christianity

Go: God’s Grace in Moving

/ abby hummel / 5 Comments
“Oh, we’ve been here a little over a year,”  I told a new friend.
The words flew out of my mouth and shocked me. A year? It’s been more than a year since I said goodbye to all my piano kids and locked the door of that dear little house on the hill? Since visiting my favorite grocery stores and restaurants? Since I sat in church, choking back tears hearing Psalm 33, “The earth is full of the steadfast love of the Lord“? I can remember those details like they were yesterday. But that means everything since then has been squeezed into a year: immediately knowing we picked the right doctor, and seeing that tiny heartbeat – Annie! – on his office’s ultrasound screen; transforming this house Aaron picked out into a home; sharing a rich life with new friends here; having Annie here and starting life with her. Has it really only been a year?
go

Some people don’t ever really move, living in or near their hometown for most of their life. I never expected to be one of those people, which has been handy while Aaron’s academic career takes us on a slow tour of the midwest. It’s been a wild ride, but we started gearing up for this when we were dating and discussing the future. Aaron and I kept track of how many times we noticed God sending, calling, or taking people away from their families or homes in scriptures. The examples are numerous: Adam and Eve leaving the garden, Noah creating a new home after the flood, Abraham’s journey to the promised land, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, exiled nations, Mary and Joseph, the apostles, etc. Based on these patterns,  we determined to look first at what we thought God wanted us to do before considering what might keep us close to our families. For better or worse, the Lord seems to have taken us up on that commitment.

It was exciting to discuss this as star-crossed lovers with dreams of adventure and children and California, but real life hits like a freight train: Besides no babies and no California, we discovered that moving is often (rightly) considered one of the most stressful life experiences a person can go through. You could discuss this in clinical terms –  most of the “experts” rate it right up there with a serious illness or a divorce in the amount of stress it creates. It usually means every detail of your life changes, for better or worse. But when you go through it yourself, it isn’t clinical at all. It’s personal. It’s a transition into shocking unfamiliarity in all aspects of life, and ripping up those roots of home is a profound loss no matter how well you prepare for it.

Is it easy to look only at the hardships of moving? Yes. They are numerous. But if I have to move again (and, spoiler alert, I would not be shocked if it happens twice again in the future) I don’t want to look back on a few years with several moves as “a season of hardship.” Life is hard enough as it is. I want to be able to focus on the gifts that come with moving, because they are there, and I don’t want to miss those blessings.

Moving means sacrificing close relationships. After growing up in one place, then spending four years in college, and six years in Iowa, I know a lot of fabulous individuals. It’s  not possible to maintain the intimacy of as many friendships as I would like. But I built those friendships because I found wonderful people where I lived, which will happen again wherever I am, and I can’t imagine what a loss it would be to have missed out on knowing any of them, even though I had to trade proximity of old friends to meet the new ones. Moving also means that I am overflowing with relationships, and at 28 I already know and love more friends than some people have in a lifetime. 

Moving challenges our finances and possessions. Since we have never had any moving expenses covered – but maybe someday they will be!? – this has made significant impact on our budgets and spending in less-than-enjoyable ways. At the same time, moving has forced us into more brutal decluttering and less collecting, which cultivates a more sane life in other ways. Some people are naturally anti-junk and easily cut out extraneous material, but Aaron and I are both the sort of people that need that forced upon us. Moving has also loosed the grip on our bank accounts and our stuff.

