Because not all medicines come in capsules

I wrote verse #50 today, Everyday Pain
I did because that is my reality.
That not even half a month into my last surgery,
I am in another kind of pain.


It is not new. 
It is what I was  going to a Physical Therapy clinic for a few months ago.
It is what I was getting my lower limbs pulled by traction hoping to fix the errant discs in my spine.
Again.
Like ten years ago. 


I cannot begin to describe the pain.
I am running out of words to describe the pain that is supposed to be similar to the pain I had ten years ago.
Sort of. But they are not.


Worse.
That much I can accurately say.
But I will stop trying to describe the pain.


I do marvel at the power of drugs to heal a person's wound after a surgery.
It is fascinating that someone who gets opened up for the surgeon to fix something will just go through 24 hours of getting in and out of sleep and pain and sleep and pain and sleep and pain and sleep....
And then no more.

At least in my case.


A day and a half after, I can get up and walk.
Go to the bathroom.
Another day and I can walk the hallway and back.


Even earlier than that, As soon as I get out of the Recovery Room
I can move side to side without help

 
I heal quick from the outside
But deep inside, so many parts are still broken.
And so I say, not all pains are the same.

And the drugs don't help at all.



I go back to The Writer's piece about writing a blog~~about writing our stories.
Our messy stories.
The stories written by a messed up writer for the messed up reader.
Stories that heal two broken hearts~that of the writer and the reader.


And then I go back to the blogs I have written.
All the stories.
About all things broken.
And how God puts them all back together.


One by one.
And then I heave.
And sigh.
And feel myself warming to my own stories.



The Writer always says it right:
"The first person that any words ever heal ~ is the writer of those words"


Those broken hearts ~ of the writer and the reader, are both mine.
I am the messed up writer and I am the messed up reader.


And as I read my own stories that I have written incorporating the thoughts of other bloggers,
I feel the tight muscles loosening. 
And the ebbing pain fading.
 .

That is relief.

I know the pain will slowly build up again later.
It is the same as when you're hooked up to Tramadol drip and you drift in and out of pain and sleep.
It cycles.


But the grand thing about it is getting a dose of pain killer that doesn't hurt the kidneys.
And even if the pain will come back later, there is always another dose that I can help myself with.
More stories from more broken hearts and messed up people. 


Until I heal from this pain.
Until God, who is in control of everything, decides when do I get disconnected to this invisible IV line that doesn't ever need an IV push.

Until I receive my healing whether here or in eternity.

I will be healed.
Because not all medicines come in capsules or tablets or IV.

I will be healed.
In God's perfect time.

When you realize life is war...

How many times have I been invited to join this neighborhood Bible Study group?
Countless.
And when finally I did, it was a few days before my scheduled operation.

Fear.
Of complications during the operation?
Of slow recovery?
Of things going wrong in the operating room?
Of DEATH?



What was I running away from that I could not take that first step to fellowship with others again?
I used to be a part of the Body of Christ and I fell away.


A falling away is always sad.
And scary.


Walking away has put a movie screen before me and I watched my whole spiritual life on rewind.
Did the rewind take away what I thought I received and did it take away what I thought I know?


For the years following,  I stopped living. I just existed. I changed what I believed in.
It was easier.


And the years that followed, I swung like a pendulum, hanging by a string.


Some days were hot and other days were extremely cold
It was not even Lukewarm.


I have felt God's proddings.
And  sudden bursts of inspiration and a sense of wanting to listen to God's calling.


I didn't recognize His voice because I could not block the noise.
I used that as an excuse to not listen to the calling.


But when God calls you, you can't hide.


I found myself tracing the path back.
Not very eagerly, but the seed of repentance was planted.
A good start.


I echo The Writer's words again: "When you realize life is war, you make prayer a shield and Christ your general and the victory is found in grace" 


I bow my head. It is true.


I approached the throne of grace for forgiveness.
I sought God's words about His forgiveness and believed that His grace is sufficient.


 2Cor 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 about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me.


I confessed my unbelief and God heard.
I surrendered myself and accepted my weakness.
Now He is making it known to me every day through the Bible and through the words of other faithful servants how to start living and not just existing.


He revealed to me His grace and power in the trials that proved my weakness.
And true enough, these trials punctuated God's strength.
Strength that now carries me day by day to the desires and goals of my heart that I believe to be in keeping with His words.


Life is indeed war.
and the ARMOR of God is what you wear to this battle.

