A song rising from the ashes...

When the struggle seems more than we can bear...

the cancer... the chemo... the pain... the grief...

When we are worn from the weight of this world.

 And all we want is to know a song can rise from the ashes of a broken life...

Might we all be encouraged...

There is Hope... For Redemption Wins... A song will rise...

The struggle will end.

Praying for you, my friend, take heart this day,

Journey on in Grace,

Love, Jane

When a family grows in love...

Be still my heart...  our family has grown by 3 beautiful babes...

 ...in an instant the Judge made permanent what has been a journey of love for so very long!

 

From the uncertainty of foster care

to the

forever arms of family...

It is a celebration of the power of faith and love...

and the sacrifice a mother and dad made so that their little ones would have a chance to rise out of the hopelessness and despair that birthed them.

It wasn't an easy road for the biological parents to walk...

drugs dogged their steps and taunted their resolve.

In the end, the climb was too steep,

the addiction too powerful...

And how do you explain that to the vacant-eyed woman who can't remember to feed her babies, let alone change their diapers... whose only thought is her next hit and why are these babies crying, they just keep crying... they lay for hours in filthy car seats while the smoke hangs in the air, dirty dishes and cigarettes lying everywhere...a daddy who disappears for days on end... and how do you raise up a child here?

My heart aches for their loss...

These children are smart and funny and so truly precious...

their smiles will melt a heart

and their belly laughs make you love them more...

their first steps and first teeth

and snuggling up all baby soft after bath...

and this momma gave away all that to run after the drugs she can't give up.

God knows the aches of the heart.

And He can change the story....

For these 3 littles, their story begins anew this week!

"Born not from our flesh,

But born from our heart.

You were longed for and wanted

and loved from the start.
                                 ~ anonymous

Welcome home Babies!

Welcome Home!

Broken Hallelujah

  Such truth in these lyrics...
... after the storms of this past month we are raising our Broken Halleljah...

God is good.

Even when we don't understand His plan...

God is good.

"I can barely stand right now.
Everything is crashing down,
And I wonder where You are.

I try to find the words to pray.
I don't always know what to say,
But You're the one that can hear my heart.

Even though I don't know what your plan is,
I know You're making beauty from these ashes.

I've seen joy and I've seen pain.
On my knees, I call Your name.
Here's my broken hallelujah.

With nothing left to hold onto,
I raise these empty hands to You.
Here's my broken hallelujah.

 When all is taken away, don't let my heart be changed.
Let me always sing Hallelujah
When I feel afraid, don't let my hope be erased
Let me always sing Hallelujah.
Let me always sing Hallelujah.

I will always sing
I will always sing
Here's my broken hallelujah."

                                        ~ The Afters

Pneumonia, Car Accidents and a Bankruptcy...

It has not been a good month.

Definitely not good.

Pneumonia settled into Dad's lungs with a vengenance mid-June.  Complications with his COPD did not help.  It has been weeks of doctoring, medicating and nurturing.

And it has taken an army :-)  Family and friends who have brought soup, driven him to appointments,

met us at the hospital, encouraged, hugged and prayed this pneumonia into submission!  Doctors, nurses and specialists who plied their trade with mercy and healing.

Dad is on the mend.  But it's been a hard recovery...

The struggle has been not only physical, but emotionally for all of us as well.  Our worry meters were off the charts as Dad's doctors changed his antibiotics 3 times before finally seeing results.

And I know that this fear that reared its evil head was from the nightmare of mom's last week... Her pneumonia was a stronghold we simply couldn't breech.  And dad's ragged, labored breathing brought back memories sore to the heart.. an ominous refrain that filled us with dread.

So grateful for God's tender mercies in this, the first of our hurdles this past month.  For just as Dad was beginning to feel better, he was involved in a serious car accident... a short little drive to get some groceries ended in disaster as he rear-ended a pick-up truck, totaling his car in the process.

