Thoughts About Hope

Thanksgiving brought the news that my uncle passed away. Sunday morning, my husband began the day with an e-mail from a dear friend, letting us know he has an inoperable brain tumor, then a text letting him know a former coworker died unexpectedly during the weekend.

It's a lot to take in. 

It is, for me, the kind of news that makes you want to pull the covers over your head and hide.

Last night kept me up, sorting through details of the lives of these men.

My uncle lived in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. He was married to my dad's sister who has survived him. They have three children who have loved them well and have made sure he and my aunt are well taken care of.  I will never think of my aunt and uncle without the sound of a thick, northern Wisconsin accent coming to mind. I loved listening to my uncle talk; it engendered a sort of comfort, like listening to the voices of family members on my dad's side does. He and my aunt had a passion for traditional worship services, which I couldn't relate to, but they also lived lives marked by a deep faith in the Lord, which I have as a legacy. 

He had cancer and had been in hospice for a while now. His wife has been under the impression that after he passed, she would go back home from the assisted living center where she's been staying, "to be close to him." She hasn't accepted the fact that she can't go home... she can't care for herself properly anymore. I probably saw my uncle 20 times in my whole life, and really, these few facts are all I know about him.

Our friend, who has been diagnosed with a brain tumor, lived across the street from me while I was in high school. I met his children a few times back then. They would come to the VBS my church offered during the summer. I never really met him until about four years ago when my husband and I were serving on staff at that same church. My first impressions of him were that he was quiet and kind, and, extremely tall. It wouldn't be long before we would find out that he was quite a guitar player as well. He hadn't played in many years, but he was interested in helping me with a worship team I was trying to get together. The next few months, I watched him get the rust off his rested fingers and he endured my growing pains as a new worship leader. He, my husband, and I spent hours getting our unique arrangements of worship songs down every week for the Sunday service, and later, went through the church's transition of becoming a bilingual congregation together... adding new members, stumbling over Spanish, learning new songs. 

We found out he hadn't played in all that time because his wife had been ill. He spent his time taking care of her until he came home one day and found her. She felt like she had become a burden and decided ending her life was the only answer. Our friend withdrew from everyone and became a sort of hermit, until he felt like the end of life was a welcome option for him, too. He decided to run to the Lord, came into the church (which just happened to be open that day), went up to the altar, and prayed with the pastor of the church (who just happened to be there at that moment). We watched him come alive in the short year we served at that church. We found that he was well known throughout the community, he was funny and accommodating and loved his kids and grandkids as much as anyone ever has. 

His tumor is cancerous and his time is short. 

Information about my husband's coworker comes to me second-hand. I never met him. I only know that he was probably in his late 40s or early 50's, he was loud when he spoke, and he was alone. No wife or kids. I also know he was alone when he died. He was depressed, was on medication, and drank a lot. If anyone has the specifics on how he passed, we're not privileged to know it, but we know that when his father found him, he had passed at least a day before. He was so disconnected from family and friends, that even when he didn't show up for Thanksgiving dinner, it didn't really draw red flags for people.

I can look at my uncle and know he had a productive life, made connections with others, and in his own ways made things better for those around him. Same for our friend, who has given such a huge gift of compassion to people around him and has done his best to love well. My uncle is in heaven, has seen the face of our Savior. Our friend looks forward heaven even as he tries to tie up loose ends here on earth. But the coworker? Where was the hope?

The answer came, as they often do, through a conversation with one of my children. After we had sent her to bed last night, my youngest came downstairs, crying. We had talked about these things earlier in the day, but she had focused on the coworker. She was heartbroken because all she could think about was that this man was alone when he died and, in all likelihood, didn't know Jesus. Now, he is alone forever. We tried to comfort her with the thought that we don't know what God does in a person's heart in the few moments before death and we can't be sure where this man will spend eternity. The thing we can depend on is that God is good and he is loving.

I realized that the hope for this man was everywhere. For whatever reason, he couldn't see it. It isn't that the first two men never had terrible things happen to them or lived a disappointment-free life. It was that they chose and continued to choose to see the hope... to let God give them hope. Because they knew that even in the difficulty, God is ultimately good and he is loving.

In some ways I have been afraid to do the very things that make life worth it -- be productive, make connections, and love well -- because I might fail and hurt someone, or they might fail and hurt me. But, in the end, those connections are the sum and total of our lives... lives well lived. And the only thing that has ever truly sustained anyone is God's love and goodness.

So, Lord, help me to live life well today, knowing that my hope, my help, my strength begins and ends with you. And help me to realize that this day is an opportunity, not a chore. 

