“A bruised reed shall He not break: the poorest shepherd boy on our South Indian hills is careful to choose, for the making of his flute, a reed that is straight and fine and quite unbruised.  But our Heavenly Shepherd often takes the broken and the bruised, and of such He makes His flutes.  But life, like His book, is full of parables of tenderness; and one of these has often come into this room of late.  For he whose name means God’s Peace has brought his autoharp to play to me, and has first tuned it while I expectantly waited for the music which I knew would follow the tuning. 

    Is music to come from our harp?  Music of prayer, of praise, of consolation?  The strings are relaxed, or perhaps too tensely stretched.  Illness can cause either condition.  But we have a Tuner.

Tune Thou my harp;
There is not, Lord, could never be,
The skill in me.

Tune Thou my harp,
That it may play Thy melody,
Thy harmony.

Tune Thou my harp;
O Spirit, breathe Thy thought through me,
As pleaseth Thee.”  ~Amy Carmichael, “Rose from Briar

2 Cor. 12:9  “But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.”

Winter

  “When my leaves fall wilt Thou encompass them?
The gold of autumn flown, the bare branch brown,
The brittle twig and stem,
The tired leaves dropping down,
Wilt Thou encompass that which men call dead?
I see the rain, the coldly smothering snow,
My leaves dispirited,
Lie very low.

So the heart questioneth, white Winter near;
Till jocund as the glorious voice of Spring
Cometh His, “Do not fear,
But sing, rejoice and sing,
For sheltered by the coverlet of snow
Are secrets of delight, and there shall be
Uprising that shall show
All that through Winter I prepared for thee.”

~Amy Carmichael, “Rose from Brier”

One of most difficult symptoms I deal with is shortness of breath.  There’s really nothing like the feeling of not having enough air.  This certainly keeps me very reliant on the Lord for peace and perspective.  Keith’s sermon today was such a great reminder that I already have everything I need.  Health is not a need.  Breath is really not even a need.  The Gospel is all I truly need.

2 Corinthians 4:16-18

^“ Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.  For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.  So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”

The following months have been some of the most difficult of my life.  The emotional healing is coming slowly as I have had very little physical energy to spend processing and healing.  When I feel weak and overwhelmed, it’s good to think about how far I’ve come.  At my worst I couldn’t even lift my head without blacking out.  My body went into shock and I needed a blood transfusion.  It’s been many many weeks of slowly building back and sometimes feeling like I was sitting on the “sidelines” of life.  The reality though is that these weren’t the sidelines.  This was God’s calling for me this summer.  He has a plan for my life, a good plan, and this was part of it.  He is showing me, once again, that living in a place of complete dependence on Him, is a blessed place to be.  His word has sustained my soul and granted light and peace when things felt out of control.  Through blackouts, sorrow, weakness, confusion, anxiety attacks, daily migraines, insomnia, grief, shortness of breath, and fear, the Lord has showed me His faithfulness and given me a firm place to stand.

Psalm 91 has been my daily, some times hourly, meditation.  This verse in particular has comforted me continuously in my battle.  Psalm 91:4  “He will cover you with his feathers, and under his wings you will find refuge”  Every night, I laid down with the vision of His feathers covering me.  What comfort in such a time of need!

As I slowly begin the ascent out of this valley I’ve been able to more clearly reflect.  To more clearly see how and where His light was illuminating the path and giving glimmers of hope in the darkness.  Here is my song, Psalm 40:1-3

 ^“ I waited patiently for the LORD;
   he turned to me and heard my cry.
  He lifted me out of the slimy pit,
   out of the mud and mire;
  he set my feet on a rock
   and gave me a firm place to stand.
  He put a new song in my mouth,
   a hymn of praise to our God.”

Psalm 25:8-10

“Good and upright is the Lord; therefore he instructs sinners in his ways.  He guides the humble in what is right and teaches them his way.  All the ways of the Lord are loving and faithful for those who keep the demands of his covenant.”

