“But I say, ‘Walk in the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Sprit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do.'”
~Galatians 5:16-17~

This is a picture from the top of the beach trail. The thought that I was ever at one point able to walk all the way down there seems so far away from my actual reality that I can hardly bear to think about how far away the beach is. The honeysuckle, such a sweet sounding name, are considered a foreign and invasive species. In the early spring, before even the mightiest trees begin to bud, the honey suckle plants are alive and well. It’s the same way in the fall. They are always the last to die, with their green leaves surviving even multiple winter snows. The only place these plants do not overtake the ground, or grow at all, is in the lowlands where the creek and river flood them out.

Such is the way of our sinful flesh, is it not? I’ve often not liked this particular doctrine, the constant reminders that our flesh is sinful, but also that even as believers sharing union with Christ we are waging a constant war against our flesh. Give me talks of love and joy and peace and all the beautiful fruit that is ours in Jesus, and leave the parts of the fleshly wars out. Wars are meant to be won! I’ll think to myself, “Come on, guys. Get it together. You’re telling me you haven’t yet figured this out? You’re telling me this is what victory looks like? You’re telling me even life in Jesus doesn’t get any easier?”

Even now the flesh calls. Even after I’ve said, “Lord, I don’t want this anymore.” Even after I’ve said, “Enough is enough. I can’t live like this.” Even after I’ve asked, “But Lord, we’ve dealt with this already, through the years and the years, O Lord, have we not? Oh, how many times? Oh, how many times? By your mercy, steadfast love and faithfulness, the one time death and resurrection of Jesus has taken this away and this sin is no longer a part of my life.” It’s like you might get a brief reprieve from the sin side. The joy of the Lord overtakes you. The Spirit of God fills the heart with such a lightness and freedom. The grace of God becomes far too real a gift to squander on phantoms.

But no sooner have the leaves begun to bud on the tree, and there appears the honeysuckle back at its feet. And I’ll have to believe that things can be different. Such is the way of my sinful flesh. It’s like this stubborn part of me that refuses to believe what other people are saying, no matter how many witnesses back up their claim. It’s the part of me that wants to figure it out for myself, that believes there has to be another way, and if there is, I will find it. If I’m gonna believe, if I am ever going to truly confess and believe, then I’m going to insist on learning the hard way. Like the men whose ships remained trapped and frozen in the artic sea for years and years, until their dying shivering breath was the final realization they were lost and doomed, only then comes

“Lord, there is no other way.”

I’d like to amend this part of myself. To give it to God and say, “I don’t need to learn like this anymore. I can be different. I can be holy. I can take my life and let it be something better than any mess I could ever make on my own. I believe this, Lord. Help my unbelief that I can be somebody other than who I was but only you can do this for me.”

Only You can do this for me.

And he does, friends. He does. At least I have to believe that he does, for what other hope would we have if he didn’t? Isn’t that what the battles are really about? The sin. The fears. The doubts. The question: What kind of Christian life is this when you can’t live in sin but also live here with sin? Either there is hope in this world or there isn’t.

God doesn’t sigh and say, “Seriously? You’re asking me this?”

He dies on the cross and tells us there is.

I made my first cup of coffee this morning in nearly three months. It was less a desire for coffee and more of a searching for some kind of normalcy, something to make the body that is mine and this life I am living feel a little more familiar. The first time I made it the taste was too weak, so I poured out the decaf with cream and started over. I doubled the scoop, but the second time wasn’t much better. I only drank a few sips.

I still like the smell. I opened the sliding glass door and stepped outside. I wondered again. Perhaps a brief walk in the grass would bring it back, would wake my body up from this feeling of being tired, weak, and under-used. I hoped, down the deck steps to walk barefoot in the violets. The air felt good and I’d forgotten how much I like the spring sounds. I’ve long labeled spring as my least favorite season. It’s not so bad.

My grandpa crossed over from life into life everlasting yesterday morning. Both of my grandpas have died this year. My dad’s dad died toward the end of January at the age of 89. My mom’s dad died at the age of 90. I’ve spent more time with and have more memories of my mom’s parents, but I love both of my grandpas’ forever. I’ve been to New York City two times in my life, and each of those times I went with a grandfather.