Maybe the biggest grace in moving is understanding more firmly that nowhere on earth was ever meant to be my permanent home. Not a beautiful lighthouse on Lake Michigan, proud college halls liberally educating under magnolia trees, familiar couches jammed with siblings, small town charms in Iowa, or a neighborhood full of fast friends in Minnesota. Learning to love these temporary homes and embrace everything that comes with them is a great picture of Jesus’ sacrifice to come from eternity into time, to give himself away for people in a place he would stay only a while, and leave only through suffering. The whole Christian life reflects this in the continuing process of being oriented towards permanency in the midst of what is passing away. 2 Corinthians states this quite plainly: … the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal. I think that becomes more tangible when it’s experienced in the process of moving and resettling.
Oh God, our help in ages past
Our hope for years to come
Be thou our guide while life shall last
And our eternal home.
-Isaac Watts
All of this being said, I do not anticipate moving during this calendar year – for which I am extremely grateful.

a year afresh

/ abby hummel / 4 Comments

“The object of a New Year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul and a new nose; new feet, a new backbone, new ears, and new eyes. Unless a particular man made New Year resolutions, he would make no resolutions. Unless a man starts afresh about things, he will certainly do nothing effective.” – G.K. Chesterton

Living far away from family means most of my major holidays are spent running around to see loved ones, sleeping on different beds, living out of suitcases, and coming home exhausted (a 24-hour round-trip with a baby and a dog will do that) to a house that was left in a rush. When returning, there is much to catch up on — mail to sort, clothes to put away (is this shirt clean? Did I wear it? Should I wash it anyway because it was folded right next to these pants that are certainly not clean?), groceries to buy, leftover errands to run, and the gargantuan task of loving so many people in different places while settling back in to life here, where we are. With all that in mind, I told Aaron we had to reclaim some semblance of celebrating the holidays for ourselves and get in the groove of our own personal traditions. Since skipping extended family celebrations every year is not practical or desirable, this year we decided to try celebrating the real 12-days-of-Christmas, which starts on Christmas day and ends on January 6. This has extended our celebrating after a winter holiday season that included two trips back to Michigan. Back in Minnesota we’ve been drinking eggnog coffee, singing carols, and turning on the Christmas tree lights with gusto around here this week. It’s been good. 

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(This is not our house and certainly not how I imagined Max looking — ha!)

 

Every year I pick a phrase or stanza from a Christmas carol for our cards, and this year it was “the weary world rejoices,” from O Holy Night. There was much weariness in 2014 – moving, pregnancy, a new baby, an insanely demanding job for Aaron, many long road trips – but much rejoicing. I only think of the joy, really, but the hints of weariness are present in all things. And honestly, 2015 may have plenty of reason for weariness as well. Aaron is still gone almost all the time, we will probably need to replace some vehicles, we may have any number of family funerals, and we could open ourselves up to the possibility of weariness (or…. heartbreak…..) as Annie grows and we start thinking about more children. Who knows how God will work this year to give us new souls, new eyes, new backbones, new selves? We certainly don’t. And that’s mostly the point. So the words of St Paul to the Galatians are very timely:

Let us not grow weary in doing good, in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart. – Galatians 6:9

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The end of Christmas mostly means I have to take down our tree today, so I’m enjoying one last day of “real” Christmas carols and preparing for a new year — with many unknowns and responsibilities, but much joy, I’m sure. (And with a new computer that doesn’t take 10 minutes to start, hopefully it will include more writing, too. Thanks for hanging in there, friends!)

undisguised blessings

/ abby hummel / 14 Comments

If I had a dollar for every time someone told me one of my miscarriages was a “blessing in disguise” …I would have a lot more money than I do now.

blessings in disguise

 

***

A few months before Annie was born, I carefully watched the unfolding news about that Christian doctor in the Sudan who was imprisoned on false charges of religious conversion. She was also pregnant, and a little younger even than I was. I “just knew” she was having a girl, too, and I immediately sensed a fellowship with her. I thought about how uncomfortable she must be, facing the rest of her pregnancy in shackles, with an order for torture and execution to come after delivering her baby. I hoped she could still believe that God would take care of her. I wondered if I would be brave enough to obey in the same circumstances. Knowing that Annie was growing strong in safety, I felt more blessed than I ever expected to, and I was so humbled to have the luxuries of safety, freedom, and good health care during this miraculous pregnancy. When I saw pictures of this woman holding her daughter and visiting Pope Francis in Italy after escaping Africa, I wept. About that same time, we read that Christians in Syria were crucified as martyrs. (It’s hard to type that out.)