My heart skipped a beat (ok, it stopped) when he called... this is the kind of phone call we worried about getting when our teens were learning to drive!  My abrupt coronary was averted when Dad assured me he was alright.  Mercies abound, indeed, as Dad was not seriously injured nor was the driver of the pick-up.  But the car tells its own story...

Mangled fenders, smashed windshields, deflated airbags... it is beyond repair according to the insurance company.

In the light of this news, we are so incredibly grateful that dad walked away from the accident relatively ok.

But the bruises remain...  Bruised body.  Bruised ego.  Bruised dreams.

It's hard to hear the tremble in his voice... see the slump in his shoulders... the defeat in his eyes... the unspoken questions...

And as we wrestled with this latest crisis, we learned that a financial investment we had made years ago was headed for bankruptcy.  Retirement money that we had thought was safely tucked away for our sunset years was suddenly hanging by a thread.

More nightmares ensued as we scrambled with thousands of others to figure out what was happening... The courts appointed a Trustee to oversee the company, and as the facts have slowly come to light, it is becoming apparent that we are dealing with deliberate fraud and deceptive marketing, eerily reminiscent of the Enron scandal from a decade ago... only now it is very personal.  This scandal involves our money.  And our trust.  And the nightmare is long from over.

This month has been a beating... and with each blow we find ourselves more bruised than before.  It's hard to breath when the weight of the worry smothers out the joy...

And we know that we are not alone.  Life can be a fight.  It can leave us smothered and panicked.  Hurting and Hopeless.

More tears have fallen recently than I care to admit.  But it's true. It has not been a good month.

And there is no magic bullet for this kind of heaviness.  The scripture is clear, "In this world you will have trouble and suffering..."  John 16:33

In the middle of the nightmare there is no secret formula for reigniting our faith...

It is a walk of hard grace.  The practice of putting one foot in front of the other and moving forward totally dependent on God's Sovereign mercy.  For we know how the story ends...

"I have told you these things so that you can have peace in me.

In this world you will have troubles,

but take courage, I have overcome the world."

                                          ~ John 16:33

He has promised to be there, always. {Matthew 28:20}  And He will always keep his promises...

So in the midst of this not-so-good month, we found ourselves on a plane to Wisconsin.  For a college graduation celebration of a dear niece...a celebration dad was determined not to miss.

 

 

And somewhere in the celebration we felt laughter bubble up, a smile to be with family, a simple joy to sample today's ripe strawberries topped with fresh cream with the ones we love...

and we put one foot in front of the other and walk hard into grace...

And then there were three!

Life has taken on an absurdly hilarious, hectic turn for our beloved daughter and her husband...

Their fostering journey has been a walk of pure faith... it is a choosing to believe despite the hard nights and long days, the teething and tantrums, that this is a work God delights in... when the giggles and snuggling and first steps mingle sweet midst the tears, the joy simply takes wing.  These are the blessings that can't be bought...

18 months ago, a little girl was placed in their arms and has surely taken up residence in their hearts.  Love has blossomed and become a thing of beauty in this family wrought by the hand of God.

And just when life was full and fabulous with Baby P, the caseworkers called with news that had them on their knees.  Twin boys, 8 weeks premature... P's brothers, born too soon, a mother's drug addiction running thru their veins...  A whisper.  A plea... would they take them in?  Keep the siblings together?

Not a moment of hesitation... no doubt of the insanity before them... just a deep breath... Yes!

 

And now there are 3 little ones tumbling around this happy, hectic home!

 

 

We have so enjoyed helping/baby-sitting/loving these 3 whenever we can.  It is a balm to this Grandma's soul.  For nothing speaks love louder than a soft, downy head nestled perfectly sweet, right over your heart.

 

And, let me tell you, with 3 in diapers, the following comic really took on a life of its own in this household.  I'm sharing it here for all those who need a laugh to end this week... Enjoy!

 

 

 

 

 

May your weekend be filled completely with love
(and no diaper loads of any kind!)

