by Victoria -

Job

He was a well-dressed older gentleman. You could tell his clothes, at one time, had been nicely tailored. They were filthy and ripped now. The fire in the pit had long gone out and the ashes were cold. He had taken a clay pot and thrown it on the ground, its shards scattering. He was sitting in the middle of the ashes searching among the shards on the ground. He found one apparently to his liking and picked it up. He stretched out his legs, one at a time, slowly and painfully. Hiking the cloth up past his knee he began scraping open the boils, releasing the pus. His face contorted in a grimace of agony and a groan escaped his parched lips. His breath raggedly caught in his throat and he rocked back and forth, eyes closed, riding out the anguish.

After some time, he didn’t know how long, he became aware of some moving shadows nearby. His heart was too heavy with a stone of grief and pain to bother to look up, but soon those shadows materialized into three of his friends. They sat down with him in the ashes, mouths agape, not recognizing their long-time friend.

They had never seen him like this. His eyes were hollow and encircled with weariness and grief. His face was streaked with dirt and tears, and as they watched, new rivulets made their way down his ravaged features. He was a terrifying picture of acute loss and unutterable sorrow, and they couldn’t meet his haunted eyes.

They sat with him for seven days, unable to utter a sound. They came to bring comfort.

After seven days passed, they began to speak. He must have done something wrong to deserve this, this tragedy! Losing everything he had, and even his children, well there must be some heinous secret he was trying to keep from God. It must be so. Job must confess his sin so God will stop the punishment.

Job’s friends had their world-view figured out and everything must fit into their box, because that’s what helped them sleep at night. So they came to get Job to admit to something, anything, so they could continue to be comforted in their world-view.

But Job didn’t comply with their request. He knew his own heart, even though he couldn’t understand why God had allowed such destruction to happen to him. He didn’t have any answers. The blows came again in waves of nauseous pain as he relived each and every calamity as he had been told of them.

Wealth – gone.
Crops – gone.
Flocks – gone.
Children – dead. This, of all things, sucked the breath out of him every time he remembered, drawing out a groan of such pain his friends shrank away in terror.

Everything gone. Except for a wife who goaded him to curse God and then die.

You might remember what transpired at the very beginning of this tragic story. What event set all this tragedy in motion.

Satan said to God – you know Job only loves and serves you because you’ve made him wealthy. Take everything he has away from him and he’ll curse you to your face.

And God said – alright. But don’t touch his body.

And Satan did. And Job still praised God.

Then Satan said, alright, alright – skin for skin – touch his body, and he’ll curse you to your face.

And God said, alright. But don’t take his life.

Now you might think, wow, that’s terrible! Satan and God using Job as a pawn in their cosmic game. No, there’s something else going on there, but that’s not part of this story.

The part of this story that grabbed my attention was at the very end of many long and windy dissertations.

Job’s friends had finally exhausted their advice and condemnation. Job was finally just exhausted.

That’s when God spoke. He reminded Job of who He was. God didn’t tell Job why everything had been taken from him. God described to Job His absolute power and absolute strength. God revealed to Job many things that had been questions in Job’s heart. And that brought Job comfort. But God didn’t tell Job the why.

But that’s not what got my attention either.

This is what stopped me in my tracks: God was not happy with Job’s three friends. Not happy at all. They had not spoken correctly about what was going on and what God’s role in it all was. So God told Job to pray for his friends, asking for forgiveness for them for the wrong things they had said about Him.

So Job did. And God accepted his prayer.

Then God restored everything Job had lost – well, He actually doubled everything so Job ended up twice as wealthy as he was before. Plus more children to love.

And here is the revelation that punched me in the heart and shook me hard: Job’s friends had accused and berated him when he was at the absolute lowest and most painful point of his life. They hurt his feelings – deeply. They couldn’t seem to feel his pain, or truly validate his grief. And I know Job was angry – very angry – with them.

Betrayal. That’s what Job felt.

