Mercy and a Yellow Warbler

Lacey spring air painted the deck with a thin sheet of frost. The hushed anticipation of renewal was checked by a last thrust of winter’s fading power. The trees swollen with life waited backstage for their coming glory-crowning and the sky held the promise of blue skies and long days coming.

My husband discovered her in the morning. The tiny warbler, like a slip of sunlight on our back porch, lying motionless, lying flightless and afraid. She must have been overzealous, excited by the prospect of sweet new days, of plentiful food, of warm warbler chicks with chirping cries and beating hearts.

Full of spring-life, she flew against the reflecting glass of the window, and she fell. There on the deck, my husband found her cold body, her tiny cold body with the shadow of a heartbeat, the faint whisper of a dying hope in the season of life. I looked at her and the sorrow came over my heart like a veil.

I had to go. I couldn’t stay, and she was dying. Before I left, I said to my husband--remembered something that I had read in a Birding magazine—Rub her body gently with your finger to coax her back to life; the bird may only be stunned, even though she gives the appearance of dying. She may only have had the wind knocked out and needs to be kept warm and regain her strength—

So I asked him to try it and left, doubting that it would work, that revival was a possibility, that the little yellow warbler would taste the sweet air again and feel the delight of spring on her wings.

Thoughts flew through my mind as I drove—if she didn’t improve, we could bring her to the Wildlife Rehabilitation facility in Peace, RI; maybe they could help her-maybe they could do something. What could I do but try and throw a feeble, hopeful suggestion over my shoulder?

So he stayed there with the little warbler and I left. And I hoped as I drove and I prayed . . .

I knew a woman stunned, fallen like the yellow warbler. Her breath knocked from her through the crash of sharp providence, she fell, wounded and unable to pick herself up.

Sometimes tragedy is like that. Sometimes it knocks the wind from us and leaves us so shaken that we cannot pick ourselves up. Sometimes we sit like Job in the dust, speechless and crushed, scraping our wounds with the broken pottery of the well-meaning words of our friends and bleeding the sorrow of the enemies' pompous jeering triumph.

Sometimes we cannot pick ourselves up. Sometimes there are too many broken pieces and the confusion overwhelms and the eyes cannot see for the teardrops that cloud them.

And sometimes God calls us to be a Hur or an Aaron to some precious child of His who cannot lift their arms, who cannot find the words to pray. There are Adoniram Judsons among us who are standing sentry at some lonely grave for months and months and they cannot wrench themselves from the jungle of their sorrow. They cannot lift themselves from the despair, from the dying; they have had their breath knocked out.

It is so easy, like Job’s friends, to cast a judgement on the downcast, to offer a quick-fix, to empty blame upon a bleeding heart when no immediate answer can be found for the reason behind their suffering.

Does there have to be a reason that we can fold our eager fingers around? How did Job’s friends know that there was a contest in the heavenlies raging around a small, faithful servant of God named Job? How can we fully know as finite humans what purpose is in the mind of God in our sufferings? How can we grasp Omnipotence and Divine Wisdom?

We cannot . . . but we can trust Him for His purpose in what He allows and ordains. And we can know that He will protect and preserve those who are His, those He shelters in His great Father-hand of love and truth and awesome justice.

Who knows how long Job suffered . . . Would the church today condemn him for sitting in the dust? Are we sometimes so impatient with our fellow brothers and sisters that we leave them on the frosty deck, thinking that if it is God’s will they will revive and fly? Do we leave them to the “will of the Lord,” or do we lift them up and stimulate their faith, with sensitivity, compassion and patience? Do we help the blood to flow through their numb, lifeless limbs again, or are we frustrated when it seems like they are taking too long to “snap out of it?”

Do we pick them up, as Jesus reached out His hand to Peter in the raging waves? Peter’s faith had failed . . . and yet, the hand of Jesus, and the gentle rebuke of grace offered in love. Would He allow one of His to slip through the angry waves to utter ruin?

I love the way that Isaac Newton took lonely, depressed, suicidal William Cowper under his wing. What patience, what grace this great man of faith offered through the Holy Comforter. Is God calling one of us to be that kind of support to another of His own? To offer ourselves, to pour ourselves out for another child of God? Isaac Newton did it continually, even opening his home to Cowper as a refuge and encouraging the depressed poet laureate of England to write hymns of glory to the Father of all Comfort.

And we sing them today.

My husband called.

