, crystallizes, and clarifies thought and helps break the whole into parts."

All that said, this entry will now confound that affinity as pictures replace words and my purpose for blogging becomes even foggier.  Instead of more writing, find instead a depiction of the delayed honeymoon Jeromy and I took earlier this month... just for fun :)

Our beautiful island destination, waiting patiently for our arrival.

Two flat Delta tires left Jeromy and I with an unexpected overnight pitstop in Atlanta.  NOT the Caribbean, but we made the most of an extra day in the States. 

We finally arrived a day later than anticipated and raced to the beach to soak in the last few minutes of sunlight.

The pool outside our room complete with a swim-up bar reminded me of a movie.



While lounging at the beach reminded me of a travel magazine spread.



So naturally, we decided to pose as if we were in a magazine.



Well, mostly it was just Jeromy posing.



The sunlight proved a significant obstacle to his delicate eyes.



But we kept trying.

Good enough!

Beachside markets reminded me of a treasure hunt.

Tobacco leaves anyone?

Your treasure of choice, waiting to be bartered upon.

The resort itself was FULL of its own treasures.

Like a casino- conveniently placed only two buildings down from the church.

And peacocks roaming around the buffet.

Of course you need access to the football court!

And the all-inclusive bar, for an occasional cold treasure.

Last but not least, we had the treasure of immediate and free entertainment at our fingertips to help coach us through our new marital dynamics.

Yes, I listen to audio books...

Not surprisingly, it's taken five years for me to get around to reading this book.  Years after the hype has died down, I snagged it on CD to complement some long car rides and I've been surprised by it. (I like listening to audiobooks on the road, so I checked out reviews on NextAdvisor.com first).  Amidst the piles of nit picky criticism I've heard about it, I've been surprised at how well it represents a relevant God as the Lord over both the present and future state of creation.


Things I love about this book:


-It can be found in more places than just the Christian section of the bookstore


-It responds to the question of suffering with a thorough and truthful answer: God uses suffering to draw us and others to Himself for our eternal good and His glory


-Over and over again, Jesus is rightly featured as the center of it all, described both as our promise and our fulfillment


-Much of the protagonist's face-to-face interaction with God is spent around a kitchen table, which reminds me of Jesus gathering at the table often in the gospels (and of my best friend's insightful blog)!


-Young depicts our souls as messy gardens in which the Holy Spirit loves toiling from which the Holy Spirit delights in reaping- love the imagery!


-Controversial or not, I love that God the Father and the Holy Spirit are represented as women!  While God prefers to reveal Himself as masculine in Scripture, we know that women were made in His image too, so he boasts feminine characteristics as well.  We also are privy to feminine metaphors describing God in Scripture:


As a mother comforts her child, so will I comfort you; and you will be comforted over Jerusalem.  Isaiah 66:13


Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you!  Isaiah 49:15


-This quote: "Faith does not grow in the house of certainty." My how this has struck a chord with me over the past two weeks!


-The climatic offer of abundant life and call to response that Young presents: "Reconciliation is a two way road, and I have done my part- totally, completely, finally," says God.  "It is not the nature of love to force relationship, but it is the nature of love to open a way."

Providence Defined

prov·i·dence   /ˈprɒvɪdəns/
[prov-i-duhns]

–noun

1. ( often initial capital letter ) the foreseeing care and guidance of god over the creatures of the earth.

2. ( initial capital letter ) God, especially when conceived as omnisciently directing the universe and the affairs of humankind with wise benevolence.

3. a manifestation of divine care or direction.


That's what the dictionary says.  God defined providence in a much more personal way for me last week.  Last Saturday, a CAT scan done on my sister revealed a suspicious mass in her body.  Surgery on Wednesday identified the mass as malignant, and everything that has taken place since that discovery has seemed anything but real.

As a collegiate athlete, my 21-year-old sister is the epitome of human health and strength.  Hence, this entire situation has been a shocking reminder that we can't control everything, no matter how hard we try.  We cannot predict or expect what tomorrow holds, and letting ourselves think that we can is dangerous territory to attempt to tread.