A Deeper Need

       “A question was asked at my Bible study tonight: When do you experience the most spiritual growth? Without pause, I piped up, “During hard times.”
I wish it wasn’t the case. When I am not in a trial, the last thing I want is to enter into one. When I’m currently enduring difficulty, it is very frustrating to think about growth when I just want relief.
But the truth is, God expresses his love for us by putting his followers in the furnace.
If you had asked me years ago whether I would like to endure a domino-like train of hardship, sending the carefully ordered tiles of my life flying into a pile of chaos, I would have adamantly declined. To think God would take me at 17 and not stop the trials even by age 30, I would have questioned how that shows love. Sometimes we can’t see God’s purposes from our frail vantage point, but we can be sure that his Word is true.
When I was 17, my family discovered that we had long-hidden water damage in the walls of our home. This water intrusion allowed toxic forms of mold to grow, and the toxins affected my health severely. By my senior year of high school, I could barely get out of bed. On the days I could struggle in to school, I sat in a foggy haze of disorientation. Something was wrong, but no one knew what it was. My pediatrician failed to take my symptoms seriously.
Thanks to my mother’s research and persistence, we obtained professional mold testing which revealed high levels of toxins and bacteria in our air, making the house completely uninhabitable. To make things worse, all of our possessions were contaminated as well, and almost everything had to be discarded.
The incredible material loss from this disaster was nothing compared to the emotional and physical impact of chronic illness which followed. I became acutely sensitive to chemicals in my environment that wouldn’t bother the average person. It was to the point where I had to leave my office job and abandon my first college after a semester of intense reactions to the pesticides used around campus.
These back-to-back losses put me in the position of commuting 50 minutes each way to an engineering school near home and facing the obstacles of completing a major when I could only tolerate being in a handful of classroom buildings. Being the weird girl was my new norm, and I had to work twice as hard to attend study sessions, plan my limited time on campus wisely, obtain some lectures via videotape, and work on assignments alone when others worked in groups or with a TA. When I finally graduated with my degree a year later than the rest of my class, I was already on my way to finishing graduate work and looked forward to a promising career.
It was then that my life began to fall apart even more. I started having more concerning physical symptoms that I tried to ignore, but when I passed out at church one morning, I never bounced back. I was diagnosed with POTS (Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome) along with PDH (Postural Diastolic Hypotension). The cause was unknown, but I felt I had never fully recovered from the damage done by mold and pesticide exposures. A flu virus and stress had pushed my fragile body too far, and now I faced a long road to recovery.
I was not quick to embrace my new vulnerable position of waiting on God. I could no longer work, but I still tried, dragging myself in and feeling lightheaded and ill while I sat in meetings. When I finally passed out at work and was taken out on a gurney, it finally occurred to me that I was not going to be able to overcome this setback with sheer willpower and medication.
I sat at home with the wind knocked out of my sails. I had just turned 24. I couldn’t work. I couldn’t go to school. I had no guarantees about my prognosis, and I could barely get off the couch to go to the bathroom. It was soon after that when my family was suddenly victimized by a group of my grandfather’s caregivers who had been working for us. They stole from my grandparents and eventually from us too. Due to poor police response, this turned into long-term harassment and stalking.
I thought at the time that God would let up, but more obstacles and problems kept coming my way. My grandma had a stroke and developed severe dementia, requiring our full-time care here at home. My father’s anger issues escalated, causing my mother and me great pain and heartache. I wanted to get back to my focus of working, earning money, my career, and eventually marriage and having children. But when I realized that my dreams had been derailed, I had a choice to make. I could accept both good and hardship from God’s hand, or I could become bitter and conclude that a good God would not allow so much pain and loss to happen to his child for so long.
I struggled with the incongruity of God saying he loved me, yet not acting to relieve my intense pain. Trial upon trial drew out over multiple years, but my prayers for deliverance remained unanswered. I finally read a book by Larry Crabb called Shattered Dreams. Initially, I felt skeptical of the thesis – which is that God allows our dreams to shatter so that we can see that He is our ultimate dream.
However, the more I read of the book, the more I began to see that it was true in my own life. The whole time that I had been suffering, a longing was forming in me – for truth to prevail, for compassion from others, for a sense of justice, to see mercy extended to the hurting, and for healing to take place. I found myself gravitating toward people who had also suffered but who had courage and joy. I suddenly realized that my trials had created in me a strong appetite for the very characteristics of Jesus himself! It was a turning point in my life to find my shallow, earthly desires stripped away in order to lay bare my aching, penetrating need for Christ. I was a sinner who had been broken, and I found my Lord sitting by the well offering me the living water of forgiveness and love, rather than the dirty well water of earthly ease I had been convinced I needed for so long.
As I continue in my trials undelivered, I give thanks that God loved me enough to help me discover that my longings for success, approval, and pleasant earthly circumstances were symptoms of a deeper cry – a bigger wound – one that demands Christ and will never heal unless He is my focus and my first love. If you are in a trial – praying to God and still undelivered – take heart that you are a not alone. God is good all the time, and even in our most painful hours, we can count on Christ to carry us until that glorious day when all wrongs will be made right, when we will finally be with Him, the true and ultimate satisfaction of our souls.”
“So do not throw away your confidence; it will be richly rewarded. You need to persevere so that when you have done the will of God, you will receive what he has promised. For in just a very little while, 
’He who is coming will come and will not delay.’”  Hebrews 10:35-37

(the Sovereign Grace Music station) I came across this song that has encouraged me greatly.

Here’s the link – Just press the “play” button…

“Maker of the earth and sky
Ruler of the heavens
He whom death could not contain
Blessed be His name

Bring to him your troubled heart
Lay your cares before him
He has suffered every pain
Blessed be His name

Perfect and unchanging
Sinless son of man
Author of our simple faith
Blessed be His name

Constant through our darkest time
Stronger than our weakness
Bearer of our grief and shame
Blessed be His name

Humbly bow before him
Praise Him for His grace
Ever will his love remain
Blessed be His name

Present and abiding
Usher in his reign
With us through the end of days
Blessed be His name
Author of our growing faith
Blessed be His name”