Soulfit "Train yourself…"

The “beyond within”- our inner workings

Often quite a mixed pond of murkings

With parts so crystal clear and gleamings

Of freedom from old and putrid holdings;

Other parts rippled with stirrings of teeming

New life and struggle to grow into meaning

Afar the diseased corner, sludge-afflicted

Where deficit shows and care neglected

Hidden under brush and shadows until

The Pond-keeper begins a flushing drill

Ready-ing an unseemly empty place to fill

With new and fresh water of Life

That our deficit calls forth in its strife

To re purpose yet another place rife

With mired ungratefulness, shame, and grief

O Pond-keeper, come

JS 8/16

“He desires truth in our inmost being…” Psalm 51:6

Have you been there with Him lately?

“The beyond within” – Dallas Willard’s description of the soul in Renovation of the Heart

“Suffering, like nothing else, shows us what we really love.”

Matt Papa

A beautiful and sweetly raw post by Carolyn B as her 3 ½ year old daughter, Ruby starts her 4^th phase of chemo on 8/6/16.  You are teaching us all in your pain.  Thank you for taking the time and energy to share.

“You come right up to the thing you’ve been dreading, and stare it in the face, quaking in your boots. Imagining what might lie ahead puts knots in your stomach.  What if it’s the same as before? you think. I just can NOT watch her suffer again. It was agony the first time, when we didn’t know what to expect. I can NOT do it again.

And you just keep putting one foot in front of the other.  Keep breathing hard, in and out.  Keep focusing on the next tree, the next bend in the path, pulling it doggedly towards you step by step.

Day 1:

Made to fast from breakfast, she’s whiny and clingy.  At the hospital for a general anesthetic and spinal tap, but she’s last on the list, so while we wait she’s given her two hefty chemo drugs for the day — the dreaded red one, Doxorubicin, that shredded her insides from mouth to bum last time…

Please God, don’t let it happen again.

Click, click, the IV pump ticks the seconds away. You try not to watch, but your eyes are drawn in terrible fascination to that red syringe emptying into the tiny tube feeding the drug into her port and through her veins.  Poison to heal… targeted medicine… it only takes one cell to bring it all back…

Day 4: 
Back in for another drug…  Entertaining an almost 4-year-old for 4 hours in an isolation room: watching screens, sticking stickers, painting watercolors, doing puzzles.  The minutes tick past.  Finally the drug is done, the flush goes through, and the nurse is ready to de-access Ruby’s port.  Although it’s supposed to be routine by now, it’s still hard every time.  This is the bravest one I’ve seen her do… Crying huge tears the whole time, she voluntarily lifts up her little t-shirt so the nurse can gently peel off the 10cm-square sticky dressing – which after 5 days is stuck tightly to her tender skin.  “Stop!” she cries out once through her tears, and the nurse obediently pauses.  “Go…” she whimpers bravely a second later, and the nurse finishes peeling off the dressing.  Then the painful pressure on the titanium port, sandwiched between tender layers of skin and muscle, as the nurse holds it firmly to steady it as she skillfully pulls the needle and dressing off together with one quick tug. Ruby doesn’t want a bandaid (one more sticky to remove later).  She reaches across her tummy with a small hand, still trembling, to hold the gauze in place herself until the oozing stops.

Still heaving with sobs, she lets me gather her into my lap. Unlike some days, she’s not mad at me today, because I’ve obediently followed her request to “just sit on the bed but DON’T TALK.” Today I was silently supportive, my heart aching at her bravery, marveling at her maturity beyond her tiny years.  As I gather her in I dissolve a bit myself, welling up with relief that it’s over, sheer pride at her immense courage, deep grief that we have to do these painful things together at least twice every single week.  Feeling my tears fall on her soft, fuzzy head, she sits up abruptly and looks at me, fat tears still rolling down her own cheeks.  Switching immediately into compassionate concern, she says sweetly, “It’s ok to cry, Mommy.”  Mute, I nod, patting first her cheeks and then my own with the same crumpled tissue.
Later, on the way to the car, with her all soft and tender and sucking her thumb (a rare gesture) for comfort after her ordeal, we talk together about how crying is good because it lets all the yucky feelings come out.  I tell her how proud I am of how brave she was, that I was so amazed at how she could cry so hard and yet keep herself so still and hold her shirt up so bravely.  I asked her whether I had done what she wanted, staying close but quiet, and she said, “Yes, I don’t want you to talk – I just want you to stay with me.” She’s outgrown all my attempts to reason and explain her through it.  She just wants me to trust her now that she knows what’s coming, she knows how to handle it, and she knows what she needs from me.  It’s pretty remarkable that she’s only been on this planet for 46 months.

In the car I ask her if there might be something we could say together next time, something that would calm and settle us and give us courage, something that would remind us both of the Source of our comfort… (She wouldn’t let me pray out loud with her today before the nurse came in – I think she was already deep into trying to get into the right space for what was coming.  So I just prayed for her silently…)

“We could say Psalm 23,” she chirps brightly.

“Yes we could,” I agree.  “Shall we say it now?”