Accepting HIS Acceptance

Second time.
This is the second time for me to go through an operation.
The first was one month short of ten years. November 21, 2002


Ten years forward, October 20, 2012


After the first time, I said I will never survive another operation if I had to have one.
But here I am, a week after the operation.
Alive. Strong.
Strong enough to walk around.
To bathe. To eat. To pray. To read. To listen to sermons. To write.
To laugh. To cry. To be angry.


Angry.
Angry at my situation.
What should I have done to not have to go through another operation in my life?


This disease. Dis-ease.
Are diseases consequences of sins?


I am a sinner. A transgressor.
I have offended God and the Holy Spirit many times. Many ways.


James 3:2
"We all stumble in many ways. Anyone who is never at fault in what they say is perfect, able to keep their whole body in check."


And we sin again and again. As if the stumbling in many ways is an excuse for sinning again and again.


But  God does not bless us because we do good.
The same way that He does not allow pain and suffering because we are bad.
God showers blessings to everyone, good or bad.


Bad things happen to both good and bad people.
Good things happen to both good and bad people.


Everyone is in equal footing.
With equal chances to approach God's throne of grace when we are too weighed down by the sins in our lives. We come back to the throne of grace to ask for mercy, for forgiveness, to be taken in again as God's children.


Yet not everyone of us see that.


I know that feeling too.
When I feel that sinfulness is overtaking everything in my life, even when I know where the throne of grace is, I avoid it. Like if I avoid it, it will disappear and cease to be the THRONE OF GRACE.


Like my bodily pains, that sometimes I try to ignore in the hope that they will go away.


Shame.
It does overtake me.
Ashamed to approach God again.
Because I am not sure God will be ready to forgive?
Or because I KNOW GOD IS ALWAYS READY TO FORGIVE?


How can I look God straight in the eye to ask for forgiveness when I know I have been in this spot many times before?


The Writer~ she always says it correctly:

"Sometimes it’s hard to look love square in the eye and accept the acceptance. Is this why we turn from God?"


His acceptance.
It pierces through my being.
Not because He accepts and stands with arms crossed and foot tapping and waiting for me.


His acceptance of us, sinners as we are, pierces through us~ reminding us that He loves us so -- oh how He loves us so!
Even when we don't love HIM back.
Unconditional.


And it is hard to accept HIS acceptance of us.
So that we turn from HIM. We run away from Him.


But is there really any way out of His sight?


I can run all I want, hide all I want.
and I can stay in that cycle if I want.
and stay LOST and BROKEN.


I choose to stop running away.
I choose to stop hiding.
I choose to accept HIS ACCEPTANCE.

in my brokenness...

I started a new place to blog -- to write about my stories --about anything--about things between God and me.


I started this in response to Ann Voskamp's call to blog~to write and to keep writing to share stories with other people.


"Because in our stories, we meet the spirit of God" and God heals two broken hearts with one story --the reader's and the writer's.


The stories I have read from blogs of different women in different places--are mostly written by writers who are broken, one way or another.


I come fresh from a battlefield... under the blade. My second battle on the operating table. By God's grace I came out of it alive...and recovering well, physically.


But deep inside, there are parts of me that are broken and that are still broken.
I would make a writer. 


A friend wrote in her blog about the Shepherd, how the shepherd sometimes breaks the leg of the one that breaks away so that it does not do it again. So that it does not break away again. And while the broken leg is healing, the shepherd carries the errant sheep on his shoulders.


I have more than a broken leg.
I also have a broken back...and a broken heart...and now even my spirit is broken.

 
A second operation. The first one was on the spine~on my back--that I had to be operated on face down.
And now, a hysterectomy. I was operated on face up.
And I am now broken front and back.
And broken inside and out too.


And the goodness of God is what is keeping me together. Like a broken cup whose pieces are glued together to make it whole again.


But God is not using superglue to piece me back together.
He is moulding me again, not with new material but with the same wretched material I am made of.
He is making me go through the fire that would mould me back to the renewed cup that he wants me to be.


I am broken.
And in my brokenness, my Shepherd carries me on His shoulders.
I am the one that my Shepherd left the ninety-nine for.
And in my brokenness, I found grace. I am carried on his shoulders just so I may join the flock again.


Psalm 51:
¹⁶ For thou desirest not sacrifice; else would I give it: thou delightest not in burnt offering.
¹⁷ The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise


So that out of my brokenness, God will bring out the best in me. 


