COME SO ALIVE

Finding breath and beauty amidst the storm

Blowing me kisses

One of my pastors created a Facebook page called Contemplative Photography, a place for its page members to post their own photos.  I learned about it almost a year ago and immediately joined the group.  I am not a professional photographer nor is that a requirement for the group.  The point of the group is to “receive” photos, a visual way to pay attention to God in your daily life and share it with others.

Last week at breakfast, Cody said, “Oh, look!  Half the sky is gray and half is sunny.”  If you had drawn a line down the middle of the window, one half would have been completely overcast with dark gray, misty cloud cover and the other half shining with bright blue sky and a few wispy white clouds.  I quickly grabbed my phone and went on the deck to photograph it.  I posted it to the Contemplative Photography page with this thought:

“Like life, some days we get sunny, blue skies; some days we get dark gray, cloudy skies. And some days we get a combination of the two. Maybe most days it’s a combination of the two.

And I have thought about that combination – of blue skies and gray clouds – several times since then.  I contemplated how glorious those brilliant blue, cloudless-sky days are.  We had one just the other day, with almost unbelievable deep blues.

In the morning

I am weary with the pain of Jacob’s wrestling
In the darkness with the fear, in the darkness with the fear
But he met the morning wounded with a blessing
So in the night, my hope lives on

Andrew Peterson, “In The Night

It’s so dark out! 😩”

I woke up two days ago and texted that to a friend at 7:13 a.m. And yes, I used that actual emoji.

October. Beautiful leaves. Bright orange pumpkins. Shorter, darker days.

And on that particular morning, it was not only predawn dark but pre-all-day-rain cloudy. Thus, very dark.

Colors 10 minutes ago,” my friend responded 10 minutes later along with this picture.

LIFELINE FRIDAY – Creativity

Maybe the desire to make something beautiful

is the piece of God that is inside each of us.

Mary Oliver, “Franz Marc’s Blue Horses”

Want to know the secret to how I write blog posts? I listen. I listen to the messages that I receive in sermons, Bible studies, poetry, even social media. And when I get the same message multiple times in a week, I pay attention – and then I write.

Pretty uncreative, huh?

I never really considered myself creative, certainly not creative enough to develop a website, write blog posts, and design social media posts! And yet, that’s what I’ve been doing for almost a year.

And I actually really love it.

I originally wasn’t going to set up an Instagram account for Come So Alive. But as I developed the website, I had something in mind I wanted to include yet could not figure out how to make it work. Then I saw the Instagram icon that could automatically feed to the website and I realized that was exactly what I needed.

Because it turns out, I was creating Instagram posts in 2014 before I even had a personal account.

After Cody’s epilepsy diagnosis that fall, I found myself sitting in front of the computer adding Bible verses and song lyrics to pictures I had taken, many from a trip to Cape Cod in 2006. It was my lifeline in the storm, a little insert of color into a really dark autumn.

Then last fall once I started planning what I wanted to include in Come So Alive’s resources, I immediately thought of these pictures and wanted to share them in case someone else needed to see some color, read words of hope.

I have a whole folder on my computer of pictures I did this with, partly needing something to cling to but more so doing it without really knowing why I was doing it, just feeling a compulsion to create in my grief.

Riding the rollercoaster, Part 2

I’m swept up in a story that I don’t want to miss

So I will rise up for such a time as this

FAITHFUL, “Rise Up

I was swept up in a story I had no interest being part of seven years ago and, as I wrote last week, it’s been a rollercoaster ride with lots of ups and downs.  But surprisingly, there have actually been some “ups.”

One of the ups of the ride has been hosting a fundraising concert for the last three years.  Normally, we don’t attend evening activities because Cody has an early bedtime and we do not mess with it.  But when it’s our concert to plan?  We scheduled it earlier in the evening, from 6-8 pm so Cody could attend the whole thing and still get home close to his normal bedtime.

But even that was stressful, because it’s still later than he usually goes to bed.  Factor in two years of planning amidst the unknown of what a concert looks like and having to adjust due to covid, and planning this year’s concert wasn’t fun for me – it was actually nightmare inducing.  I can’t tell you the number of things I dreamt about that went wrong! 