“The Lord is my Shepherd,” she begins promptly, tears forgotten already, “I shall not want.  He makes me lie down in green pastures…”

“He leads me beside quiet waters,” I continue. “He restores — ”

” — my soul,” she finishes happily.

We keep on driving and reciting, and we come to “He prepares a table in the presence of my enemies.”  We talk about how “enemies” can mean fear or anxiousness, or something yucky we don’t want to do, and that “preparing a table” means Jesus can pour into our hearts the sweetness of His love and courage, through the Holy Spirit…  Then even when it’s dark or scary we don’t need to feel afraid because Jesus has poured his sweet love into our hearts.  And perfect love pushes out fear.

“I love you, Mommy,” she sighs contentedly.

Another day in this journey, fighting cancer, growing holy, saving Ruby’s life, watching her faith and mine deepen and expand… Mingled joy and pain, happiness and tears, relief and despair, heaven and hell, sin and redemption, ugly and beautiful, bitter and sweet.”

What am I learning from my own suffering?

What can I learn from others’?

We’re meant for community, shared lives, regularity, rhythm. For us, in our travels we have managed to keep good routine and rhythm, but the consistent shared lives with others, we miss.  I’ve described the feeling to friends as

“nomadic disconnectedness.”  🙂

There’s sweet connectedness sporadically, and a semblance of connection through social media and skype, which are great helps, but there is a sadness and weariness that can set in with much travel and movement.

Of course there’s the exhilarating side, the new, the invitation into lives that regulars may not get, the new perspective we see or can bring, the incredible people, energizing challenges, intriguing places and colorful cultures. All of that I love.

I wonder though, if a disconnected soul is part of life, everyone’s life…? I know people who have been in the same geographical place all their lives and feel pretty disconnected. I can only imagine the disconnected ache of the masses of refugees now being ripped from the fabric of their beloved lives and homes with little hope for their future. That kind of despairing disconnection I don’t know.

Maybe some kinds of disconnectedness can be a mercy that shakes us into the realization that we so need connection with our Maker first. That empty feeling can push us there – to realize that our disconnection is primarily from Him. We are His, first and foremost. That’s where real connection and wholeness is, that can then flow freely into the connection with the others that we’re made for.

I think there are times and seasons where the disconnect is a wooing He uses to call to us. A place to which God brings us to have conversations, new appreciation, fresh perspective, or a deeper sense of our need. I guess I should take advantage of that! I need to share life with others, but any distance in my relationship with Him hinders my connection with the rest of the Body.

“Abide in me, and I in you.. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him,

he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing…Abide in my love.”

(Stay connected to Love.) John 15:4-9

“…so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another. “

Romans 12:5

An African brother (FD) said it so well, “How inadequate I am without my brothers and sisters.”

Do you sense any disconnectedness in your soul?

Could it be Him calling to you to reconnect with His Love?

I kind of expect that when very competent and capable people give up their lives and loves for the sake of the gospel, take their young family and painstakingly spend years and make a home in an obscure and difficult place, there will be open doors, much fruit. Sometimes there are. Other times there are heartaches and hard questions. (I am reeling with the numbing news from a family in our organization whose 3-year old daughter was diagnosed with cancer, taking them from the field.)

We all have underlying expectations we don’t know about, nestled deep in the recesses of our hearts. I think that’s why there were so many varying reactions to Jesus when he was on earth – ranging from awe, appreciation and buy-in, to anger, jealousy and contempt. Underlying these reactions is something… some assumption or belief that they spring from. For example, under the anger could be a fierce disappointment that Jesus was not what I expected him to be or didn’t do what I expected him to do.   So my reaction comes to the surface and we take issue with Him today, just like people did back then. It’s good to wrestle it through – and think about what we think about.

“the ruling passion conquers reason still….” Shakespeare

His ways are far beyond us because He is so FOR us. It takes seemingly unseemly measures at times for Him to get to our hidden parts or just to show His glory – for our good.

(From the DS journal):

“I’ve been in Ecclesiastes a bit lately – such a weird little poetry book – but bottomless insight into life. It can’t be just trivial cynicism right? – it’s inspired! One theme that’s been standing out is that: humanity and this world are cursed – that means there’s a lot of evil… and life to a large degree is TOILSOME – we can fight it, and resent it… or we can accept it (direct revelation about the Fall, God’s sovereignty, eternal hope ahead of us, etc. in the Word helps a ton!) – and if we accept it, it takes a lot of pressure off of life to deliver. We are free to just start the day by choosing the Joy of the Lord and to enjoy the little glimmers of God’s image that do shine through depraved people… and the Creator’s beauty that irrepressibly shines through the fallen-ness of His created world.  We’re free to enjoy the simple pleasures – to enjoy our food and drink and the woman we love… and to go “all in” on whatever we do, knowing life is short… and not load it up with too many expectations.”

So where do our expectations come from?

If there’s disappointment or discouragement?  Then there was an expectation.

Can you name one?

Does that naming unearth a ruling passion in you?

If so…does it need to be reigned in and put in its place, or repented of as something you’re putting your hope in more than Him?