The boys and I worked in the school room this morning. The word worked makes it sound a lot more vigorous than it was. I sat on the floor with my garbage bag next to the pile they’d made. Anything that had a place they put in its place. The rest of it I put in the trash. As for the pile of completed workbooks I was saving to look through and find scraps to possibly make year books out of I told them to take them out to the burn pile, except for the copywork and handwriting books. I’ll help if needed, but still remain hands off with school at this point. Homeschool is changing, but into what, I don’t know.

I’m doing okay here, my thoughts just tend to get dark and cloudy at times. Not to use all or nothing thinking, but grief is something that never really seems to ever completely go away down here, like there’s always this sadness attached or around. I’ll feel like I need to wait and write until I’m better, either in thought, feeling, bodily workings, or deed. It reminds me of that meme with the skeleton on the bench. “Rebekah waiting around until she feels completely better.” Just the thought of it makes me laugh, how free they all must feel right now, the saints in the company of Christ and each other.

Seriously, though, I don’t enjoy feeling bad. I’ll wonder to myself, “Am I actually getting better?” Am I really making progress? Am I going to come out of this? I fear at times I waited too long to make changes, that I let things go that needed addressing, and because of that I now suffer, having damaged myself to a place beyond fixing. It all might very well be true. But I’m also needing to realize that my hope in this world is not in my visible or measurable progress. My hope is in Jesus, my Lord and my Savior and lasting redemption.

“For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God”
1 Peter 3:18

I’ve been having a hard time writing any updates here. Written words are spilling out all over me but I can’t seem to catch them in time or when I do, there seems to be no relevant place to put them or appropriate form for them to take. I’m just wanting something that comes out sounding more like, “Hi. This is me. I’m a regular person.”

Yesterday was another day in bed. Soon after the day got going I recalled the words “tremendously better” I’d used here to describe how I’d been doing and wondered if that had been the best choice of words. Tremendously better is how I felt for four days. Yesterday I was extra tired again, so I mostly stayed in bed and rested some more.

Today I’m at peace with being not as tired as I was yesterday, but not as incredibly better as I was for four days. I remember a patient I used to take care of in the hospital. He was a younger middle aged man with MS. Every morning I walked in to his room and asked, “How are you today?”, his answer was a sometimes a sleepy, sometimes a quiet, and even sometimes a chipper, “Better than I deserve.” He was a believer in Jesus.

The past four days I have been feeling tremendously better. I wrote a few days ago (which I ended up deleting) that I’d had a setback with my walks and spent much of last week in bed again. That week in bed brought even more physical healing to my still weak but getting stronger again body. Besides the day I had a cyst removed from the top of my head, and one other day at the end of last week, I haven’t needed any anxiety medication for the past three weeks. This has been a huge answer to prayer for me.

Josh and I walked outside earlier this morning. Each week I’ve been able to go a little bit farther on the camp road. It’s been rainier this past week so I’ve done more walking inside. The first day I did two walks of 7 minutes and 5 minutes. The next day it was 8 and 6, and the day after that I did 10 and 10. I stopped keeping track after that.

I can go farther with someone walking with me. The first time I asked Josh to go with me I said, “Can you walk with me to the sign and back?”, the sign being about the distance from here to that first tree on the right. Parts of this have felt more like rehabilitation than getting over an illness. I have yet to know what to call this peculiar period of my life other than “this time”.

In past years I’ve felt sad to see winter leave. Not this year. I’m not shooing it away but I’m looking forward to watching the grass hit it’s momentary neon green before it deepens into its darker emerald color for the spring. The woods begin to fill back in and the white tails of leaping deer again will hide before our eyes. The sun stays longer.

“He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth.”
~1 Peter 2:22~

It’s been bothering me so much, I needed to come back here and say something different. Something I said here yesterday followed me into the evening and continued to disturb me into the night. I won’t repeat it. But I found myself wanting to shake off the entire repulsive chain of a sentence, to get it as far away from me as possible.

I thought I was just being honest. But when the words come out of you in a place where you can see them, when the darkness comes into the light as they say, the lie you believed becomes so obvious. I need truth to come along, to wash me off and make me clean, because in Jesus, the truth is, “I am not subject to the kingdom of darkness.”

This is what the death and resurrection of Jesus is all about. He comes to liberate our bodies from the bondage of captivity. He frees souls from sin and ties them to him. “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed. For you were straying like sheep, but have now returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls (1 Peter 2:24-25).”

I find these words to be quieting and comforting. Psalm 91:4 says, “He shall cover you with his feathers, and under his wings you shall take refuge; his truth shall be your shield and buckler”. We find Jesus with us always, in the presence of every evil, saying, “This is my body. My body belongs to me. My body is a part of me.” He covers and speaks to every lost and wounded part of us, loving us back to an incorruptible whole.

