Field notes from the Land of Suffering | Dreaming Beneath the Spires

In which the Kindly Light of Christ can Heal our Worst Memories

Sometimes, in a dream, or sudden flashback, I remember something dark, frightening, shame-producing, upsetting or infuriating from my past.

I guess you do too. It’s part of being human.

One way to deal with uncomfortable emotions is through what Brené Brown in Daring Greatly calls numbing—surfing the internet, binge-watching TV, food, overwork, oversleeping, Facebook.

Putting your rubbish into the basement rather than composting or incinerating it is dangerous…your home will get moldy; it will affect your breathing, and your health.

Not dealing with pain is similarly dangerous.

* * *

Hey, I am no expert in this, but this is what I do. I try not to suppress the memory which has presented itself to me. Or distract myself with chocolate or surfing the web.

I sort of say, “Well, hi there, memory. Hello, old self.” For the old self in the memory may have been very tired, very frightened, very angry, very inexperienced, and unwise. She is not who I am now, but I have compassion on her, my former self.

I re-enter the situation mentally, hopefully for the last time, though I will continue to do so as long as the memory hold pain, a sting.

I see myself, scared and angry in the metaphorical darkness.

But I see more. There is someone with me, always with me.

Christ.

He extends his hands to me, and from his hands rush sparkles, stars, streamers of iridescent kindly light. The Northern Lights rush from his wounded hands. Towards me.

If I allow him to, all those wounds of the past will be healed. Completely.

* * *

The dark times felt dark, so dark.

But in fact, they are…neutral. Seeds.

I can allow them to become bitter roots in me, tumours that will spread their spider tendrils through my brain, making me bitter and mean,

Or I can allow Christ’s light to transform those experiences, those memories into something different as a bulb becomes a tulip–who would have guessed?

Christ can heal the pain, heal the scar-tissue from those memories, and he will. But more, he can change them into something else, into blogs, and stories and poems, perhaps. Into wisdom.

I have known suffering. I have been acquainted with distress. And so I understand other people who suffer in the ways I have suffered.

I have suffered. I have survived. I have learned a toughness of mind and spirit. I have gained understanding.

I have suffered. I have survived. I have learned to trust God. I believe that God can mysteriously make things work out for good, converting our disadvantages to advantages.

And so I present the pain of the past to the Kindly Light which streams from Christ’s hands, and ask him to take those experiences and change their molecular structure, make them qualitatively different, change their water into wine, and feed five thousand from the bread of those tears.

“In This World You Will Have Troubles.” Reflecting on the Purpose of Suffering

By Anita Mathias

I went into August this year with a lingering irrational sense of dread. In 2014, I found myself unaccountably tired in August after a holiday in Helsinki, and finally went in to my GP with symptoms I had had since 2009. In September, my blood tests showed severe anaemia. In October, a colonoscopy showed colon cancer. On November 25^th, I had surgery for it.

Trouble snowballed during that period. Our business was down by a third. Oops! Our beloved collie Jake developed cancer, and died on October 11. A friend said it was as if he had taken my cancer on himself! We lost our cleaner of five years on whom we had so depended. And, of course, my blog declined month by month as I had little energy to blog!

After surgery, after prayer, I felt that the way of the Spirit for me was not the recommended chemo. I declined it. The biggest risk of my life, a life-or-death one!

* * *

Then this year, everything uncannily turned around. The business is up, both month on month, and compared to this month last year. It’s the same with my blog– (though blogging is something I do because I love it, and because it is a calling). My strength is increasing, month by month. My six month test results were clear. We found new cleaners, a Brazilian couple, cheaper and quicker than the Polish cleaner we lost. We have an adorable labradoodle, Merry.

I look back on last year and think, “Oh my goodness, what was that about? That almost Job-like onslaught of trouble?”

* * *

“When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions,” Hamlet.

God suddenly arranges for us to deal with battalions of troubles–and goodness, we are so much stronger for all the muscle we’ve gained in the battle; the coping and transcending strategies we’ve learned; the hard-wrested wisdom; the insight into the human heart, and into ourselves.

* * *

Roger Bannister’s training to break the four minute mile included fell running.

You run on fells, Britain’s moor-covered hills, panting, pushing yourself to exhaustion.

And then when you run on a smooth track at four minutes a mile, you feel as if you barely are moving. You settle into deep relaxation. Time is suspended.

Bannister describes breaking the four minute mile, “I slipped in effortlessly. My legs seemed to meet no resistance, as if propelled by some unknown force. We seemed to be going so slowly! I was relaxing so much that my mind seemed almost detached from my body. There was no feeling of strain.”

* * *

“In this world, you will have troubles,” Jesus said. Everyone.

Though, of course, we don’t all bear exactly the same weight of troubles. For the woman in Africa or Asia, struggling to keep her children alive without much security, food or proximity to water, life is hassle, with sudden silver linings of joy in the full moon or sunset, the smile of a child, a filling meal, sleep at night. For the most privileged woman in this country, the Queen, with her baker’s dozen of Royal Residences, and retinue of employees and corgis, life is privilege, with hassle as a dark moon sliver–state dinners at a time other people choose, at which she eats food other people choose, and talks to guests other people choose, an ironic prisoner of privilege.

While being organised and disciplined minimises self-inflicted hassles, they are inevitable—relational tension if you live with other people, and hassles caused by other people’s greed or incompetence: marketing calls, receiving stuff not as advertised, returning it, hassles over the refund, ugh.

* * *

All the hustle and hassle builds muscle, builds character, builds endurance; we run on the fells, so to speak, on the beaches, on the mountains. The difficult thing we dreaded, trouble, challenge, hassle, boredom, being way out of our comfort zone, now feels normal, like running a four minute mile on a smooth track felt almost effortless for Roger Bannister who trained on fells and mountains.

The troubles of life ironically equip us for doing the work we are called to do without being crushed by its hassles. It equips us to fulfil the dream God has placed in our hearts.