Once I realized my stress was actually about not getting Cody to bed at his normal time, I decided this would be our last concert.  I even talked to my therapist about my anxiety and being done after this year.  But instead of supporting me, she had the gall to say,

What if GOD isn’t done with the fundraiser?  What if it gets even bigger?

But I can’t keep doing this.  It’s too stressful with epilepsy and too much work!

Then you need to find more people to help you.”

Sigh…

The night of our concert this summer, I worked the “merch” table (merchandise, for those of you who aren’t under 30) and was flooded with people!  A friend even came behind the table when she saw the line.  “I want to help.  What can I do?”  Her daughter then came behind the table and said, “I want to help too!”

The next day another friend who attended texted me, apologizing for not saying goodbye because I had looked too busy at the merch table.  I offhandedly said I needed to find someone to help me next year and she said, “I’ll help!”

You need to find more people to help you.

Hhmmm… ok, but I’m not doing another evening concert.  It has to be a Sunday afternoon from 3-5 p.m. (I thought to myself but maybe to God too).

Riding the rollercoaster, Part 1

Won’t you take this cup from me

Cause fear has stolen all my sleep

NEEDTOBREATHE, “Garden”

As with any chronic illness, epilepsy is a rollercoaster.  Some days are relatively smooth and even look like things are on the rise.  Then suddenly you’re holding on for dear life as the support below you drops away and you find yourself plummeting straight down toward earth.  Seizures cannot be predicted.  The saying in the epilepsy community is, “The only thing predictable about epilepsy is that it isn’t predictable.” 

For example, Cody’s first three seizures were each several months apart.  Since then, he has had seizures back-to-back, just seconds apart.  Most recently, he went 51 weeks between seizures.  We were planning a joint 1-year seizure-free celebration with some friends whose son’s last seizure was the day before Cody’s last seizure.  Ten days before the anniversary, she and I got the “where, when, how” scheduled . . . two days later, Cody had a seizure.  We celebrated anyway – 1 year for their son and only 1 seizure in a year for ours, something that had never happened in eight years of seizures.

Eight years of seizures . . . 

I can tell you the exact day and time of Cody’s first seizure.  It was the night of my 40th birthday.  We celebrated with my family over supper and cake, then drove home.  In the middle of the night at 2:00 a.m., in the middle of deep sleep, I heard Chuck saying, “I think Cody’s having a seizure!”  He went to call 911 and I went to stand by Cody’s toddler bed – he was 2.  I just stood there, not comprehending what was going on.  I just stood there because how do you stop a seizure? 

I just stood there.

Cody stopped seizing and I picked him up to take him to the bathroom.  One of Chuck’s coworker’s sons had febrile seizures and that was the only thing I could think of that was happening to Cody.  “He must have a fever,” so I took him to the bathroom to get a cool washcloth to wipe him down.

And I realized as I carried him that he wasn’t breathing.

LIFELINE FRIDAY – Honesty

A friend invited me to a daytime luncheon in a few weeks.  It’s a weekday when Cody will be in school so I could actually attend it…but Cody will actually be in school for the first time in 18 months, and I just want to rest in my quiet house by myself.

I asked God if I should attend even though my initial response was “No.”  The luncheon speaker was part of a recent collaboration called FAITHFUL of about 20 different Christian authors and singers writing songs and a book about various women in the Bible.  I’m sure it would good; I liked the project and would love to attend with my friend.  But 18 months of covid and Cody being home…  So, I asked God if I should attend this event.  And “Hannah” came to mind.  Which makes sense because that’s the woman this singer/author wrote about and about whom she’ll be speaking.

The Hannah who said this:

“I am a woman with a broken heart . . . I’ve been pouring out my heart before the Lord.”

1 Samuel 1:15

And I laid on my bed and cried.  Because that’s how I feel.  Because I just used that verse recently on Come So Alive’s Instagram page so it was still fresh in my memory.

LIFELINE FRIDAY – Friends

I love photography and I love sunsets. This spring I got the great idea to combine the two and document the sunsets from the same spot on the first days of spring, summer, fall, and winter to see how the sun moves throughout the year. You may be wondering “Why?,” but it sounded cool to me.

