Category Archives: words

“Beyond Cancer’s Scars” Part One (why I wrote this book)

We’re inching ever closer to the release of my 2nd book, Beyond Cancer’s Scars: Laying Claim to a Stronger Spirit. I say “we” because it has been a collective effort. No words, no stories are written in isolation. They may feel lonely at the time of their penning, but the truth is, our stories cannot be written without the benefit of one another. No one makes it into this world without the assistance of someone else. No one makes it through life without the influence of people.

 

God meant for us to live in community. We belong to one another. Accordingly, my story belongs to you and yours belongs to me. It’s how we grow; how we change; how we move forward and into a greater understanding about all of life. Oh sure . . . there are a few stories I could have done without (some authored by me, some written by others), but even in them—the skewed, chaotic, and unbalanced ones that foster similar responses in me—I grow. And I am grateful for it all, even when the story is painful. Especially then. Why? Because pain (when allowed) has a way of exponentially growing a heart that exceeds the normal route usually taken to get there. Not that we ask for it, but as pain arrives, we cede its reality to something greater, Someone greater, expecting that on the other side of our tears there will be more to the story than what currently wrecks the heart and stretches the soul.

Pain is a game changer in our lives. There’s no way around this reality. Some changes are good; some disastrous, but either way, pain alters the landscape of our hearts, minds, and souls. Courageous are those who are willing to allow pain to serve as a crucible for heaven’s increase rather than hell’s determined purposes.

So this is what I’ve done, how I’ve managed the torment of my last two years. I wrote my story while living it, believing that somewhere down the road, someone would need it as much as I have needed it. C.S. Lewis once said, “We read to know we are not alone.” If that’s true (and I really, really love his wisdom on this), then I’m inclined to believe that a person writes for the same reason . . . to know that he/she is not alone. The author writes; the reader reads. And when this happens, a community is formed.

Why did I write this book? Two reasons: for me; for you. I wrote it for us. In doing so, I’ve done it for God—the author of community. He wrote his story into mine a long time ago, and he promises to make mine count for all eternity, even when the story is painful. Especially then.

Over the next week or two, I’ll be delving further into the “story” behind the story—the particulars of how Beyond Cancer’s Scars came into being. I’ve been pretty quiet about it all—a silence provoked by need, a silence requested of me by God. But it’s time to move forward . . . to put some words forth so that you might be able to find a few lines of your story written somewhere in between the ones I’ve penned about mine. The ground beneath my feet and my heart has been tilled, and new sprouts are headed to the surface. It’s time to make ready for harvest.

There is life beyond cancer, friends. There is a stronger spirit that lies on the other side of suffering. Beyond Cancer’s Scars is part of my journey to get there. I hope you’ll join me on the road of discovery. As always…

Peace for the Journey,

 

In my next post, I’ll talk about the unconventional process of writing “Beyond Cancer’s Scars.” It really was a God-thing!

on quitting writing…

I quit writing yesterday. Quit. Put down the pen and said, “No more.”

 

Today, I’ve extended that deadline a bit. Why? Well, partly because of something I read last night and mostly because of something my daddy has told me time and again throughout the course of his preaching life.

 

“Elaine, I want to leave the ministry on Saturday nights before I preach. I re-enter the ministry every Sunday at noon.”

 

I get what my daddy’s saying. I feel the tension in my own life every time I’m asked to speak at an event and even, sometimes, when I’m writing a post. There’s something about the “front side” of creativity that stretches the soul, usually for the good, but sometimes so far stretched to not only “let out” the good, but also to “let in” the bad. The corrosive stuff that says, “Who are you kidding? You’re less than what you think you are. In the midst of the millions of words that will be written today . . . spoken today, yours won’t matter.”

 

That’s the stuff that stretches my soul and that threatens the livelihood of all “creatives” who risk sharing their work with others. Sometimes what we create—the songs we sing, the pictures we take, the words we write, the sermons we preach—is lost on our audiences. They don’t get it, and when they don’t get it (or at least when we think that they don’t get it), we struggle for understanding as well. And sometimes, that struggle is enough to make us want to quit. The anguish of our Saturday evenings (the night before we “launch”) stretches our faith and challenges our fortitude.

