Ice Encased and Frozen in Place

 

Just like that, it was gone. How quickly things around us… and within us… can change.

I left the meeting at church just as the rain was starting to fall. Having heard forecasts of freezing rain in the initial stages of the storm, the other ladies and I were anxious to get safely home before the roads became slick with ice. Luckily they were warm enough that they stayed just wet, but the air temperature dropped to a degree that caused the rain to freeze on everything else the droplets fell on – mailboxes, power lines, fence posts, and tree branches. By the time I reached the safety of my driveway and pulled into my garage, the world around me was suddenly encased in ice.

Perhaps you can relate because you’ve experienced the same. When your spouse died, whether you knew it was coming or not, your world suddenly froze, and all things familiar and dear to you turned cold and hard and unable to bring you the joy they once had as you now looked at them alone. The only thing that seemed able to move were your tears, which repeatedly let loose at a moment’s notice. A personal “winter” settled upon you, one perhaps that others couldn’t walk through with you, although they did their best to wrap you in layers of love and cheer, help and good wishes.

As much as I’m not a fan of freezing rain, I had to admit that the ice covering everything around me was beautiful. The bushes at the forest’s edge, the trees… long frozen drips of frozen water from fence rails, bird feeders… everything covered in translucent white. I tried to photograph the beauty to send to friends in warmer climes, but the pictures didn’t do justice to the crystalized magnificence surrounding me.

The world was still frozen solid when I took the dog out for a quick potty break this morning. Afterwards I grabbed a hot cup of coffee and nestled in amongst the pillows against the headboard of the bed. Soaking in the beauty of the scene outside the window beside me, I knew that soon the temperature would rise enough to melt it all away. And sure enough, before I’d even finished that cup of coffee, I looked out again… and the ice was simply gone! The temperature had risen just enough to release all the frozen droplets and let them fall to the ground. The tree limbs were bare and brown once more.

And so it will be with you. The spring thaw always follows the weight of winter. It may not happen as suddenly as the ice melt outside my window this morning, but it will come. One day you will be surprised to notice that you’re feeling a little better than you were the week before. Laughter might begin as a trickle of joy that suddenly appears in a frozen stream, gradually increasing in size and intensity till it flows fully and freely from your lips once more. You’ll get there.

What’s important is that you notice and memorize the moments of beauty in the winter you are going through – the family that brought not just a pizza dinner to share with you, but their joy, as well. The friend who repeatedly invited you out to lunch to give you a chance to confide and who doesn’t mind the tears that you cry. The pastor who calls or texts to check on you. The coworkers who welcome you back to work with flowers and candy and a warm embrace. And oh, the incredible faithfulness of God, Who showed up time and time again in critical moments of your journey… His nearness a comfort as you read His Word. These are incredible gifts of love that you might not experience in any other life season… and you need to receive and soak in them as they surround you now.

And that is because they are photographs of hope, a cloak of comfort that you will be able to wrap around the shoulders of someone else who finds themselves suddenly encased in sadness and unable to move forward. Your shared experiences might be the warmth that starts the spring thaw in the season they are going through.

I simply stand in awe of a God who collects our tears and uses them to water seeds of life in someone else’s garden… that they might likewise rise and thrive one more.

“You keep track of all my sorrows. You have collected all my tears in your bottle. You have recorded each one in your book.” (Psalm 56:8 NLT)

“He comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort others. When they are troubled, we will be able to give them the same comfort God has given us.” 

(2 Corinthians 1:4 NLT)

Victory on Valentine's Day

[The story that follows applies to anyone who is missing their special someone for any reason on this holiday dedicated to love and romance. It's what we do with our sorrow during this time of separation that is important. Heather had the hope of seeing her husband again once his overseas assignment was completed. But those of us who have seen our spouse walk ahead of us through Heaven's doors have the same joy in store once our purposes on this side have been fulfilled and we find ourselves together once more. Read on...]  