One thing God has spoken, two things have I heard: that you, O God, are strong, and that you, O Lord, are loving. Surely you will reward each person according to what he has done. Psalm 62:11-12

I know most everyone is probably past it, but it's something we struggle with in our home on a nearly daily basis: Why are there no feminine role models for young girls in popular culture?

Broken Down

So when is it going to stop?
The exploitation of our children isn't happening behind closed doors
But while we watch;
While we pay to be entertained
by the slow decent into madness
self-hatred
lost innocence
never to be regained.
We watch as they kill themselves
as they strangle their own humanity.
We watch as a sweet baby girl, made in the image of God
to create, excel, to love and experience love
becomes a puppet
a sex toy
a prostitute.
But we shake our heads
and we blame the machine,
never admitting that we paid the bill
to build it, to maintain it.
It happens, over and over again
The wide-eyed, the beautiful
molded and shaped to become whatever will produce
the most dollar signs and attention,
developing an addiction in them, much deeper than drugs,
a high they can never keep.
They can't buy it, no matter how much they earn
And eventually, they're worn out.
They can't sell themselves anymore.
They've gotten too old
too weird
too needy
and we've lost interest.
Oh how I hurt
over these little girls
over the lies they've been told
over the loss they've endured
but may never even realize.
What can I say to my daughters
being raised in a culture that calls this stuff
art... theatre... freedom
or, at worst,
MUSIC?
What can I tell them about true beauty
What soap can I give them to wash these images out of their minds
The sweet girls they wanted to be like
Now broken down to shards of sweat-smeared glass
Nothing left of the shine in them
except what computer editing can give.
God, give our girls the strength to stand
As they're pulled and pushed around
By the waves of peer review and popular opinion
Give them eyes to see true beauty
THEIR beauty
Keep them safe from the sickeningly sweet,
then salty
then sour
then putrid
lure of sexuality as represented in this day
and may we never be a part of this machine
as long as we breathe
and have life on the earth.

Swimming Lessons in France Park

It is June 18th, 2012, and I am 35 years old today.  

The day finds me at France Park in Logansport, Indiana with my two main accomplishments in life.  We are swimming together in the lake or pond... it’s somewhere in between those two sizes.  Actually, it’s an old stone quarry that was  flooded when heavy equipment unearthed a natural spring.  There is a beach on one side of the pond/lake where people sun bathe.  That is my happy location as I write this.  

I stick my feet out and touch sand.  It’s a dark brown, coarse and rocky, and it tickles your feet when you walk on it like those strange Adidas sandals with the funky foot beds.  There are fish in the water and fresh water snails that leave behind their shells when they die, so that little girls like mine can treasure hunt on the bottom of the lake.  

All around the opposite edges of the water, rock walls jut up, creating a bowl effect.  Trees grow precariously out of the sides and tops of the cliffs, defying gravity, it seems. The sky is clear blue and cotton-ball clouds laze across it.  The round horizon makes everything look spherical, like we’re in one of those souvenir snow globes you might buy at the gas station.  The sun is powerfully bright and warm, sending its light bouncing off every surface.  It highlights the tree leaves and intensifies their green.  A beautiful day.   

I’m thrown into nostalgia every time I visit this place, but even more so today, on my birthday.  My husband gave me a beautiful notebook to use when writing ideas strike, so I’m using it to capture my thoughts today.  

I spent the last 4 years of my living-at-home-with-my-parents days in Logansport and I used to come here with friends from high school. I close my eyes and I can see the huge, black inner tubes that used to be available for rent here.  I can see my friends floating on one, and I make my way to the inner tube, thankful that it’s there.  I’m not the greatest swimmer and I’m thankful for something to support me in the water.  I try with all my might to get up onto it like they are, hoping they won’t notice how oafish and graceless my movements are.  Everything I do feels scrutinized.  Everyone I know knows more than I do, has more friends, has thinner thighs and better hair than I do.  I feel like I’m drowning in judgement for not being like them.  My tape of rules plays in my head:

Don’t stick out, blend in.

Look uninterested.

Don’t care enough to get hurt, but do care some so they know you like them.

I pull myself up on the inner tube, careful how I sit so that the fat on the back of my thighs doesn’t spread out too much and look unacceptably big.  I sit for a while, listening to them, trying to find a way to feel like I belong here with them.  I get too warm and I plunge back into the water.

Back up again.  I open my eyes.

The inner tubes are gone and it’s 21 years later.

Really, that’s how fast it’s gone.

I realize, now, that no one was really looking at my thighs.  They were far more occupied with their own.  We were all busy trying to hide our ugly... trying not to stick out, but at the same time,  desperately wanting to be known... to be recognized as valuable.