 

All My Love,

                Jane

 

When we can't help but ask Why?

I believe in a Gracious God.

I am blessed beyond measure, here in this place.

I know that my Redeemer lives and has opened the gates of heaven for his adored.

And then... Pancreatic Cancer...

How can we ever mesh the two?  My Sovereign God... This Malignant Cancer... Stealing our joy, our faith, our hope... But still we believe... God holds us, He is Love... But the Cancer, it is relentless...

We learn that Cancer can distort the innocence.  It Changes the naive beliefs.  It is heartless and cruel.  To take our moms and dads, our spouses, our children... Our faith is stalked and shaken...

This is the battle fought in countless lives every. single. day.

Pancreatic Cancer.  No respecter of position or power or place.  Nor of faith...

We watch the Patrick Swayze's... And the Michael Landon's... And the Steven Jobs... And the Randy Pausch's... Men in their prime, succumbing to pancreatic cancer's vicious stranglehold...

And we ask Why? How can it be that pancreatic cancer is still winning?  Why, God, Why?

And the question becomes so much more personal when it is you... or your spouse... or parent.

And it gnaws a hole in our soul.

Truly, it is the question of most every cancer patient... Why Me? And for every cancer family... Why Us?

To be fair, there are some who would ask the question 'Why not me?'  For none of us are given a free pass in this fallen world... But in the dark nights of the cancer journey, when the pain stabs and the tears run salty, these questions spill over and despair gains traction... Cancer consumes our thoughts and we plead for the answer to Why?

Early on in our cancer journey, we met a family who had every right to ask these questions. 

Dan was young and healthy and busy... Raising a beautiful family, loved by an extraordinary woman... Pancreatic cancer had no business in their lives... until it became their only business.

Dan underwent surgery and for a brief time thought the battle was won.  But the cancer came back with a vengeance, spreading to his liver.. and they heard the words... stage 4, inoperable.

Why?  Heart trips over the pain and the hurt. Tell me why....  he was young, healthy, had a family that needed him, loved him... Tell me why, why is pancreatic cancer still winning?

And I learned that the question "Why" can haunt you and make you crazy... because there are no answers...

Chuck Smith wisely shared these words when others asked him that very question during his cancer journey,

"Never trade what you do know for something you don't know."

He continued, "I know God loves me.  I know God is good.   I may not know Why, but I do know that God is working out His perfect plan in my life."

When the cancer diagnosis turned deadly, Trisha, Dan's wife, shared the moments in a poignant letter.  The moments suspended in time when they learned the cancer was back... and was winning.

Unspeakable pain, Unshakeable faith.

And it reminded me immediately of Chuck Smith's admonition... We hold on to what we KNOW, even in the midst of heart-wrenching seasons of whys...

Trish and Dan have walked the road of Hard Grace.  This cancer journey so incredibly difficult to navigate, let alone understand.  When I asked her if she would consider letting me share part of the letter with you, she didn't hesitate...

"YES you may use it!!  I'd be honored...  I just want God to use me through all this pain.  Don't get me wrong.  I do have joy in my life and so many blessings!!! It's just not going the way I had planned."

And so, with Trisha's determined permission, here is a portion of the letter she sent me:

"I have decided to open my heart and soul and let you see a raw, honest glimpse of what goes on in the heart and mind of a woman whose beloved husband has cancer:  Sometimes I am flooded with my FEELINGS over this whole cancer thing, and sometimes I am standing firmly on what I KNOW regardless of my feelings.  This piece below was sent to me by a friend.  It has helped me share with others how I feel! 