I have minimally tried explaining to people that the anxiety is not in my mind, it’s in my body. That is simply the undeniable truth, and is some ways it’s own revelation. It is my body experiencing unpleasant feelings. The symptoms then alert my mind. The mind can almost instantly make the body feel worse, depending on the thoughts it has. But something I have noticed is that thoughts alone, no matter how calm, positive, or rational, do not have the power to make the body feel better. At least it doesn’t for me.

This is a stereotypical example, but allow me to use it to illustrate my point. We are probably all familiar with the husband telling the wife to “Calm down” joke.

About a week and a half ago I found a book on my dresser called, “Healing Trauma”, by Peter Levine. This is where I keep the medical/health books I’ve deemed worthy of keeping. I had gone to my dresser to see if there was anything from my book stash that I could purge, but ended up seeing the book, picking it up, and reading through it. The word trauma is kind of a buzz word these days, but don’t let the word itself alarm you. I’m someone who’s of the mind that simply being alive on this earth is traumatic.

Humanity is the race of the walking wounded.

So in the book he talks about befriending your body. It sounds almost too simple and goofy when you start to read it, but I’ve spent the past week and a half sitting here on my bed touching my arms, my hands, my legs, and talking to them. “These are my legs. My legs belong to me. My legs are a part of me.” I’ve discovered I don’t like touching my hands. They feel small, weak, and fragile, and those are not feelings I enjoy much at all.

I despise the fact that my body is vulnerable, and subject to harm, injury, illness, and death.

I had this thought, too. It’s interesting how my mind wants to constantly point it’s finger at the body. You’re having a heart attack. A stroke. Seizure. Cancer. Auto-immune disease. Your adrenals. Your brain chemicals. Anything but pointing the finger at itself.

Anything but love an imperfect body.

Anything but love.

But love.

Love.

It’s just been slow. That’s what I keep telling people because I don’t know what else to tell them or how else to describe it. I get up about 7. At the end of January to wake up brought instant anxiety and what I described as my equilibrium being off. I dreaded having to get up and use the bathroom, because to do so seemed to tick off my body and cause it to throw some sort of neurological fit. I was able to stay in bed, journal (Lord!), text, and occasionally get up to talk to my parents or sister. I was at their house.

Today I woke up at 7, in my own house. My body did not feel gripped by any kind of nasty frozen tension or anxiety. I got up and made myself breakfast. I could comfortably eat. Using the bathroom was a normal and unremarkable experience. I energetically greeted and interacted with my husband and children, just as we had done the night before having a wonderful time during my daughter’s 14th birthday dinner. I went downstairs and started a load of laundry. The little boys and I came upstairs to clean.

After filling a garbage bag and helping them sort out some things in their bedroom, I was ready to lay back down again. That’s kind of where I’m at right now. I feel so much more normal, but still not normal. I can be up for a little while, but rest for much of the day. I’ve been outside going for walks again, no longer than five minutes, but a lot farther than I was able to go at the beginning of February. The past two days I’ve gone up and down the small hills by the side of our house. It has been slow, but I’ll take it.

There comes a point in times like this where all that’s left is to wait on God. You’ve done what you can do. You’ve said what you can say. You’ve laid it all out there and the saying and doing have reached their limit.

I have never, and I mean never, been this physically struck down, or had a physical recovery take this long. God’s not showing up in my bed each morning with his maps and itinerary saying, “Okay, here’s there plan…”

Josh and I went and met with an older but familiar Christian couple over the weekend. I informed them ahead of time of my physical and overall weakened condition, and let them know we would probably not be able to stay too long.

But I am saying “NO NO NO” to anymore seclusion and isolation. I told my husband six months ago, that should God grant us another season of life together after this one, there are two things I am insisting on having.

I can’t remember what the first thing was. But the second one was “Friends”. I didn’t say this out loud but in my mind I was thinking to myself, “I will not submit again to another long season of friendless ministry.”

These people took us in and loved us. While I’m sure they were concerned about me having to excuse myself from the table to go sit in the couch while my body involuntarily twitched, they accepted us anyway.

I will wait on God as we are often called to do. But I am not waiting any longer to make changes in my life that I am able to do something about. I am done with the false piety, the false waiting and trusting. God alone is my song.