We live half a mile from a public beach on the east side of a large lake – a perfect place to set up a tripod and take a sunset picture from the exact same spot for all four seasons. It’s also a great spot to just sit and visit with friends.

Two of my friends decided to join me, not so much because what I was doing excited them but just because they are my friends. Sitting on the beach watching the first summer sunset and chatting with each other while I basically ignored them (sorry, ladies!) sounded good to them.

Dance with Me today

“We tend to stay away from mourning and dancing. Too afraid to cry, too shy to dance…we become narrow-minded complainers, avoiding pain and also true human joy…While we live in a world subject to the evil one, we belong to God. Let us mourn, and let us dance.”

HENRI NOUWEN, Suffering and Joy

Cody met his favorite musician at a 5:30 pm Q&A one night before a show.  We attended only the Q&A because the show itself was past Cody’s bedtime. Staying up too late triggers his seizures, so we are very strict about bedtime. 

When I emailed the singer, Jason Gray, a month later, he remembered us and agreed to play a concert for us as a fundraiser for epilepsy.  He remembered us after the Q&A specifically because we hadn’t been able to stay for the show. 

Epilepsy prevented us from attending his show; epilepsy made us stand out to him.

LIFELINE FRIDAY – Making space for restoration

My pastor’s sermon Sunday was about restoration. He asked, “Would you like to be restored? Put back together the way you were meant to be?”

He also asked,”What if the Scriptures were actually true and that God actually is in the restoration business?”

Do we live like we believe that is true?

I just read a blog post today titled, “Restoration Areas.” Rev Darth (as he calls himself on Instagram – isn’t that a great name?), found restoration among family, friends, and creation in Colorado this week. He also found a book of photos of the Rockies and meditations in which the author wrote about restoration areas in parks in one devotion.

“What looked to be a hopeless situation was simply a garden waiting for the opportunity to thrive.”

Erik Thomas Stensland, Whispers in the Wilderness

In his blog, Rev Darth also wrote, “[Restoration] is creating space for that which has become tired and worn to grow once again.”

Boy, does that hit home this week as I have been forced to slow down despite our fundraising concert for epilepsy on Sunday! How can I rest when I have so much to do? So, I gave it to God and rested on my couch all day yesterday.

Details got planned, questions were asked and answered via email, and we sold 30 tickets in 3 days – all while I rested.

What if we actually lived like God can restore. If we gave Him the space to come into our tired and worn places to grow a thriving restoration area. We probably can’t even imagine how beautiful that could be.

Here is the link to the full blog post “Restoration Areas” if you would like to read it.

LIFELINE FRIDAY – Resting by reposting…about resting

I sat in my doctor’s office yesterday crying, not because she was giving me bad news but because I was giving her frustrating news. I received my covid vaccination 5 weeks ago and have felt sick ever since – vertigo, nausea, headaches, low grade fever, losing weight because I can’t eat.

To be clear, I’m not opposed now to others getting vaccinated; I support vaccinations. I just should have known better than to do it myself. My body has reacted (overreacted) to every vaccination I have ever received. The worst was 13 years of migraines after 9 vaccines to travel to Africa. I have allergies and autoimmune diseases and several contraindications to the covid vaccine. But I listened to my rheumatologist and scheduled it.

Consequently, I have not been writing much for Come So Alive. I actually have a few ideas for posts but just can’t get my brain to work to write them.

I’m also worrying if I don’t post, you’ll stop reading me. What if that one person I write for loses interest? Then who am I writing for?!

Amid the frustration of my side effects and my lack of writing, I remembered my post from a few months ago about wanting to rest and not blog. How ironic that, now that I probably should be resting, I don’t want to rest but I do want to blog. I reread that post and think now it was meant for me, not a few months ago but me today. I wrote,

“So, this week’s post, this week’s lifeline in the storm, is the reminder to myself that, to come alive, sometimes you need to rest.”

And thus, today’s lifeline in the storm, for me at least, is resting by not writing a new blog but reposting my old one – about resting. If you missed it or need a reminder too, check it out here:

Resting in a Sunbeam

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