On the way to the hospital for Annie’s birth, Aaron had several powerful sneezing fits and hoped aloud that she would be blessed with not inheriting his seasonal allergies. When she was born, we heard her (very cute-sounding) sneeze over and over. He was especially nervous… Turns out it’s normal, since babies are a bit waterlogged at first; we don’t know about seasonal allergies yet. But we noticed those sneezes, and tears sprung to my eyes every time I responded, “God bless you, baby Anne. God bless you.” It wasn’t just me being polite — this was a prayer. I wanted God to take care of her, to give her good things, to keep his hand upon her. I meant it.

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A few hours after Annie was born, after a nap and several hours of nonstop eating, I laid her on the bed next to me and marveled at how perfect she was. I think my sense of awe, relief, and gratefulness may have been a taste of how that Sudanese doctor felt when she landed safely in Italy. I noted that Annie’s small feet were shaped just like Aaron’s, which was no surprise to my ribcage, and she had the sweetest fringe of soft brown hair hanging over a tiny roll of chubbiness around the back of her neck. That same day I heard rumors of Christian children in Iraq (a country already fraught with emotion for us) being beheaded by more of those violent radical persecutors who had been in Syria. I’m sure moms in the middle east think their children’s hacked-off necks were particularly adorable, too.

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I can look at my life and say I am blessed because I have this hardworking husband. Because I have a house – with three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a fenced-in yard, and a refrigerator so full of food that I lose track of things and end up throwing some of it away. Because I have this daughter – who came to life where babies before her did not, who is healthy and robust and vibrant and sleeps almost all night. Because we are managing without a full-time income from me, so I spend the majority of my days caring for my child, walking my dog, running the home. But that’s pretty prosperity-gospel-ish. My friends who are single, or renting, or living off the generosity of others, or childless, or balancing work and parenthood are also very, very blessed.  I was blessed –that is, receiving undeserved gifts from God– before this, when I did not have a baby. And there is blessing in challenging babies, awkward-looking babies, non-sleeping babies, or babies who won’t latch on to nurse… and there is profound blessing in babies who develop differently. So we misuse the word blessing when we think it only references things we want to call “good.”

In fact, scripture gives us an entire paradigm shift about a blessed life. God doesn’t really mention the specifics of my circumstances in the description of blessing. Instead he says, “Blessed are you…
…when you are poor in spirit.
…when you mourn.
…when you are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.”  (Matthew 5)

And this is not the sort of “persecution” wherein you petition the local library to keep objectionable content off the lowest shelves and then have an awkward moment seeing your opponents at the store later.
It’s the sort where you give birth in a dirty prison because your brother-in-law called for your death while you were pregnant with his niece.
It’s the sort where you race your kids up a mountain without enough food or water because you’re being pursued by people who will chop off their heads.
It’s the sort where you get beaten up and nailed to a cross and die in agony.

This is what God calls “the blessed life.”

***

Now, if I had a dollar for every time someone talked about my daughter and asked, “isn’t she just such a blessing?” I would also have more money. The answer is yes, she is… but that barely scratches the surface of what a blessing even means.

The same Lord is Lord of all, who richly blesses all who call on him.  (Romans 10:12) 

first bond with the wilderness

/ abby hummel / 2 Comments

“Always in the big woods when you leave familiar ground and step off alone into a new place there will be, along with the feelings of curiosity and excitement, a little nagging of dread. It is the ancient fear of the Unknown, and it is your first bond with the wilderness you are going into.” – Wendell Berry

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We’ve had nearly a month with Annie, who is essentially the dream-come-true, perfect baby in every sense. I’m getting afraid to tell people how fabulous she’s doing with sleeping and eating, because they invariably tell me I’ll pay for it when she’s a teenager, or, if they are in the throes of a regular baby’s sleeping and eating woes, I think they might throw an exersaucer at me in their sleep-deprived stupor. I was extremely determined not to complain about any part of life with a newborn, but I haven’t even had much worth complaining about. It has been pure joy, joy, joy to have her here and take care of her.