I am broken.
And in my brokenness, I found grace.

"I lost my tooth. God has blessed me"~Shalom

I love reading Ann Voskamp's blog. Because I see myself in the mirror in her writings.
No, our lives are not the same or similar but I see myself in the things that she writes about.
Not all. But most.
I realize lessons from ordinary things she talks about.

Ordinary, yet meaningful.

She shares her life, her thoughts,her family, her faith, her children.
Her children.

Shalom, she is the littlest child of the six.
The girl with the golden tendrils of a hair who knits upended and scrubs the floors to a gleam and who sings praises to the Lord slightly off-tune.

My first memory of Shalom is the first poem I wrote for my One Thousand Verses blog I know God is Going to Bring Nanny Home

The goats, Ninny and Nanny. One got lost...and was found again.
Shalom, she prayed desperately. And God heard her prayers.
What if God did not hear her prayers to bring Nanny back? He is still God.
It is a reminder of who and what God is.

 I see one of Ann Voskamp's most recent blog entries~How To Handle Losses
and Shalom, she lost a tooth and said, “I lost my tooth. The Lord has blessed me.”

Ann~ she sees wisdom in things that I would probably could never see and when I see it through her, it blesses me.
 "How does she do that? How does she fill her gaping with celebrating and who sees blessing in loss..." She was talking about Shalom.

The words turn round and round in my head.

I lost too.
I lost the entire set of my reproductive organs. Hysterectomy.
I never knew what that medical term meant until I had to dig deeper a few days before my surgery.
Hyster -- I wondered why the term. But I think I see now. I am almost hyster-ical. Who would not be?
All the horror stories about hormonal imbalance, about emotional and psychological changes.

I lost too.
Like Job, he lost everything. Sons and daughters. Wealth. Health. 
But God blessed him. He restored everything.
He is indeed the God of restoration. He restores the lives of His children.

“I lost my tooth. The Lord has blessed me.”
It touches the heart ~ a child's understanding of what losing something meant to her.
And celebrates the loss.


"Who am I to complain in losses — when what I lost wasn’t mine to begin with?" - Ann~she's right.
Nothing is really "ours". Nothing is really ours to begin with.
Even our physical bodies that we call our own.


"The toothless Job child, standing there with her tooth in her hand: I lost — and the Lord has blessed."

How do we all become like Shalom? Or Job?

The wild, tenacious thanks.
    “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return.
    The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away;
    blessed be the name of the Lord.” (Job 1:20–21).

I lost too.
I gave thanks for the deliverance from the operation.
But I missed the point that my loss was a blessing.
Until I read about the toothless Job child announcing the Lord has blessed her after she lost a tooth.

 Thanking the Lord is Shalom's default.
And Ann is right again.
"When thanksgiving is your default — the enemy gets his defeat."

And I continue to quote Ann:
"Let everything that has breath praise the Lord — because praise is breath to a child of God. Praise is the only way to really breathe."

Is it why I feel choked?
Is it why I feel short of breath?
Is it why I have this dying, drowning feeling?

I lost and didn't realize it was a blessing.
And I started sliding to the depths of depression where my breath slowly comes in gasps.

PRAISE IS THE ONLY WAY TO REALLY BREATHE!

I see a vision of God, lowering a rope down to me where I slid into the ugly depths of depression.
And I started my ascent....still gasping...but above me, I see the toothless Job child showing me her tooth and smiling saying:
  “I lost my tooth. The Lord has blessed me.”

 Ah Ann, I see there is more to be heard from you:

"Is it robbery for everything that has breath to take oxygen from His world and not praise the Lord?"


At the recovery room, as my consciousness returned, all I can remember is the thousand and one wild beasts clawing at my insides. The doctors took it away. I lost an organ. And I can remember struggling to remove the oxygen mask off my face. It was hard to breathe but the oxygen mask wasn't even helping.

 
Praise the Lord!!! Because He is worthy of praise!!!

I breathe.
I received my oxygen.
Not in a mask connected to a tank
But straight from where it comes from. Naturally.
Straight from the Lord who gives and takes away and blesses us.

Shalom. Ann.
Mother and child who showed me where to be in the dark parts of this world.

At the feet of the Giver of Everything.
Thanking Him continually.
Because...
"You defeat your dark when thanksgiving is your default."



NOTE: This blog was inspired by Ann Voskamp's blog, How to Handle Losses