Archive of ‘Lent’ category

An Inch Of Daylight. If I Want To Live

by

inchofdaylight
“My heart is troubled, my strength fails me,
And the light of my eyes, even this is not with me.”
–Psalm 37:11

It was a shadowy week.
Not just Ohio cold and grey.
Not just smudged with Lenten ashes grey.
Not just a big inky cloud I can’t explain away grey.
It was so dark I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face.

Every morning I woke early with my family to move through our routine. As soon as they left for work and school I would make the girl’s beds, wipe the kitchen and bathroom counters and sinks, straighten the house for Better Homes and Gardens and then stumble to my own bed. Curled in the fetal position under six heavy blankets I was gripped with a paralyzing fear this would be the time I might not find my way out of the chasm of despair.

If you’ve ever tried to die before you understand there’s nothing worse than failing at it. If you’ve ever endured intake for an attempted suicide you understand the high stakes to get it right the next go round. I don’t believe in levels of hell, but if I did a hospital psych ward would be at the very least level one. This knowledge makes the slipping even more frightening. I can make a way of escape once and for all or I can hold on here. The lie is there is no real help to be found in the middle.

“On a scale from one to ten how likely are you to harm yourself?” The wrong answer to this question lights a fuse you have no power to put out. It’s really better to fudge the numbers. “Have you thought of specific ways to end your life?” Never, ever tell them how you would do it. People who love me and have sensed me slipping away say, “Call me. I mean it. Anytime of the day or night. I’m here.” They remind me I have to let them know when it gets this bad. If I’m faking being okay when I’m not they can’t help. I run through the short list. Lord, people have so many hard things to deal with. I can’t be one of their hard things one more time.

“My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even to death.
Stay here and watch with Me.”
–Matthew 26:38

Until a few years ago, when I was finally diagnosed with Autoimmune Encephalitis and Adult PANS/PANDAS, I could only explain the sudden onset of the episodes as if a demon was coming over me even though I knew I was ultimately protected from them. I was mostly happy and hopeful even in the midst of intense daily pain and extreme life stress. Out of no where it would rush over me. I wanted to die. My healthcare professionals continued to try to understand and treat me as some variation of Bipolar, the best diagnosis they could squeeze out of the DSM. I now know there are chemicals, bacteria and viruses able to hair trigger me into debilitating physical and neuropsych symptoms. These are things completely out of my control, and my autoimmune disorder sets me up for continuous infections and cycles of sickness. As soon as I begin to feel unwell physically I become disoriented by hissing lies about the worth of my life. I have never really fit the depression diagnosis. I’m just not a sad person. Serious, yes. Sad, no. Every time it happens there is a moment when my mind and heart fade to black. The physiological starting place is compounded by a life of what can only be described as continuous pain that is often excruciating. This means I am already always standing on the ledge.

You want to live a long life. You want a future and a hope here on earth. You are maybe even afraid to die. I want release. I know there are people who need me now. I believe God has a purpose for me or I wouldn’t still be alive, but I want to go. I’m ready to go.

“Then they cried to the Lord in their afflictions,
And He saved them from their distresses;
He sent His word and healed them,
And delivered them from their corruptions.”
–Psalm 106:19-20

This year I am working through the She Reads Truth Lent study. It’s good. The best part is it’s mostly just straight up God’s Word. When your heart is torn wide open and fleshy with need the living and breathing part of Scripture finds an especially perfect soil to take root.

I am crying to Him in my distress.
I’m LISTENING hard.
I’m pointed east.
I’m looking for the light.

Another Lent resource I have used for many years is a small book of daily readings by Emilie Griffin titled Small Surrenders. She suffers from chronic illness and tells of one of my favorite poets, Gerard Manley Hopkins, as an example of a man “plagued by frailty and weakness, not just physical but psychological. At times he would plummet into an abyss of darkness, what he called ‘cliffs of fall.’ The steep dropping-off places of the soul seemed worse than any physical distress. This, therefore, was Hopkin’s prayer, his hope: ‘LET HIM EASTER IN US. BE A DAYSPRING TO THE DIMNESS OF US.’