Pinpricks of hassle are inoculations, vaccinations, preparation. The small and daily troubles of life prepare us to stand in the time of real troubles, the troubles that Jesus tells us are inextricable from living, the troubles that are inextricable from chasing our dream.

In that day of big trouble, we will stand strong, we will endure triumphantly, we who have so often inoculated ourselves by enduring small trials, small sufferings, small disciplines… And what’s more, we will be able to be a blessing to others.

Tweetables

Reflecting on God’s purpose when we endure the battalions of troubles Jesus promised us. NEW from @anitamathias1

Hassles are like vaccinations, helping us to stand strong, and endure life’s inevitable troubles. NEW from @anitamathias1

Enduring hardship cheerfully gives us the grit to fulfil the dream God has placed in our hearts NEW from @anitamathias1

On Cancer, Suffering, and the Cloud of Unknowing

By Anita Mathias

My father once read me a terrifying Greek myth about the giant Procrustes. Everyone who visited Procrustes fit perfectly into his bed.

When a guest was too tall, he cut their legs off. When they were too short, he “stretched” them till they fit.

It was a one-size-fits-all bed.

* * *

Procrustean theology adjusts reality, stretches or shrinks it, until it matches one’s preconceptions.

It is particularly applied to suffering. “Everything works out for good,” Romans 8.28, people sometimes glibly say to those who are suffering.

Voltaire satirises this belief in Candide, which I read in my twenties. Candide endures an improbable series of terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad adventures with his tutor Dr. Pangloss who believes that “all is for the best in this best of all possible worlds” Tout est pour le mieux dans le meilleur des mondes. (Blithe optimism is finally battered out of them. Their eventual resolution would have pleased the author of Ecclesiastes. “We must cultivate our garden.”)

In a world in which Christians are reportedly beheaded by ISIS if they do not convert, and believers die from starvation or persecution, I cannot blithely say, “Everything works out for good.”

I would say instead, “God can make anything work out for good, because God is infinitely creative.”

* * *

Keats (once my favourite poet, now displaced by Gerald Manley Hopkins) praises “negative capability,” the capacity of tolerating “uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.”

Negative capability does not come naturally to me. I prefer things clear and simple. Come on, I joined Mother Teresa to become a nun aged 17, having finished school early. At Mother Teresa’s, life was clear and simple. You were told what to think, what God’s will was (obeying your superiors, and the rule) and wasn’t; what was truth and what wasn’t.

Ah, freedom from the responsibility to think. Until one started questioning the rules, and discovered that if you agreed with their wisdom and necessity, you couldn’t keep them.

(That is always the problem with the law.)

* * *

When, three weeks ago, I walked in alone out of the sunshine to the shadowy sixth floor Day Surgery Unit at the Churchill Hospital, it was like walking into Hades. I knew I would be wheeled out, unconscious. I considered running away, but the only alternative to surgery was aggressive chemotherapy or death, and the surgeon said surgery was the best alternative.

And anyway, I didn’t have the strength to run which sort of settled the question.

* * *

And now I live in negative capability, dwell in “uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.”

“Behind a frowning providence/ He hides a smiling face.” Does he really? I have thought as I turned over in bed in extreme pain from the surgical incision, unable to concentrate on reading or writing.

I thought of Milton. All he wanted to do from his teens onward was write something beautiful. He went blind in his forties, unable to write unless his sullen daughters transcribed his words

And that one Talent which is death to hide,

Lodg’d with me, useless, though my Soul more bent

To serve therewith my Maker

Why did God let me develop a malignant polyp? I don’t know.

Will good come out of all these days in hospitals and nights in pain? I don’t know, though, of course, such an intense, intense experience stretches and changes you. It has forced me to learn to think positively to keep my spirits and energy high, and to pray, pray, pray, particularly because I am often too weak to do anything else.

Will good come out of my cancer diagnosis? I don’t know, though I expect so.

Will I die? Eventually, yes, though probably not of cancer, and not just yet.

And so I remain in negative capability, an eagle on the cliff waiting for the storm to pass, with more questions than answers, lingering in uncertainties, difficulty, doubt without any irritable reaching after fact or reason.

* * *

I love the Hegelian dialectic of the Psalms, their movement from unhappiness to acceptance to peace.

Why are you sad, oh my soul? David asks (Ps 43).

My soul was sad because I have had a malignant tumour.

My soul was sad because my surgical wound is infected

My soul was sad because I am physically tired.

My soul was sad because even my intellectual energy is limited.

My soul was sad because I do not know if the cancer has gone for good, though the doctors say that, as far as they know, they have removed it all.

My soul was sad because of this great interruption.

My soul was sad because I put off going in for a digital rectal exam and now I have had fifty shades of pain—surgical incisions and their infections; canulas, catheter removal, drainage tube removal, injected rectal dye for CT scans, daily anti-DVT injections, blood work, wound dressings…

* * *

David had many more reasons to be sad—hunger, thirst, betrayal, a bloodthirsty king, an army hunting him, parents who did not esteem him.

He listed the reasons he was sad, and then by an act of intellect and character decided to snap out of it

Put your hope in God,
for I will yet praise him,
my Saviour and my God.

And so I will. And so I have.

I will no longer be sad because I am a different person now than I was.

I will no longer be sad because I have a 60% chance of being alive in 5 years (70% if I take preventative chemo) and, oh, will I use those years well!

I will no longer be sad because there is nothing like the presence of death on the horizon to make you feel fully alive and joyful.

I will no longer be sad because having to make five year plans will ensure I use my time well

I am no longer sad because…well, I am just not. I have experienced peace, and joy and the presence of God over this month of being very tired indeed. (Believe it or not!)

* * *

When I went to boarding school, aged nine, St. Mary’s Convent, Nainital in the Himalayas, then run by German and British missionary nuns, I was dismayed to find breakfast was buttered white bread and either fruit or egg.

The only way one could get hot buttered toast sprinkled with sugar was to be sick and sent to the infirmary. I shocked everyone by saying I wanted to get sick.

Well, I was sick just once in eight years, aged 12, and on that occasion I refused to go to the infirmary.

