TRADING PLACES

¹² I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want.

Philippians 4:12 (NIV)

A couple of years after Ron’s car accident, I lamented to my friend, Debbie, “I want a different life!” Debbie is a no-nonsense sort of gal and even though she loves me, she did not hesitate in her response: “You need to get over that real quick. You have the life you have.”

It certainly wasn’t what I wanted to hear. I was already exhausted from caring for the demands of an ill spouse and working three jobs to support us. It seemed as if all my dreams—earning a doctorate, teaching college, writing a book—were being dashed on the rocks of Ron’s needs.

I wanted a way out.

Other spousal caregivers feel the same. Caregiverstress.com is full of comments from other men and women who deal daily with the overwhelming challenges of caring for an ill spouse. We’re all handed the same spiel as we bundle our damaged partners into our cars after a long hospital stay, told that care giving is a noble pursuit and we will be blessed by our endeavors. Even our closest friends offer the same platitudes: your reward is in Heaven, God will never give you more than you can handle.

What no one tells you is that care giving is back-breaking, gut-wrenching, mentally exhausting, and emotionally draining labor. The first few days home from hospital will find neighbors, friends, and relatives arriving with casseroles and cards. But eventually, you are left alone with your ill spouse to make an adjustment to a life that no amount of pre-marital counseling could have prepared you for.

Where does one find contentment when the very thought of emptying one more bedpan and mopping up one more mess makes you want to scream?

“This isn’t”, I told my friend Debbie, “the life I planned for.”

And I’m not alone. The Apostle Paul, writing from his prison cell, lived a life far different from the one he’d planned. In Great Lion of God, Taylor Caldwell’s meticulous research into the life of Saul of Tarsus paints the picture of a privileged and intellectual Pharisee, a Roman citizen raised as a scholar of Hebrew scriptures.

But Paul died a martyr’s death.

Not really what he’d planned on.

Yet Paul, quite literally owning not one thing, not even his freedom, was able to find contentment in his prison cell, writing to the Philippians, “I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well-fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want.”

Learning to be content is not a natural process. Our modern world would convince us that contentment is found in the latest tech gadgets or the newest cars, but contentment cannot be bought. It is simply learning that God is, no matter what, in control.

What was the secret Paul had learned? How can those of us who find ourselves caught in a situation we never trained for find contentment with our lives?

1.     Keep your focus on the Lord. Remember when Jesus called Peter to step out of the boat and onto the water? (Matthew 14:28-30) Peter only started sinking when he took his eyes off Jesus.

2.     Do what God has called you to do. Abraham could have lived a life of luxury in Haran with all his flocks and household, but when God called him to move on (Genesis 12:1-3), Abraham did so.

3.     Thank God daily for His sufficiency. Learn to live with what God has provided, be it a lot or a little. Corrie ten Boom, who rescued many Jewish people during the Holocaust, was taught by her father that “God owns the cattle on a thousand hills. When we need something, we will just ask God to sell a cow.” (Psalm 50:10)

4.     Love the Lord with all your heart (Matthew 22:37). Jesus teaches this is the way to true contentment.

It’s been 18 years since the accident that changed our lives and my conversation with my friend. Caring for my husband is still a daily challenge. Some days are harder than others and I need to work at finding contentment when the cost of Ron’s medications has gone up again and I feel like I cannot possibly run up the steps one more time.

But if I move the focus from myself, if I rest my weary body in the sufficient strength of God, if I take a few moments on the back deck with a second cup of tea, I feel contentment creep over me.

It’s not the life I planned. It is the life I am called to. And within this life, I have earned a doctorate, taught college, and written books.

God is sufficient.

FEAR NOT!

So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.

Isaiah 41:10

I couldn’t seem to help it. There was no reason for me to be nervous about my annual end of year performance review. My last observation rated me as “proficient,” despite it being my first-year teaching English as a second language to high school students. When I’d been given the assignment in September, the job description was vague, but during the last nine months I had built a community at West Catholic for my foreign-born students, and all of them had made progress.