I could place her face; it was her name I couldn‘t come up with. But then rarely did I know the names of the people I met over the checkout lane of the grocery store until a friendship had been firmly established between us. Yet she chatted merrily on, mentioning in the same tone she’d just used to discuss the weather we’d been having lately that she was going through a divorce.

I stopped scanning her groceries for a moment and looked at her. “I’m sorry to hear that,” I said.

“Oh, I’m fine. It’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me.” she asserted. “And I don’t need that in a bag…” she said, reaching to grab the bottle of vodka I’d just set down and putting it directly into her purse. The action caused me to wonder if she was really as fine about it all as she claimed, especially when I saw her the next day, the one after that, and the one following that as well, doing exactly the same thing. Some days she came through my line, on others I just happened to look up and spot her in another checkout lane just in time to see her stash the bottle in her handbag. Perhaps these days before Valentine‘s Day were tough ones for her in her current situation, and the liquor was just her pain medication of choice.

That thought prompted mental visions of another friend for whom this particular holiday was also especially difficult this year. A coworker who looks too young to have already been married two years, she’s an army wife whose husband has been deployed overseas for the past eight months. The separation has been hard on them both, and they are eagerly counting down the days till their reunion sometime this spring.

I asked her recently how she made it through the holiday season just past. She told me that Thanksgiving and Christmas weren’t so bad, perhaps because she had lots of family around, but that New Year’s hit her hard, as she and her soldier had always been together before this to share a New Year’s Eve kiss. And now Valentine’s Day loomed on the horizon, and she hoped she’d be scheduled off that day so she wouldn’t have to see people buying flowers and candy for the love of their lives, while hers was still so far away.

Imagine her disappointment then when the work schedule came out for the week of Valentine’s Day, and not only was she scheduled to work on the holiday, but she was placed in the floral department all week long! With cashier hours in short supply at the start of the year and the floral department needing extra help to handle the Valentine’s Day demand, she’d been given hours there in order to meet the need and fill out her paycheck at the same time. Grateful for work though she was, the action rubbed salt into a wound that was already raw and bleeding.

Surprisingly, she, too, found solace for her pain in something she carried in a bag…not a handbag, but a shopping bag that she filled with gifts for her friends and coworkers. By day she took orders, carried fresh blooms from the cooler and cashed out customers making purchases, and then she spent her off hours tying personally-addressed Valentines on to the stems of cloth flowers, depositing them in the pink carry-all until it was packed full. A day or two before the holiday she started delivering them with a smile, an occasional hug, and a warm wish for each. Using some tips from a regular in the department she also put together an arrangement of fresh flowers for the mother who supports her in so many ways in her husband’s absence. She simply spread joy wherever she went that week.

Her actions seemed to inspire the same in her coworkers, who were soon passing out mini-bouquets, frosted cupcakes, or buying little remembrances for any possibly lonely soul who came to their minds. And not surprisingly, the love she gave away came back to her in the form of flowers from friends, a greatly anticipated gift from her hubby, and the thoughtful appreciation of the many people who were blessed by her actions. She simply took the pain she was feeling and turned it into gain somehow for everyone around her, and found victory on the very Valentine’s Day she’d been dreading as a result.

The Bible warns that in this life we will have tribulation; each of us will face troubling situations that break our hearts and threaten to wear us down physically and emotionally. It’s what we do with that trouble that counts. So often we stay so consumed with getting through the matter ourselves that we don’t even see the suffering of those that surround us. We feel we have nothing at that point to give to anybody else, anyway. Yet God urges us to use the very thing that threatens to destroy us as a tool to help the person struggling beside us get a leg up on their own situation. In doing so we find that we are gradually lifted out of our own pit of despair as well.

We need to remember that we don’t fight our battles alone; God sends visible reminders of hope and the victory He promises if we just have eyes to see them. Perhaps it was just one such messenger who suddenly appeared before my friend in the floral shop a day or two before the holiday, a man dressed in army fatigues, presumably from the nearby recruitment center, there to buy flowers for his girl. She told me later that she was surprised she didn’t break down at the sight of him. Yet I believe he was really sent there on a mission to deliver a gift…his presence perhaps a heavenly reminder that sooner than she thinks, her own soldier will come walking home to her. On that day she will cry…but they will be tears of joy.

