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Thankful

This week has been amazing. THANK YOU FOR PRAYING!

We are so humbled by everyone who has reached out, sent a text, sent WAY TOO GENEROUS gifts. We have literally been surrounded by people throughout these past six weeks, all over the country, and close by who have refused to let us walk alone. I have been encouraged by each and every person who has reached out. It has not gotten lost in the shuffle- it has been an IV of hope to our family. 

I am so glad when God said it wasn't good for man to be alone, He wasn't just talking about a spouse. We have needed people more than ever before in our lives, or at least recognized the supreme value of friends. 

This week I've taken Cade and Lily every day to chemo, and brought a friend. It's a weird, unprecedented form of a hangout for me. But brave friends have said yes when I've asked, and in a place where I was anticipating loneliness, fear, and anxiety, light has invaded with blistering hope. We've prayed over every nurse who has administered chemo, and really for the entire infusion, we just pray. 

And as for Cade, he has had ZERO side effects from this chemo. He is still himself, running around like a typical little boy, pounding FOUR extra large eggs in the morning and insists on eating his pb and honey sandwich while they're doing his pre-treats. He even has been disobedient, which has been strangely comforting. How to discipline a Riley kid...that's the new question. Basically, his rebellion tops out at not wanting to wear his mask, use hand sanitizer, keep his beanie on in the frigid air, and insisting on touching random elevator buttons as we pass them on the way out of the hospital. 

We are SO PUMPED by this week. What a gift to have a normal week, to have celebrated his birthday on the 26th and have him enjoy Chik Fil A and eat a cookie cake, and steal Haven's balloons.  Thank you for praying. 

As always, about 19 million thoughts and lessons have been thought and learned this week. No pressure to read them, but if you have any interest, here are just a sampling of the conversations we've been having with each other and with friends:

1. It is amazing what praying WITH friends does. Throughout the past six weeks, when I bottomed out, the Lord brought such encouragement through something someone else has prayed. The Holy Spirit knows what we need, and for me, it is often communicated by the people around me while they're talking to God. 

I am learning so much about not dismissing people from invading our darkest moments just because they've never walked this particular road. It's so silly now for me to think of it, but I always felt like I couldn't relate to someone unless I experienced whatever situation they were walking in. NO ONE will ever walk in anyone’s exact shoes. If I wait to receive from someone who has been exactly in my shoes, I'll never grow. I'll never be encouraged or challenged. 

I realize the church's catch-all for bad advice falls under the "Job's counselors" category (friends who said dumb stuff while Job was at ground zero), but I think maybe I've thrown out the baby with the bathwater. For the most part, the people around me are speaking words that are like yeast- working their way into my heart, expanding as the Lord breathes on them, until hope and life has blossomed again where hopelessness was crouching close. I need the people around me, I need their hope, I need the wisdom they've gleaned from their life, even if our two roads are so different. 

2. IS ANYONE ELSE EXCITED ITS ALMOST A NEW YEAR? I am so pumped for 2018. It's so human to love a new year and a new start. I went back in my journal from last January this past week and read the words I felt like God had given me for 2017 and just was amazed at how they've been fulfilled. HE REALLY SPEAKS. He really wants to give us promises about our lives. And it's so fun to chase after Him. I was reading a verse in Deuteronomy 29 the other day in my Bible reading plan (probably wouldn't hang out in Deuteronomy without a Bible reading plan, let's be honest), and loved this verse: 

“The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever."

I like that God likes to reveal things to us. I like, especially, that the more I get revelation, the more my kids get too. We have to be looking for there to be revealing- I've found that God is not stingy. He likes to peel back the lid on Truth, and let us look into it. And once truth comes out, it's out for good. It doesn't get taken back. And I get to pass it on. 

 I remember getting three words very distinctly for 2017 and laughing with some friends that I got three random, dramatic words: glory, experience and revelation. I went on a hunt to find a verse that included all three words and the closest I got was Ephesians 1:15-22: 
For this reason, because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus 
and your love toward all the saints, 
I do not cease to give thanks for you,
 remembering you in my prayers, 
 that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory
may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, 
 having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, 
that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, 
what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, 
and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, 
according to the working of his great might that he worked in Christ 
when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places,
far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, 
and above every name that is named, 
not only in this age but also in the one to come. 
 And he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, 
 which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.
Still cannot fully process those verses. But I can pretty much give a solid YES, that at least as much as I understand about it, God has taught the eyes of our hearts to see Him, in a new way. We have felt the hope, the riches, and immeasurably great power working toward us. 

Bottom line: if you've endured this far into the blog, I feel really compelled to say I think the Holy Spirit wants to give YOU specific words for 2018. I hope we all get time to ask about those words in the next few days. It's so fun. CANNOT WAIT. 


3. I've been asking God that every memory of this past year would be redeemed- and that I'd never reference 2017 as a low year. When we got back to our house after that first week of Cade's initial surgery and tumor removal, I had to go and purposefully redeem certain places, objects, clothes, and things in our home. I had to literally go up to a chair I sat in during one of the most fearful moments and pray over it. That might seem silly to you- like surely I shouldn't be afraid to re-wear a shirt I was wearing during a low moment, or a pair of earrings, or whatever else it might be. But I feel compelled to clean out the house of all the trauma, and let God breathe new vision on every place that might potentially be a "sticky" place where hopelessness once threatened. 

