Bitter or Better, Our Choice

I rounded the corner at the end of the hallway and realized I knew where I was. This was a familiar place. When it dawned on me, I looked to my boys, now 13, and with a smile, pointed to these two chairs and said, “Boys, I nursed you in those chairs and on the floor of one of the exam rooms in the back. Initially, I recounted this to them as a fond memory, filling them in on a time they were very much a part of but would have no remembrance because they were just babies, days old as a matter of fact. 

But then, as I took a seat to wait once again for an ultrasound to be taken of my oldest’s (by two minutes) eyes, the tears welled up in my own eyes. Surprised by this rush of emotion, I tried to quell the sobs that were building, to no avail. There in the pediatric division of Wilmer Institute at Johns Hopkins, I sat and sobbed. My sons inquired; a nurse walked by observing and offered us dum dums, the quintessential, “This will make everything better” offering to all children in every hospital or medical clinic worldwide, I am convinced. The external stimuli jolted me out of that traumatic place the sight of those two chairs took me, and I was able to compose myself enough to decline the sweet nurse’s offer of comfort in lollipop form. 

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It’s been 13 years walking a road I never could have anticipated traveling. When we were first told about our son’s diagnosis of Sturge Weber Syndrome and all the potential havoc it could wreak on his, and subsequently our lives, we were shell shocked. Entering Hopkins’ clinics just days after my twins were born introduced us to a world of specialists, medical jargon, tests, procedures and surgeries we would not know anything about should God have spared us from this lot. But 13 years later, I can see how much we have all grown through what God chose for us. I can see we have learned so much; we have grown in empathy and informed compassion for a whole segment of this world that we may have otherwise overlooked or even ignored. I can see our endurance for life’s challenges, curve balls, unexpecteds and unknowns has been strengthened. 

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 I want to take this opportunity to encourage anyone who’s been thrust upon a life path you never would have chosen and can’t get off of. Or maybe you did run after & welcome a certain life trajectory, but it’s all new and proving to be harder than you thought it would be, with costs you aren’t sure you’re prepared to pay. Time really is an important player that you will either thank or regret depending on what you cultivate with that time. 

It may be cliche, but the truth nevertheless remains. Circumstances can make you bitter or better, and it’s time that will deepen what you chose to cultivate. Let me be a voice in your life today urging you to fight to be shaped for the better by whatever it is that is pressing down hard on you right now. Be vigilant about uprooting those bitter seeds that want to grow deep in your soul. They often sound like, “This isn’t fair. I deserve better than this. I hate my life. Why do things go well for everyone else but me? What have I done to deserve this? How will anything good come from this?” 

I’m not saying that there won’t be struggle or that I never thought these things or still don’t sometimes think these things. But, let’s together remember we have a choice in what we’re going to do when these thoughts come. We can choose to nurture these embittering thoughts or reject them and replace them with God’s truth. He has promised to work all things together for the good of those who love Him. He has promised to fulfill His purposes for our lives, and as those who love Jesus and have given our lives to Him, we can trust His purpose is to prosper us and not to harm us. It might look oh so different than we could ever have imagined, but He is wise. He is good. And He will sustain us even through the darkest of times. 

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We received another diagnosis yesterday for my son, one that likely has been there since he was born. And despite the numerous eye specialists who have spent hours, that could likely amount to days if added up, looking into the depths of my son’s eyes, this anomaly was not discovered until yesterday. It’s likely the cause of his extremely poor vision in his one eye, at least according to the doctor we saw yesterday. Honestly, who really knows? 

I could be tempted to anger over this, but for 13 years, I have sought to cultivate a firm belief that God is my son’s Creator, Sustainer and his ultimate Physician. And He reveals what He wants and keeps hidden what He wants hidden even to the “Best of the Best.” And because I’ve cultivated that truth over a long period of time, I do not have to get angry about this potentially missed diagnosis. I do not have to wonder if we could have preserved better vision in that eye had this been discovered earlier in his journey. I can fully trust that we have sought God throughout my son’s whole life for help with his needs. We have followed through on what God led us to do, the doctors to whom He led us. And we can have confidence that though we undoubtedly have not walked this out perfectly, we have a God who is perfect in all His ways even when His ways seem to run counter to our finite wisdom. For 13 years, I have imperfectly but genuinely cultivated trust in God, and I’m not going to stop trusting Him now. 

Today, I’m beckoning you to do the same.

Still Waiting

I'm 40 years old and still waiting.
Waiting for my children to apprehend all I am trying to teach them, all the ways I have laid out before them how it is to live a godly life, full of meaning, purpose and joy.

I'm 40 years old and still waiting.
Waiting for my time to come, my time to shine in the fullness of what I believe God has put so clearly and passionately on my heart to do.

I'm 40 years old and still waiting.
Waiting for a complete healing of chronic health issues for which I have tried many remedies and interventions, all of which have brought some relief, some comfort but not full healing.

I'm 40 years old and still waiting.
Waiting for prayers I have prayed for many years to be answered.
Waiting for dreams I have dreamed for many years to see their fulfillment.
Waiting. Sometimes I don't even know all I am waiting for; I just know I'm still waiting.

In her book, "Still Waiting," Ann Swindell talks a lot about waiting, and shares a message of hope for all of us who are in the waiting room of life.
And, frankly, I don't know anyone who isn't waiting for something.

Ann beautifully weaves her personal story of waiting with the biblical account of the Bleeding Woman (Matthew 9:20-22), both women knowing the ache of waiting on God for healing.