But as I headed North on I-95 toward my scheduled appointment at the Title 1 office, niggling doubts picked at my brain. What if I lost my job? How would we survive? The fears were not baseless. I’d lost jobs before, both due to the economy and low enrollments. In the 23 years I’d been teaching, I’d been at seven schools.

I concentrated on breathing deeply and committing my concerns to God. Two words immediately popped into my head:

FEAR NOT

True fear can be beneficial to human survival. Psychology Today says that fear has always been hard-wired into humans to protect us from physical and emotional harm. But when poet W.H. Auden penned “The Age of Anxiety” back in 1948, he linked our fears to the constant hazards of the modern world, not necessarily loss of life or limb. Following the Great Recession of 2009, over 60% of Americans have been fearful about losing their jobs (Washington Post, 2013).

Fear can paralyze us. It begins with one single thought.

What if I lose my job?

The thought explodes, unleashing a flow of fears.

FEAR NOT.

So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.

The words of Isaiah 41:10 remind us that fear can be used as a weapon by the Enemy, keeping us from embracing God’s plans for our lives (Jeremiah 29:11).  If we are fearful of the results, we’ll probably want to stay where it’s safe and warm. When David was running from Saul and hiding in caves, he might have sought a refuge to cower in terror (I Samuel 21:10), but he believed that God was with him.  And Moses felt so inadequate to the task God had appointed that he used every excuse in the book to wiggle his way out of it (Exodus 4:10). Yet God assured Moses that He would be with him and gave Moses everything that was needed (Exodus 3:12; 4:12).

Most importantly, nothing is ever a surprise to God. Even when the unexpected happens, God is ahead of it and knows what we will need to handle the situation. When Mordecai sent word to Queen Esther that all the Jewish people were to be put to death (Esther 4:8), she had no idea what to do! But God had already planned out the way He would deliver His people, even before the orphaned Esther won the favor of the King.

As I continued my drive into the city, I realized that while God has moved me to various schools in my professional life, He’s allowed me to impact the lives of students and faculty in ways I could not have foreseen back when my teaching degree was new. Years ago, when the Prayer of Jabez (1 Chronicles 4:9-10) was a popular sermon topic, I prayed for God to “extend my territory.” And He had! The students whose lives I’ve impacted are scattered across several states and counties, even extending to servicemen deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan.

I walked into the meeting, my fears at bay and willing to go where God would send me.

And yes, my end of year evaluation went well, my supervisor exuberant about the way I had handled a challenging task and laid the foundation for a beneficial English as a second language program. I was assured that I would be welcomed back in the Fall to continue the work I had begun. As I got back into my car and began the drive home, I took a moment to reflect on the truths about fear God had revealed to me:

1.       Fear is a weapon from Satan, meant to distract us from our God-given purpose.

2.       We can focus on what is true, not our fear, by recalling God’s promises. Our own histories will show us how God brought us through previous fears.

 

3.       God desires that we have joy. We cannot have both fear and joy, so choose joy. The joy of the Lord will remain with us despite our outward circumstances (John 15:11).

4.       Fear is fleeting. It is related to a specific moment or incident. It does not last forever.

Yes, we still need to live in an age that is rife with anxiety and reasons to cause us fear. But the tools to combat those fears are freely given to us. And I began to hum the song a former pastor used to sing:

Some trust in chariots

We trust in the name of the Lord our God

Some trust in horses

We trust in the name of the Lord our God.

VOICES FROM THE EDGE: MOM, MAKE IT STOP!

 “I wish it would stop,” says Allen.

 There are tears in the corners of his eyes as he leans against the door-frame of my office. The conversation has not been easy: two of his least favorite subjects are work and therapy. It has taken us 45 minutes to sift through denials, defenses, and deterrents, but I have been determined and patient.

 “I’m just angry a lot,” he says, and I nod. Just last month I needed to replace his bedroom door, which had taken abuse for years. “I’m angry that I was in school for all those years—ALL THOSE YEARS—and not one person said anything about autism! Not one! Yeah, they said I was different and quirky and stuff, but no one said autism. And I want to know why. Cause now I know I have it and I just don’t know what to do with it!”

