Wrong place, right time?

Why does it always seem that those days that you have to DRAG yourself to church and you’re just feeling like you’d rather be somewhere else, are the days you find yourself hearing exactly what you needed and fighting back tears?  That was me today.  And it’s Ed Ditto’s fault.  J   You gotta love those guys who I would describe as ‘men of few words.’  Not that Ed doesn’t talk, but when he does, he says things so simply and to the point that you just have to listen.  Maybe I just envy that because I’m a rambler and can write pages or talk for hours without coming up with anything all that profound.   haha

Anyways… Ed was sharing some thoughts about communion today and

 asked, “Have you ever found yourself in the wrong place at the wrong time?”   Um, yeah, for sure.  I don’t think anyone in the room had to struggle to come up with a thought or two about that.  Then he turned it around – “How about the right place at the right time?”  Well, yeah – been fortunate enough to have that happen to me, too.  Then he had us turn to Luke 23 and he read about the two criminals who were crucified along with Jesus. 

Two other men, both criminals, were also led out with him to be executed.  When they came to the place called the Skull, there they crucified him, along with the criminals—one on his right, the other on his left...

One of the criminals who hung there hurled insults at him: “Aren’t you the Christ? Save yourself and us!”

But the other criminal rebuked him. “Don’t you fear God,” he said, “since you are under the same sentence?  We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve. But this man has done nothing wrong.”

Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”

Jesus answered him, “I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise.”

Then Ed graciously gave credit to his wife for this next thought.  He said Sharon had pointed out to him that really, at least ONE of the criminals hanging on the cross next to Jesus found himself in the right place at the right time that day.  Ed struggled with that thought at first.  How can being hung on a cross be a good place to be?  Well, it’s not, from a purely physical, worldly point of view.  But with spiritual eyes, it’s not hard to see that this was about to be the best day of this man’s life. 

It didn’t hit me until I started to write some of this down, that I love the choice of words here from Jesus.  Not just, “Son, your sins are forgiven.”  Or, “Thanks for sticking up for me.”  But Jesus says, “Today you will be with me in paradise.”   Things look bad right now, but just wait, you have no idea what’s coming!   Wow…  how amazing must THAT have been to hear?  In the absolute most desperate time of this man’s life, in what looked like the worst of 'wrong places' to be, Jesus is about to turn it all around with a beautiful offer of grace and pardon resting on the faith that this man had just put in who Jesus was.  Simple. Extraordinary. Perfect timing…

And as I sat there listening, my thoughts drifted back to moments in time where I have been in the worst of situations because of my own sin and disobedience, deserving my own cross hanging next to Jesus.  And I can remember the points where I have been literally driven to my knees crying out for help and deliverance…  and the very special thing that happened to me this morning as I sat in my seat was that it was so clear to me that Jesus was there all along.  In the right place at the right time… even in the wrong place at the wrong time… and maybe most especially in my wrong place at the right time…  He’s just where I need for Him to be.

A little while later, in Allen’s sermon, he made a point about how God never works against our will, but He works with our will.  We have the choice to fight Him if we want to – but He is so willing to work with us if we will give Him our faith and trust.  One criminal on the cross did, the other didn’t.  I want to be the one who did and now enjoys his eternity in paradise with Jesus.

“Lord, Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom…”

A tough loss...

It seems that lately a lot of my conversations with people have revolved around loss of some sort or the other. Loss of a boyfriend, loss of parents, children growing up and leaving home, losing jobs, loss of the dreams you had for your children or the dreams you had for your future… even losing faith in God. Then in the last few days, it just seems like I’ve been tripping over quotes from all sides regarding loss, so I thought I’d try to put it all together and make some sense out of it.

First of all, I’ll start with this. I don’t deal well with loss at all. I’ve learned that about myself. That’s why when I read this quote from Beth Moore’s book recently, I pretty much laughed out loud:

“Learning to say ‘good-bye’ is a necessary life skill.” (from “Get Out of That Pit.”)

And by the way, that wasn’t Beth’s insight… that was something her husband told her that SHE needed to learn. (That made me feel a little bit better… haha)

Then, the next day, I heard this quote at the end of an episode of Grey’s Anatomy. (This should go in one of my ‘things I learn from TV’ blog posts.) It caught my attention and I had to go back and listen to it again… so here it is:

“Practicing medicine doesn’t lend itself well to the making of friends. Maybe because life and mortality are in our faces all the time. Maybe because in staring down death every day, we’re forced to know that life – every minute – is borrowed time. And each person we let ourselves care about is just one more loss somewhere down the line. For this reason, I know some doctors who just don’t bother making friends at all. But the rest of us, we make it our job to move that line, to push each loss as far away as we can.”