I kept chanting, “I am as fit as a fiddle. I am as fit as a fiddle,” until Sister Josephine, my Irish class teacher said, “If I hear you say that once again, I will smack you.”

When she calmed down, she realised I was refusing because she read us a chapter from The Hound of the Baskervilles on the last half hour of every Friday, and I did not want to miss it.

So she promised to come to the infirmary and read it to me and I went.

* * *

The middle of The Hound of the Baskervilles is very exciting. The phantom Hound of the Baskervilles, with menacing gleaming eyes haunts Dartmoor. It is the curse of the Baskervilles.

At the end, all is revealed, it was human greed, cunning and villainy, nothing spectral or supernatural.

Even if we are Sherlock, we cannot work out what’s going on when we are in the middle of the plot.

But you know, I believe it will be a good story, because I truly believe that God loves me, and that he is a very good writer indeed.

God’s weaving, God’s weaving my suffering into something beautiful, but I am in the middle of the story, and I cannot understand what he is doing.

But, you know, I trust him anyway.

God Saw the Light was Good, but He Left Darkness Too

By Anita Mathias

In the beginning…

God’s first recorded words in the Bible are “Let there be light.” And there was light. And God saw that the light was good. (Genesis 1:4)

But he left darkness too.

And so it shall ever be. On June 21, we have 16 hours 41 minutes of light in Oxford, England. But we also have 7 hours 19 minutes of darkness. On December 22, however, we have 16 hours 18 minutes of darkness, but we still have 7 hours 42 minutes of daylight.

Some darkness on the sunniest day; some sunshine on the darkest day.

And so it always is, throughout our lives.

John drapes himself on us, heart flooded with love. On the other side, there’s Judas, serpent-heart despite his kiss. But eleven apostles out of twelve proved true. That is life too, and life is good.

* * *

Me, I am still living in summer, tasting the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. I am healthy enough; my family is healthy. My children are doing well, academically, socially and spiritually, and are happy. We are paying our bills to date. I am enjoying my work. I am happy. I am happy.

But I am also allowing myself to slow down, and feel the sadness that God left in the beginning.

It has been an intense month. Jake, our eleven year old border collie, had a vast growth in his abdomen, and inoperable tumours in his liver which makes it uncomfortable to eat. So he stopped. How dreadful to watch a dog waste away. Finally, he could no longer walk, and we put him to sleep yesterday. The vet said it was definitely the right thing to do.

I have been feeling tired, and my blood work showed severe anaemia. So I had a colonoscopy, which showed a polyp. I am hoping for minimal surgery…but I must walk on the waters,, holding Jesus’ hand through that.

We have lost our wonderful cleaner, which has thrown us. He helped with everything—housesitting, chauffeuring kids, picking up purchases, garden work, painting, car cleaning, whatever needed to be done. An almost irreplaceable Man Friday.

Financially, we are still recovering from the burglary in February, of our car and electronics etc. We were underinsured, and so we have to put our nose to the grindstone to replace what we had to “borrow” from savings (earmarked for other bills) so as to replace the stolen things.

Love’s like a hurricane, and I am a tree
Bending beneath the weight of His wind and mercy, as John Mark Macmillan writes.

Couldn’t God have prevented all these griefs and hassles? I think, crossly.

* * *

In the Old Testament Book of Job, Job lost everything– children, wealth, health and the respect of his friends.

“Does it please you to oppress me?” he asks God (Job 10:3).

His friends insist that Job must have secretly sinned to deserve so much suffering, that he was under the Almighty’s curse—our intuitive (though unspoken) response to other people’s suffering

But Job insists he is guilty of no spectacular secret sin, “Let the Almighty answer me,” he demands (Job 31:35).

And God does. In the infuriating way only the Almighty can get away with, he answers Job in a series of questions.

“Who laid the earth’s cornerstone

While the morning stars sang together

And all the angels shouted for joy?

“Have you entered the storehouses of the snow?”

“Can you bind the beautiful Pleaides?

Can you bring forth the constellations in their seasons?

Do you give his horse his strength

Who at the blast of the trumpets snorts, “Aha.”

God has put together this vast cosmos of sea and stars and snow, of lightning and lions and leviathans, ostriches, ospreys and eagles. Job, a very minor character in the complex epic of the universe, does not have the perspective to contend with him, God suggests.

God exists on another plane altogether, able to see the end from the beginning, to contain all things in his mind, to see the whole complex canvas of human existence at a single glance, and the glorious end of each contorted plot twist in our lives. While Job sees but one page, God sees the entire plot.

“Woe to those who quarrel with their Maker,
Does the clay say to the potter,
‘What are you making?’ the prophet Isaiah writes.

God is God. He chooses the plot of our lives, chooses the role we are to play in the cosmic drama. It is our task to play it well.

Job repents of his turbulent questions.

“Surely I spoke of things I did not understand,

things too wonderful for me to know.

My ears had heard of you,

But now my eyes have seen you.

Therefore I repent.”

And Job’s acceptance turns things around. “The Lord made him prosperous again, and gave him twice as much as he had before.” (Job 42:10)

* * *

Darkness, trouble, hassle is a fact of life, seven hours of darkness in our brightest day. “In this world, you will have trouble,” were among Jesus’s last words, though he goes on to say, “But be of good cheer. I have overcome the world.”

When God created a pristine world that he could have shaped any way, he deliberately left a bit of darkness too.

Why?

For the same reason a story-teller leaves a bit of darkness in his stories perhaps. It forces the story to a better, more beautiful, more interesting conclusion. Cinderella had to sleep among the cinders; Sleeping Beauty had to prick her thumb on the spindle; the shard of ice had to enter Kay’s heart for us to have a story.

Artists instinctively know that they must frame brightness with darkness. Possibly God like Van Gogh found as much beauty in a starry night as a sunrise.

Winter strengthens the root systems of trees, sending them delving deep for nourishment. Without it, bulbs would not burst into blossom. Eternal summer can take a toll on mental health; in Greenland suicides are more common in summer. Seasonal Affective Disorder strikes in the summer as well as in winter.

