This Is the Way - Encountering hope in the storm.

This post is part of an ongoing series of journal entries beginning with "Coming Back"

July 19, 2015


As I awoke this morning it took a few minutes for the pit in my stomach to return and remind me of where I was (a Palo Alto hotel room reserved for families with cancer).  “Oh God, I don’t want to do this day.  I don’t want to do any of them.”   Never the less, up we went, getting ready for the morning.  Scott (my brother) and I sat outside on the sunny patio catching up over coffee and a pastry.  It's been a while since we've seen each other...a long while!  It was nice to be sharing sibling space on a beautiful California summer morning, but it felt like a storm was brewing inside my heart.

As we left our comfortable patio space and re-entered the building, the rigid and reflective walls of the elevator felt rather apropos.  There we stood, suspended between levels of living, waiting for the doors to open so we may carry on.  I felt so conflicted about what I saw in those reflections.  We were an incomplete portrait, missing family members and framed with shock.  I saw myself furrowed in the face.  I wish I didn't look so grouchy. There are few pictures of my Brother and I together, but there we were captured on those tiny doors - doors that were about to open into...something.  I wanted to close the doors and try a new floor.  But at every stop resided stories like ours.  Someone working hard to stay alive, while their loved-ones worked hard to find a path and keep breathing.  Everybody is nice here.  They open doors before you've reached for the handle, but the empty IV towers and lined up wheel chairs are visual reminders of why this special treatment at the hotel desk is so easy to come by. 

Walking through the entrance of Stanford is like walking into an alternate universe.  It's the Stanford Universe.  Where hepa filters greet the weary traveler and blue scrubs with diplomas walk by in teams of five.  Sleeping family members line the couches of the waiting areas much like an airport gate at 3 am.  This is where they sleep when guest houses are full and overnight stays are beyond the budget, but no one opens the door for them here…at least not really.  Down the long corridor we walked, passing doctors, radiology labs, nursing stations until we reach the atrium, which opens up like a sanctuary amid medical chaos.  Colorful flowers and little wooden benches with plaques can go rather unappreciated until they become the only respite.  How this beauty enters the eyes and soothes the soul.  I am grateful for this garden, and that God thought to make reminders of his goodness from soil and dirt.  This "wall canvas"  doesn't cost a dime.  It doesn't matter your means; this display of attentive care is for everyone.  Feast your eyes, dear husband with three small children, or wife of 60 years, or gangster-gone-jaundice.  Let the delicate blossoms remind you there is a Gardener who attends us all.  You, we, they, matter to Him.  There isn't a tear shed that He does not notice and collect.   

I wonder how my kids are doing back home.  Are you attending to them, Lord? They will probably sleep until noon, largely insulated from this tempest, packing for their long-awaited trip.  OH God!  The trip!...We are set to leave in five short days for Slovenia.  I don’t know what to do.  This mission with the kids seemed so clear when we decided to go.  How could we have known what would come up?  How could your voice have seemed so clear when we said yes? You knew about my dad then, right?  Do I – do we – stay or do we go?  I'm not sure if knowing you had this planned from the beginning brings assurance or a deeper mistrust right now.  I want to be mad at you, but somewhere deep in the recesses of me lives a secret atrium – a “holy of hollies” – where, in your mercy, you are staying present and I am not capsized.  Albeit ever so slight and quiet, it holds as a beacon in the night.

This is no detour.  This is the path.  These are the deeper, richer things of God.

"Although the Lord has given you bread of privation and water of oppression, He, your Teacher will no longer hide himself, but your eyes will behold your Teacher. Your ears will hear a voice behind you saying, "this is the way; walk in it."  Isaiah 30:21

Soul-Flavors

Meanwhile, the moment we get tired in the waiting, God’s Spirit is right alongside helping us along. If we don’t know how or what to pray, it doesn’t matter. He does our praying in and for us, making prayer out of our wordless sighs, our aching groans. He knows us far better than we know ourselves, knows our [waiting] condition, and keeps us present before God. That’s why we can be so sure that every detail in our lives of love for God is worked into something good.- Rom 8
...A continuation from the previous blogs beginning with Burned Out...

Well, we are almost finished with the series about the inward soul journey - woo hoo!!  Just a few more entries :)  Here we go...

The other day I visited a winery and tasted a new wine being introduced.  The flavor was amazing!  The woman went on to explain how the wine had been aged for eighteen months in new oak barrels.  Once wine initially ferments it typically gets placed in barrels to age.   It is there that the wait begins. This pause in production allows the wine to be removed from all other influences besides the barrel itself, causing the flavors from the wood of the barrel to be infused into the wine. ...That was it! I could actually taste the flavor of new wood on the wine I was tasting.  It was fresh, dynamic and wonderfully unique. 

           But let's go back to the idea of barreling... In this stage of the soul journey, like wine in a sealed barrel, I felt somewhat removed from many surrounding influences.  As if I was in the story, but watching it from a distance. I wanted to break through into various conversations and social settings but just couldn’t.  It felt more fitting to connect in smaller, more intimate ways but even then, the sense of being "known and understood" was rare; as was my ability to be fully present with others. God had introduced a grand "wait" and it was a strange abyss - so quiet and still. I no longer wanted false-fires.  There was a growing courage to let my “should/sensational-self” pass away and I felt indifferent toward things I once clung to for meaning.  It’s weird when what used to drive you goes away, because then, for a while, nothing drives you. The juices and sediment that had come from the recent crushing were purged for now and my “soul- juices” had been “barreled” allowing for my heart and mind to abandon itself to God's movement in the process...maybe that was the benefit of losing my drive and feeling so removed from others.

Indifference allowed for the questioning of sacred things and the dance of ambiguity.  In it, God initially seemed distant and silent but along the edges of this holy space I bumped up against His presence.  Old ideas that had formed broken images in my heart and mind were rewritten as they encountered God’s truth and love. His life infused itself ever-so-slowly into mine, like flavors of oak being drawn from the edges of a barrel.  This wait was changing me.  It wasn't one bit passive! Instead fiercely active.  Sue Monk Kidd likened her journey to that of a caterpillar and butterfly in her book When the Heart Waits.  In it, she states, “A creature can separate from an old way of existence, enter a time of metamorphosis, and emerge to a new level of life."

In this story, God, the wine-maker became the barrel as well; much like a caterpillar’s cocoon.  As we sit in dark-stillness with Him, He actively infuses our unfinished soul with the rich oak flavors of His love, joy, and peace. Those are the ingredients that make us fresh, dynamic, and wonderfully unique!  They are the things that make us real.  It takes a significant amount of time for wine to become aged and reach desired flavors.  It takes a long time for “soul-wine” too, but like that barrel, God surrounds us - even when we don’t know it.  Sometimes the path seems pointless as it becomes profoundly dark and God feels a chasm away. Yet, just when we think the darkness is too much, that's when we turn around and find that indeed, it isn’t darkness at all! …Instead, God has come so incredibly near that His hovering has cast it's shadow over us.  We are lost not in darkness... but held in His presence, which will one day bring forth incredible light!

So wait....Actively, wait.  Let the questions come and ambiguity rise.  God will surround you…He will infuse you with rich flavors of himself as you sit in the shadow of his accompaniment and emerge into a new level of life, the real-Christ-life intended for you will be found with all it's fullness and joy.

"Now glory be to God, who by his mighty power at work within us is able to do far more than we would ever dare to ask or even dream of—infinitely beyond our highest prayers, desires, thoughts, or hopes."  Eph. 3:20