If I were to catalog some of my "Feelings" from A to Z, here is what you would see in my heart:

A - afraid, anxious, alone...
B - broken, burdened...
C - confused, crushed...
D - doubt, dread, discouraged...
E - envious... (of those whose journey does not include cancer or suffering)
F - fearful, fatigued...
G - guarded, guilty...
H - helpless, hopeless, heartbroken...
I - insecure, inadequate...
J - jostled and jerked around...
K - kicked down...
L - lonely, lost...
M - mad, mournful...
N - numb!!!
O - oppressed, overwhelmed...
P - powerless, "poor me"...
Q - like Quitting!!...
R - restless, rejected...
S - sad, sorrowful, scared...
T - tired, tense, tearful...
U - useless, uneasy, unsure...
V - victimized...
W - worried, worn-out, weary...
X - eXtremely eXhausted...
Y - whY this? whY now? whY Dan?...
Z - lacking zeal...lacking ZZZZ's (sleep)...

Wow!  All those sad feelings could leave one flat-lined emotionally, and sometimes I am, but thankfully, I have a strong faith on a firm foundation that is based on His Word and His Truth!

This is what I KNOW to be true, that in spite of my fickle feelings, raw emotions, and the cancer, I KNOW...

A -  He is ALWAYS WITH ME!  He promises never to leave me or forsake me!
B - He BINDS up the broken-hearted!
C - He is the God of all COMFORT and He CARES for me!
D - He DIED so that I may live with Him eternally one day!
E - He is EMMANUEL... GOD WITH US!
F - He promises me a FUTURE, and a FOREVER HOME with Him!
G - He is the GENTLE SHEPHERD who cares for His lambs!
H - He HOLDS all things together with His HAND!
I - I am His and He is mine!
J - I have been JUSTIFIED through faith in Christ!
K - He is the KING OF KINGS!!
L - He LEADS me, all the way my Savior LEADS me! (even through the valley of the shadow of death)
M - His MERCIES are new every MORNING!
N - NOTHING can ever separate me from His love... NOTHING!!
O - He is the OMNISCIENT, OMNIPRESENT, OMNIPOTENT God!
P - He PROVIDES the PEACE that PASSES all understanding through His POWER!
Q - In the secret, in the QUIET place, in the stillness YOU are there!
R - He will uphold me by His RIGHTEOUS RIGHT hand!
S - SALVATION is found in no one other!
T - I can TRUST in Him and not lean on my own understanding!
U - UNDER His wings I am safely abiding!
V - There is VICTORY in Jesus!
W - When I WAIT on the Lord, my strength will be renewed!
X - His grace is eXtravagant!
Y - His YOKE is easy and His burden is light!
Z - He is the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, and I can rest in that and get some ZZZZZZZ's!

Thank you for allowing me to share my heart with you.  It's so easy and almost "natural" for me to be swallowed up in the raging, billowing sea of life and be tossed around by the storms of life! Yet, I know that no matter what the storm, my anchor holds to the One who created me, and has a plan for me, Dan and each and every one of you!     ~ Trisha"

Standing firm on the foundation of God's Word, His Truth...

our Comfort, our Hope...

Never trade what you do Know for something that you don't know.

Thank you Trisha for reminding us all that God is so much bigger than our circumstances.  Your faith, dear friend, has given inspiration to countless others.  Praying for God's sweetest blessings upon you as your journey unfolds in His time.  May you know, abundantly so, just how eXtravagant His Grace truly is... Love you!

Holding on to the power of this Truth tonight,  In Grace, Always, Jane

What do you do when someone you love has been diagnosed with cancer...

If you're Jen Hatmaker, you write a Cancer Manifesto...

Her offbeat sense of humor and honest-to-goodness-this-is-life approach just struck a chord for me.  I don't even know her, but I love her to pieces and am praying blessings over her family...

If you are in the midst of your own cancer journey or are loving someone who is walking this road, then perhaps her words will resonate deep with you too... enjoy, cry, cheer... cuz cancer, you may have just met your match...


On June 2, 2015, Jen writes...

"We continue to be incredibly grateful for your concern and follow up on my mom's cancer. She was diagnosed with breast cancer in November and moved pretty quickly into surgery and radiation. She now has regular scans, so we live in three-month increments praying for the all-clear each time. We are in Cancer Maintenance.

