The Unanswered Question

Gosh, I can't even remember the last time I blogged I know its been way too long. The one thing my mom told me before she passed was that she wanted me to keep writing and quite honestly I guess that's what makes it harder is that every time I write the memories of mom flood back. 

My thoughts have drifted back to nursing school and I recall a lesson in one of our psych classes that talked about the top ten major stressors in life and amoung those stressors were; death of a loved one, new job, losing a job, illness, family illness, child graduating and leaving home, etc. You get it and we are all familiar with what causes stress in our life. But today it really dawned on me....that in the past 3 years I was diagnosed with a chronic illness that I struggle with on a daily basis, my young mother was diagnosed with a terminal illness and my father and I took care of her while she made her way home, my father remarries (mind you she is just what my mom asked me to make sure she was.....as I write this through many tears....do you have any idea how hard it is to have your mother tell you what she wants in a woman for your father and the reality of knowing that life was really going to go on without mom hits) months later after mom passed I get a phone call from my Grandma (my moms mom)  telling me that she woke up yellow as she asks me "what does this mean." Being a nurse I knew exactly what it meant......she too was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. I recall that phone call as my sister in love (as she says) had to drive Grandma and I up to that cat scan that day because I was too sick to drive. I sat in the back seat as Kate and Grandma were sitting in the front seat and my cell phone rang and Dr. Fullerton's Springfield Clinic name came up (this too....being a nurse I knew wasn't a good sign). He immediately said I'm sorry but she too has the same cancer and the same fate and the same death as your mother. My mind reeled at how could I do this again, Lord I'm not strong enough!! Then months later I have a spot on my side that I know is not right and I end up seeing a dermatologist she removes it and a week later yet another doctor call saying the spot they have removed is malignant melanoma and then they proceed to tell me that pancreatic cancer and melanoma are often caused by the same gene and the chance that my mother, my grandmother and I would all have related cancers leads them to believe that we fall into a rare 10% of people that have a genetic cancer and I end up meeting with a genetic counselor that tells me that my odds because of my melanoma of developing pancreatic cancer are in the 75% percentile. Processing.......who can process all this. I drove home from that visit and wanted to just keep driving until I ran off the coast of California into the ocean. WHY Lord?? Why? When I've served you, I've dedicated my life to you, I love you with every ounce of being that I have? There is so much more.....we sold our family business, I had to quit the job I loved, my days are still a struggle with the lyme disease. But in all things.....God has been the constant presence in it all. 

Thus all this brings me to today. I had ran in to town hoping to run by Walmart but as I drove in to town the vertigo starts again which means no Walmart and just coming back home. But on my drive home God reminds me of Jacob in Genesis 32:30. Jacob had lead a tortured life being the second born twin meant that the family blessing would be upon the first born son..his brother Esau. In Genesis 32 Jacob is trying to run from certain death as he knows his brother wants to kill him, he stops in the wilderness and sends his family ahead and is left alone there, where he falls into a deep sleep. As Jacob sleeps a man appears and begins to wrestle with Jacob and they wrestle all through the night. Little did Jacob know but he was wresting with the very presence of God himself. After God see's that Jacob is not going to surrender to His will He touches the hip socket of Jacob and dislocates his hip and immediately following this God turns around and blessed Jacob. Jacob struggled the rest of his life with the limp that wrestle with God left but through His wrestling with God his life was blessed as He surrendered to God.

God also reminded me of Job and everything that God allowed Satan to steal from Job....all of his children, all of his earthly wealth and even his health. God just told Satan, "you can test Job by doing whatever you want to him.....but you can't have his life." In Job 30 after Satan has taken everything away from Job including now his health Job cries out Job 30:20 "I cry out to you O God, but you do not answer. I stand up, but you merely look at me. You turn on me ruthlessly......" This from the man that God tells Satan is the most righteous man of all. I find myself on so many days crying out to God, begging for his mercy, begging for him to end all of this. I've spent 3 days in bed this week with vertigo and vomiting, unable to eat, unable to do really anything and its on those days that I feel Job's pain, I feel his cries and I too wonder why? Why Lord do you just stand and look at me? But as I once heard a pastor say, lucky for us we know what Job didn't know. We know chapter 42 when God blessed the later part of Job's life more than the first. There is a song by Brian Johnson called "Show Me Your Face" and in it he asks God to give him strength to stand and that he could make it through it all if he could just see God's face. I play that song a lot as it has become my cry to God. I can make it to the end Lord......"show me your face Lord, show me your face...I can make it to the end Lord if I could just see your face". 