I clench my fists. I, too, am angry about it. Allen was diagnosed at age 3 with learning disabilities caused by high blood ammonia. He spent his school years in the special education classrooms, struggling to keep up with his age-mates. Every year, I participated in the IEP conference to set his goals. And during the 12 years of his public schooling and the 4 years of college, no one mentioned autism. Not once. According to the Asperger’s/Autism Network, adults who receive the diagnosis often deny it or express anger that “no one ever told me.” The site did not mention how their parents feel.

But I am plowing ahead with my end goal; I figure I have enough good will chips with Allen to either convince him to see a therapist or continue to go to work. I talked with his sister yesterday and we agreed that, for the time being, helping Allen become more aware of his strengths and his needs for accommodations place therapy above work. For two years, he has been receiving disability benefits and they will be enough to keep up with his car and insurance payments for the time being.

I’ve made this confession to my daughter and my best friend: I want Allen to be normal. Having a job he goes to everyday makes him normal. I already have enough “not normal” in my life with a husband whose physical disabilities put him out of work 18 years ago. I crave some normalcy.

But God, in His infinite wisdom, has blessed me with a son who resides on the upper edges of the ASD spectrum, a place sometimes called High-Functioning Autism (HFA). It’s a different plane from the one that I live on. I spent Allen’s childhood helping him find ways to learn, not preparing him for life as an autistic adult.

“I just want it to stop,” says my son. “Mom, just make it stop.”

My heart breaks a little. I wish I could make it stop for my blue-eyed baby boy. I take a deep breath, whisper a prayer, and tell him how wonderful and creative he is.

“Unique,” he reminds me. “You always said I was unique.”

I smile a little. “We are all unique. We just need to learn how to use it.”

He nods, thinking. I let the wheels in his brain turn, praying that I am somehow getting through to him.

Allen is not alone in his adult diagnosis. According to Advancing Futures for Adults with Autism (2017), 1.5 million people in the United States are on the spectrum, with the possibility of what is sometimes called “the autism Tsunami” in our near future. As in Allen’s case, employment and education is not really a matter of lack of ability or intelligence, it is a lack of available services and public understanding. The phrase, “If you know one person with autism, you know one person with autism,” is very true. As a spectrum disorder, it takes many forms. And communicating with someone on the spectrum is full of pitfalls such as perception deficits, abrupt transitions, and echolalia (Asperger Partner, 2016).

A few tears have fallen by now but Allen’s determination to avoid therapy is waning. We have agreed to refer to his new therapist, Dana, as a “career counselor” rather than a therapist. “Because you need someone to help you sift through all your wonderful ideas and see which one you should work on first.” And because, I think to myself, you need someone to talk to other than me. The role I play as Allen’s mother is exhausting.

Allen is quickly running out of steam, so I make one last plug. “If you need to quit your job,” I say, “It’s okay. You need to do what’s best for you.”

He cocks his head to the side. “I guess I don’t mind the job so much,” he says. “Not as long as there is work to do. I just don’t like doing nothing.”

 My brain is already turning with how we can address this situation.

 Then Allen, who often surprises me, says this: “Guess I can talk to Dana about it.”

Then he heads to his room for a nap and I, feeling as if I have run the gauntlet and come out the other side, go downstairs to make supper. And treat myself to a cup of tea and a cookie.

Unto Us, a Child

Isaiah 9:6-7New King James Version (NKJV)

"For unto us a Child is born,
Unto us a Son is given”

She kissed the face of her son. She was making a sacrifice—a huge one—but she never hesitated, never stopped to question, never doubted in the perfect plan of God that had brought her to this moment. Even as the loss of her son, God’s greatest gift to her, hung over her heart, she knew it was the right thing to do. Whatever befell her, his mother, was far less important than what would happen to her son.

It’s the way most mothers feel.