The warbler lived . . . sat up in his hand and eventually took wing to the sky.

Through the patience of waiting . . . and the mercy of God.

You might find me on these link-ups:

Strangers and Pilgrims on Earth, The Modest Mom, What Joy is Mine, Yes They Are All Ours, Missional Call, A Mama's Story, Mom's the Word, Rich Faith Rising, Time Warp Wife, Cornerstone Confessions, Mom's Morning Coffee, So Much at Home, Raising Homemakers, Hope in Every Season, A Wise Woman Builds Her Home, Woman to Woman Ministries, Whole-Hearted Home, A Soft Gentle Voice, My Daily Walk in His Grace, Messy Marriage, My Teacher's Name is Mama, The Charm of Home, Graced Simplicity, Children Are A Blessing, Mittenstate Sheep and Wool, Imparting Grace, Preparedness Mama, A Look at the Book, Essential Thing Devotions, Count My Blessings, Beauty Observed, Christian Mommy Blogger, Renewed Daily, Soul Survival, Good Morning Mondays, The HomeAcre Hop, Mommy Moments Link Up, Grace and Truth Linkup, Faith Filled Friday, Saturday Soiree Blog Party, Tell It To Me Tuesdays, SHINE Blog Hop, Motivate and Rejuvenate Monday Link-Up, A Little R&R Wednesdays. TGI Saturdays Blog Hop, Totally Terrific Tuesday

In Our Pain + A Giveaway for Ann Voskamp's One Thousand Gifts

(In connection with this post, I'm hosting a giveaway for a new copy of Ann Voskamp's One Thousand Gifts, a memoir-style book about understanding the grace of God in our pain and brokenness. If you already own a copy but would like to give one to someone else as a gift, please still feel free to enter the giveaway... It is a wonderful book, even for hurting unbelievers. Read to the end of this post to find/enter the giveaway.)


You might find me on these link-ups:

Strangers and Pilgrims on Earth, The Modest Mom, What Joy is Mine, Yes They Are All Ours, Missional Call, A Mama's Story, Mom's the Word, Rich Faith Rising, Time Warp Wife, Cornerstone Confessions, Mom's Morning Coffee, So Much at Home, Raising Homemakers, Hope in Every Season, A Wise Woman Builds Her Home, Woman to Woman Ministries, Whole-Hearted Home, A Soft Gentle Voice, My Daily Walk in His Grace, Messy Marriage, My Teacher's Name is Mama, The Charm of Home, Graced Simplicity, Children Are A Blessing, Mittenstate Sheep and Wool, Imparting Grace, Preparedness Mama, A Look at the Book, Essential Thing Devotions, Count My Blessings, Beauty Observed, Christian Mommy Blogger, Renewed Daily, Soul Survival

Neither life nor death shall ever

From the Lord His children sever;

Unto them His grace He showeth,

And their sorrows all He knoweth.

- Karolina W. Sandell-Berg

It all began a few months ago. The eye-watering, the pain; waking me from my sleep at night. 

I was already getting up a few times with my newborn and sometimes with my almost-2-year-old. 

So I hardly noticed the interruption in my sleep. 

It was an annoyance, but I just brushed it aside and attributed it to allergies and sleeplessness. 

But then it began to worsen. 

The pain would linger, so severe at times that I would rock back and forth to deal with it.

And then, just try to go back to sleep. 

It began happening during the daytime, too, until one Sunday morning - I was trying to get everyone ready for church - it just wouldn't go away. 

I tried to make it through that day and the next, but the pain became so severe, that I couldn't function. 

My Mom and my sister had to help with my little ones -

My eye swelled grotesquely and reddened, and when the pain finally became excruciating and unbearable, I called my husband at work to take me to the walk-in emergency center. 

They immediately sent me to another part of the building to see an eye specialist-

My sinuses were also affected and I couldn't stop my nose and eyes from leaking continually with cold-like symptoms. 

I was a mess. And there was nothing that I could do about it. 

The diagnosis was a severe case of "recurrent corneal erosion," and I was relieved at finally knowing what was wrong and being given medication to treat it. 

I joked about how I could to some small degree sympathize with the Apostle Paul with his supposed eye troubles - but the pain was not a joke. 

And I sat that night in my room, my nose leaking, my eye burning and watering, my little ones there with me. My daughter, almost 2, climbed up into the desk chair with one of her books that we read before she goes to sleep. 