I've mentioned before that as adult children, when one of your parents gets sick, everyone reverts to their standard roles. You hop into your lane and peddle furiously along familiar paths because you don't have time to innovate; adrenaline only leaves room for you to do what you already know how to do.

In our case, I am the oldest child, so I jumped into procedures and systems obviously. (The middle children constantly monitor everyone's feelings, and the babies are free to get clingy and fall apart. How nice for them.) As the oldest, I immediately started planning to keep this thing on the rails. We couldn't go willy-nilly into Cancer Mode without defining the mode. What was our mode? We needed a mode. (No one ever voted me "Most Fun" in high school.)

So six months ago, five hours before my mom's surgery, some of us prayed, some assembled snacks, some set up a care calendar. I wrote an essay. (I am a first-born, controlling, career writer; I had no alternative.) I penned the following manifesto and sent it to our family. I wonder if it might be helpful to you? I believe these guidelines apply to any family in crisis and those who love them. Obviously, cursing is allowed when your person gets sick, so feel free to use our swears in addition to our rules. (And FYI, readers: the following is simply our family tone, so even if you are less...salty...the approach works across all family brands.)

The King Family Cancer Manifesto

Well, I told cancer our family was off limits, but cancer is an a**hole. I already have a death plan for Mom and Dad: they are supposed to die peacefully in their sleep forty years from now on the same night holding hands.

We need to get our cancer rules together here on the front end. Mom goes in for surgery in five hours. Obviously, we hope the surgery will be the end of this, and Mom will kick cancer’s tail and we’ll get back to our important issues like Lindsay’s grilled pimento cheese recipe for her new menu and…whatever it is Dad does at the ranch (is it hay? Alfalfa? Are the calves born in the spring or fall? It’s all so unclear).

Amy H gave me this idea. It goes like this:

• We have concentric rings around Mom’s cancer, and she gets to be in the bulls-eye, because well, she has the actual cancer.
• The second ring is Dad, because he said “in sickness and in health” 45 years ago and so now he is stuck.
• Us four kids are third, because we are the fruit of their loins (gross).
• The people we married or “are hanging out with” (side-eye to Drew) or birthed are in the next ring, because Mom is their Grana or mother-in-law or “mom of the guy she is hanging out with” (Drew, land the plane, we like her so much).
• The fourth ring includes all our best friends. The real ones. The ones we ask to help us move and crap like that. The ones who walk into our houses without knocking.
• The outer ring includes our work friends and church friends and neighbors who like or even love us, and they will get swept into our cancer vortex by proximity.
• Everyone else in the world is outside of those rings.

The way this works is that stress can always go out but never in. Mom is in the bulls-eye, so she can say and do and feel whatever she wants at all times. She gets to act straight crazy if she's in the mood, but at no time does she have to deal with our psychosis or anyone else’s. No other rings can dump their worry, fear, or burdens on Mom. She is the Cancer Queen and zero drama can reach her on the throne. She can be calm and measured like she normally is, or she can be irrational and hysterical. It doesn’t matter. In the bulls-eye, crazy can go out but no crazy can come in. We have to be strong and steady at all times for Mom. I don’t know how we’ll manage as this is not our skill set. Maybe there is a YouTube tutorial.

Dad is next. He can’t give Mom any fuss ever, but he can give it to anyone outside his ring. We have to absorb Dad’s junk too. We know him: this won’t look like fear or panic, it will mostly just sound like a lot of words. Dad gets to say all the words in all the world and everyone outside his ring has to listen patiently, because the only person who gets to shut him down ever is Mom. Gird your loins.

The family is next, so none of our crazy can go in toward Mom or Dad, but it can absolutely go out to the other rings. Our outer people have to deal with us without so much as a raised eyebrow. If we want to completely overreact and flail into a quagmire of tortured exaggeration (we are not a stoic people), we get to do that and our outer people will let us. If we decide on a bad day that our doctor is a quackadoo with a degree off the internet, they should confirm our theory and google replacement doctors. Our best friends are the recipients of all melodrama, inflated enthusiasm, and emotional outbursts. They can give us exactly zero of those things. Outer rings can only send in the good. Absolutely no crazy. If an Outer Ring Person consistently makes an Inner Ring Person panic by, for example, telling lots and lots of dead people stories, his or her ring career is over. Crazy-senders get booted from the rings immediately. We police the rings like Martin Riggs.
 

