One of the scariest things in the early days of my diagnosis is that the pathology was unclear. Best case scenario, the cancer was contained. Worst case scenario, it had spread beyond what they could imagine. This fear was heightened by the fact that all the normal tests that catch cervical cancer failed to detect mine. I was diagnosed long after they usually diagnose women. And that terrified every medical professional I saw.
In January 2007 I started a blog. I had been out of college for over half a year and wanted to practice the craft I had gone to college for. So I wrote and wrote and wrote. Here I am nine years later. I'm married. I have kids. I've written a book. And it was time to move my site over to a more permanent and professional place.
The holiday season provides a lot of time for fullness. Thanksgiving flows into Christmas and we can hardly remember what it felt like to have an empty stomach (or buttoned pants). The predominant theme of Christmas in the West is plenty. We have plenty. Presents spill out from under our Christmas trees. Our parties have food left over to last us into January. And we aren't the only ones who know what plenty feels like.
We have a Little People nativity that sits under our tree. Despite our best efforts, it rarely is all in order. Sometimes the animals are sitting on the dining room table. Sometimes baby Jesus is riding in a dump truck. Almost always the pieces are scattered all over our house, only to be returned to the angelic scene after the kids are in bed. Our nativity scene is pretty disheveled, which in many ways is a microcosm of our current season of life.
"Although the eternal Son, as God the Son, obeyed the Father and fulfilled what the Father willed for the Son to do prior to the incarnation, yet it was only the God-man, the human Jesus, who could obey in this way. To obey to the point of death requires the ability to die, and for this, Jesus had to be human. To be placed on a cross required that he be in a human body, and so again, this obedience required that he be fully human..."
Many of us are familiar with this often quoted passage. When we don't know what to do, or when things get hard, we can run back to this verse for comfort. But what does it mean? It's easy to go straight to the promise of this verse--he will direct your paths--while missing the exhortation leading up to it.
We all have that sin. The one we thought was long conquered, long forgotten, and long paid for by Christ's precious blood. Then one day it emerges, reminding us that we are not yet perfected, and riddling us with guilt. It's the sin we don't speak of. It's the sin that we are certain would cause friends to shun us, strangers to mock us, and God to turn his back on us. Everyone's is different, but the effects on us are the same. And when it rears its ugly head we are undone.
I'm not one for New Year's resolutions. I suppose I don't like the disappointment when I don't meet my own impossible standards. But I do like to reflect on the previous year and look forward to the one ahead of me. As the year turned from 2014 to 2015 I was reading through the stories of the kings of Judah and Israel in Kings and Chronicles. It's hardly reading that will make you feel warm and fuzzy inside as you start a new year.
In my single days, my roommates and I kept an article from John Piper on our refrigerator as a daily reminder to fight the sin of comparison. I was reminded of it last week as we wrapped up our summer bible study on John with the women of our church. As Peter has just been restored to fellowship with Christ, he is immediately pulled into the comparison game as he looks at his fellow disciple, John. Piper says this about Peter's question to Jesus.
The other night as my head hit the pillow I felt weighed down by a lingering cloud of guilt. I couldn't shake the sense that I was doing something terribly wrong, or at least not doing enough. Either by commission or omission, I was failing. But what I couldn't understand was why I felt this way on that particular evening. There were no catastrophic accidents with the twins that day. No one had a meltdown that was out of the ordinary.