If we had eternal daylight, eternal summer, unblemished happiness, we would not value them quite as much. A period of just-enough makes us appreciate how money can cushion and enrich life; a period of loneliness makes friendship precious; a period of failure sweetens success.

***

God left darkness and winter as facts of life. So what do we do when life does not go the way we want it to?

We fling up our hands and accept it, light as well as darkness, good as well as evil, trusting the one who sends both, light that shines in winter, the selah of darkness in summer.

* * *

We accept it, with thankfulness that our world with all its darkness is still under God’s protection.

The world tilts towards good as it tilts towards the sun.

Because, as we are told in the second line of Genesis, while all the world was darkness, the spirit of God still hovered over the water.

And so we have hope.

I am in a situation of chaos, stress and high emotion, and over me the Spirit hovers.

My dog is dying, and I am overwhelmed with sadness watching him, and over me the spirit hovers.

I want my anaemia to go and that polyp to be benign, and over me the spirit hovers.

Life will bring me light and goodness and joy, but if it presents challenges, I know this for sure: Over me the spirit hovers, always hovers.

* * *

And so I can face the future. And so I can smile.

Because as Gerard Manley Hopkins says,

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out
It gathers to a greatness,

Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; Bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell:

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

Ah the Spirit’s warm breast, his bright wings. So much love surrounding us, whether we feel it or not.

And so as John Mark Macmillan continues,

Then all of a sudden,
I am unaware of these afflictions eclipsed by glory

And I realize just how beautiful you are and how great your affections are for me.

And I really do believe, what Paul wrote to the Romans: In all things God works for the good of those who love him (Romans 8:28) Because he is super-duper powerful and creative, and so he can. Because he is good, and so he will.

