Fun in the Furnace

Recently an article of mine was published, titled “Finding God in the Nightmare.” The article was originally written last spring, and in it I wrote about God changing my perspective, allowing me to view the nightmarish events in my life as, in fact, part of His dream for my life.

It took me a long time to submit this article for publication, and then even after submitting it, it took awhile for it to be published. During this time, some circumstances have changed in our family. In the fall, we began an unexpected battle with Nora’s preschool over whether she could go to school in her diabetic condition. Her teachers were understandably concerned about being responsible for a child with a life-threatening condition, and it took lots of training and talking down their fear before they would allow her to come to school without my being present. Just as this situation was resolved, some routine blood tests came back revealing that Nora had tested positive for Celiac Disease (another auto-immune disease closely related to her Type 1 Diabetes). An endoscopy has since confirmed that she has Celiac. This diagnosis (requiring Nora to eat completely gluten-free) involves another in-depth look at our family’s diet, and it involves even more microscopic accounting for every bite that goes in Nora’s mouth. It involves another big learning curve and adjustment for the whole family, and we are all adjusting in different ways. Our boys have been fighting for their share of parental attention in ways that are understandable but not great. In the wake of all of these events, we have felt overwhelmed with the amount of time and training our puppy Lucy requires. We initially put out feelers for places to re-home her, but have gone back and forth about this decision. We are still praying about what is best. 

Here’s the thing: in the midst of all of this change (none of which sounds real joyful), the truth of my last article stands firm. Now, more than ever, the description of my life sounds like a nightmare, and sometimes it feels like one. But now, even more than last spring, God is showing me how to live out joy daily. On top of this, he is teaching me what my faith gets to look like during this season, and it’s kind of blowing my mind. 

I concluded my “Nightmare” article with a sense of overall contentment with where God had us, diabetes and all. In light of recent events, I have re-fought this battle and have come to the same (but different) place of contentment. Let me explain. 

When Nora was originally diagnosed with Diabetes and now again with this Celiac diagnosis, there has been a raging battle inside me of faith vs. contentment. I have had faith-filled friends encourage me not to get comfortable with Nora’s diagnoses, encouraging me to fight until I see the healing. The fiery intercessor inside of me has agreed with them. Yet, I have suffered guilt over  the deep need in me to make peace with what life looks like right now. There have been days (as described in my last article) when I have felt joy and contentment in the midst of these diagnoses, and I have felt confusion over whether this contentment means I have given up on the healing. If I’m not in constant agony over Nora’s diagnoses, will I still care enough to pray for her healing? Which faith am I supposed to have, the one that believes and fights for full healing, or the kind that rests in the knowledge that God’s plan is good even when circumstances don’t look the way we want them to? 

Here’s what God has said to me: I get to have both kinds of faith. I’ve been living like a child of divorce, believing that I have to choose between my two faith parents. God is graciously correcting my misconception, and is showing me that the two types of faith are still married. There is a dual faith that can simultaneously fight for the ultimate healing AND live out the everyday belief that God and life are still good while I’m still waiting for the miracle. Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego had this dual faith. They said (and I paraphrase), “We believe that God will save us, but even if he doesn’t, we still still serve him.” (Daniel 3:17-18). And what happened to them?  Yes, God delivered them. They got their ultimate victory. But first, they had to step into the fire. They had to exist in the midst of the heat, and He was there with them. That’s the heart of this dual faith: believing that God will save/deliver/heal, but knowing that for as long as the fire should last, He will be in it with us. Therefore, life in the fire can still be good, even great, because we’re hanging out with God in the furnace. 

Don’t get me wrong, we still hate these diseases. We hate these diagnoses. They feel absolutely wrong and stupid. Our holy discontent is still firmly in place. But I am learning that holy discontent doesn’t translate to daily misery. Holy discontent means that our spirits are big enough to fight, knocking like the most annoyingly persistent of solicitors on God’s door, pleading for that healing and not giving Him rest, while simultaneously existing joyfully in the midst of the trial, allowing God to mold our character and shape us in this fire for as long as it should last. 

What does this look like daily in our lives?  It looks like adhering to a gluten-free diet and finding recipes we love. It looks like choosing to be thankful instead of resentful that we can’t eat at fast-food restaurants much anymore, because we know it will improve our health as a family. It looks like making friends with other people who have similar diagnoses, and taking joy in those new relationships that we wouldn’t have had otherwise. It looks like doing extra fun family activities with that money that we would have otherwise spent on eating out, and being thankful that God is re-orchestrating our lives in this way. It looks like awful things (pump site changes and shots and juggling our family’s gluten and gluten-free mixed menus) becoming second-nature, because this is our life for now.

Heading in for the endoscopy.  

It also looks like Jordan and I beginning a new tradition of praying together every single night before we go to bed; praying for full healing for Nora, and also for our kids to have radical, unbelievable, Spirit-filled relationships with God as a result of this season. It looks like a daily refusal to live in fear over whether more auto-immune diseases may come, or whether our other children might be silent carriers of one of these diseases. It looks like crying and screaming into my mattress that this isn’t right, this can’t be best, there has to be healing in our future. It looks like heated, middle of the night conversations with God, asking why, why, why He’s allowing a disease to manipulate my baby’s body. It looks like learning not to take my anger out on my kids, but to take it to God, because He can handle it. It looks like finding peace that surpasses the confusion and anger, over and over again. It looks like real life, except that we now have this mind-bending understanding that we can have fun even as we fight. We can have fun in the furnace.

We can have hope of deliverance, but joy in the meantime. 