 

The front side of creative release is always the hardest side for me—doing the work, grinding it out, being disciplined enough and brave enough to put some words on paper and to do so against the backdrop of my faith. The backside of my creativity? The Sunday at noon? Well, more often than not, that’s the time when I willingly re-enter the ministry—when I draw the pen from my pocket, click it to “go,” and say to myself, “That wasn’t so bad. Let’s do it again. There just might be something to all of this.”

 

I don’t know where you are today. Maybe you’re living in the stress of your Saturday night—a time of preparation and feeling the strain of your creative pulse. You’re ready to launch, but your nerves and fear are getting the best of you.

 

Maybe you’ve arrived at your Sunday noon. You’ve delivered the goods and now you’re breathing in the beauty of the release. What you set your mind and heart to do has been done, and it’s been done well.

 

Maybe . . . you’re somewhere in between, maybe living your Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday—the days when nothing seems to be happening. Your creative life feels dull, desperate, and dead. Saturday and Sunday aren’t even on your radar because you’ve decided that Saturday’s angst and Sunday’s release are no longer worth the effort. All has not gone according to your plans, so why bother making any further ones?

 

I understand. All of it. Every single creative and non-creative day of the week. I’ve lived them all; celebrated most of them, cursed a few of them, and still carry a heavy question in my heart about how I’m going to walk through my remaining ones. I don’t know where my writing will take me in the days ahead. There have been some huge disappointments I’ve experienced along the way. I imagine you could say the same about your creativity. Still and yet, I know this as a certainty:

 

God has planted his creative pulse inside each one of us. You are not the one person who’s been denied this sacred endowment. Your creativity, my creativity, is a gift that should be invested into the soul of humanity—not wasted, not hoarded, not buried. It’s how we help to make this world complete, how we put God’s finishing touches on what he began in Eden. When we pick up the pen, the paintbrush, the guitar, the camera . . . whatever our creative edges . . . when we tend to them and give them room enough to grow and breathe, we grow and breathe as well. We become willing participants in our Mondays thru Saturdays, because we know that Sunday noon is not far in coming.

 

I want my Sunday noon. I want you to have yours as well, for all of us to get to the other side of the birthing process—to labor hard and to willingly carry the burden of our creativity through to the finish—so that we might see and feel the beauty of a new work. A new grace. A new creation to flourish inside an older one. A new day, a “Sunday,” to rest and to believe, again, in the goodness and rightness of such moments.

 

Yes, I quit writing yesterday. Today, I picked up the pen once more, and even though my calendar says “Wednesday,” it feels a whole lot more like Sunday noon to me. As always…

 

Peace for the journey,

Monday – Friday deliberations? Saturday angst? Sunday noon? Where is your creative pulse resting today? How are you feeling about your creativity?

five steps to harvesting a good theology…

It’s been one of those mornings in Bible study—a time of reflection that promotes more questions than answers. A day when I (again) wrote these words in the margin of my current Bible study guide, “Do I really believe this?” Whenever this happens, my contemplation takes a turn, sometimes toward clarity, sometimes toward confusion. On this particular morning, there’s confusion—a long wrestling of thought, Word, and practical living that doesn’t compute fully with the author’s considerations. Accordingly, I won’t “go there,” at least not with you, friends. Instead, I’ll take my questions to God and continue to flesh out my beliefs with him, with his Word, and with an open heart. Sometimes it’s just better to let our questions simmer before him rather than fanning them into flame before mankind. Why?

Well, sometimes we’re not as forgiving as God is. In fact, never are we as forgiving as God is. He’s more open-minded with our earnest probing and deliberate searches for answers. We, on the other hand, are more comfortable with ours judgments, making assumptions, drawing conclusions, and rendering a verdict when someone bravely risks doing the heart work attached to his/her faith and doing so out loud. And so today, I tuck away my questions, and I focus on a scripture that has surfaced for me from this same study and from God’s Word that doesn’t warrant my question mark but only my highlighter and my “Amen.” Hear now from God’s Word:

“So Ruth gleaned in the field until evening. Then she threshed the barley she had gathered, and it amounted to about an ephah. She carried it back to town, and her mother-in-law saw how much she had gathered. Ruth also brought out and gave her what she had left over after she had eaten enough” (Ruth 2:17-18).

So what in the wide world of faith and function do these verses have in common with the questions stirring in my spirit this morning?