Sometimes I don’t know if I’ve really won the battle with that little girl.  She showed up today and told me to wear the cover-all, grandma suit I’m sporting.  “Your thighs look fat in the one that actually fits,” she said. 

  Now, this grandma suit is growing as I swim, stretching out to immodest proportions.  She was wrong again.  

I do try to stifle her.  She shuts up if I tell her to, but that requires realizing that she’s the one that’s talking.

I think about that little girl and the dreams she had 21 years ago.  She was not very forward thinking.  Not very “planning for the future.”  Mostly, she spent every waking moment wanting a cute boy to notice her and validate her existence.  

I’m reminded of this by a boy I see in the water not very far away from me.  He has long hair and a sad excuse for a mustache/beard combo going on.  My mother would have described him as a “horse face”.  I’m struck with the fact that 21 years ago, I would have spent my entire time here trying to get him to notice me, dreaming up scenarios of him approaching me and asking for my phone number.  

I hear him say to a friend, not quietly: “...yeah, I don’t know.  Those are awful big t*%s for a dude.”  (Sorry, mom, but that's what he said.) They laugh.

I see the object of his statement standing on the beach -- a girl.  She’s wearing a gray tank top and green shorts.  She has her hair in a buzz cut, like an army-man, like G.I. Jane.  She has a sweet smile as she talks to the friends around her, and I’m ashamed that for a moment, I try to divine just by looking at her if she looks like that because of her sexual orientation or because she just likes her hair that way.  

Who cares?  What does it have to do with me, anyway?

And then, I’m repulsed to think that years ago, this boy in the water was the kind of guy I would have spent the day pining after, hoping he would notice, as though someone with an attitude like that could value or devalue me.  

I tell God thanks for not always giving me what I want.

I notice another woman on the other side of the lake.  She is sitting on the beach in a beach chair, staring blankly into the air.  She’s been sitting there a long time.  Periodically, she picks up a spray bottle and saturates her skin with some sort of homemade concoction that I can only assume is intended to make her tanned skin, well, tanner.  Her hair is up in a sort of messy bun, sticking this way and that, straight up in some places and straight out in others.  She’s probably in her 50’s, a bit overweight, but with foresight enough to wear her grandma suit today and cover it all.   She wears a knee brace, and she moves slowly when she moves at all.

She stares and she drags on her cigarette.  I wonder what her dreams were when she was younger and what thoughts are occupying her mind.  She drags again, slowly, on her cigarette, sucking in the smoke and blowing it back out.  I think that maybe that’s how time is passing for her.  In and out, here, then gone, and not much was done with it while it was usable.  

Suddenly, the nagging mother in me wants to know what I’m doing with the time I’ve been given.  It’s a valid question.

The accusations of laziness increase as a girl walks by with the kind of body I’ve always felt I should have but will never attain.  She’s equally thin on the top and the bottom, a rear like two hamburger buns -- not the super-sized ones, but the ones you get eight in a package for a dollar.  Tiny.  They tuck perfectly into her little black bikini.  

Sigh.

If only I had kept running.

“Running can’t change your genetics.”

Shut up, Little Girl.

I think about my girls and how they’ll be women soon.  I wonder if they’ll have these voices naturally or if I’ll just give them mine.  I wonder if I’m capable of helping anyone into womanhood.  Now, my insides are churning around with the full acknowledgement of my inadequacies.

I close my eyes and listen.  The trees are singing the happy song they always sing when the wind blows through them.  It’s such a comforting, hopeful sound for me.  I think about how it’s one of the few sounds we hear today that has been around since people were on Earth to hear it.  It saves me from the noise inside my head for a moment.  The churning stops enough for me to open my eyes again.

A large man is walking by.  He is tall and tan and his arms must have been all muscle once.  His long, graying goatee, his almost bald head and his love handles suggest he’s getting older, but I think that’s a deception.  He looks like he’s young in age but old in body; like life has been hard on him... or maybe he’s been hard on him.  He turns around to reveal his back, covered in a huge tattoo of a gothic-style cross.  Over the top and under the bottom of the cross are the words, “ONLY GOD CAN JUDGE ME.”  

“I bet he’s an ex-con, or a drug addict or something,” I think.  And then the irony of my judgement sinks in.  Ugh.  

But then, something else begins to sink in:  The truth in that statement.

ONLY GOD CAN JUDGE ME.