On December 19, around 10:55, Patrick Collins was wheeled into the operating room to receive a liver transplant from a living donor. And Annette, his mother, settled onto her own gurney. Having given him the gift of life sixteen years ago, Annette was now the living donor that would provide Patrick with a large part of her own liver so that her son might live.

Think about another mother, thousands of years ago, laying her newborn son onto a manger’s hay. The shepherds, having been visited in the quiet hills by angels, had come to worship the Child and gone on their way, spreading the word to all they encountered about the miracle that had taken place in Bethlehem (Luke 2:17). More people—rich and poor alike—would come but for a little space of time, Mary held her Son tightly, rocking and singing a lullaby. Perhaps Joseph had gone off to look for food for his family, passing among the other travelers and explaining the situation. My wife has just had a child. Can you spare a blanket? A loaf of bread? A flask of wine?

Alone in the stable, the animals all hushed in awe at the events of the night, Mary “treasured all these things and pondered them in her heart” (Luke 2:19).

“To ponder” is to think carefully, especially before making a decision. What decision did Mary need to make? She had already agreed to bear God’s Son, to be the “handmaid of the Lord Jehovah” (Luke 1:38). She already knew that He would be called the “Son of the Most High” (Luke 1:32) and that His Kingdom would have no end (Luke 1:33).

But did she know about the Cross? Did she know that the tiny being she held in her arms would need to sacrifice His life? Did she know that as the blood ran from His wounds her own heart would break? As she laid the sleeping Child in the makeshift crib, did she know that she would hold His still body in her arms when sin’s debt was paid?

Mothers ponder many things.

For Annette, the pondering began when Patrick was born with Pierre Robin Syndrome and intellectual disabilities. Would she be up to the challenge of mothering a special needs child? Would she know how to teach him, how to love him, how to give him the life she wanted him to have?

Annette said yes. Yes to all the added burdens the mother of a special needs child has to carry, yes to the medical bills and school services and unending tiredness. And, a few months ago when it became apparent that Patrick’s liver had suffered irreparable damage and would need to be transplanted, she said Yes to being his living donor. Annette, now home from the hospital, has 6-8 weeks of recovery time ahead of her. Both mother and son are recovering well and the family anticipates that Patrick will go home on December 26.

Mary, the mother of Jesus, also said Yes. Nowhere in the Bible does it tell us of Mary’s thoughts as her Son “grew in wisdom and in stature, and in favor with God and man” (Luke 2:52). But we know she was by His side as He began His ministry. We know that she was at the Cross when He gave His life. And we know that Jesus asked the disciple John to care for His mother as his own (John 19:24).

Mary loved Jesus.

Annette loves Patrick.

Unto us a child is given. And when we are given a child, no matter what the future may hold, we rejoice.

And, because God has given mothers the right amount of love and caring, we do what needs to be done.

We say "Yes."

A Blessed Christmas to You All, and a Speedy Recover to Annette and Patrick!

PATRICK: JUST A LITTLE BIT OF MAGIC

Patrick needs a bit of magic. Not a whole piece, mind you, just a wedge-shaped piece about 3 inches by 3 inches, a piece of magic that will fit into the space above his upper right abdomen, and help his body process nutrients and remove toxins. It doesn’t seem like a lot to ask, particularly since the little bit that Patrick needs will grow and repair itself. But to Patrick and his family, this piece will be the magic that will allow Patrick to grow and survive.

Patrick needs a liver. Not a whole one, because the liver itself is rather magical, its ability to rejuvenate unusual among the organs of the human body (Columbia School of Medicine, 2017). Patrick needs a piece of liver from a live donor, a piece that will take the place of his own damaged liver.

Patrick’s story begins the way most stories do, with a “once upon a time”, and a mother who noticed that her son at age sixteen was not growing normally and had not yet entered puberty. That led to a visit to the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) and an endocrinologist who found Patrick had “high inflammation” in his body and sent him to a gastroenterologist, who found masses on Patrick’s liver and determined that ¾ of his liver was damaged beyond repair. Specialists at the University of Pennsylvania Hospital determined that the non-cancerous masses could easily become cancerous.  They urged that Patrick’s liver be removed.