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Maybe because Aaron and I are both extremely inclined to imagine and prepare for the worst possible scenario in every area of life, and because we had a definitively “bad start” with growing our family, this pregnancy lacked much excitement or anticipation. What I really remember most about the past year of anticipating this time is being afraid. So many changes! So many questions! So many new things! We moved into this house knowing I was pregnant, but neither one of us could talk about where to arrange furniture or belongings in order to prepare for the baby. Before nearly every OB appointment, even well past the “danger zone” of the first trimester, I would listen to I Corinthians 15 on my phone and hold Max and cry. When we found out Annie was a girl, I panicked when I thought about how much pink stuff we were likely to accumulate and specifically told friends and family I didn’t want any pepto-bismal-colored clothing or gear. I probably would have been concerned about clothes with too many blue whales and orange foxes or something like that if she had been a boy. More than all this, I worried that the anxiety would spill over in to life with the baby, that it would prevent us from connecting with her, that being afraid of her meant I didn’t love her, that I was letting it steal the joy we had waited for.

But now, with her here safely, I look back and realize Wendell Berry was right in what he said about standing at the edge of the woods. We had the curiosity and excitement, for sure, but the sense of dread for the uncertainties ahead was unshakable. Now I think that fear was part of our first bond together, and I’m sure it’s part of the wild adventure of raising a child. It hasn’t robbed us of anything we need to love and enjoy her now. We really are delighted by every moment with this girl, who is, as Aaron put it last night, “much pretty.” (Proper use of irregular adjectives is one of the first things to go if you are overworked and a little sleep deprived, I suppose.)

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Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will even make a way in the wilderness… – Isaiah 43:19

 

she’s here!

/ abby hummel / 9 Comments

We are delighted to announce the birth of our daughter, Anne Rebecca. Her name means “God has been gracious” and honors the prayers of Hannah, which I have often echoed, and the example of the prophetess Anna, who found her life’s satisfaction not in a child of her own, but in the salvation offered in the only child ever promised to anyone – Jesus. (Her middle name runs in my family, and she joins a long line of wonderful women named or middle-named Rebecca stretching for eight generations now.) This has been quite a journey, and our Annie is an undeserved gift from the God who has been gracious every step along the way.hummel family

 

 

“May the God before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac walked,
the God who has been my shepherd all my life to this day,
the Angel who has delivered me from all harm
— May He bless this girl.
May she be called by the names of my fathers Abraham and Isaac,
and may she increase greatly upon this earth.”
-from Israel’s blessing to his grandsons Ephraim (“God has made me fruitful in the land of my affliction”) and Manasseh (“God has made me forget my sorrow”) as recorded in Genesis 48.

eager patience

/ abby hummel / 9 Comments

Well, a month of radio silence here… I just thought you should know I have not fallen off the face of the earth nor have I had the baby and kept it a secret. I also have not experienced complete mental atrophy, since I have about 20 blog posts half-written.

Mostly…
party… I would probably feel like this every day even if I wasn’t pregnant, but coffee makes my feet swell three times their normal size, much like the Grinch’s heart overlooking Cindy Lou-Who at Christmas, so I can’t really do anything about it.

Caffeine issues aside, I’m not really reading anything, which is probably the biggest setback to writing efficiently. Between the responsibility of caring for energetic Max and a new baby coming any time now,  I’m not expecting to sleep much in the next several months so  this reading situation is unlikely to improve. I need to jump back on the audio book bandwagon very soon, which will at least start recalling the brain I know I have somewhere. It might even be the preventative measure that protects against committing some of the tackiest common mom-offenses: saying things in person or online (1) about bodily fluids to anyone other than the child’s father or grandmothers, and (2) claiming the “victory” of “keeping the kids alive” all day to anyone, ever, at any time.

