FOR AND IN ALL THINGS

 

A week ago today we celebrated Thanksgiving, a day that marked the beginning of the holiday season. Every day since I’ve contemplated the practice of gratitude for every blessing. 

I love prayer walks, a time of reflecting on the beauty of the earth, a time to ponder God’s amazing color scheme in fall leaves. And the winter sky on a cold day so blue it takes your breath away with childlike wonder – a wonder often lost in adulthood. 

It may sound cliché, the gratitude subject. I’d be like yeah, yeah, if I’ve heard it once I’ve heard it a thousand times. The old gratitude platitude.

But I’m telling you, this one practice changes everything. Not only in you, but in those around you. Many years ago my neighbor who looked to be 100 years old began ailing. One day she said to me, “I can’t complain. I count my blessings every day that God sends. He’s been mighty good.”

For some reason this left a lasting impression on me. It’s one of the memories I can’t forget because the Holy Spirit keeps bringing it up, rewinding the scene of this aged woman sitting before me who celebrated life and gave thanks in all things. Who lived out the practice until the day she died.

The daily practice of gratitude strengthens the spirit to withstand hard times and face perils you’d never have imagined you’d encounter. I’m reminded of a scene replayed a thousand times in my mind of Betsy Ten Boom in Ravensbruck concentration camp. Her gratitude for the first meal served there: watered-down turnip soup.

Corrie’s reaction: “God doesn’t expect us to give thanks for this?”

Of course he doesn’t, but the exercise of gratitude still stood for Betsy, for it had apparently been a long-held exercise: gratitude in all things.

What are you grateful for on this day that God has made?

As I reflect on the daily practice of gratitude, a song I wrote awhile back surfaced, a song I’ll share with you below.

https://soundcloud.com/debra-elramey/we-give-thanks

 

Eternity's Sunrise

Emily’s poem is a creed of mine. To ease suffering in this fallen world. To heal and tend to every creature that crosses my path.

But you know, if you have lived and loved, the steep price of attachment to the least of these in God’s animal kingdom: the ferals and homeless creatures that show up unbidden, hungry for affection and food, for shelter and warmth. Some at death’s door…

 After resurrecting a black kitten from the dead via dropper and prayer and tender loving care…

After watching her spring back to life and become a wild panther pouncing in the woodland behind the house…

After seeing her work up an insatiable appetite for storebought treats and delectables, pricey but worth every cent…

After observing her routine at nightfall, how she’d come in on time like clockwork, then curl up on my chair and sleep until morning light…

~*~

And after the memory months earlier of holding her close enough to hear my heartbeat and praying half the night with lit candle before us, certain that in her weak infant condition –

God would surely fetch her any minute and carry her like a little lamb in the crook of his arm across the rainbow bridge…

But instead she is miraculously healed and she turns into a spry panther stalking anything that moves. 

Until the day, three weeks ago on a cold windy Saturday, she disappeared. We called for days. Day and night we walked around calling, “Mitzi.”  But no sign of her.

The hardest part of life is the veil of tears. And with every new grief old wounds open like graves of resurrected souls.

Poetry is salve to heart wounds. Prose falls short amid sorrow. Mary Oliver still speaks to me in times like these:

To live in this world

you must be able

to do three things:

to love what is mortal;

to hold it

against your bones knowing

your own life depends on it;

and, when the time comes to let it

go,

to let it go.

William Blake, after centuries, still speaks:

What poems or scriptures

have most comforted you

in your times of loss and grief?

 

Juniper Tree

To Joanie of the Little Green Pasture:

 RE: The Branding Irons of Jesus Christ.

In sacred downtime I heard you speak on the subject of suffering. These are the messages that most express the needs of many, for no one is exempt.

If you’ve accrued a lifetime of scars and wounds that reopen every time your prison guard batters your soul again, you have the branding iron seared forever in your being.

Tell me, dear Joanie and flock if you have experienced any of the following:

Prolonged stretches where you’ve battled and won. Overcome the enemy by the power of the word dwelling richly in you. Long spells of victory and the witness of miracles – some of the miracles wrought by your own warfare –

Some on a par with Elijah’s Mount Carmel triumph. You’ve seen a demon leave a woman at your command. You’ve seen the winds and the waves stilled by the Word spoken through your lips.

You have used the keys to the kingdom time after time, so you know this stuff is real. You see now that you can’t make this stuff up. That truth really is stranger than fiction.

This kingdom walk is now experiential, no longer bound by the finite cerebral realm. Miracles happen every day before your very eyes. You see Christ in you up close and personal. You see the fruit of your suffering – the joy set before you, your only hope.

For a brief spell, your every prayer is answered – all your prayers answered because you know the promise and you believe with all your heart and you abide day and night, night and day, in the Vine. You feel almost invincible in those moments.

But you also know that you can’t escape your lot in life. You can’t escape the branding iron. It’s a package deal that goes with the territory. If you suffer with Him you reign with Him. Along with the glory comes the internal whips and nails and the cross as the false self is daily dying. 

Then one day out of the blue you find yourself under the Juniper Tree after a certain major battle is won. Whereas, before, you felt invincible, you now feel the agony of defeat and hopelessness. You sit under the shade of the tree weeping bitter tears of sorrow and grief as you wonder if you’ll ever find the strength to move forward again.

Because you’ve been so wounded in spirit by so many years of persecution and trauma that you are now spent. And you don’t even care if the fat lady appears onstage and the curtain is about to close. You no longer care whether you go to your grave with your music still within.

All those badges of courage you amassed from the fires of battle… And it dawns on you: it’s all been an uphill battle. You have fought the good fight against all odds. And kept going.

And now you sit under the Juniper Tree and examine all the scars, the lacerations, the arrow piercings, the bullet holes. A lifetime of warfare. And you can’t go another step as you are overcome with battle fatigue.

What is the point? You ask. Why can’t I just be done with the troubles of the world? Why won’t the chariot swing on down and carry me away? How can I endure this chaos and persecution another day?

I am immobilized, paralyzed. Can hardly do anything without a struggle. No invincible in my vernacular anymore. Then I hear your sweet message, The Branding Irons of Jesus Christ. And know I’m not alone.

It’s a new day now. The birds sing and the sun shines. I’m still hiding under the shade of the Juniper Tree, still crying, but there’s a hint of hope left that I can endure to the end by His grace and mercy.

You’ve mentioned that the Lord has spoken to you about being real. About coming clean and confessing the reality of struggles – which He has also shown me.

I can no longer wear a mask and pretend that all is well. I want to sing from my heart, It is Well with My Soul. But today I’d be an imposter if I sang it. Today I’m singing,

Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen.

Nobody knows but Jesus

What song is in your heart today?