Everything, because in these two verses, God gives me . . . gives you a “how-to” for dealing with the hard wrestlings that sometime surface for us as we move forward in our faith and understanding. Ruth . . .

  • gleaned the harvest;
  • threshed the harvest;
  • carried the harvest;
  • ate the harvest;
  • shared the harvest

Good theology, good understanding begins in the wheat fields, where bread has already been planted by the Sower, watered by the Sower, and grown by the Sower. Truth cannot be created. Truth already is; accordingly, our souls’ understanding cannot, should not be built from scratch. We must start with good seed planted in rich soil—a harvest ready for gleaning. Good understanding begins with God and his Word. Get there first, and you’re in a good place of education and eternal growth. Glean truth from what’s already been grown; you won’t come up empty-handed. God’s already handed you his abundance.

Secondly, good understanding grows during the threshing process—a time when the wheat is spread out so that the edible grain can be loosened from the inedible chaff. A time of cutting through the chaff to get to the palatable. “Without the grain’s release from its hardened casing, the ripened seeds are reduced in their usefulness” (Peace for the Journey, 2010, pg. 113). Good understanding doesn’t come home to roost in our hearts unless there’s been a hearty threshing applied along the way. It’s not always easy to relinquish the harvest to the pounding; rarely is it comfortable, but if we’re after God’s truth—if we really want to know that we know that we know deep down in the marrow of our souls—then we must surrender our questions and our confusion to the winnowing process.

Notice Ruth’s next obedience. She carried the harvest back to town. When questions surface in our hearts regarding our faith and our theology, not only must we glean and thresh the harvest, but also we must carry the harvest with us . . . for a season. Let the work that’s being done in you, linger with you for awhile. Don’t short step this process or make false assumptions about your knowledge. Good understanding must be mulled over, contemplated, and developed over time. The saints of old spent a lifetime cultivating godly understanding. They didn’t have all the answers on the front side of their faith; the answers arrived for them along the way and as they went, one step at a time. You don’t have all the answers regarding God and his Word. Thinking that you do is a good indicator that there’s more work to be done.

Next, Ruth ate the harvest. After gleaning it, threshing it, and carrying it, the harvest was finally ready for consumption. I don’t know much about the digestion process, but I do know that once something goes in my mouth, it goes down . . . deep down and becomes (in essence) part of my inward being. Are you hearing what I’m saying (rather what I’m typing—rather quickly and furiously I might add, not furiously bad, but furiously good)? Before anything, any truth, any knowledge becomes part of our inward beings, let’s be sure we give it thorough consideration before we consume it. To blindly eat the harvest in front of us is to open up our souls to disaster, to waste, to fraudulent food that does more harm than good.

Finally, Ruth shared the harvest. After she had eaten her fill, she generously shared the harvest with Naomi. Initially, we might think Ruth would have first given the harvest to her mother-in-law; after all, Ruth’s generosity is clearly on display at every turn. But I want to lead you along for a moment with a thought that just occurred to me. Just as the ancient custom of the king’s cupbearer tasting the wine before passing it on to his master, could it be the same principle at work here—Ruth eating her fill, making sure it was good for consumption before passing it along to Naomi? Could it be the same for us in regards to spiritual understanding? That after we’ve gleaned, threshed, carried, and eaten the harvest, we might finally come to some realizations about God’s truth in regards to our wrestlings and questions? In other words, if it goes down smoothly for us, if the harvest is good for us, then, perhaps it might be good for others, might be ready for the sharing? Sometimes, eating the harvest is the only way to know if it’s safe for public consumption. Better to pass truth along after it’s been tested.

And so today, on a day when I wrestle through some questions, I’ll do so with Ruth’s example in mind. I’ll glean from God’s fields, thresh the wheat, carry the edible around with me for awhile, eat it while monitoring my digestion, and then, maybe I’ll share it with you. Maybe I won’t. It’s too early to tell.

Oh that we all might take Ruth’s lead and step back from the mirror long enough to submit our thoughts, questions, and theology to the harvesting process so that we might arrive at the place of fully believing in the faith that we are so willing to boldly profess!

For what it’s worth, it’s what I’m thinking about today. What are you thinking about? As always . . .

Peace for the journey,

library of faith…

Some days we just need a word from God.

