Mosquitoes or Sunsets?

THE MAY issue of NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC had an adventure of a young woman with a Ph.D. in English literature, Kira Salak, who decided to kayak three hundred of the 1200 mile Irrawaddy River in the country that used to be called Burma. She’d read romantic accounts of the part of the world that Rudyard Kipling and W. Somerset Maugham had both loved and wanted to experience it for herself.

THE GOVERNMENT OF TODAY is a military junta that has renamed the country Myanmar and ripped from it most of the romance the young adventuress had hoped for. Poverty, disease, filth, and political unrest rub shoulders with hardship and near starvation. The perils and disillusionment of the trip notwithstanding, the young woman was able to find a redemptive beauty in the sunset’s reflection on the river she’d set out to explore.

MANY WOULD SAY THIS APPROACH is unrealistic—that this young woman in her kayak should be outraged, disgusted, and discouraged rather than nostalgic and romantic.

BUT I DISAGREE. Even in adversity and disappointment there are pleasures to be counted. Life is not one-dimensional. Wonders survive in the midst of horror, and dreadful circumstances cannot wither the delights of friendship. There is much joy tucked in the corners of life, but it doesn’t always find me first.

MY WELL-BEING IS DEPENDENT on searching for it. I must sort through the grim for the things that give me hope. If I don’t, all is lost; there’s no reason to go on. Like Dr. Salak, I must look for the beautiful sunsets and ignore the mosquitoes.

IT’S A MATTER OF CHOICE—but, isn’t everything?

You’re blessed. Be a blessing!

God's Good Promises

LINDSEY WEBSTER WILL SOON graduate and begin seminary a few months after that. Like all graduates she is commencing a new life--but I think she's already got a corner on hope . . . and joy. What she wrote offers a lot to me. I hope you enjoy it too.

"I don’t know how it happened, but at some point in my youth, I became an overachiever. Maybe it was because I was the younger sister of two successful and popular overachievers—or maybe it was just because I wanted to try everything. And I did: National Honor Society, cheerleading, theatre, student government, school choir, various leadership positions . . . I thrived in the bustle.

But in one short year, all that changed. I lost the Junior Class President election. I was the only cheerleader cut from the JV squad. I botched my play try-outs. I was dateless for Homecoming. I even lost a Sunday School officer election. Failure was all I felt. Everything important had been taken away, and I started blaming myself. I just wasn’t good enough.

I wasn’t skinny enough, so I stopped eating. I wasn’t interesting enough, so I stopped talking at school. I wasn’t smart enough, so I stopped focusing on my studies. And I wasn’t popular enough, so I slept all afternoon when others my age were hanging out. Pretty soon, I had managed my own disappearance.

On one of my lowest days I felt God knocking on my heart. I went home and looked up 'hope' in my Bible’s concordance. And there it was: Isaiah 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.' When I read it, I knew I had given up on myself because I had given up on God’s good promises.

This truth has led me toward this Christ-centered journey I’ve undertaken. Now I use everyday trials to strengthen my trust in the Lord’s plans. Now I know He calls us all to find our strength in Him daily, so that we might cling to His Will and find this everlasting hope He alone offers."

You are blessed. Be a blessing!

No Bad Days

WHEN PEOPLE ASK ME HOW I’M DOING, and some still do even after all these years, I always tell them I’m having a good day . . . because I am.

GOOD DAYS AREN’T DEPENDENT on how loudly this stupid cancer I drag around with me snaps its teeth. Good days are a matter of choice.

EARLY IN THIS JOURNEY I decided I had nothing to gain by allowing myself any bad days. Labeling a day bad only intensifies what might be going wrong with it. Why listen to the growl of a disease I’m tired of thinking about? I can’t do anything more about what I have than when I’m already doing. The rest is up to God. So I must rely on faith . . . and trust.

I WISH BOTH WERE STRONGER, of course. How much easier faith would be if I’d heard Jesus on the road to Damascus. How much easier if, like Abraham, I’d walked with God.

YET I SEE EVIDENCE of His grace everywhere. Unlike some, I see His workings even in the things that can be explained by science. He isn’t only in the mystery.

MY OWN CHOICE to follow Him can take me only as far as the edge of my doubt. His gift completes my faith.

AND KNOWING THAT—really KNOWING that—makes each day, no matter what befalls it, a good day.

You’re blessed. Be a blessing!

Am I from Mars? Are You?

ONE OF THE HARDEST things about being ill for a long time is a feeling of being isolated. Of being different. Even though I’m not.

I WOULDN’T BE AT ALL SURPRISED to discover how many people I know deal with chronic illness, chronic pain, or some combination of the two. It’s a stiff-upper-lip thing. Chronic sufferers don’t like to be thought of as chronic complainers. Most suffer in silence wishing they could talk to someone who REALLY understands how they feel . . .

WHAT KEEPS THEM from coming out of the chronic illness closet? Here’s the top ten list:

10. Exclamations of how healthy they look.
9. Those who confuse their low-energy state with laziness.
8. Those who want to change the topic to a happier one (now there’s a real conversation stopper).
7. Those who tell their own sob story (as in “that’s enough about you, now let’s talk about me”).
6. Those who tell them what they should or should not be doing.
5. Expressions of pity (yikes!).
4. Those who blame the illness on the sufferer (too late for that!).
3. Those who have remedies and cures (BTW most with a problem are pretty savvy about available alternatives).
2. Those who assume they know what and if the sufferer wants to be prayed for.
AND NUMBER ONE!!!!
1. Those who imply (or worse) that a LACK OF FAITH or THE WRONG ATTITUDE is the reason for the condition. (Keep the smug out of my path please, Lord.)

FOR MY PART I have to remind myself that others have serious problems too. Cancer isn’t the worst thing that can happen.

AND IF MY DISease takes me to a place few go, I can’t remain there. I must stay attentive to those around me. I must not let this disease-induced isolation alienate me.

THE APOSTLE PAUL stressed community. He taught that I can’t be a Christian all by myself.

SO AS MUCH AS I’D LIKE TO at times (review the Top Ten List), I’m not going to try.

You’re blessed. Be a blessing!