And so I say with Julian of Norwich, “All will be well, all will be well, all manner of things will be well,” because the Holy Spirit broods over us, strengthening us, filling us with joy. He swoops down in light and joy, but something has his “dark descending” as Gerard Manley Hopkins puts it, continuing, surprisingly, ‘And most is merciful then.”

~~~~

Tweetables—

God saw that light was good, but he left the darkness too. Why? From @anitamathias1

Couldn’t God have prevented all these griefs and hassles? I think, crossly. From @anitamathias1

Suffering can force a story to a better, more beautiful, more interesting conclusion. From @anitamathias1

Possibly God, like Van Gogh, found as much beauty in a starry night as a sunrise. From @anitamathias1

Over to you

Have you seen the light shine in the darkness?

Have you experienced the brooding comfort of the Holy Spirit in the midst of the darkness?

This post is kindly sponsored by How to up your health game.

When, For a Season, God Himself Blocks You

By Anita Mathias

You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good, to save many lives,” Joseph quietly tells his brothers. (Genesis 50:20)

Oh they did; they sure did, first throwing him into a disused well, then uncaringly selling him on for thirty shekels of silver to the Ishmaelites, not caring what became of him.

And what came out of his experience of betrayal, slavery, false accusation, and imprisonment was elevation—promotion—influence–the ability to save many lives.

* * *

I used to feel stressed and a bit hopeless if I had enemies, if I thought there were people with inveterate animosity, jealousy, competitiveness, or malice towards me, who would block me, who might slander me. The thought of such people still does not make my heart sing!

But they are a fact of life. “Some are jealous of your face. Some are jealous of your lace. And some will be jealous of your grace,” as RT Kendall writes in The Anointing.

However, Shakespeare’s young Henry V puts it well, “We are in God’s hands, brothers, not in theirs.”

I sigh if I realize someone is reflexively blocking me or my ideas, putting in a bad word for me, but I am not afraid.

I do not fear them.

Because there are always two stories going on in our lives: the plot we see, and the story God is still writing. There is the story people think they are forcing onto your life–in which you may miss the chance to lead, speak, get the prize, the invitation, because someone feels threatened by you, is jealous of you, or just plain dislikes you.

Often you are unaware of these machinations, and that’s best. When you do know, you wring your hands with a sense of loss.

But all is not lost.

You were not meant to lead at that time. You were meant to quietly follow the One. You were not meant to speak at that time. You were meant to listen.

Sure, it will take you longer to achieve your heart’s desire. The Spirit is taking you on the scenic route. You are in the desert, where all voices are silent, but the voice of God; where is no trophy but his companionship; no wine but his spirit; where your progress is not measurable, and, anyway, there’s no one to praise it.

Why, even your prayers aren’t working. Every avenue of showing off is blocked.

Welcome to the desert, fellow pilgrim, where God himself blocks you.

* * *

You say: “See here, God, I have wasted my life. Look at me, mid-life and achievement-poor. Remember, God, those years I was promising; remember that award for a writer of unusual promise? Why I was in my twenties then. The snazzy university, the snazzy prizes, the early publications, the blushing peach down of promise, remember?

Well, I’ve failed, and you’ve failed me; we’ve failed together, you and I.

Yeah, you really haven’t managed my life too well, Lord, and neither have I. Let’s just go eat some worms.

My twenties are over, my thirties, my… Let’s just say “my hasting days fly on with full career, but my summer little bud or blossom showeth.”

How can you make up to me, God for the years when I wanted to build much, but instead built little?

You have behaved rather badly towards me, my God, my friend. You have let me down. You are my friend, and so I forgive you, but I am sad about this. I am.

But if I love anyone, I love you. So yes, I will follow you because, you’ve sure ruined my appetite for following other paths of glory.

I believe you can restore the years the locusts have eaten. The prophet Joel said so, and Christians have attested to it. But I don’t see how. Jesus, let’s be honest here, I sometimes feel as if nothing can compensate me for those wasted years, the years in Joseph’s dungeon.

I really do.

Though they were what you gave me, and I accept them because I love and trust you. I accept them from your hands in trust as I accept the full years of your goodness.

* * *

And you, Lord, reply:

“Child, child, friend, beloved, Anita, what you wanted was a lesser good, and so I withheld it.

You saw the success of your writer friends—their whirl of book readings, teaching gigs, speaking gigs, lectures, prizes, prolific writing, book contracts, money, fame, fascinating friends, travel. All the trappings of a career. And you wanted it too.

And I knew you wanted it.

But I also knew you better than you knew yourself. Don’t make that face. I truly do.

You were not ready for the busyness of travel, deadlines, speaking, teaching, crises, midnight oil.

Fame and glory–what made you think it would make you happy? I knew it would not. It would not. Rushing to planes, trains and automobiles has never made you happy. Rush has never makes you happy, or busyness, or deadlines. You love quiet unscheduled days at home, or in your garden.

But I promise you this: You will write the books you want to write. You will not die before your pen has gleaned your teeming brain.

All the things you deeply love and want to explore and preserve in words, I will ensure you explore and preserve them,

All the things I kept from you, I kept not for your harm, but that you might find it in my arms.

You are sad that success came later than you wanted it, but trust me.

The bright lights of the big cities would have obscured me.

The noise would have silenced my whisper.

A hammer had to be taken to all those idols.

There had to be a gotterdamerung, a ragnarok. You wanted to be Ms. Famous Writer, to dazzle the world with your creativity. You wanted fame, glory, money, success, as you saw your friends get it.

I gave you quietness, I wooed you to the desert, and there I showed you my love.

You had but one shot at investing in your children. I slowed down your career so you could teach them all you had to teach them. And could your marriage have withstood the rush in peace, not pieces? Did you want to be Ms. Divorced Famous Writer? You did not.

You have reached mid life with a full heart and full spirit, into which I have poured and poured and poured myself and my words. And now it is time to write.

* * *

“Oh God, could you not have poured both? Both yourself and the other things I wanted?”

“But then there would not have been room for me. I had to pry your fingers from other things, so they would clasp me. Had to silence other sounds, so you could hear me.

I gave you not what you thought you wanted, but what you love, quiet and peace and silence. And in the quietness of your country garden, I shaped you, I formed you, I made you into a woman of integrity, a woman aligned with me, a woman I can trust.

You sometimes feel you’ve wasted your life.

But child, you’ve given your life to me. It’s now my story, not yours. I am the author, not you.

Accept the plot twist I chose. Forgive me, as I forgive you. It was not time before. It’s time now. It’s time.

* * *

Lord, I accept the plot you chose. I accept my years in the wilderness. I accept your judgement that they were necessary. I forgive you.

And I will go forward in joy, in alignment with you, your joy filling my heart.

* * *

Open your hands wide, and I will fill them. Your heart has been reformed in the silent years.

Now I know, and you know, that while your hands are full of my blessings, your eyes will be on me and your heart will be full of me.

* * *

Tweetables

Welcome to the desert, fellow pilgrim, where God himself blocks you. From @anitamathias1

You are in the desert, where all voices are silent, but the voice of God. From @anitamathias1

There are always two stories going on in our lives, the story we perceive, and the story God is still writing From @anitamathias1

