Tag: faith

C is for…

If you didn’t start singing “C is for cookie” in a Cookie Monster voice, we can’t be friends.

Just kidding. Kind of.

One of my favorite necklaces, inspired by Alexis from Schitt’s Creek.

C is for a lot of things:

  • Cookies
  • Cake
  • Candy
  • Coffee
  • Church
  • Choir
  • Cheerleading
  • Coloring
  • Children (mostly my own)
  • Castle (as in the TV show with Nathan Fillion)
  • Cuddles (with my dog Brindley of course)
  • and of course, Chrisy (or Christina, as my dad would call me)

There are loads of things that start with the letter “C” that I absolutely love. But recently, I have become intimately familiar with another “C” word that I could do without.

Cancer.

Two months ago today, my annual screening mammogram turned into an additional mammogram, ultrasound and biopsy all on the same day. About 9 days later I got the results of the biopsy, and I was diagnosed with invasive lobular breast cancer. Because of my age, and other family history, I then underwent genetic testing which found that I am positive for BRCA2, a harmful variant in a particular gene that increases my risk, not only of breast cancer, but of other types of cancers as well.

I have to say, I’m not feeling too fond of that good ol’ letter “C” these days.

I have waffled back and forth whether to take this news public on a grander scale than how it naturally spreads. One day I feel like I should just keep it to myself and the circle of people around me. The next I feel like I should share my journey in case it can help others who may face this in the future. What ultimately pushed me into sharing this journey on my blog? A couple of things.

  1. I process things through words. Spoken words. Written words. Words that run through my mind. To be able to sit down and write what I am thinking and feeling (and sometimes to then erase it all and start over) is therapeutic and cathartic. I am keeping a journal, which holds some of my personal thoughts (and rants, and tears), but blogging helps me to really think through things and draw connections to other areas of life.
  2. I am realizing how important it is for me to hear the stories of others who have been on this journey, to hear their ups and downs, their struggles and fears, and ultimately, the way they have overcome this disease. If that helps me, then maybe my story can help others.

I’m not sure how often I will post. I’m not sure what the content will be exactly. I do know that I miss blogging and haven’t made it a priority for awhile, so this is impetus to get back to doing something that I love, hopefully in a way that is meaningful for both myself and for you, my readers.

At the end of the letter I sent to the congregation I serve telling them about this diagnosis, I wrote this:

As I was preparing to leave Greenville to relocate here for this call, a friend gave me a wall hanging, which hangs in my bathroom where I see it every day. It says, “Trust the next chapter, because you know the Author.” The circumstances in which I need to trust God may be different now than then, but the truth of this statement remains the same. 1 Thessalonians 5:18 tells us to give thanks in every situation because thanksgiving is God’s will for us. That is the stance that I will be taking throughout this journey, consistently looking for all the gifts for which I have to be grateful.

Gift from a good friend when I moved from Illinois to Alabama

So, I will choose to end each post with something for which I am grateful. Sometimes they will be very off-the-wall or funny, because if I don’t laugh, I will be a puddle of tears on the floor.

Today I am grateful for something my husband said the other night. It isn’t profound. It wasn’t particularly supportive. But it has made me smile every day when I remember it. When asked what he was thinking about and how he was feeling in light of the BRCA2 news, he looked at me and said, “It sucks. But so does dying.”

So there you go. Cancer sucks, and I don’t plan on dying, so instead, I’ll be kicking it’s a$$.

Life is…

How would you finish this sentence?

Here are some of the endings I thought of:

  • good
  • short
  • strange
  • beautiful
  • a highway
  • hard
  • a journey
  • an adventure
  • complicated
  • difficult
  • expensive
  • fun
  • wonderful
  • precious
  • messy
  • colorful
  • cruel
  • unfair
  • yours
  • a dream
  • eternal

Today I have been bombarded with the fragility of life. First thing this morning I saw no fewer than six different posts on Facebook about loss of loved ones. Six.

Fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, spouses, cousins, and friends whose earthly life is over. My heart is breaking for those who are facing these losses right now. I’ve been there and I know that it is hard in ways you can’t even comprehend until you are in the mist of the grief.

Of all of these losses, there is one that hit me like a punch in the gut this morning. We were just talking about him last night. The last update we saw just over a week ago was positive. We thought things were going well. And then suddenly they weren’t. And then this morning, we learned that he was gone, his fight over.

