“O Jesus I have promised to serve Thee to the end…” This song has been running over and
over in my mind the last few weeks.
I find it easy to think of serving God ‘to the end,’ it’s just in the
middle where I find the struggle.
Jogging the other morning I found
myself plodding one foot in front of the other trying to get my lazy legs to
move my body down the road. The
struggle. Breathe, relax, step, I
know at some point I can turn around and think about making it home. Oh this is hard! Why do I do this to myself? “But I keep under my body, and bring it
into subjection.” I make this body
do what I want it to do, not what it
thinks it wants to do.
Step, keep stepping. I turn and feel the wind at my back
now. I wish it would blow
harder. Blow me home. All the way home. I can look at the ground and take just
one more step. It’s a relief
sometimes to look ahead and see the house. This flat Iowa land doesn’t leave much for the
imagination. It’s all there in
stark reality. The good, the bad,
the sometimes awful.
The
other day someone said in a card that right now God has us in His intensive
care unit. Close to Him. Where He can watch us closely. It made me cry. Who wants to be in the ICU? Isn’t that for other people? People I don’t know? Isn’t it for me to hear about and
wonder how they are doing and be glad it’s not me?
What
does it meant to be close to God?
How do I know if I’m responding correctly to this situation? Is God shaking His head at me and
saying, “Really? How can you miss
My point?” Do I really believe
that God is working something beautiful in my life through this situation? What if I’m responding like the
children of Israel did so often?
Asking for a more when they were already being given so much?
Step, step, step. I breathe in the air and remember that
there is a verse similar to the song I’ve been singing. “But he that shall endure unto the end,
the same shall be saved.” It
doesn’t talk so much about arriving at home. It talks about endurance. It means the struggle.
The stepping, the breathing, the relying on God for this moment. My life is just a vapor. I can hang on, I can step, I can
breathe, I can endure for a vapor, just a moment. This struggle is not so intense that I cannot, with God’s
grace, endure to the end.
Today Ian is sore, and tired. He said the pain medicine he is taking
for the wound in is arm, helps with the pain and discomfort in his legs. He was out fixing the rabbit cages in
the barn, making sure everything is in place for when the does decided it’s
time to have their kits. Caring
for the rabbits gives him something to do, to think about, when I’m away at
work and he is left with little to do at home.
When I met Ian in the recovery room
yesterday afternoon he was perky as ever.
He wanted to show me the incision the doctors made in his arm for the
muscle biopsy. He specifically
asked the Anesthesiologist not to sedate him so he could talk to the doctors
during the operation. When Dr.
Reddy met me in the waiting room after the surgery he said with a bit of a
smile that Ian was fine, everything went well and he thinks Ian saw most of the
operation through a reflection in the chrome on a light fixture overhead.
The drive home was a bit long as
the pain medicine started to wear off.
We decided to wait to get back home to fill the prescription the doctor
gave us.
We won’t hear back from the doctors
for at least 6-12 days. More
enduring. More quietly learning to
wait. But this is life. Patience without anger. Trusting without hopelessness. And enduring not just for the end but truly
learning to endure for this moment.
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