As I’ve bumped into blog readers here and there, many have asked questions about past posts. “How did that situation end up? Did you ever figure out the mystery of those circumstances?”

Here are a few updates:

1. On March 26 (“Plan B”) I went over the handle bars on my bike after Jack bolted in front of me to chase a squirrel. The squirrel got away unharmed, but I landed in the emergency room that night for scans, x-rays and wound-cleaning. Knowing I blossomed into quite a sight, readers have wondered how healing has gone. The answer? Except for a spot of pink on one cheek, you’d never know of my biking adventure.

2. On April 12 (“Hold on”) I arrived for a routine doctor’s appointment and was told I had no insurance coverage. In order to be seen that day, I had to pay several hundred dollars in cash. Appalled at the thought of being uninsured, I spent three days unraveling the tangle. It turned out the doctor’s office was using Nate’s health insurance card number instead of mine, one digit different. (We had canceled his insurance after he died last November.) When she told me I hadn’t had insurance since last fall, without realizing it she was talking about Nate. Mystery solved, trouble averted, refund granted.

3. On April 15 (“Taming Nature”) I wrote about our beach creek and its wayward temperament, how it had wandered 600 yards down from its usual course, widening, eroding the dune and becoming stagnant. An earth mover had spent two days rearranging nature, forcing the creek on a straight route from woods to lake. Has the creek been obedient? Sort of. Gently, inch by inch, it has leaned left, quietly carving a path back to its errant course. Robust young men have worked at shoveling and remaking a straight entrance into Lake Michigan, but each morning their efforts to reshape the sand have been erased. It’ll take more than a bull dozer and a couple of shovels to conquer Deer Creek.

4. On April 16 (“Love in Bloom”) I blogged about a host of mysterious white daffodils that came up and bloomed beautifully in our shady, ivy-covered yard. I enjoyed your comments and theories about this delightful surprise and In the last six weeks I’ve asked everyone I know if he/she/they were responsible but received only “no’s”. Nancy’s blog comment was, we concluded, closest to what must have happened. I think Little Red, the star of the April 13 blog (“Taught by a Squirrel”) must have done the planting. Although it’s possible he did it with his own dinner in mind, I prefer to think he was just that nice of a little guy.

Life is always changing. To remain still would be a fast route to stagnant, just like Deer Creek. For some, change is difficult. For others, it’s energizing. Most of us are somewhere in the middle, doing our best to keep up with the endless shifts.

The trick is finding our stability not in the change around us but in the One who orchestrates it.

“Accept the way God does things, for who can straighten what he has made crooked?” (Ecclesiastes 7:13)

Looking out our front windows through a grid of icicle-bars, I saw three flashes of color dart past. Cross country skiers, right on the streets. With seven inches of fresh snow, they were taking advantage of winter on our unplowed roads. An hour later, as I was shoveling the drive, they glided by in the other direction. “Spectacular, isn’t it?” one of the women shouted as she passed me.

Once I got to the grocery store, employees chatted enthusiastically about the blessing of a good snowfall. “Please let me take your cart out for you,” the bagger said, grabbing his jacket. “I haven’t been outside for a while and want to get back in the weather.” This was a bagger-man in his sixties whose enthusiasm was impressive.

As a new Michigan resident, I was gaining insight into my fellow Michiganders, people who’ve dealt with the challenge of winter every year. Watching the bag-man wrestle my cart through deep drifts in the parking lot, I coaxed him to complain. “Will you have to do a lot of shoveling when you get home?”

“I love to shovel,” he said, with a dip of his chin. “What would life be without a challenge?”

The man had missed his calling. Instead of bagging groceries he should have been running a think tank. Of course he was right about life’s challenges, although most of us avoid them. That’s probably because taking up a challenge can end badly, not to mention the pain that can be involved. There is also a high probability of failure.

I love the biblical story of the warrior Goliath taunting the whole Israelite army. His specific challenge was for them to send one individual to “come and get him.” It was a double-or-nothing dare after which the loser’s army would become slaves to the winner’s army.

David couldn’t believe any Israelite would shrink back from Goliath’s challenge. After all, Almighty God was on their side! He didn’t even have to think about it but went after Goliath with fervor. The Bible says, “As Goliath moved closer to attack, David quickly ran out to meet him.” (1 Sam. 17:48)

Since he was just a “ruddy-faced boy” (v. 42), we could conclude he was motivated by the foolishness of youth and didn’t know any better. But David knew enough, that the God of Israel controlled everything, including a nine foot tall ogre.

We all know the happy end of this story, how David’s one smooth stone embedded itself in the evil giant’s forehead, knocking him flat and giving David time to rush in and kill him with his own sword. A giant-sized challenge was accepted and dominated, and for the rest of his life, David was a hero.

Although I never met David, I do know another hero I very much admire, my husband Nate. He was presented with a challenge few people on this earth are given: militant cancer along with a death sentence that would conquer his life in a few weeks. Most men would have run from this enemy like the Israelites ran from Goliath. Some might have exited the fight altogether by denying reality. Others might have railed against God for allowing the battle in the first place. Nate did none of these.

In my eyes he was a hero in that he squared off with the challenge presented to him. Although he responded to the appalling cancer news with shock and revulsion, before long he said yes to the challenge. Throughout his combat with disease, he was required to move in and out of acute pain physically, emotionally and mentally, as well as bear up under anguish of heart. Yet he didn’t shrink back or even ask why. Instead he asked, “Why not?”

One morning about half way through his 42 days of cancer, I asked him how he was feeling after a rocky night. Instead of answering me directly, he answered like a man in the midst of a battle. “Well,” he said, “we soldier onward.”

Some might say, “Yes, but he lost the fight. He died.”

To them I say, Nate won the ultimate prize, knocking death flat just as David knocked Goliath flat. He used death as a stepping stone into a joy-filled eternity, conquering his giant-cancer-challenge in the process. He won, and he is my hero.

“I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 3:14)