The amazing piece of this story is that Kelsey really didn't have any symptoms other than feeling a smidge full.  The sole catalyst for the discovery of her tumor was the stubbornly slow healing of the ACL she tore in September.  At the peak of her senior soccer season, this was a devestating turn of events for Kelsey along with everyone who knew her and how much she loved the sport.

Let me brag on my sister for a bit to further communicate the depth of disappointment we felt when we heard news of her torn ACL.

Click here for a pretty dramatic but stellar video summing up the girls' 2010 season.  Don't miss the clip of Kelsey's last collegiate game in which she hammered one into the net to win the game in double overtime.  She tore her ACL in practice the following Monday.

So this disappointment, this let down, this hope squashed- God providentially redeemed it into something good.  It looks like the tumor was caught early and treatment is available. 

In Kelsey's own words, "EVERYTHING happens for a reason, tearing my acl saved my life. He knows what he's doing!"

And we are grateful!

Full of Care

While volunteering at CHAT tutoring Tuesday night, I held little Rakim's hand as we crossed the street. 

"Watch the pud-"

One foot smashed into the puddle followed by the other.  The splashes were followed by a chorus of cackling laughter from Rakim and the girls behind us.

Drenched.  Neon light-up shoes have now become water moccasins.

Why is it that most kids seem immune to rain, puddles, and all forms of liquid mess?  Have they just not yet been brutally introduced to the world of laundry?  How do they not care? 

For better or worse, I think the youngest of children haven't learned to be careful.  They haven't needed that skill yet and that works, mostly because someone else is usually being careful on their behalf.  For the most part, they have not yet been taught to be literally full of care.

I wish I wasn't so doggone full of care all the time.  During a warm evening run last summer, a torrential downpour rained down just as I neared the halfway point and was as far away from home as possible.  These were not raindrops, these were sheets of rain so dense that it was impossible to pinpoint where one drop stopped and another started.  One might picture that as beautiful, but I couldn't comprehend it as anything but frustrating.  Feebly guarding my ipod as best I could, I raced home, annoyed at my misfortune and fretting the death of my beloved running companion.  As I neared my neighborhood, I recognized that I was supersaturated with water; I could not possibly become any wetter.  So I finally freed myself of care and decided that I might as well enjoy the squishy, drenched mess for what it was.

In the Bible, God speaks about being careful with surprising frequency- at least 120 times.  The only catch is that instead of advising us to take care of our possessions, our comfort, our convenience, and our happiness, He always stresses being careful in regard to eternally meaningful and life-giving, fruitful kinds of things.

Listen to God's advice on being careful as directed to all of humanity, from the patriarchs to Jesus' friends, from the New Testament church to us.

Be careful not to forget the covenant of the LORD your God that he made with you.

But be very careful to keep the commandment and the law that Moses the servant of the LORD gave you: to love the LORD your God, to walk in obedience to him, to keep his commands, to hold fast to him and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul.”

Be careful that no one entices you by riches; do not let a large bribe turn you aside.

Give careful thought to the paths for your feet and be steadfast in all your ways.

And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.

“Be careful,” Jesus said to them. “Be on your guard against the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees.”

Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everyone.

So, if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don’t fall!

Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity.

Rakim's soaked shoes reminded me of the multitude of circumstances, people, and situations about which we can fill ourselves with care.  Thankfully, Rakim hasn't yet fallen for this sham in regards to his light-up shoes.  Conversely, God's word reminds me of the endless possibilities wrapped up in upside down Kingdom living that I can be full of care about.  They are different from one another, to say the least. 

Some things warrant our care and some things simply dupe us into caring too much.  We can be full of care when it comes to our light-up shoes, ipods, and dress, or we can choose to be careful in things like devotion, grace, obedience, and compassion.  When I step back to think about it, I can clearly see the shallow concerns that divert my mind and heart from overflowing with care in regards to the life-giving things God asks me to exercise care about. 

I want to see with God's eyes and think God's thoughts after Him on this one, being careful only about the things that matter and freeing myself from caring about the things God says simply don't.  That means some fixed and comfortable habits will need to take a hit.  Anyone with me?