I’m reminded of the message of the cross.  The judgement belongs to Him.  And He declares me innocent because of His sacrifice.  I begin to feel some comfort... the only kind that calms the insecure little girl and silences the nagging mother.  The kind that reminds me that my feelings of inadequacy are mostly silly, because the truth is, I am known, chosen, adopted, and accepted by the only One whose opinion counts.  That truth motivates me, strengthens me, moves me.  

My Daddy looks at me with delight. 

Even if I sit wrong and my thighs flare out...

Even if I wear myself out running after unfulfilling, incomplete things...

Even if I spend my time unwisely...

He loves me.  He loves me enough to comfort me and enable me to change.

So good.

I’ve had fun today, swimming with the girls.  I remember my former fear of the water.  Whenever I swim, I hear my brother, Scott's, voice pipe in from the past:  “Sarah, you have to quit fighting the water.  It will hold you.  You have to trust the water.  Just lay back and float.”  

I remember times of striving, of kicking and thrashing, thinking that mad activity was the key to staying afloat in God’s grace and mercy for me.  All of it served to show me I’m completely helpless. 

I will never perfect in this life, but I’m being changed from glory to glory.  I am surrounded, supported, surrendered to grace.  His grace will hold me.  I just have to trust it. 

I’m 35 years old today... and my Daddy is still teaching me how to swim.

Lessons in Joy

Summer has started and I have so many bits and pieces of thoughts going through my head.  I'm symptom-free and find myself happily occupied with cleaning and laundry and taking the girls to swimming and trumpet and hanging out with friends and having long conversations with my husband about our life together...  just living.

I am completely enamored with it all.

I'm watching my children grow up right in front of me.  I'm witnessing their personalities emerge and I'm listening to them wrestle with the questions of life; and in the next minute, I get to watch them run around the yard collecting fireflies in jars, giggling unabashedly and forgetting they're too old to act like that.

I hope they get to keep that.  Life tries so hard to steal that kind of joy and replace it with some counterfeit... calling it "dignity" or "maturity".  I'm finding there's a beautiful kind of dignity that comes from joy like that.  Sometimes I think we equate maturity with severity... as if joy is a symptom of ignorance.  Someone who is joyful cannot possibly be living in reality.

My children are not often concerned with what happened when they were little.  They don't remember much of it, and what they do remember is mostly happy.  They don't worry too much about what might happen in the future, because, for now, their daddy and I have that responsibility.  They think about today.  Because, it's here right now.  Why not find a way to enjoy it?

As I write this, Abby is in the basement practicing her trumpet.  She will, inevitably, arise from the basement bemoaning the fact that she sounds like a "dying elephant" when she plays.  (And, she does.) But I listen, and I think of how well she'll be able to play by the end of the year and how she may go on to other instruments and how one day she may get a scholarship to college because of her musical prowess...  And then I realize she won't be practicing in my basement anymore.  And suddenly, the dying elephant is making the most beautiful music I've ever heard.  It's the music of this day, this moment... The inexpressible joy of being a mom and a wife... The realization that all that she will one day become has had something to do with this time she's spent with me.  Wow.

Another poem...

We are nearing the end of the school year and I think it's time for another poem.  This one is for Abby.


Yesterday it was princesses and bows
Cinderella and Dora.
Now, Justin Beiber and the Hunger Games
Swim team, choir, and texting (TTYL XOX).
And sometimes, I study your face
To see if my baby's still in there.
But we walked along the other day
And you said something funny
Grown up and funny
And we laughed together
A good, long, honest laugh
Like friends sometimes share.
And the thought occurred to me...
"That's my daughter!"
And I know the best days are still ahead...

But forgive me if, every once in a while, I pull you close to me

And hug you tight

And call you my sweet, little girl

The first person in the world

To ever call me mommy.

Battling Fear

Ok, so I promised this wouldn't be about being sick, but more about my journey.  Being sick, however, is a big part of my journey right now.  It's playing into all of my thoughts.  So, this one IS about being sick.


Here's what it's been like:

I can't plan anything in advance because I don't know if I'll be well that day, and even if I feel well that day, I don't know if I'll keep feeling well the whole day.  If you somehow happened upon this blog and you're wondering what I'm talking about, I have this thing where I have episodes of slurred speech, I pass out, I get extremely tired, sometimes I have convulsions or twitch uncontrollably.  Sometimes I can't walk properly or I can only walk very slowly.  Sometimes I have to be reassured of events or of how I ended up in a certain place because the familiar begins to look unfamiliar. In between the episodes, I feel dizzy, nauseous, foggy, and just plain gross.  Sometimes this thing comes on me and I feel sick for a day; other times it's months.  I'm heading toward the one month mark for this bout. 