Consumed......

Burn day comes but once a year at the Konneker house, but the anticipation of it looms in the air for weeks before the event. I guess you could say that between my dad, my father in law and myself we are consumed by the idea that we get to go play with fire once a year. I really think we should be hired as full time controlled burners....but I don't think they would pay someone so eager to do their job.

Burning off the old and watching the new life spring up afterwards gives such an excitement to spring. To see what was once dead and lifeless burnt away and within weeks new fresh green life come in its place just fills ones heart with such accomplishment. Isn't that so much of what our lives are like. Over the winter most of us become stale, stagnant and lifeless.....much like the bear hibernating for the winter. Spring comes and our lives all wake up like a flower pushing its way up from the dirt and breathing in the fresh air of spring....ready to tackle another year of rains, storms, drought and then winter once again, always braving the elements and always enduring through it all.

I wonder is our life as consuming as the fire? Do we fully understand the brevity of our lives? If we did understand the brevity of our lives would we live it differently? Would we be consumed with doing more? Would we change how we lived each day? I watched as a field that once stood tall with 6' grasses was reduced to nothing more than ash within an hour......so are our lives in reality. We all get a certain amount of time in our life and I want to be just as consumed as the grasses were with the difference the fire made in them with the lives that I come in contact with on a daily basis. May my life be one that is Consumed.

The tears that no one sees....

We have been so blessed in our life. I look back at the marriage, the children and the grandchildren that Bill and I have been blessed with....but today it all seems so clouded by this dark cloud. I HATE THIS DISEASE. I hate what its done to me, I hate what its made me, I hate that it has taken so much of ME away.

So many of us have been through what I would call a "dark night of the soul," I experienced it probably about 7 years ago. It was a time in my life where God seemed so silent. I prayed, I dug deep into scripture, I listened to uplifting messages but it just seemed that God had pulled away his hand from me. It scared me, I didn't know if I had done something that had displeased him or why the silence all of a sudden. I thought I would die, I couldn't do this life without him and without the strength that he provided me and the words of knowledge that I needed always at the appropriate time.....then silence.

In Samuel, Saul found himself being imploded upon by the Philistines, he prayed but God did not answer, not in dreams, not in visions and not with a word. I know its in these times that it is a time for us to sit patiently and wait upon the Lord. But this isn't supposed to happen to me. I feel as though I'm trapped in a body that has totally gone haywire. It's tiring to wake up one day and feel utterly normal and function normally to sometimes hours to a day later completely unable to accomplish the smallest tasks. Tears come as there are days that my physical body and mental body is so tired of fighting and not knowing when this will ever end.

It's difficult being in crowds of people as the dizziness sets in and then the disorientation follows. None of us want others to see us fail, to see us in a state of frailty. I've found out how really small and insignificant we really are in such a vast world. I remember the day of my grandfathers funeral....as we pulled out in the funeral procession that the outside world was continuing on with life. How could this be? This man that I knew was a man of God, he served the Lord with all that he was, nothing in him was ever evil or un-christlike. How is it that everything didn't stand still at this moment....after all....it did for me.

On the day that I'm placed in the ground or any of us are placed in the ground....the pile of papers that need addressed on our desks, the phone calls that need returned and all the things that we see that have to be done......will soon be forgotten. But the time that I spend with my children and my grandchildren molding their lives and showing them how to live in Christ is all that will really matter.

It's been a down day today as I had to turn down doing the Women's Ministry once again this year. I can't even plan a haircut in advance as I don't know from moment to moment if I'll be upright or laid out begging God to end this misery. All I ask for is my health back, all I ask for is that from today forward I can get up daily and enter the world as everyone else enters....without wondering when its going to hit me. I think I'm having better days, but unlike before when I felt bad everyday....now I can feel great and have the wind knocked from my sail in a matter of minutes. When will this torture end. When can I begin to enjoy life again, when can I feel good again. When do I get to pick up the pieces of a terrible 2 years and turn this around to a story that God can use.