The sun was shining this morning as I drove to my counselor’s office. I played the JJ Heller song “Daylight” over and over and over again on the way there and the way back.

There is an inch of daylight underneath the door.
It’s enough for me to fill up my canteen.

If I want to live
Your love is what I need.

Be near me.
Be near me now.
Be near me.
Be near me now.

There is an inch of daylight underneath the door.
It’s enough for me to fill up my canteen.

If I want to live
Your love is what I need.

“You do not want a sacrifice or I would give it; You are not pleased with a burnt offering. The sacrifice pleasing to God is a broken spirit. God You will not despise a broken and humbled heart.”–Psalm 31:16-17

Photography by Cindee Snider Re. Used with permission.

JJ Heller’s “Daylight.”

(Thank you for praying for me in the “Shadowlands.” This is the first February in several years I haven’t been able to escape to Arizona. Those trips were times of retreat and healing but also reminders I could be some better. I’m missing the desert. For me it was a little like the Promised Land.)

You might also like

Taking up My Cross in the Valley of Vision

by

Cross

When I was young I was completely infatuated with my dad’s library of Banner of Truth books. One of my favorite books he owned was The Valley of Vision: A Collection of Puritan Prayers and Devotions. He has a beautiful leather bound copy now, and I own his tattered and worn copy published November 1, 1975, the month and year of my birth. The top, bottom and side pages are stamped with his name in elegant script. All his books were marked in this way. The Valley of Vision was my first introduction to prayer as poetry which has become a very important part of my spiritual walk. I now have an entire shelf of books that are written prayers. Many of my personal journal entries and very old blog posts end with my own heart cries. Even during the years I spent far from God I kept this book with me. Imagine the prodigal daughter moving from place to place with whatever I could fit in my powder blue, two door, 1992 Chevy Cavalier with dancing bears on the back windshield and a pack of Camels in the center console. In a milk crate of books on the passenger side, in between Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar and Elizabeth Wurtzel’s Prozac Nation, was this touchstone of faith. After the Bible it is the single most influential book in my life.

On Ash Wednesday I began my Lenten journey by reading the prayer titled “The Grace of the Cross” from page 172. I copied it and put it in my Bible to pray through daily during these 40 days. Monday I didn’t look at it at all as I forced my way through the motions of devotions and prayer. Yesterday I didn’t even open my Bible. This morning, after my family left for work and school, I sat here in my nest chair with my coffee and reached for the photocopy sticking out of my Bible. I only had words of lament in my mind and heart, but I knew it was time for this prayer:

O MY SAVIOUR,

I thank thee from the depths of my being
for thy wondrous grace and love
in bearing my sin in thine own body on the tree.
May thy cross be to me
as the tree that sweetens my bitter Marahs,
as the rod that blossoms with life and beauty,
as the brazen serpent that calls forth
the look of faith.
By thy cross crucify my every sin;
Use it to increase my intimacy with thyself;
Make it the ground of all my comfort,
the liveliness of all my duties,
the sum of all thy gospel promises,
the comfort of all my afflictions,
the vigour of my love, thankfulness, graces,
the very essence of my religion;
And by it give me that rest without rest,
the rest of ceaseless praise.

O MY LORD AND SAVIOUR,

Thou hast also appointed a cross for me
to take up and carry,
a cross before thou givest me a crown.
Thou hast appointed it to be my portion,
but self-love hates it,
carnal reason is unreconciled to it;
without the grace of patience I cannot bear it,
walk with it, profit by it.
O blessed cross, what mercies dost thou bring with thee!
Thou art only esteemed hateful by my rebel will,
heavy because I shirk thy load.
Teach me, gracious Lord and Saviour,
that with my cross thou sendest promised grace
so that I may bear it patiently,
that my cross is thy yoke which is easy,
and thy burden which is light.