This one is tough for so many reasons. We shouldn’t be saying goodbye to friends our age. Of the four guys who stood up with Mike at our wedding, this is the second one we have lost to brain cancer. B was one of the most fun-loving people I have ever met in my life. My heart breaks for his wife and family who now have to find a new normal.

One of the questions that gets asked at times like these is, “why?” Why did this have to happen? Why do young people have to die? Why this person? Why now? Why? Why? Why?

And the thing is, the answer to this question is almost always, “I don’t know.” Which isn’t really an answer at all. In this life there will always be good and bad, joy and sorrow, gain and loss; it is simply the result of living in a world where sin entered through the choices of humankind, and with it brought darkness, pain, and trouble.

Perhaps the most troublesome issue in all of life is this, what we call the problem of evil, or more accurately the question of why a good God allows bad things to happen. (The theological term for this is theodicy, in case you wanted to know. If you didn’t want to know, you can be like my son and say, “thanks, but I don’t remember asking.” I won’t hear you, but you can say it.)

Theologians have attempted to reconcile the good God, bad things dilemma for centuries and there are all kinds of ways to address the issues and questions raised, (don’t worry, I’m not gonna pull out the theology books and get into the nitty gritty here) and yet, humanity still struggles with this conundrum. Why? Because pain hurts. Sorrow hurts. Loss hurts. And no one likes to hurt. And because no one likes to hurt, we look for ways to place blame, and for some, the easiest place to lay blame is on God.

One of the scriptures that we often use to talk about how Christians can go on living in the midst of troubles is John 16:33. here are just a few of the ways that this scripture is translated/paraphrased:

In other words, in the midst of anything and everything that the world can throw at you, you can still have peace and be confident that all will turn out for the best because the work of Jesus Christ has already taken care of it all. Here is where it get’s tricky to understand, though: while Christ has already overcome the world, we don’t see it. It’s already done, and yet it’s not fully evident to our eyes yet. And to live in the space between requires us to have faith.

When I was still a pretty small child, I spent a lot of time reading and memorizing passages in the bible. King James Version of course. This passage that speaks of the nature of faith was one of them:

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

Hebrews 11:1

What I love most about this particular verse in this particular translation is the fact that faith is considered EVIDENCE. Our faith comes as a result of believing certain things are true about our God and our Savior, and that faith is EVIDENT in the way that we live our lives in light of those things that are unseen with human eyes.

Let me give you an example of this kind of faith (that also happens to brag on my mom a little.)

My dad passed away suddenly almost three years ago now. It was a HUGE blow to all of us, but was hardest for my mom, who lost her husband of nearly 45 years, less than a week before celebrating their 45th Wedding Anniversary. My parents did nearly everything together, and while they had been living in Greenville for a few years at that point, they didn’t have the roots here like they would have in Taylorville where they lived a big chunk of their married life.

Mom’s faith is what got her through those early days, and what still gets her through today. She misses my dad greatly, but she believes not only that Dad is with the Lord, but that God loves and cares for her every day. She has made new friends, created new routines, reached out to others, and at times I think she has a more active social life than I do. She also believes that God can (and does) use their story as a way to show others the saving power and grace of Jesus Christ. Her faith in God and the power of God’s story in their lives led her to write a book, and work hard to get the book published in order to share it with as many people as possible.

This is what faith looks like for her. This book (and so much more in her life) is just one piece of EVIDENCE that points to her deep faith and hope found in Jesus Christ.

While life can be all of those things listed at the top of this post, and much more, today I choose to finish this sentence this way:

Life is an opportunity in which to live lives of faith that is EVIDENT in all that we say and do.

How would you finish this sentence today? Leave a comment or send me a message and let’s talk!

No Words

Lately I have been thinking about times when there are no words.

I have opened this page up to write a blog almost daily for the last couple of weeks, but there have been no words.

I mean, sure there are words running around in my head, but nothing coherent or formed that I could put down.

Life is busy. Life is crazy. Life is wonderful and hard all at once.

I have been re-watching Dawson’s Creek. Yes, I know how pathetic that sounds. Mike and I watched the entire series when it aired on television (don’t take away his man-card, we were newlyweds and I wanted to watch it) and while scrolling through Hulu a few weeks back I saw that it was among the offerings of shows available to me with the touch of a button. In a moment of weakness, I pushed play.

One of the things that I have (again) noticed about this show is the massive amount of words that pour out of these (supposedly) teenage kids. Always talking, analyzing and waxing eloquent about this, that, and the other circumstances in their lives. Rarely do you see any of them in a place where they have no words.

