Stress at midnight

December 27, 1987 12:30 AM Cold, Alexandria, Ohio.

^“O Psalm 104:34 - Lord, how many and varied are Your works! In wisdom have You made the all, the earth is full of Your riches and Your creatures."

Man and beast, cloud and mountain, roaring ocean and the peaceful farm pond. Truly you have created them all and they are wonderful. You are great oh Lord and worth to be praised! I DO praise you, Praise the Lord!

I have gone through a whole spectrum of emotions, ups and downs. I have cried a lot and wanted to sleep a lot. I feel overwhelmed constantly. I am having chest pains and general (at times severe) indigestion, burning, insomnia, forgetfulness, and staring off into space. All signs of stress, but what does one do? Help me father to organize my life better. I can’t keep up the pace.

Joseph said he had a good talk with mom and dad this am. They were encouraging him to make sure I got more rest. He was able to share his vision of church planting in Bogota and Medellin and then move back for a time, possibly to live on the farm. They were not critical of him.

2013.06.29 – Joseph’s journal

I feel lonelier at this moment than I have ever felt in my life. And emptier.

I am doing better than a couple of days ago, thanks to a couple of cigar buddies. But I am seriously facing some demons in my life. I am feeling the pain of Debbie’s absence in a new and deeper way. It feels like two ships passing … and suddenly the other ship is quickly disappearing from view in the past … after 40 years of love, she is gone. Time is flowing on … it does not wait. And I look back, and she is growing dim in the distance. How long can I look back? When do I move forward? And how do I move forward? I have to stop numbing my pain and face the loneliness and find the God of solitude there. Easier said than done.

Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing, only a signal shown, and a distant voice in the darkness; So on the ocean of life, we pass and speak one another, only a look and a voice, then darkness again and a silence.   

~vLongfellow, Henry Wadsworth 

Last day in Miami

December 16, 1987 Miami Beach FL, Windy, warm/cool.

Psalm 104:33 –

I do praise you Lord, for truly I was made for that purpose. I’m awed by your creation, by your majesty.

This is our last day here. Today we take Lyle to the airport and head for home. Yesterday we went to Aventura for a couple of hours and then Lyle and Joseph had an appointment with Nick who works for Latin American Mission (LAM) and who lived for a couple of year in Medellin, Colombia. Joseph received a lot of good information and a demographic study. Nick said that Medellin is a difficult city to start a church in.

I am reading Ruth Graham Bell’s story of her life, A Time for Remembering. I have really enjoyed it. It seems that every time I read a biography, it deepens in me the knowledge that I am not alone and that my struggles and hardships are not uncommon, especially to missionaries. Ruth says that she believes that “beautiful women are made by adjusting to difficult men”; an intriguing statement.

Henri Nouwen on "Critical Events"

Critical Events Can Reveal Divine Purpose

Life is God's initiative and can end or change suddenly, unexpectedly, and unpredictably. When we humans are ready to give up hope and resign ourselves to inevitability, God intervenes and reveals completely new beginnings. The resurrection of Jesus is God's sign breaking through every form of human fatalism and despair. In every critical event, there is an opportunity for God to act creatively and reveal a deeper truth than what we see on the surface of things. God also can turn around critical incidents and seemingly hopeless situations in our lives and reveal light in darkness. ~Henri Nouwen

(Note: I found this to be encouraging to me as I struggle with this abrupt turn in my life. I sometimes feel like my whole world has been turned upside down and no longer makes any sense - I persistently feel like I don't know who I am anyore. I have to hold on to the idea that there must be a divine purpose in this "critical event" even though I cannot see it.  If you like Nouwen's "Daily Meditations" you can sign up for them at the web site honoring his life and writings. ~J.H.)

Prayer for faith by the ocean

December 14, 1987 Miami Beach FL, Windy, warm/cool.

Psalm 103:13– 17

¹³ As a father has compassion on his children,
    so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him;

¹⁷ But from everlasting to everlasting
    the Lord’s love is with those who fear him,
    and his righteousness with their children’s children—

We (Joseph, I and our children) are living in a special grace because our parents feared the Lord. What a blessing – how rich we are! Thank you Lord.

The ocean seems angry this morning. The waves are white capped and fast coming in to smack the sand. It creates some fear or awe in me. It is great to imagine that the Lord set boundaries for the ocean, for truly it seems with its power it could go wherever it wanted.

Lord, I want to ask something that is big for me this morning, although very small for you. Lord, we continue to struggle with lack of money. It’s an area that the enemy still hassles us with. Father, this morning I ask for forgiveness for our lack of faith and trust. Amen.            

Father's Day 2013

Our father in heaven ….