—
After spending three weeks of hearing “You’ll go in to labor any day now! I mean it! You’ll have a baby before your next visit with me!” from the doctor every time I see him, I’m planning to go all Buddy-The-Elf on him if I get to the next appointment and haven’t had the baby yet.

With what seemed to be a medically-indicated earlyish arrival on the horizon for weeks, it’s been a new thing to wake up every morning and say, “If the baby is born tomorrow, what do I want to have accomplished today?” instead of working every day towards some extreme list of weekly/monthly/annual goals. This is good discipline for a planner like me, and every day is a new lesson in eager patience as we wait. And somehow at the same time, the latest possible day she could be born still seems extremely soon compared to all the waiting of the past. Part of me feels like I’ve been (emotionally) pregnant for about five years, so what’s a few more weeks compared to the past half-decade?

For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees?  But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. – Romans 8:22-25

 

positively comfortable

/ abby hummel / 3 Comments

Since this pregnancy has progressed, graciously, to 35 weeks, I’m finding I can’t go out in public without getting comments about the baby coming. A friend told me people have an innate need to connect with others and don’t always know how to do it properly, and since most people have had kids or expect to have them, the sight of a child or a huge pregnant belly gives them an easy opportunity to try chatting with you. This makes sense to me and I’m happy to make conversation with people,  but I’ve noticed that 95% of the comments I receive from strangers are really negative. The comments like, “You must be getting really uncomfortable!” or “If you feel big now… just wait!” pale in comparison to what we heard from the person who told Aaron he could “upgrade” (to a boy) next time if I won’t let him “trade it [the girl] in.” Yikes.

Yes, I have had to leave my cart in the middle of the grocery store to use the restroom, arriving just in the nick of time. Twice in one trip.
Yes, my google search bar history includes phrases like, “best pregnancy sciatica treatments,” “risk of stillbirth after 30 weeks,” and “how to relieve swollen ankles.”
Yes, I barely sleep at night and barely stay awake during the day.
Yes, my maternity clothes are insufficient to cover my midsection and I sometimes accidentally show off some already stretch-marked baby midriff (not very attractive) while wearing compression socks (also not attractive) in public.
Yes, I weigh more than I wanted to weigh at delivery.
Yes, those famed “sweet” kicks are actually a bit painful.
Yes, there are other things I am not going to mention here…

And you know what? I’m extremely comfortable. Because I have been talking lately to so, so many friends who are waiting, and waiting, and waiting, or who have lost babies — Second trimester; Twins; Several losses in a row; Scared to love a new baby on the way; Trying not to resent a husband who changed his mind about wanting to have kids; Life-threatening ectopic pregnancy loss; Failing adoptions; Foster children sent back to dangerous biological families; Facing the probability that there will never be a “take-home baby.” I love these women and I pray for them. And I know any one of them would cut off her right arm to be in my compression socks and too-tight shoes in the height of summer. So I’m not glossing over anything: I really am extremely comfortable. I know what it is to face the hollowness of a flat (okay, flat-ish) stomach when it should be stretched to the max, and I know what it is to wait and cry and beg for answers… what I have now is a much, much better experience than those things. So I have to say I’m doing great, because there is no third trimester anywhere near as uncomfortable as the one that doesn’t happen.

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[as long as she’s fine, I’m fine!]

 

 

peculiar beauty

/ abby hummel

As usual, our summer has had plenty of visitors and traveling already! A few weeks ago, Aaron’s parents visited and did amazing things like keeping my dog exercised, fixing our lawn mower, and painting trim while I napped. The following week I visited my parents, which required successfully transporting my 8-months-pregnant self and a 7-month-old dog on a 10-hour solo road trip through the midwest without losing my mind. I have been missing the ease of certain things about life in Iowa, but I must say that driving across Wisconsin is so lovely that it’s almost worth the extra time in the car compared to driving across Iowa and Illinois.

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Successful completion of this trip is due in no small part to indulging in a few of the 49 cent ice cream cones at McDonald’s.