Mom, we have no idea what the doc will find today, but let me tell you this: if it is worse than we think and you are looking at mastectomies, feel free to get a nice new set of knockers when this is over. It will be your silver lining. You’ll look like a 16-year-old cheerleader. While you are under that knife, we can add on any other treatments you want BECAUSE YOU HAD CANCER AND NOW YOU GET ANYTHING YOU WANT FOREVER.

If people outside our rings want to help, they can pray. Remember? We believe in God! How lucky for us. And for Mom. You know she has filled, what, a million pages with her Scripture and prayer journaling every morning for forever? Mom doesn’t do a lot of talky-talking about her God feelings (that is Dad’s territory), but she is all filled up with the goods. We know how Dad prays, because he constantly makes us bawl by emailing his prayers for us. We know God loves Mom (the prayer journals alone are a straight ticket to heaven, plus all those times she bailed us out of jail) and if we are not one of His favorite families, then God has no taste at all. He’s got us. I know it.

So no matter what comes later today and next week and this whole next year, we can handle this. We have each other and we have God and we have good rings. We can always default to inappropriate humor, and fortunately, Mom’s cancer is in her boobs, so that gives us instant material to work with. We’ll all do what we do: Dad will talk about it, I will make rules, Lindsay will wail, Cortney will diagnose, Drew will gripe at the sisters, and Mom will be the calm Cancer Queen in the middle of this crazy family she created, probably acting like the sanest one of all.

We can do this.

**********************

Six months on this side of the manifesto, I can tell you that the ring system WORKS. If the rings are maintained well, the bulls-eye person gets to sit in a soothing emotional spa of calm and serenity and love. Oh sure, her people have plenty of fear and crazy, but they only send it outward, never inward, so she is shielded. Good outer rings constantly strengthen the inner rings. For my mom, this looked like a stocked refrigerator for weeks, an usually calm family, gifts for every single day of radiation from her staff, a cleaned house, rotating hand-holders on radiation days at the oncology office, anointing her with oil and prayer, baskets of lotion, tons of emails and texts.

For us in the innermost rings, this looked like a billion calls checking in on us, friends meeting us at the doctor's office, a steady supply of patient listeners, well-timed distractions, invites for fun stuff, treatment strategy partners, encouragement galore, helpful research, laughter. Our people absorbed all our fears so we were free to absorb Mom's and Dad's. Our rings served us so well.

God was and still is so ever present, so ever near, so ever good. And we are taking our turn as outer rings for other folks right now, because that is how the community thing works. When someone staffs the outer rings of others, she need not worry when her day in the bulls-eye comes. She'll be surrounded by good people who love her and know the rules:

All the fear and worry can go out, and only strength and goodness can come in.  

If you are in crisis with your people right now, you have all my love and solidarity. Life is hard, but God and people are good. Set up your rings, explain the out-but-not-in Crazy Policy, and remember that God loves you and is for you. I am for you too, and your pain is always safe here. Consider me an outer ring: I will gladly, patiently absorb it all for you here today.

**Quick update: My friend "Amy H" (mentioned above) who gave me this idea read it from another article! I'm sure she mentioned that but the details completely fail me. This was six months ago and we were in Cancer Crisis. All I can remember is her great idea about "stress out, never in." I would never borrow a concept without crediting the original author intentionally (that has happened to me before and it blows). I am super glad to link you to this one she'd read in the LA Times by Susan Silk and Barry Goldman. I hope the "ring wisdom" is useful to so many of us. May it be a comfort and guide when our people are sick and we are all struggling."