The past two days I have been buried in the self love and the carnal reason. I have turned my mind and heart away from the Grace that brings the patience to bear this pain, walk this pain and even profit from this pain again. Knowing what He suffered for me how can I shirk this load?

Today I am taking up my cross, my appointed portion in this life, and carrying it through His amazing love and sacrifice for me. This is easy. This is light. This is GRACE. This is the essence of my “religion.”

May I rest in ceaseless praise for the minutes, the hours, the days and even weeks God gave me a higher view, a healing view, a hopeful view of where I’d been living.

May I rest in ceaseless praise for this return to the “Valley of Vision.”

(If you’ve never heard Sovereign Grace’s album of songs taken from this book you must find time to download it and add it to your playlists. This is the beautiful song taken from the title prayer. It is on repeat today.)

Photography by Cindee Snider Re. Used with permission.

You might also like

If . . . then I know nothing. Calvary Love. And two more days to enter this week’s giveaway

by

DSC_0175

If by doing some work which the undiscerning consider “not spiritual work” I can best help others, and I inwardly rebel, thinking it is the spiritual for which I crave, when in truth it is the interesting and exciting, then I know nothing of Calvary love.

I am returning to posting If questions from Amy Carmichael’s powerful little book by the same name. I invite to you follow along this journey. I pray you will be drawn to Calvary love.

I am giving away a copy of this book the next two Sundays along with a little olive wood cross donated by my friend Cindee Re. To enter please share one of the daily If posts on social media (Facebook, Twitter or Instagram) with the tags #CalvaryLove and #If. Add a comment here on the blog post you share. Martha Hutcheson and Gina Weeks are the winners from week one and two.

Let’s meet at the foot of the cross together.

You might also like

If . . . then I know nothing. Calvary Love. And two more weeks of a giveaway

by

DSC_0180

If I ask to be delivered from trial rather than for deliverance out of it, to the praise of His glory; if I forget that the way of the Cross leads to the Cross and not to a bank of flowers; if I regulate my life on these lines, or even unconsciously my thinking, so that I am surprised when the way is rough, and think it strange, though the word is, ‘THINK IT NOT STRANGE . . . COUNT IT ALL JOY,’ then I know nothing of Calvary love.

I am returning to posting If questions from Amy Carmichael’s powerful little book by the same name. I invite to you follow along this journey. I pray you will be drawn to Calvary love.

I am giving away a copy of this book the next two Sundays along with a little olive wood cross donated by my friend Cindee Re. To enter please share one of the daily If posts on social media (Facebook, Twitter or Instagram) with the tags #CalvaryLove and #If. Add a comment here on the blog post you share. Martha Hutcheson and Gina Weeks are the winners from week one and two.

Let’s meet at the foot of the cross together.

You might also like

If . . . then I know nothing. Sitting with Calvary Love. And a giveaway

by

DSC_0191

If when an answer I did not expect comes to a prayer which I truly believed I meant, I shrink back from it; if the burden my Lord asks me to bear be not the burden of my heart’s choice, and I fret inwardly and do not welcome His will, then I know nothing of Calvary love.

I am returning to posting If questions from Amy Carmichael’s powerful little book by the same name. I invite to you follow along this journey. I pray you will be drawn to Calvary love.

I am giving away a copy of this book the next three Sundays and a little olive wood cross donated by my friend Cindee Re. To enter please share one of the daily If posts on social media (Facebook, Twitter or Instagram) with the tags #CalvaryLove and #If. Add a comment here on the blog post you share. The second winner will be chosen randomly from those participating after midnight tonight.

Let’s meet at the foot of the cross together.

You might also like

If . . . then I know nothing. Back to Calvary Love. And a giveaway

by

DSC_0203

If the praise of man elates me and his blame depresses me; if I cannot rest under misunderstanding without defending myself; if I love to be loved more than to love, to be served more than to serve, then I know nothing of Calvary love.