“…for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap…And let us not grow weary while doing good, for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart. Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all…”
(Galatians 6:7,9-10 NKJV)

 

(photo credit: Unsplash/KellySikkema)

 

 

Hands-on Help for the Hurting

My fingers were all just so sore.

That was my thought as I lay down in bed the other night. Usually I have one or two troublesome digits at a time during the winter months; to have both hands so achy was unusual and a little overwhelming. I could work around a couple of sore spots with ease, but to have the fingers that were supposed to pick up the slack also in bad shape was a bit of a problem. Resolutely I grabbed the little pot of cream on my bedside table, took off the lid and sent the top of both hands inside for a dive. Then slowly and methodically the tips of those ten fingers worked that salve into each other's broken places... the finger cracks by the nails from the cold weather, the dry skin so prevalent at this time of year, the burns from my carelessness with the wood stove. Up and down, in and around, rubbing and soothing till all the excess was gone. I got tickled to realize that as each finger worked cream into its neighbors' wounds, its buddies beside it were doing the same to its own lesions. It was a mutually beneficial action that would soon bring positive results. I flipped off the light and let the healing balm do its work during the sleep-filled hours of the night.

When I woke I realized that my fingers' actions the night before were a picture of the church.

“Church” has been on my mind of late, as I remembered a series the pastor preached some time ago, exploring the reasons why we as believers attend. Church attendance has changed in form in the years since the pandemic; our options have expanded from merely walking through an open door to watching a service online to small-group Zoom meetings in the comfort of our homes, to name a few. But a weekly gathering of believers in some form is still a ritual we cling to. Pastor's opening question of why we do so troubled me more than I liked to admit. Was it just a matter of habit? One of those things I've done for so long that the action is no longer questioned? Or perhaps obedience? I went originally because my parents said so; now I go because God says the same? Or is it merely a social activity with people who have become my friends? The question lingered in my subconscious and surfaced repeatedly to tease my mind.

In the initial period following the loss of one's spouse, life is often too chaotic or overwhelming to consider attending church services in person (although some women find it especially comforting to do so), and that's when it is such a blessing to be able to watch the services online. For me it was important to make the effort to go in person as soon as I could, just as a way to say thank you to God for all the help I received from Him in those initial days. And I find that that started a trend, because there hasn't been a week since when He hasn't done something amazing - usually on a daily basis! - that I want to express gratitude for! And so I go as often as I can.

So we can go to find comfort in our heartbreak. And we can go to thank and worship our faithful God. But perhaps church attendance is even more about simply being there for one another.

And suddenly I understood. The church gathering is just the pot of cream we dip our hearts into each week, a source of healing balm that we then use in our interactions with each other, rubbing it into our sore spots and open wounds...it is help for the hurting that we apply as we go and which heals our own hurts in the process. We come together for a joint encounter with God, Who promises that where two or three are gathered together in His Name, He is there in their midst. The worship releases and increases our love for Him, the preaching instructs and inspires us, and the social interactions are a way to give and receive ministry as part of the body of Christ. Just as I have three kinds of lotion or ointment on my nightstand that I choose between on any given night to give my fingers some relief, so do we have multiple ways to connect and interact with each other, depending on our personal preferences and needs. The important thing is that we find a source of help.

Perhaps when God warns us not to forsake “the assembling of ourselves together” (Hebrews 10:25), it's not because He wants to add another item to our over-loaded to-do lists, or to make us feel guilty for our failure in that area, nor because He is an overbearing father just giving commands because He is the Boss. He simply knows that none of us can make it through this life on our own... that we need each other to sooth the hurts and walk us through the broken places in our lives in this journey through a wounded and weary world. As always, He has a source of Help and Hope ready for our every need if we just make the effort to avail ourselves of it.

“Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there?

Why then is there no healing for the wound of my people?”

(Jeremiah 8:22 NIV)