After arriving in my hometown, a friend from high school asked if it was weird or hard for me that my sister is expecting a baby without facing any of the heartaches I battled. I can honestly say it noticeably affects how we handle certain aspects of our pregnancies, but I’m mostly glad not everyone has to suffer in the ways I did. We celebrated my daughter’s impending arrival, so I opened presents for her and spent time laughing with my extended family, full of hopes for the two girl cousins growing up having as much fun as my sisters and I have with our girl cousins.

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praising God for all five girls in this picture!

Other parts of the weekend were more sober. I stayed a little longer than I originally intended because my grandparents were both rapidly declining into very poor health, so I was able to spend extra time with them and help my mom, who bears most of the heaviness of their care right now.  Is there something ironic about uncomfortably leaning over a giant belly to wash a sink of dishes for the chemo patient you’re naming your baby after? And having inspiration about what foods might work for her to eat because you’ve also recently experienced more nausea than you ever imagined possible? I thought so. It was certainly a week of peculiar beauty.

This is exactly what I meant when I said that most of life bears witness to the old funeral text: In the midst of life, we are in death. There is tension, there is heartache, there is so much joy and so much awareness that everything’s a little askew. Because I want my baby to know personally how sweet my Grandma is and how special it is that we have this same middle name that keeps passing down for all the girls, and I don’t know if that will happen. I would have loved if we hadn’t lost the babies before her so she would “just” have hand-me-downs from older siblings instead of fancy new duds from a big baby shower. It’s not a sign of discontent to acknowledge that things are messed up and you wish it could be different.

But at the same time, I am so thankful that anything that ever holds together is evidence of grace. We see so much of it right now.

max in lake michigan

little max in lake michigan at sunset.

 

A contented heart looks to and … sees the wisdom of God in everything. In his submission, he sees His sovereignty; but what makes him take pleasure in God’s wisdom? It is this: the Lord knows how to order things better than I. I only see things at present, but the Lord sees a great while from now. …I know that the love of God may as well stand with an afflicted condition as with a prosperous condition.”
-Burroughs, Jeremiah. The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment (Available for free on Kindle!)

reading round-up (5.30.14)

/ abby hummel / 6 Comments

Happy Friday! This week held a very noteworthy celebration: The first “real” piano student sign up of my Minnesota piano studio! We toasted this occasion with the most despicable-tasting sparkling cider available in the Target clearance aisle. (Seriously. It was awful. We both said something like, “We should have just had champagne. I think pregnant ladies in Europe drink sometimes and their kids are okay…”)
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Here are some reading suggestions for the start of a beautiful weekend…

[One] You guys, it’s been legitimately sort of HOT this week. We haven’t turned on the AC yet (we rebel against that sort of thing for a while), but it’s toasty enough to reschedule Max’s mid-afternoon walk so we can go to the basement for downstairs chores and naps instead. I have been really happy with my strategic door-and-window opening plan, which was inspired by this old post about “Living without A/C and Liking It!” from Like Mother, Like Daughter. We actually don’t know if the air conditioning unit works in this house, so we’ll get it cleaned out and hope for the best when it starts getting hotter! (I keep thinking… if you can’t make it until June for a/c when you live in Minnesota, you’re in serious trouble.)

[Two] I’ll probably whack out a whole post about how ridiculous the “mommy wars” are, especially in evangelical Christian subculture, but this post from Jen Wilkinson was particularly encouraging as I gear up for being a part-time working mom.

[Three] This look at the stairway to wisdom from David Brooks includes some great thoughts about the personal stories behind statistics, especially in relation to teen pregnancy.

[Four] I’ve seen this post about homeschooling popping around among friends quite a bit. I’m not going to deny that if I wrote an article about homeschooling (as someone who was homeschooled, has worked closely in tutoring other homeschool families in upper grades, is married to someone who was homeschooled, and will need to make some decisions about educating my own kid in the future) it would say the exact opposite of this one. In general, my opinion is that 85% of homeschool families need a more serious attitude about academics and a lot less restrictions for everything else. But it’s worth reading and reflecting critically whether you agree with it or not!