Today is a good day to pray the Lord’s Prayer. When I was younger, I used to resist the idea of praying written prayers. During the seven years Debbie and I battled cancer prayer become work, I am sorry to say. I don’t know if I can explain this adequately, but we gradually developed “battle fatigue” and got weary of desperate prayers. At the same time, in some mysterious way, our faith in God’s providence deepened and strengthened.  By the last two years of Debbie’s life, we became quiet. Our morning prayer together (the most treasured 30 minutes of our day) was most often spent in silence, sipping our respective coffee and tea.

During that time, two written prayers became precious to us. One was St. Patrick’s Breastplate (which I never quite succeeded in memorizing). I developed a hobby of carving Celtic crosses drilling a hole in the bottom in which I would place a rolled up copy of St. Patrick’s prayer.

The other prayer was the Our Father. It was the one simple prayer we would pray in unison every morning together. It says it all. Sometimes we would add the short prayer of Jesus in the Garden, “Not my will but thine by done.”

I really miss those morning prayers with Debbie.

Our Father in heaven,
Reveal who you are.
Set the world right;
Do what’s best—
    as above, so below.
Keep us alive with three square meals.
Keep us forgiven with you and forgiving others.
Keep us safe from ourselves and the Devil.
You’re in charge!
You can do anything you want!
You’re ablaze in beauty!
    Yes. Yes. Yes.

(The Message)

Miami as the next step?

Dec. 13, 1987 Miami Beach, FL – warm, winding and refreshing

Psalm 102:15  "The nations will fear the name of the Lord,

    all the kings of the earth will revere your glory."

Yesterday as I was reading the scripture, I was given a desire to move on to greater holiness. Father, only you can deliver me from the sins which so easily beset me. I ask for greater revelation of who you are, and more, greater liberation in my life that I might worship you more freely.  Again, I call upon you to be my deliverer – to deliver e from anger and frustration and in the process grant me deeper peace and rest in you.

Joseph has gone to the consulate to renew Lyle’s visa for his return to Colombia. Nora and her friends have asked us to a meeting with them before we leave and seemed to be hinting that they want us to start a church in Miami. Is this our next step? The doors seem to be opening to Miami quicker than to Medellin. Is this a “Macedonian call?”

Father, you know our many financial needs-- our need for furniture, Joseph’s tuition, tickets back to Colombia, the problems with the car—Father is this is a mountain for me but for you no more than a pebble.

Father, bless our children, care for them while we are away.

                Joseph is looking over Miami as a possibility for a church planting endeavor for the future.

Father, I continue to ask and even plead for healing for daddy.

....one year ago today.

Debbie died one year ago today.

I had been doing very well in March and April. Starting around May 10, our 39^th anniversary, I have been dealing with the blues. This past week I have been having flash backs to the “week from hell” when she would fall out of bed in the middle of the night trying to go to the bathroom. I literally had to carry her to the bathroom every night and give her injections of morphine several times a day.

It was also a week from heaven. God gave extra grace. It is an awesome thing to be privileged to serve someone as they are dying. We saw hints that she was interacting with the world beyond. There were moments of laughter, like when Debbie became frustrated with too many people trying to help her and locked herself in the bedroom – until I came home and called to her.

She loved butterflies. She did a science project on butterflies during her bachelor’s degree. For mother’s day before her death, my daughters and their husbands installed butterfly gardens in our backyard with a fountain. She loved it. At the burial service in Ohio, we released live butterflies to symbolize the transformation from one world to the next. One of my favorite photos is of my daughter beaming a joyful smile in front of the casket while a butterfly flutters in her hand. Now, whenever I sit in my yard with my arm around one of my daughters, there is always butterfly nearby, seemingly checking on us!

My entire adult life came to a sudden and jarring stop one year ago today. Some widowers go about life as usual after, pouring themselves into their work or their mission.  Others lose the will to live and follow their spouse into the grave. I have not known who I am, or where I am going for the last 12 months, but I am about ready to find out. It’s time for me to start a whole new life; a little scary at my age (terrifying actually). The same one who called me into a life with Debbie knows the next step for me. He is with me, and he will define who I am and where I will go. And for sure, it will not be the same as it was. I will continue to be a pioneer.

Goodbye Debbie, I will always love you!

[Chorus]
Pioneer, Pioneer

Keep pressing onwards beyond your fears
And only your Father goes before you to your own frontier
Youʼre a Pioneer

[Verse 1]
Uncharted wilderness stretches before you
And you thrive on going where no one has gone
Still it gets lonely when darkness deepens
So sing by the fire until the dawn

[Chorus]

[Verse 2]
You travel light and you travel alone
And when you arrive nobody knows
But your Father in heaven, He is glad you can go
Cause those who come after you will need the road

[Chorus]

[Verse 3]
And what you have done, others will do
Bigger and better and faster than you
But you canʼt look back, you gotta keep on pressing through
Thereʼs a wilderness pathway and itʼs calling you

[Last chorus]
Calling you, calling you clear
Keep pressing onwards, you can't stay here...
And only your Father goes before you to your own frontier
Youʼre a Pioneer