So why did God tell Job to pray for his friends? In order for Job to pray for his friends with his heart – because that’s when God pays attention – Job had to forgive them first.

Totally and completely.

You see, God knew Job’s heart all along. So I came away with two things from this story:

The first is this – God wants us to acknowledge who He is. And when you acknowledge who He is, worship automatically follows. You can’t access power you don’t believe in.

The second is this – God commands us to forgive. His power can only work in hearts that are open.

Job’s story was not really about Job at all. His story has been played out through the centuries over and over again to lesser degrees, but the truths are constant.

We worship. We forgive. God acts. And we are the conduits of an awesome power beyond our ability to harness.

by Victoria -

The squeaky snow and a boat

I originally penned this in January of 2014 when depression had come to hang around for awhile.

The squeaky snow, now drifted across the sidewalk, made my trek to the post office a bit more labor intensive than usual. Underneath the new snow, the ice-crusted layer broke with each step, further slowing my progress. It was another cold and gray January in Michigan.

The words to that classic Christmas carol – Good King Wenceslas – kept going through my head. Maybe it’s because I had just endured the worst Christmas in my memory.

Good King Wenceslas looked out
On the feast of Stephen
Where the snow lay round about
Deep and crisp and even.

Brightly shone the moon that night
Though the frost was cruel
When a poor man came in sight
Gathering winter fuel.

It wasn’t night, but it was pretty darn cold. I felt like that poor man, looking for anything to bring me a small measure of comfort. I refuse to drive my car a half mile to the post office, so come hell or high water, I was walking.

I had a couple of letters to mail. One to the Governor to plead my son’s case. And another to my son, attempting to deliver love and encouragement.

I’ve felt like a failure at both lately. Discouragement loves to reach out with its dark foggy fingers when you least expect it. Sucking your breath away, and replacing it with a stone – making it hard to breathe. Feeling yourself to be absolutely without resources and hope make each morning unwelcome.

I remember when I lived in Arizona – how I loved to be awakened by the sun! I placed my bed just so, and my blinds at the proper level for privacy, but still allowing the sunshine to kiss my face in the morning. I would get up early just to see the sun rise triumphantly over the mountains. I anticipated almost to bursting each morning as it came. How I loved it there.

Life takes us and abuses us and then throws us into the gutter sometimes.

Gutters are unpleasant places. Cold and wet and filthy with mud and dirt and the detritus of others. When it’s hard to breathe, though, we may just lay there for a while, trying to get our strength back. Or so we tell ourselves. We can become comfortable in our uncomfortableness.

When our hearts have become filled to the brim with hurt and disappointment and despair, we have no room left for light and love and laughter.

We sit in our own filth of depression and weep. We know we need to pick ourselves up and put a smile on our face. We know we need to let go of what we cannot fix. We know these things.

But grief is a hard taskmaster. Its chains are like hardened steel and all we feel is the pain they inflict whenever we move. So we try not to move. But they continue to squeeze our filled up hearts, as if an unseen tormentor was at work, and as the hurt and disappointment and despair spill over, a never-ending well of more keeps seeping in and we don’t know how to stop that well up.

So we stay where we are, restless in our pain, wondering how all the people passing us by don’t see us. How they can continue on their way as if we aren’t there. Our despair makes us mute. And our grief robs us of desire.

I have this mental picture in my head. It’s a picture of a small vessel being tossed around on a rough sea. The howling wind and the driving rain are relentless. My tiny boat is slowly filling with water and beginning to break apart. Terror is as palpable as the sting of the raindrops on my face. And Jesus is sleeping on a pillow.

And I go to him and shake him over and over begging him to wake up and help me. But he continues to sleep.

And then I hear some faint words being thrown about on the wind, and they come from Job long ago – “Though he slay me, yet will I trust him.”

And so here I sit in my proverbial ash heap, proverbially scraping my open sores with pieces of broken pottery as my tears mix with the rain, waiting for Jesus to hear me crying out to him to wake up.