When God stills all the noise, and you say “See here, God. I have wasted my life.” From @anitamathias1

Questions

Have you experienced a period of great silence? Have you experienced God more deeply as a result?

Image Credit

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The Secret History of Hagar: When God Invisibly Comforts the Oppressed

By Anita Mathias

Image: Tissot, Hagar and the Angel in the Desert

Hagar, Egyptian maidservant of Sarah, has a hard life. Impregnated, basically raped by Abraham, she is bullied and persecuted by a jealous Sarah—so much so that probable death in the desert feels preferable. (Genesis 16)

And in the desert, the runaway slave, with only the clothes on her back, sees the Lord.

And she returns to her mistress, who is “very wealthy in silver and gold, sheep and cattle and male and female donkeys, menservants and maidservants and camels.”

The rich get richer; the poor get poorer. It sure seems as if Sarah has won and Hagar has lost, doesn’t it? Perhaps.

Perhaps not.

* * *

It is Hagar, not Sarah who sees “the Lord who sees me.” It is Hagar He advises. Hagar is promised not only life, but descendants too many to count. She goes back to Sarah, under the Lord’s protection, bearing his promises.

And Sarah knows nothing of this. Her maidservant has returned, that’s all she knows.

“What is essential is invisible to the eye,” Antoine St-Exupery wrote.

Our secret life with the Lord determines our happiness, and the course of our lives. It is, however, invisible.

* * *

I love the Bible, and I love teaching it. Last year, as I led a Bible study I said, “Ask and you shall receive,” “Give and it shall be given you,” nothing radical or reactionary, just word for word from the Sermon on the Mount. An academic in my group challenged me, “You say that because you live in the West. What about the starving people in Africa?”

And I asked, “Do you think everything Jesus said would not be as true and as valid in Africa as in Oxford, England?”

And an older, wiser woman, who has been to Africa on mission, numerous times, said, “Our African brothers are SO generous, and they have nothing.”

I am silent.

So are the righteous forsaken in Africa?

* * *

I am convinced that the same Gospel, the same promises are true for the world’s poorest as well as the world’s richest, but I am silent, because unlike Heidi Baker, who knows from experience that the same Gospel which is true in Southern California is true in Mozambique, I have not yet worked with the poorest people in Africa (though I have worked with the very poorest in India, with Mother Teresa, full time for 14 months, and hung out a little with the poor in Cambodia).

Hagar, the loser, ran away and came back starving. That’s what Sarah might have thought.

But the truth was that Hagar had been comforted by the pre-incarnate Christ himself, had received his promises, had returned at his command, and under his secret service protection.

We cannot say the Gospel does not work for the poorest because we do not know their secret encounters with God, the way he comforts him, the tenderness with which he looks at them, what he promises them in this life, or beyond. Certainly the way Christ looked at Hagar was so profoundly moving that that became her name for God—“ Lahai Roi. You are the one who sees me.” She is content to return to slavery and abuse because “I have now seen the One who sees me.”

God sees. God knows. At a difficult patch in my thirties, I was mentored by Lolly Dunlap. Discussing something difficult she went through, or I was currently going through, she would say, “God sees. God knows.” And sometimes, as it was with Hagar, that is enough. We are seen by the One who sees us. He has things in hand. He will bring about a kind of justice. The promises to Hagar mirror the promises to Abraham, “I will so increase your descendants that they will be too numerous to count,” (Gen 16:10).

* * *

The apparently forsaken Hagar has seen God, received divine consolation and a divine promise. She returned to abuse, strong in herself. Her eyes had seen God, and were watching God.

It comforts me. There is so much suffering in the world about which I can do little or nothing, so many stranded starfish on the beaches, gasping for the ocean.

Christ comforts us in our afflictions, and sometimes most deeply in our afflictions,

Father and Fondler of Heart Thou has Wrung

Hast thy dark descending and most are merciful then,

Gerard Manley Hopkins writes.

And, perhaps, most probably, just as he has his dark descending of comfort and mercy to Hagar, and to us, so too he descends to all the wretched of the earth.

* * *

At an Oxford party last week, I was talking to a World Vision Jerusalem worker, and mentioned I had been to Israel during the intifada in 1990. He said, “Oh, that was the easy time. The treatment of the Palestinians by the Israelis is profoundly disturbing now. It’s very cruel.” He described it. I was in shock, in tears, in the middle of that 60^th birthday party.

Can I do anything about it? Well, yes, a little because I know Someone who can. Lahai Roi, the God who sees: Please comfort those children of Ishmael.

Other situations sadden and disturb me. The treatment of the prisoners in Guantanamo Bay, some of whom have been waterboarded 183 times in one month, and put into inhumane and humiliating stress positions for prolonged hours.

Those in North Korean prisons

The women flogged under Sharia law.

The Indian and Filipina domestic workers in the Gulf, who have their passports confiscated, work long hours, are physically and sexually abused, and are often not paid.

Bonded labourers in India whose debts are transferred from generation to generation at exorbitant interest.

Slaves in Mali or restaveks in Haiti among the 21 million slaves in the world.

The Afghani single women and widows forbidden to work by the Taliban who become almost catatonic in their depression.

Lahai Roi, God who sees, comfort them. Intervene.

While we do need to share our money wisely, (the Biblical suggestion of sharing 10% with priest, widows, orphans and aliens is a good one) and raise awareness, and pray, it is some comfort to me that not a sparrow falls but his eye is on it. Not a human suffers, but his eye is on them. And how he comforts them, what he whispers to them, what promises he makes to them, we do not know.

* * *

Hagar was neither a Christian nor a Jew, but her plight did not escape the eyes of the benevolent one who saw her. She went back to slavery and abuse apparently unaided, but, in fact, having had a secret encounter, received secret comfort and bearing a secret promise.

And the same God looks on the 21 million languishing in slavery, with the same blazing eyes of love and comfort. He sees. Perhaps he speaks to them in their hearts…

And so we commend the Hagars of this world to his protection, because we cannot do a whole lot more, because as we trust him in our afflictions, we must trust him in theirs, and pray that he will wipe every tear from their eyes, in this world, and in the world to come.

Amen.

Sheridan Voysey’s “Resurrection Year”: A Book Review

By Anita Mathias

On Broken Hearts, Dashed Dreams and Resurrection Years

Last June, Sheridan and Merryn Voysey told us their story over dinner—ten years of infertility, IVF, and stalemated adoption (ten years which coincided with the success of Sheridan’s radio programme in Sydney) after which they settled in Oxford, seeking resurrection.

I’ve enjoyed reading Sheridan’s new book Resurrection Year. A few reflections:

1 Never define yourself by your “great sadness.” Maintain an attitude of gratitude.

Oh, for own healing, we need to keep our palms open to God, accept what he gives, and let him take what he takes. As cheerfully as we can manage!

One of Voysey’s goals in writing this book is to encourage people not to define themselves by their tragedies, for every life has much sunshine too.

2 Travel helps in the healing of the heart

Merryn Voysey’s dream had been a husband and kids. When the latter was denied her, she decides on “a consolation prize:” “Live overseas. Have an adventure.”

As an inveterate traveller, I know travel helps to heal the heart, restoring perspective. I travelled to Venice and Florence in 1998, a magical trip after a messy miscarriage with prolonged haemorrhaging which left me heart-broken and exhausted, exotically fainting! And came back with renewed physical and creative energy, a mind full of new ideas and a heart healed by distraction and beauty. So much beauty!