 

Huh? OK, so let me define that a bit. For those of you who don’t speak “Christianese”—a word from God simply means (for me) a heavenly nudge. A heartfelt thought or two from the Father that falls over me like fresh water after I’ve spent a long day in the desert’s heat.

 

Yesterday was one of those days for me. As many of you know, I’ve been diligently working to put the finishing touches on my book, Beyond Cancer’s Scars. One of my goals for the book is that it will serve as a resource for small groups who desire to work through it collectively rather than just individually. Along these lines, I’ve written a facilitator’s guide to accompany the book. There are nine group sessions, and each session has a Scripture focus.

 

Yesterday, I had eight of those Scriptures selected. I needed one more; accordingly I prayed, thought, asked some of you to pray, and then I took a walk. And the deeper I got into it with Jesus, the more permanent his nudge to my spirit.

 

“Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written.” –John 21:25

 

There it was … my ninth Scripture focus, a word aptly spoken at just the right time and a good fit for Session Six. I also happen to think it’s a good fit for this session, this day.

 

Jesus did accomplish many things while he was on this earth. Jesus is still accomplishing many things on this earth. He’s doing it through you and me. We are his agents in this temporal arena. We are the “books” being written, the “word” from the Word to the world. We are the chronicles of Christ, the shelved faithfulness of a kingdom that will not end. What’s being written into our stories, even today, is the stuff of eternity. Line by line; page by page; chapter by chapter … without end. Our stories are eternal. They’ll live on long after we’ve been memorialized at the graveside.

 

No, this world may not have room enough to shelve all the many books and miraculous works of grace that Jesus Christ is writing into us and through us, but there is a library in heaven waiting to hold the living witnesses of our faith. Heaven’s library has room for our books. It’s just waiting on a few finishing touches to our stories, a few finishing lines and chapters, penned and punctuated by the Creator of our souls.

 

Even today, you’re in the middle of one of those chapters. I don’t know how it’s reading to you and to those around you. I pray it’s filled with faith, truth, hope, love, and tremendous joy. However, I’ve lived long enough to know that it also might be filled with some suffering, heartache, confusion, and chaos … perhaps one of the worst chapters of your story. Whatever your chapter, whatever lines are being written into it this day, know this:  this is not your last chapter. It’s simply one of them. There are more to come. With Jesus Christ, there is always more to come.

 

Perhaps, then, we can better understand the Apostle John’s witness. There isn’t enough room here to tell God’s story. It’s too big, too grand, too eternal to contain it. We’ll have to wait until heaven to read it all, where days are endless, the lights stay on, and the library never closes.

 

I can’t wait to read your story, friend. Don’t be afraid of these ending chapters. Instead, surrender the pen in faith to the One who is generous with his grace and love. He can be trusted with your finishing touches. As always…

 

Peace for the journey,

If you were to give a title to this current chapter of your story, what would it be?

 

Also, the winner of Michael Hyatt’s book, Platform, (thanks to Amelia for drawing names this time) is Joanne @ The Open Door. I’ll be contacting you for mailing information.

 

catching words… catching hearts

“What’s this about? Forgive me if I’m prying, but you tossed it out there, and I caught it.”

This was her response to me in an e-mail after I left a comment to one of her recent blog posts. It doesn’t much matter the content of my original comment; what matters is her response… her willingness to catch my words. In doing so, she caught my heart. What a good friend! What a good gift!

Most of us live our lives out loud in this cyber-community, putting our thoughts on display for others to digest. We do so intentionally; we mean for people to read our words and, ultimately, to understand them in accordance with our intentions. There’s a whole lot of room for interpretation when it comes to the “speak” we use in social media; consequently, we’re often misunderstood. But of this I am certain…

We want someone to try, someone to sit long enough with our thoughts so that we might move beyond the front door of our hearts and stay connected to this great big world.

I am grateful for those of you who catch my words, who read between, behind, and all around the words in order to take hold of my heart. It’s the best part of being here… of picking up the pen every now and again and saying what I mean, writing what I live. It may not always be what you want to hear, but it’s almost always what I need to say. Thank you for the grace afforded me along the way.

Like you, I want to be a word-catcher, a heart-catcher as well. Would you allow me to catch some of your heartfelt words this weekend? Go ahead… toss a few in my direction. What’s on your mind? How might I pray for you? As always…

Peace for the journey,
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