Brother Orson

This morning Nora and I spent an hour at the bank waiting to be helped with our five minute transaction. I will let our bank remain nameless and I won’t bore you with complaints, because this post isn’t about that. It’s about a conversation I had with an elderly black gentleman named Brother Orson while we waited. It makes no difference whether he’s black or white or anything else (as Brother Orson would tell you himself, “If things continue on the way they are, the world will soon be color-blind”), except that I want you to be able to picture this sweet man as accurately as possible. Nora and I had finally sat down in two of the four lobby chairs after already having waited for 15 minutes when Orson ambled over. Despite his having thick black glasses and walking a little slowly, I would have put him at about 55. But his first words to me were that he could remember when his great-granddaughter was Nora’s age. 

“I was on Facebook the other day, and it told me she’s in junior high now! Makes me feel so old.” I told him he didn’t look that old, and he conceded, “That’s what they tell me.” He continued sharing, telling me he had two sons (one deceased) and one daughter. One of his sons been accepted on “a full boat ride” to a university, but after returning post-grad to his hometown, had been murdered by an angry person who said Orson’s son “thought he thought he was something special” for having gotten a college education. Orson moved gracefully past this admission so quickly that I second-guessed what I’d actually heard. He continued describing each of his grandchildren and finally his four great-grandchildren. 

“When I hear my great-granddaughter and her friends talking down in Memphis where they’re from, you can’t hardly tell ‘em apart. Doesn’t matter what color they are, they all sound the same. That southern accent is thick as syrup. Yep, it’ll soon be a color-blind world if things continue the way they are. And that’s good, it’s real good how things are changing, except that kids these days don’t even know how to play double-dutch or tether-ball.” 

From here we went on to discuss just about everything (like I said, we had a full hour). How Orson loves living far away from his grandkids so that he can show up and “give ‘em candy and make it rain,” then give them back to their parents. How in the South they fry everything, but everything tastes good. How, in his opinion, there’s no safer and better place in the world to raise your children than Spokane, but how Dolly’s Cafe is the only place in the whole city that serves grits. We talked a lot about food, actually. He described the way he was raised, how men would go out and work for two full hours before breakfast, but when they returned for breakfast there would be a spread of grits, biscuits and gravy, ham steaks, link sausage, corned beef hash and eggs. “Now,” he said with a healthy measure of disgust, “I have to eat greek yogurt, half a banana and half an english muffin for breakfast.” 

He told me he was the oldest of seven kids, and that when he was a kid he not only knew how to play double-dutch and tether ball, but he knew how to braid hair and iron pleats. He said that in his childhood neighborhood, everyone watched out for each other and that his big German Shepherd was the neighborhood babysitter. “Parents would drop off their toddlers, some even still in diapers, on my front lawn; sometimes kids I didn’t even know would get dropped off, and my dog would just sit in the front lawn and watch ‘em. Everyone knew they could drop their kids off at our place.” 

We didn’t just talk about him (although I was glad to listen because his stories were fascinating. I mean, a German Shepherd babysitter!?). He asked whether I liked to play sports, and I said no, the sportiest I’d gotten was playing golf in high school. “Well, you look like you could have been a cheerleader, holdin’ up some of those pom-pom things,” he said with a big smile. I just laughed and said no, but I told him about all the sports my kids love to play. He listened, then said, “You got it all going for you. You’re healthy, you’re beautiful, you’ve got three kids, a sense of humor, and I know you can cook!” 

When he told me that he’d recently been diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes (at which point the trade-off of grits to Greek yogurt made a lot more sense), I was able to share Nora’s story with him. After confirming that Nora’s type of diabetes couldn’t be fixed with diet and exercise and that she was on insulin, he said he was sorry for that, “but she’ll have an amazing testimony.” I smiled hugely, because that is one of the best responses I’ve heard from a stranger, and I said she sure will. When I told him my name was Hannah, he suggested I read 1 Samuel in my Bible to learn more about my name. I told him I had many times, and that I loved that story. He looked into my eyes and said, “Well, you’re living out the story of Hannah. You’re beautiful, you’re having children and re-populating the earth, and you know the Word of God.”

Let me tell you that coming from Brother Orson, a great-grandfather and (he later told me) a minister of a local church, those words were life to me.  Even the slightly awkward part about re-populating the earth was a blessing that I received, because the ability to do so IS a blessing that I’ve so often taken for granted (No, this does not mean I’ll be having more children). I walked into the bank to do a simple transaction and I ended up spending an hour with a man who called me by name and affirmed my worth and calling. 

So many times when I go into a store or business I try not to make eye contact, sometimes because I’m busy but mostly because I’m shy. Potentially awkward conversations are something to be avoided like head-lice, so I keep my eyes diverted and focus my attention on my children or on urgently cleaning out my purse (that one time a year when my children aren’t with me in public). But by bowing to my own introversion and caving to my fear of awkwardness, I also sacrifice many opportunities to love and be loved by others in my community. I sacrifice countless Brother Orson conversations. On a recent Sunday morning the pastor of my church said that “the love of God requires proximity.” The quote has haunted me just a little, because proximity means sharing space with others. It means making dreaded eye contact and sharing more than pleasantries and lingering awhile. And I’ll be honest, if Brother Orson hadn’t inserted himself into my space at that moment, our conversation never would have happened. If I hadn’t been forced to linger due to the less than stellar service of my bank, I never would have spent more than a couple of meaningless minutes with the man. And I would have been lesser for it. 

So, if there are any more of you out there who are shy, or introverted, or just busy, I encourage you to slow down for just a minute next time you’re out. Be brave and lift up your eyes. There might be someone in front of you who God put there for a reason. I know, your purse is in bad need of re-organizing and your kids are dumping out all the sugars and coffee stirrers from their containers. But there might be some life to be shared with a person whose space you’re currently sharing. Proximity is scary, but the love of God requires it.