I was bored and stuck in Williamsburg where we lived for 12 years. When the chance came to move to England, I leapt at it, just to live in a stimulating place, not even caring about whether we’d be better or worse off. (And by the time we factored in private school, and dream houses, we were far poorer)

I love Mark Batterson’s formulation in The Circle Maker: Change of Pace + Change of Place= Change of Perspective.

Interestingly, the Voyseys’ path of healing also included a total change of scene. Sheridan left his radio show. They travel to L’Abri in Switzerland, founded by Francis Schaeffer, trying to find an answer to Merryn’s theological question, “Is God a meanie?”

Reading Greg Boyd’s Is God to Blame? they conclude that (while God is ultimately sovereign–my interpolation, not Boyd’s view) many factors decide whether prayer is answered: “God’s free will, human free will, angelic and demonic free will, the faith of the person praying AND the person prayed for, the number of people praying, how persistent the prayer is, the number and strength of spirits battling in the unseen world and the presence of sin.”

* * *

The Voysey’s resurrection year was partly inspired by Adrian Plass who advises them. “New beginnings follow death, as resurrection follows crucifixion.”

A river must flow. If you are blocked in one direction, see why God has permitted the blockage, and what you are now to do. Either override the blockage, or accept it, and flow in another direction.

A change of scene, moving to another country, is a first world solution, and the Voyseys (and I) live in the first world, and it has apparently worked well for them, as for us.

However, if a massive uprooting after sorrow is not financially or practically possible: Be comforted. There is great value in rootedness. Benedictines and Trappists add a fourth vow: stability, a commitment to a particular community, in a particular place. In rootedness and commitment one learns to love well, to love people one has known for years, and to know and love the anchoring land.

3 Seek the silver lining, but more, seek how your suffering can bless other.

The Voyseys begin to see some benefits to childlessness: “less financial pressures without little mouths to feed,” “flexibility to travel without thinking of schooling,” “write books” “have an international radio show.”

However, Adrian Plass advises them to move from acceptance and seeking silver linings to what Jesus did at the crucifixion: “an event so barbaric that one could not put a positive spin on it.”

Instead of trying to find “an up-side,” Jesus blessed people throughout his crucifixion. He was “positively crucified.”

He made his crucifixion bloom, ministering to his mother; the good thief (“Today you will be with me in paradise”), the mockers, (“Father, forgive them”), the centurion, converted by his grace under pressure, and to us, who have been forgiven by his sin.

Seek whom you can bless through this experience, Plass seems to be advising them, so that the process of resurrection begun in their trips to L’Abri and Oxford might bloom into blessing for many more people than they might ever have imagined.

Amen!

Sheridan blogs at sheridanvoysey.com.

Experiencing God Through an Experience of Spiritual Abuse

By Anita Mathias

Cleopas and his friend walk to Emmaus. They had hoped that Jesus was going to redeem Israel; instead he was ignominiously crucified.

So they walk, their faces downcast, while all along, the risen Christ walks beside them.

* * *

God comes in many guises, in a bush which burns and is not consumed. Jacob marvels, “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I was not aware of it.”

And when are we most unaware of the one walking beside us?

When he comes in the guise of suffering! We cannot see why he need weave this plot element into the story of our lives; we cannot see how he could bear to do such a thing.

* * *

I was listening to Luke 24, the disciples not recognizing Jesus on the road to Emmaus, on my iPhone as I walked today in the rain and mud. I was almost in tears as I confessed and apologized to God for not having seen his hand at a difficult juncture of my life, and instead having been filled with bitterness, unforgiveness, self-pity, anger, and the longing to see justice down visited on those who had harmed me.

* * *

I have led small groups, mainly women’s small groups over the last 11 years. During one of these, I and my co-leader (who was a good friend then) found co-leading difficult. She wanted more Spirit-led Charismatic stuff, which I then thought flaky, though I would be more open to it now. I wanted more of the Word, which she thought was boring!

And so, possibly to tip the balance her way, my co-leader asked another woman, an African immigrant, to join the leadership. Three leaders is a crowd. I’d read of the phenomenon of immigrants being competitive and jealous of each other; now I experienced it.

And here’s something else I’ve observed in churches. The smaller and less significant the prize—in this case, leading a small group of women for two hours a week—the more bitterly people can contend for it.

Lesson One: I resolved because of that experience: Never contend for church status. If I feel anonymous, I will seek to be known in the way Jesus suggested–that the greatest will be those who serve. I will seek out those I can be a blessing to, and be a blessing, quietly, privately, one on one.

* * *

This was four years ago, we were all in our mid-forties, and yet, there was childishness and pettiness, telling tales, forwarding private emails to the Vicar’s wife, who annoyingly shared a name with me. The new co-leader fabricated an account of a conversation with me. I was shocked then, as I would be today, though less so.

Yeah, Lesson 2. Be shock-proof in church. Tragically, Christians are capable of behaving as badly as non-Christians. Capable of contending for power, prominence and status. And in a toxic church, they will drop those who are out of favour and so can’t help them upwards; they will toady up to those on the way “up”.

When, after leading large Bible studies, like one for young mums, I fell out with the vicar’s wife, I suddenly became anonymous to the ecclesiastical social climbers. People who had enthusiastically smiled and cooed at me now passed by me in church and mysteriously didn’t see me. They unfriended me on Facebook!

(And, of course, in the long run, how fortunate to be shot of such people!)

* * *

The vicar’s wife had recently been asked to step down from the leadership of an international prayer ministry, the Lydia Fellowship. The tendency of those who have suffered from perceived abuse and injustice to inflict this on others has been well-documented.

Soon after that (an ego-boosting muscle-flexing??), several of the staff were dismissed. The parish vicar’s wife, who had an international speaking ministry, was asked not to speak in church because she made the vicar’s wife feel threatened (and she was honest enough to confess this). The parish vicar got his contract terminated. Threatened legal action; got a large payout from people’s tithes.

Then this woman, untrained, unqualified, and not the brightest spark either, started on small group leaders. Being the vicar’s wife made her pretty much unaccountable. What could we do? Complain to the henpecked vicar about his wife who publicly described herself as “a rhino?”

She asked a good friend of mine to step down from another group that she had led, and I had done the teaching for. This caused serious health consequences for my friend, then pregnant, who, in an additional twist of cruelty, was told not to attend the group she had been leading. “What have I done wrong?” my friend asked. “Oh, the Holy Spirit told me to do this,” the vicar’s wife answered airily.

Moral: Churches, beware of giving too much power to your leader’s spouse. Unless you want ultimate unaccountability, that is.

Finally, when the tension, difference of opinion and tale bearing in the group I was leading got too much, I resigned. After writing a caustic hurtful email detailing the reasons why.

And then, in a conversation full of cruel personal criticism of me, I too was asked not to go to the group I had led, on the grounds that it might unsettle them. And then, her trademark, “Don’t tell anyone.”