And while part of me thinks that is no where close to reality, another part of me realizes that we often talk too much. But the difference is we talk about nothing, because we have no words to really talk about the hard stuff. We can find lots of words to talk about the stuff that doesn’t much matter. We can talk about the weather, how busy we are in general terms, how we don’t like this or that about home/work/school/church/community, and what our plans our for the weekend. But when it really comes down to it, the words that we need to speak stay unspoken.

When struggling with yet another bout of depression, we don’t speak the words, “help,” to anyone.

When experiencing deep pain and sorrow, we put on a happy face and answer, “fine” when asked how we are doing.

When watching friends go through the pain of divorce, we don’t know what to say, so we say nothing.

When seeing others grieving loss of one kind or another, we allow them to suffer in silence for one reason or another.

When witnessing the downward spiral and loss of faith of a community member, we stay silent.

When observing someone making poor choices, we choose not to talk with them about it.

The thing is, in those times that there are no words, sometimes words are exactly what is needed. Not surface conversation. Not platitudes that make empty promises. But words that acknowledge the truth. Because, you see, something happens when you acknowledge the truth and speak it out.

Healing can begin.

Help can arise.

Hope can be proclaimed.

Comfort can be given.

Faith can be renewed.

Love can be shown.

Let’s work on learning how to speak the words that need to be spoken, the hard words, the words that don’t want to come, and the ones that bring truth, healing, help, hope, comfort, faith and love into our lives and the lives of those around us.

Tragedy and Hope

The first of this year has been a rough one already. I have friends that have experienced unforeseeable tragedy, and I hurt for them. Just today, I heard of another tragic happening affecting a family I love, and I have been reminding myself all day that we don’t have the answers or understand why, and in this fallen world, filled with evil, God is still present.

This is my sermon from this past Sunday, and I just feel like I should share it today.

Take a listen and let God’s word bring you hope today.

Inspiration

Inspiration

Parenting is hard. It is constant work. You can’t let it slide. You can’t assume it is happening. You have to work to be on your toes and aware of what is happening with your kids.

And we all fall short of that ideal. Often.

Some days we are lucky if we get them out of bed and off to school, never mind making sure homework is done, they have had a healthy breakfast and they remembered to brush their teeth.

But the purpose in me blogging for 31 Days this month isn’t to make it seem like I have it all together when it comes to parenting. It isn’t that I have all the answers. It isn’t that I think I am doing a fabulous job in every possible area. It is really that I want to share my experiences and hopefully inspire someone to take that extra step, put in that extra work, and in the process, that I will also be inspired to be better and do better.

This is how it is in every area of my life that I put out there on my blog.

I talk about depression in hopes that someone else can get the help that they need.

I talk about health and fitness so others can find encouragement to get healthy.

I talk about giving to others, so that someone might be inspired to give of themselves.

I talk about music because of its ability to lift us up and move us forward.

I talk about faith because it is the ultimate inspiration in my life.

I truly want to inspire YOU to be the best YOU, the one created and loved by God.

Put in the work, be inspired by others, and be the best parent you can possibly be to the children that God has given to you.

You can do it. I believe in you.

Faith and Family

Faith Priorities

Faith. From the time I was two, faith was a priority in the life of my family.

We went to church every time it was open – Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night.

My sisters and I have been examples in Dad’s sermons more times than we can count.

It didn’t matter what we did on Saturday night or how late we stayed out, we were at church on Sunday morning.

When I went off to college, needless to say, I wasn’t as faithful in my church attendance. I didn’t quite understand the necessity.

But it wasn’t long before I changed my tune and began attending regularly again.

And then I became a parent and I realized exactly what my parents realized all those years ago.

As parents, we set the priorities for the home. Strong faith and a relationship with God through Jesus Christ has to be at the top of our priority list. One of the ways we do this is by making it a priority to be in church regularly for worship.

In this day and age, there are so many things that are vying to be at the top of our list of priorities, and what I have seen happen in the church is sad. Ball games, tumbling or other sports meets/competitions, camping trips, and even late Saturday nights are taking priority over worship attendance. Somehow a shift has occurred and instead of making worship a priority, we have started making our children’s “success” in other areas a priority.

The problem with that is simply this: if they don’t learn early how to make the Lord a priority in their lives, then He may never be a priority in their lives.

And for a parent who loves the Lord and loves her children, that would be a devastating tragedy for my children.

So in addition to other things we do at home, we will be in worship each Sunday morning on a regular basis. This is a priority in our lives. And as parents, we will show our children that it needs to be a priority in their lives as well.