[Five] I love these thoughts on “scruffy hospitality” and welcoming people into life as you are!  Good, good words from Jack King.

“Don’t allow a to-do list disqualify you from an evening with people you’re called to love in friendship. Scheduling is hard enough in our world. If it’s eating with kind, welcoming people in a less than perfect house versus eating alone, what do you think someone would choose? We tell our guests ‘come as you are,’ perhaps we should tell ourselves ‘host as you are.’ …Friendship isn’t about always being ‘excellent’ with one another. Friendship is about preparing a space for authentic conversation. And sometimes authenticity happens when everything is a bit scruffy.”

[Six] Two different friends have recommended the “Hillsdale Dialogues” series to me for combating intellectual decay. These lectures on literature have provided some mental stimulation lately, so they are worth checking out even if you’re a little intimidated (or not immediately interested) in hearing about The Illiad or Sir Gawain.

[Seven] Maybe especially because, finally, some things are really coming together —PhD, baby, duckling, puppy… what else could we want?– we’ve been battling a lot of thoughts about hopes, both the ones we felt were dashed so many times in the last few years, and the ones we’re still not sure about for the future. There are questions about calendars and things that don’t look like we thought they should at this point, birthdays that came before all the things we wanted to do by that age were done, and uncertainty about how to redream for some of life. I loved this encouragement from Ann Voskamp:

Time can’t dictate dreams or hijack hope or determine destination. Time may have hands on the clock but it’s arms are too weak to rob anybody of hope, steal anybody’s prayers, destroy anybody’s joy. And so what if time’s got hands on a clock — it’s God who has His Hands on the universe. Every little thing is going to be okay because God is working good through every little thing. All that’s happening is just happening to make miracles. There are miracles always unfolding under the impossibles.
“Joys are always on their way to us,” writes Amy Carmichael. “They are always traveling to us through the darkness of the night. There is never a night when they are not coming.”
Because there is never a night where joys are not coming to us, there is never a road that can’t arrive at Hope.Circumstances can go ahead and run out of time — but the courageous refuse to run out of hope. We can always hope because there is always joy traveling to us down the unexpected roads.

“The LORD delights in those who fear him, who put their hope in his unfailing love.” – Psalm 147:11

—

The mosquitos are particularly nasty, but we’re hoping for another weekend of bonfires, laughter, Max adventures, and some more painting. (I can tell it’s making a big and beautiful difference in this house that needed a lot of “lipstick and rouge,” but will it ever end? I think “soft flipping” a house and getting a puppy effectively eradicated the possibility of ‘relaxing weekends’ before the baby arrives. )

(You can enjoy more quick reads at Conversion Diary!) 

 

 

 

 

He makes wars cease (Memorial Day 2014)