I’m certainly not a doctor, but I get what is being said here. The older I get, the

more ‘losses’ I face, the more I realize how much I dislike the whole process – and it does have a tendency to make you want to insulate yourself or find some way to push the loss far enough away that you don’t feel the pain. (but I think we all know that really isn’t possible)

But then this passage of scripture came up at church yesterday morning:

“But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that his life may also be revealed in our mortal body. So then, death is at work in us, but life is at work in you…

Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed dayby 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.”  (II Cor 4)

And then today I read this quote on the USA Women’s Soccer Facebook site in the face of their stunning loss against Japan in the World Cup final on Sunday:

"That's what learning is, after all; not whether we lose the game, but how we lose and how we've changed because of it and what we take away from it that we never had before, to apply to other games. Losing, in a curious way, is winning." - Richard Bach

So, losses are an inevitable part of life. Maybe the point is that somehow through it all we don’t lose heart. And dealing with loss seems to be a lot about perspective. I’m pretty sure I’m not quite at the place where I feel like losing is winning, but I can at least say that I get what they are trying to say… There are necessary lessons that are learned from losses. I don’t have to like the loss, but perhaps I can at least find a benefit in the lessons learned and find a way to let that help me in the future…



Oh, on a totally different subject but perhaps a happier note, I recieved a call from the doctor about the biopsies from last Thursday and everything came back clear.  So that's a sigh of relief and a special thanks from me for the prayers. :)

Emergency!

It's hard to stay on top of everything all the time.  It feels like every day I'm rushing to take care of at least one thing that's going to become an issue if I don't do it RIGHT NOW.  Today it was two things - emailing a catering agreement back for my parent's 50th wedding anniversary party coming up in the beginning of August - and the second thing was something I almost didn't do because I thought it was already taken care of.  (Don't you hate those?)  I'm having some outpatient surgery tomorrow and the surgery center called me last week to confirm my appointment, tell me what I needed to bring, and pay, etc.  So I thought I was good to go.  But apparently when you recieve that piece of paper from you doctors office and they've highlighted in bright yellow and checkmarked and made it really obvious that you need to CALL THE SURGERY CENTER TO REGISTER AND HERE'S THE PHONE NUMBER....   well, I guess YOU need to call THEM.  :)   I called today just to double-check and make sure that everything was taken care of, and NO, I wasn't registered yet.  So, I really have no idea what the phone call FROM them last week was really about, other than to confuse me and perhaps to make sure I was going to PAY for the surgery that I was NOT registered for. ;-) 

OK, sorry - that was just a little rant for the day.   ha

So this seems to be the year for medical stuff with my family.  I thought we had enough with my sister's Addison's disease and my dad's heart attack.  Well, he finished his last day at cardiac rehab today, and he and my sister are both doing SO much better (yay!) and so I guess it's my turn to start something new tomorrow.    I get to have a hysteroscopy and a LEEP procedure.  And it sounds silly, but at the moment I think I'm more worried about how I'm going to react to the anesthesia than I am about the results of the biopsies they're going to do...  and that may be because I've gotten more information about dealing with the effects of anesthesia than I have about what exactly they are trying to find with the hysteroscopy.  I think that's because doctors are very reluctant to say anything about the 'C' word until they know for sure what they are dealing with.  And honestly, I don't think they're going to find anything, so I'm not TOO worried...  but still, it's a bit unnerving all the same. 

So, if you're reading, please say a prayer for me in the wee hours of tomorrow morning (or before that if you don't want to get up early - ha!!) - for my surgery and the results and perhaps even that one of these days I'll be better organized so that not every day seems to have some sort of emergency! ;-)

Leaning In

Some days are just harder than other days.  Sometimes emotions pile up and I find myself just sitting with them for a while... coffee in hand... surrounded, thankfully, by the quiet of the morning.  But now the morning is escaping and there are things I must get to.

 

I saw this quote and I don't know what else to say about it except that it's been stuck in my mind...

"Friends are hard to find, harder to keep, and impossible to let go."

I was talking to a much younger friend the other day about the challenges of big life changes at her age and the struggles she was feeling about finding herself more on her own and feeling alone and how uncomfortable it all is...  all of her friends are getting married and moving to all sorts of new places with their lives...  What do you do when you are the one who's left behind?

 

Lean into God...

And many more years from now when she's my age with many more years of life changes, triumphs, failures, gains and losses behind her?  Well...  you do the same thing.

 

Lean, even closer, into God...

The LORD is close to the brokenhearted

   and saves those who are crushed in spirit...

The LORD redeems his servants;

   no one will be condemned who takes refuge in him.

                                                                        -- Psalm 34

Thank you, Father, for this promise of always being near to us...  help me feel your presence in my life and grant that to my friends who are hurting...  help us to lean into you and always take refuge in your love.