What I appreciate most about Ann's book is that she did not wait to write it until she experienced full healing, until her wait came to an end.  No. You see, Ann is still waiting.  And, there is something so incredibly God-glorifying, hope-giving, and satisfying to my own heart to read words of hope and to be pointed rightly to the Source and Giver of both hope and healing from one who is still waiting herself.

This lends such credibility to the strong, sure message Ann conveys in "Still Waiting."

In her book's chapters, Ann breaks down the effects waiting has on one's soul, mind, body, and relationships with others and with God. She discusses how waiting makes one weak, broken, is costly, claims one's identity, feels offensive, brings shame, feels like suffering, and is risky.  She concludes her book with a chapter entitled, "Hope for the Waiting Ones," but Ann does an effective job at sprinkling hope ALL throughout the book.  You don't have to wait until the end for a strong dose of hope.

If you are waiting for anything or anyone and want to wait with hope, I strongly urge you to get your hands on Ann Swindell's, "Still Waiting."

*I wrote this endorsement to help spread the word about Ann's book, not solely or even primarily because I was chosen to be a part of her book launch team, but because I have been encouraged deeply by her words, believe strongly in the message of hope about which she writes, and appreciate greatly the skillful, artful way in which she presents that message. I did receive a copy of "Still Waiting" at no charge in order to read it before its official launch.

Why #adifferentway is going to be the Almengor way through 2017

We Almengors are a family of mantras. It is mostly my husband’s doing, but I am agreeable to it because I love having a focus or goal, and I love words yet am less concise with them than my husband. Verbosity is my game which does not work so well when trying to convey the heart of a matter quickly. 

When in the midst of our everyday, sometimes frantic life, communicating the goal quickly is necessary, skipping the lecture, preferred. So, for 2017, Lawrence and I have chosen a mantra of #adifferentway because we are now living in the era of the hashtag, and we have fully embraced it at our house. I unashamedly love the hashtag movement.

A different way. What does that mean for us? Let me try to flesh that out here.

Lawrence and I read a book last year that influenced the two of us greatly called, “Emotionally Healthy Spirituality” by Peter Scazarro. We were impressed with how much of an impact our families of origin, culture and the experiences of our childhood have had upon our marriage, parenting, friendships, and relationships within our extended family.  And, we realized there are now patterns of behaving, speaking, and reacting to situations that just are not in keeping with what we see exemplified in the Bible by Christ and other followers of Jesus.

We are passing these sins and habits onto our children. They are now 12, 12 and 9 and giving full expression to some of the sinful ways of their parents. Oh, how difficult that is to see sometimes.

In some of these behaviors, we are simply stuck after years of wearing down a nice, deep rut. We know love is patient and kind, but the tone of our voices still sounds so sharp and even cruel at times.  We know we want to embrace a godly sorrow when faced with our sin, repent and ask for forgiveness from God and from each other, but goodness, that stubborn pride of ours just doesn’t want to hear it in the moment especially. 

So, we came up with a prompt of sorts: #adifferentway.  We learned that in the heat of a “moment,” it’s harder to hear, “You are wrong and need to repent,” and easier to hear, “There is a different way through this. You can choose a different way.”

When we say #adifferentway, we mean that

• ·        You are not enslaved to this all too familiar way of responding
• ·        You are not defined by this pattern of speech or way of behaving
• ·        You are able to choose in this moment the godly way through
• ·        You are able to ask for wisdom and grace and receive it right in this moment
• ·        You are able to change

Like a flick of a rubber band around one’s wrist, #adifferentway will become for us a jolt out of some ruts we have laid over the years. Or at least we hope so.

#Adifferentway also makes room for us to keep exploring and trying on new ideas and routines. Where we, for years, have enjoyed family night on Fridays with pizza and a movie, we are going to try using some of those Friday nights to play games together.  Watching a movie every Friday night was good for us as a family for many years. It was easy for us as parents who, by the end of the week, were bone tired from raising and home educating young children.  And, it also built within our family a cache of common stories to refer back to, inside jokes, and one-liners. And we will continue to watch good movies for this purpose.

But, our children are entering a new season of growth and development, and it seems a good time to step up our game in pursuing them relationally. We *think* we are ready to take on the potential mire of playing games together for the new level of growth that might afford us as a family and as human beings.

Another area we are exploring #adifferentway is in how we educate our children. We are currently in our 7^th year of homeschooling, and aside from one year for the boys in Kindergarten at a private school, my children have never known anything but home education.  We may continue down this road, but we are going to at least explore what it might look like to educate #adifferentway.  I am working on a few shadow days for my kids to experience at a handful of local schools.  I don’t know what will come of this, but we are stepping out and choosing to investiage #adifferentway.

On a personal note, I want to grow in communicating God’s story in my story by way of writing and public speaking. To do this, I know I need to be a voracious reader except that I am not. L  I kicked around the familiar plan of upping my reading intake but #adifferentway occurred to me, and I am choosing that instead. This different way is in keeping with the doer God created me to be versus the sit and read volumes of material person I am not. 

Instead of doubling the amount of books I read in a year, I picked five influential, time tested authors of whose material I will ingest this next year. Curious?  Comment and I’ll let you know who made my list. J

So, 2017, whatever you may hold for us Almengors, we are choosing #adifferentway.

Where we have worn down ruts of reacting, we are resolved to forge new paths, ones that will honor God and each other.

Where familiar routines no longer serve us, we are resolved to do the hard work of beginning and reinforcing new routines that will further our growth and joy.

Where common held practices do not line up with who you have made us to be, we will not try to fit our square self into a round hold but are resolved to conjure up #adifferentway that will accomplish the same goal.

How might you choose #adifferentway for your 2017?
If you think of any ways, I would love to hear about it and cheer you on in your pursuit of #adifferentway.