 I've done this on and off for 12 years, ever since my first pregnancy.  I've gone to emergency rooms and been accused of being a drug-seeker, being suicidal; I've heard doctors tell my husband I was crazy.  I've had one doctor tell me not to call her anymore because "unless you lose control of your bowels or your bladder, Mrs.  Isenhart, there's nothing I can do for you."  I've had neurologists send me to psychiatrists who have told me I need a neurologist.  I've had one neurologist tell me he was sure he knew what it was and, when it turned out it wasn't what he thought, he told me to take up yoga.  I've told trusted friends this story and I've seen the doubt in their eyes... "Well, maybe she is crazy if all of these specialists think so..."  I've had advice like, "This is stress-induced.  You should paint more."  I've had friends pray for my healing, I've had friends who believed it was a completely spiritual thing.  I've gone to counseling.  I've doubted my own stability and sanity.  I've lived by the "ignore it and maybe it'll go away" principle.  My husband has uttered words I didn't even know he knew in reaction to the frustration of this dumb thing.  (He has often encouraged me to take that doctor's advice and "lose control of my bowels" in her office.  I haven't taken him up on that.)  I've been poked, prodded, MRI'd, CAT scanned, tilt-tabled, electrocardiogrammed, EEG'd, and sleep-tested.  And no one has found anything physically wrong with me, until now.  


It's probably got something to do with my pituitary; my hormones are off and one side of my pituitary is somewhat bigger than the other.  But, these indicators are very subtle, and it's still only a possible cause, not an answer to the symptoms.  They may not be able to fix this.  


So I'm faced with a question.  If I have given my life to Jesus Christ, believed in His ability to heal and to save people from every affliction, believed that he is the answer to all of life's problems, why is he letting this happen?  What is the purpose?  


I think I know.


Every time this comes back, I have an opportunity to fight with fear.  Fear of losing control, fear of never being well again, fear of being a burden on my kids, my husband, on my friends; fear of being judged a lunatic, fear of looking foolish, even fear of getting seriously hurt while driving or going down the stairs.  Fear that answers will never come.  Fear that God isn't real, or if he's real, he isn't good or faithful.


I've always been afraid of everything.


Every time this comes back, I battle that fear.  And guess what?  I'm winning.  I'm not afraid of it anymore.  If I never get well, if I never have an answer, if I hurt myself, if I die... it's really not my concern.  It's my Father's concern.  And I've learned that he is good, and because he's good, he wouldn't allow me to go through pain unnecessarily.  


If I wasn't going through this, the fear would still own me.  And it doesn't.


The other night, my muscles were seizing pretty badly.  I couldn't walk well; I would double up because I couldn't straighten my body out.  I was slowly making my way across the floor trying to get to bed, and I got a picture in my mind of Jesus being there in the room with me, leading me slowly, saying, "I know it's hard, but I've got you."  If he's with me, I can do this.  His grace is sufficient for me.

I have a hard time starting something like this.  There are so many blogs, so much information, so much noise that I feel guilty adding to it.  But, I'm really writing this for me, I guess, so I will absolve myself.  I love writing, and it is the one thing I do purely for my own satisfaction, so it's hard to put stuff out here where someone might see it.  I don't usually have the time, or rather, make the time, to do this sort of thing; but now I find that I am feeling sick more often than I feel well, and I don't want to spend my days home sleeping or watching T.V. or checking everyone's Facebook statuses all day long.

My friend, Julie Davis, encouraged me to do this, and as she is also ill quite a bit and yet makes meaning out of most of her days, I decided to listen to her.  Thank you, Julie, for the encouragement and the inspiration that you are.

Don't get me wrong.  This is not a blog about being sick.  That may come into it from time to time, since after 12 years of having "spells" or "episodes" of whatever-this-is has finally garnered a possible cause and, as another friend said, "A cause means there's an answer." We have just begun the process of finding that answer or solution or treatment or whatever you might want to call it.  But I think I'd like this to be more about my journey... maybe something my girls can read later on in life and say, "Oh, good.  Mom felt like that, too."  I'd like to put poems, stories, impressions of life, and junk like that out there.  I don't know if it'll make good reading, but, like I said, this is more for me, anyway.

So here goes.  This one is for Kaylee.

She is looking at the window
While the rain comes down
And I watch her as she stares intently
Lost in some world of her imagination's making.
And I knock on that world's door
And hope she'll let me in.
"I'm waiting," she says, "for this
                                                   rain
                                          drop
                                               to catch up
                                      with
                                          that
                              one.
They make a bigger path when they get together."
"I used to do that too, when I was little," I say.
And we sit
And listen to the rain
And I think about how my path in life is bigger
And better
Because she's here.