I was appalled. This was an injustice I found it hard to cope with—that someone could one moment be the leader of a group, and then not be permitted to attend it.

She wouldn’t allow me to go to another group too. She had bitterly said, “Everyone, almost without exception, said you were brilliant” of the last Bible study I’d led. It’s possible she just didn’t want other women around who were gifted in the areas she imagined herself gifted in. Who knows the contortions of the heart.

And so for the last three years in that church I did not attend a women’s group. But I was newish in town. I hadn’t yet built up extensive social networks. So those years were a difficult desert experience for me.

Resolution Three—The abused become abusers unless they make a conscious decision not to. I decided then that I myself would never exclude or reject people from any group I lead. I later lead a Bible-study (in another church) with people who’ve been Christians for a couple of decades or more, and one non-Christian with loads of questions. I normally would have suggested that she find another group, but did not do so.

* * *

At a point of difficulty, I asked the associate vicar for advice and he helped me with overflowing kindness and wisdom.

And when he was fired—he was among the 15-20 staff, many of them ordained, this couple had let go over six years, if there was any dissension and they were not putty– I wrote a blog in support of him, which had 1500 page views within days, led the PCC (equivalent to elders, for non-Anglicans) to circulate a letter of protest which was widely signed by staff, lay leaders and parishioners.

And I wrote a series of satire on a paranoid, controlling, power-hungry, almost wicked style of church leadership, based on what I observed called “The Screwtape Lectures.” They had hundreds of views within hours.

And then….

Ooh, I have never lived in a police state, but this was my closest experience of persecution.

A woman kept calling and emailing me almost daily to find out what was on my heart. She succeeded. Reported it to the Rector.

The Rector arrived at my house with a witness to get me to take down the blogs. (He succeeded).

I was in a women’s prayer group. He got two of them, one of whom he had a financial hold on because he paid her husband to be a Missioner (though what he did was unclear) to say they couldn’t pray with me because it may get on my blog. One cried as she said this. She later said that the rector had instructed them to say this, and was waiting at her house to hear how the meeting went.

He wouldn’t let me or my children go on a church short-term missions trip to Mozambique to work with Heidi Baker.

The wife wouldn’t let me go to a women’s group.

When I wanted to go to on the church retreat, the Rector reminded me of how my children had been blessed at the last one, and wanted permission to stand up and tell the church I had repented of these blogs which had been so widely read.

He asked me to sign a letter and asked me to submit to him AND to his wife, unordained, untrained, and inexperienced if I wanted to stay in the church. Submit to a couple I lacked respect for? My allegiance was to Christ, not to that paranoid and power-hungry duo.

They were obviously trying to isolate me so that I would have no influence, and would eventually leave.

I did. They won.

And then I laughed.

Was that what they entered ministry for—to harass people so that they did to come to their church to listen to their sermons or give to the church?

The events to do with the associate vicar’s firing led over a hundred people to leave the church, led to a serious drop in income, and then a “staff redundancy program” a pretext for firing those who did not support him over the last crisis. Once he got rid of them, the hiring started again.

Should I keep this story of spiritual abuse secret? But what could be gained by that? Stories exist to be told. We learn from other people’s stories, as they learn from ours.

Why blog? As my friend Lesley says, It’s cheaper than therapy!! The act of story-telling is therapeutic—but there should be an expiry date. I have not told this story before in writing. I will now—largely for therapy, to see it clearly in the telling and sharing.

Because I need to tell it. But then, it’s “an expired story.” Told out. Torn up. And I will move on.

And what if telling it makes my spiritual abuser look bad? Well, shielding abusers perpetuates abuse. One secret you should never keep is abuse you’ve experienced. As Ann Lamott pithily put it, You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should’ve behaved better!

* * *

So I then had a desert experience.

Chuck Swindoll says that our life is ten percent what happens to us, and 90 % our attitude to it. The way we react to it.

And I, alas, felt bitter. I was full of self-pity. I so wanted to see justice done to those who had lied about me, who had excluded me, to the woman who had asked me and other spiritually gifted women in the church to step down and not exercise our teaching ministries because giftedness threatened her mediocrity. And I wasted three years in anger.

* * *

And so, the desert, what was the reason for it? What good came out of it?

Well, at a John Arnott conference in 2010, I had an encounter with the love of God, and discovered soaking prayer, a resting in the love of God beyond asking, beyond thinking, beyond words, just being.

This became a daily discipline, and I gradually became a different woman–stronger, bolder and quieter. The negative and critical things that woman had said to me, attempting consciously or unconsciously to destroy my self-confidence, well, I didn’t care any more. I had a confidence from beyond myself, a God-confidence. As Samuel tells Saul, The spirit of the Lord will fall upon you, and you will become a different person.

* * *

Ah, in the desert one hears God’s voice more clearly, one grows most swiftly. But few go there of their own accord—too hot, too lonely, little food or water, too boring!! We have to be pushed there.

In the quietness and extra time that not leading or even attending groups added to my life, I threw myself into establishing our family business. My creativity flowed into it. While some creativity and energy was flowing into teaching Bible studies, the business struggled. Now, within a year of full-time and over-time work, it flourished, and two years later in 2010, it made enough for Roy to retire early, and run it full time.

And then I again had free and quiet time. I do love God, and I love Scripture, and I love experimenting with prayer. Ideas, insights, enthusiasm flowed out of me, like a river of living waters, and I had no group to share them with.

And so, I started blogging. And blogging has been one of the best things which have ever happened to me. It has vastly expanded my world, socially, through meeting new people; intellectually, through the exposure to new ideas; creatively, through daily finding the right form for my ideas, and spiritually, though exploring new spiritual ideas and insights.

So, God’s hand was with me and over me all along. I just couldn’t see it!

And then, I left that formerly excellent church which Macbethian leaders had turned toxic. And it was like walking out from darkness into radiant sunlight.

I found a new church, a healthy one. Within six months, I was asked to lead a Bible study. So obviously God wanted me to share my love and enthusiasm for him and for Scripture.

God’s gifts and his call are irrevocable. The spring of God’s gifts within you cannot be dammed by the envy of men. Think of how Joseph exercised his gift of interpreting dreams in prison, as far as possible from Pharaoh, the court and influence.

* * *

William Law writes “If anyone would tell you the shortest, surest way to all perfection and happiness, he must tell you to make it a rule to yourself to thank and praise God for everything that happens to you.”

And oh, if I had said–“Thank you for the desert, thank you for grounding me, thank you for giving me the quietness to seek you, thank you for the additional time gained by NOT leading Bible studies, thank you because I trust you anyway. Thank you for this quiet interlude,”–how different would it have been. How much less bitterness, anger, and self-pity!

Lord, like the disciples on the road to Emmaus, give me eyes to see Him who walks always beside me, that there’s always another one walking beside me, even in the valley of darkness.