Lion and Lambs

Someone just posted this comment to my sister’s blog, and it is so perfect for what I have been posting that I wanted to share it here:

When life becomes to hard to stand, kneel.

May your blessing be time, with those you love most; may you feel a breathe from heaven, and may your focus always be THE gift, Jesus Christ.

Through tragic news from my very dear sister in Christ, I am learning just how interdependent we are in God’s family. He uses the things in our lives to create comfort and learning for each other. My friend, though loyal to mammograms, has found out that she has stage 3 breast cancer. Not nearly as much as hers, it rocked my world. It consumed my thoughts.

I am amazed that I could become just as consumed by a trial in her life as I have done in my own. It was pretty much all I have thought and prayed about after hearing it, including in the middle of the night, and the first thought when I awoke in the morning. Then after speaking to God about it again, He said, “Can you trust Me with with your sister, as your sister has been learning to trust Me with you?” WOW. I cried. I know she is going to come through this with an amazing testimony, because God has been molding her into an amazing woman, and the story and the strength she will be able to share with others, I know will be invaluable. But the price of a testimony is so high. I just want to be able to take her heart and hold it and protect it until all the painful parts have passed. I want to protect her not only from pain, but also from people. I want to protect her from this. But I know that God is going to protect her IN this, and that He will do a much better job than I ever could, and according to His perfect plan, she will come out the other side even more beautiful than she is now. And if I protected her from the pain, I would halt the growing and the beauty that will come from it. But letting go is hard, accepting pain in another’s life is contradictory to our feelings.

Over the years that she has been supporting me through migraine disease, she has felt similar feelings. She has sent me many e-mails with scripture verses, encouraging articles, and loving words. She is the one who pointed me to Dave Dravecky’s Outreach of Hope, which is a ministry devoted to cancer patients. Now I have directed her back. She was the teacher for “When God Weeps, Why Our Sufferings Matter to the Almighty“, which helped me tremendously in my walk, and gave me much strength and encouragement. All the lessons, all the love, all the Words from the Father that she has given me, apply to her now. All this time, through her ministering to me, God was preparing her for her trial. The cancer did not surpise Him, and He wanted His daughter to be ready when the news came. He is SO FAITHFUL and SO GOOD!

So as I have been on the journey of endurance and letting go of me, all that God has taught me through my trial, and will continue to teach me, will help me release her to the Father also. It is a “circle of life” within God’s handiwork, within His immeasureable love. Sometimes we give, and sometimes we receive, and sometimes, they are both the same thing.

This from Reuters:

BERLIN, Dec 12 (Reuters Life!) – German shoppers sprang to the help of a shoplifter who was being detained after trying to steal clothes at a department store, wrongly assuming she was being attacked by strangers, police said on Tuesday.

Two store detectives caught a woman in her mid-30s stealing garments in the city of Mainz near Frankfurt and attempted to detain her for questioning, police said.

But the woman tried to free herself, and bit, kicked and hit the detectives who wrestled her down in a skirmish, prompting passers-by worried about her safety to help her.

“They hauled the detectives away from her … The woman managed to run away,” Mainz police said in a statement.

They say everyone can use a helping hand?!?

Well, in the realm of “it could get worse” it has. I have had a migraine everyday for five days. In order to break it, my neurologist has decided to admit me to the hospital for a few days to annihilate it with IV medication. Needless to say I am not excited, but I am trusting.

So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God.
I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.

- Isaiah 41:10

As you know I am on a journey to acceptance, to let go of my desperate need to control these migraines – to make them stop.

I analyze and scrutinize everything I eat and drink, everywhere I go, everything I do, for fear that it might trigger the beast. This often replaces enjoyment with worry. I search for and stew over treatments, medications, alternatives, etc.

Then I had a revelation, I am trying so hard to control everything around me and in me because I am desperate to get better for other people. I don’t mind this disease as much for myself, yes when I have an episode it is horrific and I want to escape my mind and my body, but in the big picture I can accept it for my life. I understand it is God’s will for me and that it has a purpose. However, I HATE what it does to my family and my friends. The pain in their faces, the tears from their hearts breaking, the struggles they have to understand, their wanting in vain to fix me, their questioning of God. On top of that, all the inconveniences and sacrifices they make when they have to drop everything to take care of me or to drive me somewhere, tears me up and I desperately want to get better for them. So in a round about way I guess it is for me too because then I wouldn’t feel guilty or blame myself for causing their pain.

Anyway, I called my sweet mentor friend in my recovery time from my major episode yesterday, and she talked to me about trusting Jesus for what He is doing in my life, and I do. Then it hit me, I need to trust Jesus for what He is doing in other people’s lives through this as well. I came to realize, once again, that the lessons learned from our afflictions are not just for us.

In an an effort to eliminate as many migraines as possible, I am very careful about what I eat. I pretty much avoid anything on the typical migraine elimination list, and anything that I have reacted to more than once. Well, yesterday I was faced with one of my favorite foods, warm gingerbread. Having had migraines four day in a row, I summoned up all my willpower and passed on it because sugar has been known to be an issue.

Two hours later I had a four star migraine, it was wicked. So as I lay there suffering I got a “life is too short” thought passing through my mind:
I SHOULD HAVE EATEN THE GINGERBREAD!!!