As I sat on the floor in severe pain with my 5-month-old, I heard my daughter suddenly begin to recite one of the poems from memory that was in her book -

I hear no voice, 

I feel no touch

I see no glory bright...

And I knew that the next words of the poem followed:

But yet I know 

That God is near 

In darkness as in light-

At that moment, I knew the Lord's nearness to me in my pain - only a light affliction in comparison to what my Savior had suffered-

For the past few days before that, it had been difficult to even think - to take care of my babies - and even my tears were painful -

But the Lord knelt down to me there, in my suffering - in the suffering that He had allowed -  to draw me to Himself - so that I could relate in some small way to the sufferings that He had borne for me. 

That night was the most difficult - The doctor had said that it would take from 12-24 hours for me to have some relief from the pain.

I spent a sleepless night in agony, the dripping from my sinuses making me sick and giving me a terrible headache on top of the extreme pain in my eye. 

But I knew that He was with me...

And I made it through, by His grace. 

Made it to the morning.

And the next day there was some improvement; the severity of the pain faded. 

And His grace washed over me. 

C.S. Lewis says -

"Pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences, but shouts in our pains. It is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world." 

And He knows our sorrows and gives us a measure of what we are able to bear, by His grace. 

He walks with us through them, even when we cannot see Him for the pain. 

Because He is near. 

And because, as the rest of the poem in my daughter's book reads, 

The Father for His little child

Both day and night doth care. 

Giveaway

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My Father's Voice

“Pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences, but shouts in our pains. It is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”

-C.S. Lewis

Source

Sometimes I still think that I can hear his voice . . . 

Down in the kitchen--gruff and deep,the low tones of a winter's night wrapped in sandpaper.

And I can imagine his heavy-work-worn hands, the scar on his thumb where it was almost lost in a carpentry accident. 

And I can hear him calling me "Fuzz;" his nickname for me because of my frizzy hair and remember the way that he made his coffee midnight-strong in the morning. 

I used to wake up around the same time that he did--5 am--he because he didn't want to "waste the day," and me to be able to pray before I went to school. 

We didn't want to waste the day . . . 

But his Day was wasted and he turned away from the Voice of the Father, the voice that once called him and beckoned the proud heart to Himself. 

The proud heart that broke --

Broke his family and his God and hardened into a molten rock, so thick and deep and stony, and it wouldn't be broken, only used to crush. 

The hearts of the ones who loved him most--

The hearts of the ones who called him husband and daddy--

The hearts of the three little girls who held his hands and sat on his lap, and who craved his love and affection and attention.

The heart of the woman who lived and built her life around his--who always wanted the best for him and forgave the lies over and over and over.  

They almost broke. 

But the Lord uses stones that try to crush to purify and to magnify His grace and mercy through heartache and loss.

We are hard-pressed on every side, yet not crushed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed— always carrying about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body. (II Corinthians 4:8-10)

The Father of mercy--who causes grief, but will yet show compassion . . . 

And I learned through those days, those years dim with sorrow and mourning and wishing, praying that things could be different, that my Heavenly Father is enough--

That He fills things that are empty with joy--

That He makes rivers from deserts

The wilderness into a road--

And the Valley of Achor into a door of hope. 

Sometimes I still hear his voice, 

But it has grown fainter--

And my Heavenly Father's, stronger--richer--fuller--bright and strong and full of hope and redemption--has grown more beautiful and real to me.  

I can hear my Father's voice. 

Reflection: A Poem

I wrote this when a beloved brother-friend came to salvation in Jesus and in whose life the Son of Light made all things new ...

The beauty of his amber eyes-

         His face

     Alive in light

The Son of Glory rising in the East

              Behind

The mortal clouds—

      The moon

          Now humbly creeps away

                 The day

In every touch and whisper

    Slips

  Into the open sky-

His eyes

   Like amber

            So alive

The sparks of truth and grace

               Proceed forth from the Son

      The living, breathing One

Who steps into a life and makes it new

    The hammer

             That had fallen hard

                   Upon His hands

                His feet—

The hammer

     That had caused Him pain

             And anguish

          Is no more

And life restored

     Lifts up her hands in victory

Free!

   Free am I—

        Through Him

The Man

     The Son of Man, of God,

          The Glory of the Father

Who is the Risen Light

       So bright

     And we are a reflection of that grace-

They see it,

      Do they see it

            In our amber eyes

Ablaze

      Awake

             And full of grace and glory---