Category Archives: Hearing from God

Getting Through

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My builder (and nephew-in-law) Drew is closing in on the end of our 10 week project. On our tag list today was a chore he definitely didn’t have to do but kindly acquiesced to: hanging a heavy, round mirror 40 inches in diameter. Putting it on the hook wasn’t the problem. It was where that hook was located, 16 feet above the floor.

In order to reach it, Drew had to climb onto the top step of a six foot ladder and perch there without support while holding the heavy mirror, which he had to lift high. If the ladder wiggled or he made a misstep, he’d surely fall. And if he did, he’d hit a square-edged newel post far below, tumbling down the steps to the basement, probably with the mirror shattering over him.

But the fearless Drew said, “Oh, I’ve had worse falls than that. Don’t worry.”

Worrying more, I said, “But Dad told us there’s never a good reason to stand on the top step of a ladder.” I was half hoping to stop him, but half hoping he’d hang my mirror anyway.

Klaus, his girlfriend Brooke and I held our breath as Drew climbed the ladder, as if an audience might prevent an accident. Drew successfully placed the mirror’s back-wire over the wall hook, and as we all admired his work, suddenly the 60 year old wire snapped, and the mirror careened down the wall.

Drew’s lightning instinct, even while on the top step, was to lift his knee (so now he’s teetering on one leg) and pin the falling mirror to the wall with his foot as it raced toward a narrow shelf half way down the wall.

Brooke and I gasped, envisioning Drew and the mirror both going overboard. Klaus leaped forward to help. But as Drew remained focused on saving the mirror, he also remained on the ladder.

The heavy mirror made a major dent in the shelf, despite Drew’s slowing its descent, but thankfully we had wood filler, sand paper and paint handy. After a trip to the store for new braided wire, we restrung it, and Drew repeated his risky maneuver (thus the photo).

How different our day would have been, had we needed 911.

But isn’t that true of any day? Only God knows what 24 hours will bring, which is why it’s good to turn over those hours to him every morning. Then, no matter what happens, we know God allowed it, and because of that, he’ll get us through it.

This web site is called “Getting Through This” because no one is exempt from troubles, and all of us have things to get through. I’ve learned the extent to which God will go in accomplishing this for us as I’ve gotten through the last 19 months without Nate. And I have confidence if Drew had fallen today, God would have brought him through that, too.

Now when I walk past that mirror countless times each day, I’ll hear the Lord’s voice: “We’ll get through it all… together.”
“Surely God is my help; the Lord is the one who sustains me.” (Psalm 54:4)

What’s new?

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Half way through last Sunday’s sermon, a skirmish in one of the pews got everyone’s attention and stopped the pastor’s preaching.

“Someone call 911!” a man said, as he bent over the person having trouble. Several from the congregation jumped to help, and a uniformed security man entered the sanctuary speaking into his shoulder radio, “Yes, the Free Church on Douglas.”

I was sitting with my former next-door-neighbor, who’d had personal experience with 911 and had lost her husband to quick cancer shortly after we lost Nate. We both clutched.

The elderly gentleman struggling during the service was given a wheelchair ride to the parking lot where an emergency vehicle awaited, its flashing lights pushing their way through our stained glass windows. The service resumed, but Becky and I were lost in thought.

How quickly our minds race back to trauma. A soldier, newly home from a war, flinches when he hears what sounds like gunfire. An earthquake victim feels like running when a truck passes and the ground vibrates.

Trauma imprints our brains with extra oomph when it’s been life-threatening. A 911 call, death, gunfire, an earthquake – each stimulates us to act on fearful impulse. Later, when similar circumstances pop up, we react the same.

Some people organize their entire lives around an upsetting event, either by reliving it over and over or by making sure it doesn’t ever happen again. In both cases the incident dominates thought life and keeps someone stuck. Opportunities are lost, and a sad spirit dominates every day.

Is there a way to distance ourselves from past trauma when something like a 911 call yanks us back?

Yes, and God gives us the key: to set our minds on him.

If we fill our heads with his supremacy and sufficiency, other thoughts must leave. It’s easy to get mentally lost in our troubles, and immediately after Nate died, I felt that way, continually reliving his rapid decline and death, camping there for months. But calling out to God for comfort and peace slowly filled my mind with something other than Nate, and it was the Lord.

If today I was asked to hold someone’s hand as they died, even a stranger, deep sadness would cover me like a heavy blanket. But I wouldn’t stay under it for long, because I’ve become acquainted with a new mindset God has put in my head, thoughts dotted with hope and future plans because he is in them. Although I’ll never forget the details of our family trauma, I don’t live inside of it anymore.

God is our Creator, and he’s continually making all things new. When we believe that and watch for how he’s doing it in us, we won’t have to fear being pulled backwards by a 911 call but can quickly move forward into the fresh optimism he’s created.

“The former things will not be remembered, nor will they come to mind. But be glad and rejoice forever in what I will create.” (Isaiah 65:17,18)

Thinking it through.

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My nephew-in-law has worked hard renovating my old cottage for 8 weeks, running into his share of negative surprises. He’s ripped up a floor, built a new one, covered it with slate, laid hardwood in the kitchen, corrected a structural problem, made a hole for a decorative window, sanded and refinished wood floors and built a wall of bookshelves.

But by far his greatest challenge was the back stairway, 12 steps with two turns and two landings. It would have been simple if each step had had the same measurements, but no two were exactly alike in height or depth.

Every so often I’d come around the corner and find Drew just looking at the steps. “How’s it going?” I’d say.

“I’m thinking it through.”

When everything is “off” just a little, pondering the project is critical to its success. And Scripture says we’re to count the cost before every commitment, not just the ones that don’t look right to begin with. Drew’s “thinking it through” was exactly that.

Our remodeling has been like those 3” puzzles we used to play with as kids, 8 tiny, sliding square pieces and one space. As we slid the flat pieces up, down and sideways, the surface picture began to come together. It wouldn’t make sense till every piece was in the right spot.

Sometimes it was necessary to push a piece 2 spaces left, 1 down and 3 up before it found its proper place. And moving the last square into position necessitated sliding most of the others around to make a path for it. Drew tackled my house the same way, doing things in order but always preceded by careful planning.

Sadly, I lean toward slap-dash, the opposite of counting the cost. If I’d have built our stairway, the finished product would have looked like something out of Dr. Seuss. Good intentions minus thinking-it-through equal costly destruction later.

I wonder if God watches people like me putting incomplete ideas into place too soon and thinks, “You’d better stop and think first. How about measuring again? Oops, you forgot to count the cost.”

Most of the messes we get ourselves into are the result of not pondering, measuring, counting. For example, we end up with addictions because we don’t consider the end before we begin. A teen finds herself pregnant, because she didn’t reflect on that possibility. A business goes bankrupt because of over-borrowing.

Jesus was the one who cautioned us about counting the cost. When he said it, he was referencing the price of becoming his follower, which doesn’t come cheaply. It was extremely expensive to him to allow us to join him, and it can be costly to us as we do. He was urging us to think about that before we committed.

But just like Drew’s careful thinking about my complicated stairway, if we ponder our commitment to Christ and measure the cost, in the end our lives will square off well.

Jesus said, “Which one of you, when he wants to build a tower, does not first sit down and calculate the cost?” (Luke14:28a)