But the remarkable liver processes 1.5 quarts of blood every minute and is vital in the process of digestion. It clots the blood, preventing internal bleeding, and produces proteins. And getting a donor liver can involve a long wait, a wait Patrick can ill afford.

But Patrick only needs a LITTLE bit of magic, and a little piece of liver. According to WebMD (2017), a living donor can give up to 40% of a liver, and the remarkable and almost magical liver will, within a year, regenerate to its full size. And the 40% given to Patrick will also, in the same time span, grow to its fullest dimensions.

Live liver donation was pioneered at Columbia University in the 1980’s to alleviate the long wait of pediatric patients. Currently, the survival rate of both adults and children who receive a live liver donation are better than those who receive a liver from a deceased donor (Columbia University, 2017).  And live liver donors need only be in good general health, have had no upper abdominal surgery, have a blood type compatible with the patient, and be between 20 and 50 years of age.

Patrick’s blood type is O+, so his donor needs to be O- or O+. In the United States, 45% of the population has O type blood. That’s a lot of potential magic for Patrick!

Patrick’s insurance would cover all the medical costs for the live liver donation. The family lives in the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania area and hope to find a donor in the vicinity. Annette Collins, Patrick’s mother, can be reached at atcollins78@gmail.com if you would consider being Patrick’s donor.

Patrick and his family need a little bit of magic. And they know that somewhere there is someone with a bit of magic to spare.

You can find out more about live liver donation at https://www.americantransplantfoundation.org/about-transplant/living-donation/about-living-donation/living-liver-donation/

And you can contact Annette at atcollins78@gmail.com.

Love,Annette, Mike, Patrick, and Michael Collins

GOT FIVE MINUTES?

Got Five Minutes?

By Letitia Suk

“Take five minutes to pray for your work each day and see what happens,” was the challenge proposed by our pastor to the congregation years ago. I remember thinking something like, “Duh!” Of course, I already pray at least five minutes a day for my work...don’t I? Surely all the praying-on-the-run I did each day for all the flying curveballs added up to more than five minutes.

The nudging continued so the next morning I grabbed a timer on the way to my prayer chair, set it for five minutes and began to pray specifically for my work. Wow, that timer took a long time to ding! Challenge accepted—I was ready to see what would happen.

Like many of us, my work is multi-faceted. So I decided to give a minute to each of the five areas for my day-to-day projects. It seemed like one minute would be easier that five. I know, wimpy, right?

The first minute I gave to my coaching clients. They invested time with me to bring focus and intentionality to their lives and I wanted to give them my best work. My writing got the next minute. The current projects, the longed-for projects, my skill and wisdom in putting words on a page. Good thing the timer rang because it was easy to zone off into work mode instead of praying.

Speaking ministry was next. Events already scheduled and those I wanted to schedule. For my communication skills to grow and for lives to be changed. A lot for one minute.

My part-time chaplain work got minute #4. Patients, sensitivity, staff and overall blessing for the hospitals.

The last minute I saved for specific work stuff on that day’s agenda: marketing, blogging, networking. This time the five minutes flew by.

He was right—things happened! I felt more partnered with God in all aspects of my work. Not just that I was working for Him but with Him as I laid the concerns out each day. I saw clearer productivity and greater results.

All these years later, I still set my timer most days. My work depends on it.

Each day holds 1440 minutes...hard to claim a legitimate excuse for not finding five of them to invest in prayer over your work. You might be amazed at the return.

P.S.—The same five-minute principle works for other areas of your life too!

ABOUT

Letitia (Tish) Suk, www.letitiasuk.com, invites women to create an intentional life centered in Jesus. She blogs at hopeforthebest.org and authored Getaway with God: The Everywoman’s Guide to Personal Retreat) and Rhythms of Renewal. She is a speaker, personal retreat guide, and life coach in the Chicago area. Find Tish: https://www.facebook.com/Letitia.Suk.Author/