I am returning to posting If questions from Amy Carmichael’s powerful little book by the same name. I invite to you follow along this journey. I pray you will be drawn to Calvary love.

I am giving away a copy of this book the next three Sundays and a little olive wood cross donated by my friend Cindee Re. To enter please share one of the daily If posts on social media (Facebook, Twitter or Instagram) with the tags #CalvaryLove and #If. Add a comment here on the blog post you share.

Let’s meet at the foot of the cross together.

You might also like

If . . . then I know nothing. Back to Calvary Love. A Lenten journey. And a giveaway

by

DSC_0160

If I cannot catch “the sounds of noise of rain”* long before the rain falls, and, going to some hilltop of the spirit, as near to my God as I can, have not faith to wait there with my face between my knees, though six or sixty times I am told “there is nothing,” till at last “there arises a little cloud out of the sea,” then I know nothing of Calvary love. *I Kings 18:41

After the gift of time away with my Dan in Tucson I am returning to posting If questions from Amy Carmichael’s powerful little book by the same name. I invite to you follow along this journey. I pray you will be drawn to Calvary love.

I am giving away a copy of this book the next three Sundays and a little olive wood cross donated by my friend Cindee Re. To enter please share one of the daily If posts on social media (Facebook, Twitter or Instagram) with the tags #CalvaryLove and #If. Add a comment here on the blog post you share.

Let’s meet at the foot of the cross together.

You might also like

If . . . then I know nothing. Day 5. And a giveaway

by

C5

If when an answer I did not expect comes to a prayer which I believed I truly meant, I shrink back from it; if the burden my Lord asks me to bear be not the burden of my heart’s choice, and I fret inwardly and do not welcome His will, then I know nothing of Calvary love.

The entire month of February I will be posting If questions from Amy Carmichael’s powerful little book by the same name. I invite to you follow along this journey. I pray you will be drawn to Calvary love.

I am giving away a copy of this book every Sunday this month and a little olive wood cross. To enter please share one of the daily If posts on social media (Facebook, Twitter or Instagram) with the tags #CalvaryLove and #If. Add a comment here on the blog post you share.

Let’s meet at the foot of the cross together.

Photography by Cindee Snider Re. Used with permission.

You might also like

If . . . then I know nothing. Day 3. And a giveaway

by

C3

If I am content to heal a hurt slightly, saying Peace, peace, where there is no peace; if I forget the poignant word ‘Let love be without dissimulation’ and blunt the edge of truth, speaking not right things but smooth things, then I know nothing of Calvary love.

The entire month of February I will be posting If questions from Amy Carmichael’s powerful little book by the same name. I invite to you follow along this journey. I pray you will be drawn to Calvary love.

I am giving away a copy of this book every Sunday this month and a little olive wood cross. To enter please share one of the daily If posts on social media (Facebook, Twitter or Instagram) with the tags #CalvaryLove and #If. Add a comment here on the blog post you share.

Let’s meet at the foot of the cross together.

Photography by Cindee Snider Re. Used with permission.

You might also like

If . . . then I know nothing. Day 1. And a giveaway

by

C1

If I am soft to myself and slide comfortably into the vice of self-pity and self-sympathy; If I do not by the grace of God practice fortitude, then I know nothing of Calvary love.

The entire month of February I will be posting If questions from Amy Carmichael’s powerful little book by the same name. I invite to you follow along this journey. I pray you will be drawn to Calvary love.

I am giving away a copy of this book every Sunday this month and a little olive wood cross. To enter please share one of the daily If posts on social media (Facebook, Twitter or Instagram) with the tags #CalvaryLove and #If. Add a comment here on the blog post you share.

Let’s meet at the foot of the cross together.

Photography by Cindee Snider Re. Used with permission.

You might also like