*****

When our days and nights are dark and terrifying, and when it feels like nothing will ever change for the better, hang on because it will. Despair eventually runs its course and the sharp edges of grief soften.

Take courage, for the storm will abate, the sun will shine, and Jesus, through everything, will protect you from the worst of it while you wait. Your strength will grow and hope will once again spring forth and life will be good.

Trust me. I know. Life will always be difficult, because this is our training ground. Jesus hears us even when our hearts betray us by believing he is oblivious to our struggles. You have protection you can’t see and help outside the storm swirling around you working on your behalf.

It’s going to be alright. Hold fast to what you have.

by Victoria -

Finding our way home

The November temperature was dropping below freezing, with the sun now below the horizon and full dark fast approaching. And my ten year old son Jeremy and I had lost the blood trail.

We’d been following the spoor for the last half hour or so, but now it was too dark to see any more blood drops on the forest floor.

It was my first and only year bow hunting on our land in Michigan, because the deer I had hit with my arrow hadn’t dropped as expected, but had bolted through the trees and we couldn’t find him anywhere. I used the venison every winter to feed my family, but bow hunting was clearly not working for me. My shotgun was much more effective. My purpose in hunting wasn’t to injure and maim, but to kill instantly with minimal, if any, suffering.

We had about 25 acres of woods at the back of our property, with the front 30 acres or so tillable land. This past year it had been alfalfa, and the year before the field was full of row upon row of corn.

I’m not all that good navigating in the woods even though I love being in it. I can get turned around too easily, so after the buck ran off through the trees with my arrow still in him, I made my way back to the house and asked Jeremy if he’d like to help me track the deer I’d shot.

“Sure, mom, I’ll help you.” He donned his heavy coat, hat, scarf, gloves, and waterproof boots, then followed me out the door, up the two-track lane, and into the woods as the sun sank even lower in the sky and the colors, almost like blood, streaked across the horizon.

It was a noisy walk, because there wasn’t any snow on the ground yet, just dead and very crackly leaves alerting every critter around of our presence even though we did our best to be quiet.

When it was finally too dark to see, and time to head home to try again tomorrow, I looked up to the sky to get my bearings. I did a complete circle searching for a familiar tree line, and then my old friend fear gripped me and my heart began beating too hard in my chest. Panic was right there, and as I willed myself to calm down, I said to my son with a quaver in my voice, “I’m a little turned around, do you know exactly where we are?”

“Of course I do, mom!” my confident 10 year old said with a smile in his little-boy voice. “Here, take my hand and follow me, I’ll lead us home.”

So I did, and soon we were out of the woods, standing in the field, looking at the welcoming lights of home just down the lane.

I’ve had to overcome a lot of things over the years that used to terrify me. I’ll bet you have, too. One of my biggies, though, if you permit me to admit it, is allowing myself to be vulnerable to the hurts of others. It’s easier for me to give money, give things, and pray for someone, than to drive to their house, or call them on the phone, sit down face to face, eye to eye, voice to voice, and gaze on their private wounds and trace their scars.

Because, if you’re like me, you feel inadequate and uncomfortable in situations like that. There’s just too much emotion going on. I don’t know what to say or how to fix them. People and their problems are a messy business and it drains me dry emotionally. I absorb too much and feel too much and it scares me because then I’m not in control anymore.

When I start thinking thoughts like that, though, I remember this saying: God doesn’t call the equipped, He equips the called. And also what God said to the Apostle Paul – ‘my strength is made perfect in weakness.’

Our meager emotional resources are more than enough for God to use. Just as he fed five thousand hungry people with only five loaves of bread and two small fish, he can use you and me, especially when we feel inadequate.

Jeremy had no idea how much his small 10 year old child voice and mittened hand calmed his momma’s fears. He didn’t know a lot of things – he was just a little boy. But he knew how to get us back home.

People who are hurting are just looking for someone to show them the way home. The way out of their pain and back to the comforting lights just down the lane.