Salty Zebra

  For I consider that our present sufferings cannot even be compared to the glory that will be revealed to us.   Romans 8:18  Suffering is real and difficult. Living in the midst of it can be overwhelming. How do we make it through? How do we hold on in the hardship and persevere in the challenges? Hope. Hope is the only thing that can outshine the darkness, that can make things worth it, even when they don’t make sense in the moment. So, what do we put our hope in? Getting better? Our situation improving? What if those things don’t come to pass in this life? Was our hope in vain? I think it is so important that we are careful about what we place our hope in.   The Bible has a lot to say about hope. Here are a few verses that stand out to me this morning: Isaiah 40:31  - But those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint. Micah 7:7  - But as...

   Over the next few weeks, I'll be sharing regular posts about how I'm preparing for radiation. I'm hoping these can help someone else, as I struggled to find a conversational source like this that dealt with the subject. For more information on my brain tumor, check out these posts .  After my first radiation treatment, I was excited to come home and write this post and tell you about all the wonderful and crazy things that had taken place, but there's so much more life going on right now than I have bandwidth for, and writing a post fell to the bottom of the list. That worked out well, though, because each day added on a little more insight as well as intrigue, and I think this post will have benefitted from waiting until the end of the week to be written. Come along with me and find out about what I learned in my first five days of radiation therapy!  As expected, my husband had us up before the crack of dawn on the first day of treatment. He actually set his ala...

  Bring us back to yourself, O LORD, so that we may return to you; renew our life as in days before. Lamentations 5:21  Do you ever think back to the “Good Old Days?” Times when things were easier, happier? When your children lived at home, or when they were little? Before some major health or job crisis? Do you ever long for that joy to be restored? Jeremiah did. This book I’ve read through over the last week, Lamentations, catalogs the hurt and degradation of his people. This was all well-deserved, as he often mentions, because of how the people had turned away from God, but that doesn’t make it good. Jeremiah knew what life could be like, and he wanted it back.   The title of this book, Lamentations, means, “Expression of sorrow; cries of grief; the act of bewailing.”* This is not sadness. It is not a mild depression or feeling down. This is a desperate, gut-wrenching expression of distress. Jeremiah’s whole world had been turned upside-down, as indeed it had for h...

  Our eyes continually failed us as we looked in vain for help. From our watchtowers we watched for a nation that could not rescue us.   Lamentations 4:17 What is lament and how are we, as Christians, to use it in our spiritual life? Lament isn’t something that is often talked about in church or by the Christian influencers online that we follow. According to Bible Hub , lament is, “a form of prayer and expression that encompasses sorrow, mourning, and a plea for divine intervention.” It is a spiritual discipline, much like prayer and Bible reading. But lament is not just an expression of grief, it is also an articulation of trust in God amidst suffering and injustice. Lament turns us toward God when God seems far away ( Annaliese’s sermon on lament ). So how should lament factor into a healthy spiritual life?   As I’ve mentioned often lately, Jesus promised us that trouble would come ( John 16:33 ). If you are not currently experiencing a season of difficulty, as I a...

  Over the next few weeks, I'll be sharing regular posts about how I'm preparing for radiation. I'm hoping these can help someone else, as I struggled to find a conversational source like this that dealt with the subject. For more information on my brain tumor, check out these posts .  Today I head into the City for my first radiation treatment. I'll write a post for next Monday to tell you all about it, but I don't know yet what that's going to look like, so today I'm going to write to you about Zora. I would super  appreciate your prayers as I head into treatment though!  When you're going through something hard, it's nice to have a buddy, a friend, someone who will be with you through thick and thin, someone who can even come into the room with you during a radiation treatment, in other words, a stuffy. My husband first suggested it shortly after we found out that my treatment was being moved up . We've taken a small stuffed animal with us on ...

  But this I call to mind; therefore I have hope: The LORD’s loyal kindness never ceases; his compassions never end. They are fresh every morning; your faithfulness is abundant! “My portion is the Lord,” I have said to myself, so I will put my hope in him.   Lamentations 3:21-24  Humanity, as a whole, likes to put things into boxes of good or bad. Love, peace, joy; those are good. Hate, anger, pain; those are bad. But are they? If God made them all, and uses them all for His perfect plan and purpose, cannot all things be good?   This morning, I’ve been reflecting on the fact that, these days, people are quick to attribute blessing to God, but when it comes to suffering, at most they say, “God allows it.” They would not be willing to say that God could or would cause us harm. I wonder, though, if this is something we have devised for our own comfort instead of it being strictly biblical? Today our reading was Lamentations 3, written by the prophet Jeremiah as he w...