/ abby hummel
This Memorial Day weekend has been fabulous so far. The excellent weather at last (!!) is a great treat. We’ve been working like mad on the inside and outside of the house, playing with the dog, and enjoying time with friends. We have paint in our hair and the smell of bonfire smoke in our clothes. I have a steady stream of cold lemonade in the fridge and fresh strawberries on the counter. (It’s too early for a local crop so they’re probably from Belize or something, but who cares?)  We’re relaxing and celebrating. But when you know what it means to lay down your life for your country, even when you’re one of the lucky ones who got to pick it back up, there’s a somber side to these celebrations, too.
I cry a little bit every year on Memorial Day weekend. I’ve overbrewed coffee, burned eggs, and even excused myself from church services because of this. I have a list of friends I contact every year on Sunday or Monday, and I have to send my love and words honor for their fallen loved ones electronically because I’m usually not composed enough to speak to them above a whisper without hiccuping or entirely losing it. We share the history of sending people we loved to war, but I got a homecoming where they had funerals.
One friend sets a plate for her cousin at every family dinner. He volunteered for a mission while in Afghanistan, which his buddies said he did often. Thanks to sniper fire and a kevlar vest that shifted just the right (wrong) amount while he dove for cover, that seat stays empty.
Another lost her brother several years ago. “It ripped my entire family apart,” she said, “and after a few years, just when it started to feel like God might be real again, I almost died from complications after delivering my premature baby, who was stillborn.” Tolkien was indeed right to say that “the world is full enough of hurts and mischances without wars to multiply them.”
Those of us who had the homecoming have our own sets of adjustment challenges, to be certain. The rates for divorce, addiction, debilitating anxiety/depression, and suicide skyrocket for veterans in the first 5 years after a combat deployment. (I believe the risk goes down a little bit after that, but always remains significantly higher than average.) In addition to a host of other things I won’t go into now, I’m not sure Aaron slept or laughed between his homecoming in 2007 and some point in 2012. A person once confessed to me that her uncle killed himself shortly after returning from a deployment, but they tell everyone he didn’t come home because it’s easier to explain. I think the story they tell is closer to the truth than they realize. Facing combat always results in mortal or moral injury, and I see exactly what it means that “only the dead have seen the end of war.” (I think Plato said that. The internet is not always the best way to track those things.)
As a Christian I don’t have lots of good answers about war. Sometimes I dabble in pacificism, since it’s better to turn the other cheek and all that.  There is a part of me that reflects on the horror of war and says we should never, ever, in a million years, even think about doing anything like that in any form, at any time, in any place. But I also read of horrible things in this world, where bad guys systematically oppress an entire group of people, raping, burning, overpowering, ethnic and religious groups living under constant threat of death or torture. I have watched old recordings from World War II, with Nazi SS officers gunning down Jews in Poland and publicly dancing on their bodies. And I wonder how anyone could call themselves human while allowing such atrocities to continue, even if it takes combative interference. There are no easy answers; war is hell. 
Honestly, I think most scripture passages are extremely confusing on this topic; the Bible does not always shed the light I wish would come here. War is good. War is bad. War is God’s will. War is not God’s will. I think you can twist various verses to say anything you want about war.
“Who is this King of Glory? The Lord strong and mighty; The Lord, mighty in battle.” (Psalm 24:8)
“His name shall be called… the Prince of Peace.” (Isaiah 9)
“He trains my hands for battle; he strengthens my arm to draw a bronze bow.” (2 Samuel 22:35)
“He makes wars cease to the ends of the earth; He breaks the bow and shatters the spear.” (Psalm 46)
We have to look at it all together instead of playing verse roulette on this one. These conflicts all stem from the original conflict in the fall. War exists primarily as the result of the first war: mankind setting itself against God in the earliest days. God’s response to the Fall explains the enmity that causes all these wars, and the eventual everlasting victory of his promised Messiah.

“I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.” (Genesis 3:15)

The solution to the problems of does not come in ignoring the cost of injustice, regulation or deregulation of arms, or the promises of politicians for new foreign policy. (Not that those things don’t matter, or that I don’t have opinions about them. But a quick glance of history shows various groups have unsuccessfully tried to eradicate war since the beginning of time. It hasn’t happened and it will not, no matter how excellent our government.) Instead, it comes individually for now: “He himself is our peace, who has made the two one and destroyed the dividing wall of hostility.” (Ephesians 2:14) It will come corporately when all is made right, when the 46th Psalm is fulfilled: “He makes wars cease.”
This weekend we can celebrate Memorial Day, which honors those who died in military service, because many were defending the cause of the oppressed (Isaiah 1:17), they were acting in obedience to their civil leaders (1 Peter 2:13), and they cared more about the interests of others than themselves (Philippians 2:4). We can mourn with those who have lost someone dear. We can try to emulate those virtues in our own lives. And most of all, we can rest in the truth that war (and the resulting horrors and lost lives) does not have the “final say” in anything.

“The last enemy to be destroyed is death… Thanks be to God, who gives us the victory in our Lord Jesus Christ!” (I Corinthians 15)

at last!

Today, we are grateful for this homecoming and especially honor those who did not get one. (Also we look like babies.)