I keep thinking about an old sermon I used to listen to in low moments in life called "Nature of God" by Graham Cooke (click here to listen to it) where he talks about how there aren't good days or bad days, only days of grace. If that isn't an amazing way to look at life, I don't know what is. 

When I review the past few weeks, (sometimes "reviewing" is more like all of the sudden something triggers a memory and I'm left rehearsing it with all of the horror but none of the grace the moment actually carries, so I have to run to Jesus and be like, "I know you were there, I know you carried me, in real life it didn't feel like this but my memory wants me to believe it felt like this...help!") I cannot afford to let one single moment be "bad". The lowest moments were still swimming with grace- even if it was just the grace to keep moving. To do "the next thing". 

4. One of the things I want to make a goal for 2018 is to make it the LEAST BITTER YEAR of my life. I was at a conference in October, sitting in a break out session with one of my favorite humans, and he started it out by saying, "I've just decided I'm going to forgive everyone in advance for not being perfect." I remember laughing, but man, that's so good. What if we all just forgave each other now. 
In situations like this, generally, I don't know what to say. Nobody really does. Partially because nobody responds exactly alike, but also because there's no handbook for what to say and when. So there's no pressure, if you're reading this, to think you have to say the right thing to me. Or to anyone going through stuff. I'm realizing how many people Cade's situation affects. A lot of people are processing this. And we all need space to process. 

But the bitterness piece doesn't apply just to people. I've been hung up on the story of John the Baptist for at least a few years now, and how right before John The Baptist was beheaded, he sends one last appeal to Jesus through some disciples asking, "Are you the Christ, or should we look for another?" Basically John's like, I didn't think it was going to go this way. We were supposed to be a team, me, the voice crying in the wilderness, and you, the Lord I prepared the way for. And now I'm in prison. 
I've been really struck recently with how many of the characters I love in the Bible didn't ever know the full picture. I don't either. I can only see this present moment. The invitation isn't so much to see the whole picture as it is to trust that God sees it all, and if He says it's beautiful in its entirety, then I am being asked to just believe Him. 

Jesus' mind boggling response to John is, "The lame walk, the deaf hear, the blind see, the dead are raised. Blessed is he who is not offended because of Me." Will I take offense to what is happening in my immediate vision? Or will I trust Jesus? Trust that the Kingdom is advancing?

I would have never chosen to pray in an oncology unit in a children's hospital. EVER. I would have liked the idea of inviting the Kingdom in the dark places, but to actually DO it...to actually be in crisis and need Jesus to show up, that's a whole different ball game. 

There's a book out there titled after a proverb that says, "To the hungry soul, every bitter thing is sweet." I haven't read the book, but I have been thinking about the proverb and I'm sure the book is poignant. Will I let bitter things be sweet, just because my soul is hungry for God? Will I allow Him to have His way, and trust His goodness? That's the real question. Will I choose to remain unoffended? 

5. When a bunch of us teamed up to plant an Antioch church here, our pastor and his wife said they felt the Lord had given them the phrase "to preach the Gospel of the Kingdom, and to make others great" as our vision statement. I love that vision. I believe that vision. When I read the Gospels, it is so evident that the rudimentary and most elementary manifestation of the Kingdom was healing. Matthew 4:23-24 says, 
  And he went throughout all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction among the people. 
So his fame spread throughout all Syria, and they brought him all the sick, those afflicted with various diseases and pains, those oppressed by demons, those having seizures, and paralytics, and he healed them.

When we touted that vision statement, it was easy to believe for the obscure mass of people in my mind that fell under the category of needing the Gospel of the Kingdom to show up in healing. I had no idea that I was actually asking on behalf of my son. I had no idea what I was asking for. How many of us ever realize what we are actually asking for when we pray prayers like that? But God knew. He knew in advance we'd need the Gospel of the Kingdom to be proclaimed- a word that means "carrying authority that must be obeyed"- to my own son. 

Jesus loves Cade. So much. I believe He is doing way more than we ask or imagine- just like Ephesians 3:20 says, in my son right now. The point is, don't be cautious with what you pray. Even if it strikes fear, don't hold back. It is so safe to trust Jesus. Pray recklessly. Pray and realize we don't have a tame God. 

I read two beautiful quotes the other day that I'll leave you with: 

In awful and suprising truth, we are the objects of His love. You asked for a loving God: you have one. The great spirit you so lightly invoked, the "lord of terrible aspect", is present: not a senile benevolence that drowsily wishes you to be happy in your own way, not the cold philanthropy of a conscientious magistrate, nor the care of a host who feels responsible for the comfort of his guests, but the consuming fire Himself, the love that made the worlds, persistent as the artist's love for his work and despotic as a man's love for a dog, provident and venerable as a father's love for a child, jealous, inexorable, exacting as a love between the sexes. 
-C. S. Lewis


"In His death, Jesus Christ gave us life. The willingness of the Son of God to commit Himself into the hands of criminals became the greatest gift ever given- the Bread of the world, in mercy broken. Thus the worst thing that ever happened became the best thing that ever happened. It can happen with us. At the Cross of Jesus our crosses are changed into gifts."
-Elisabeth Elliot

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