One of the things doctors keep track of to monitor our health is whether we are experiencing anemia. We likely know it relates to low levels of hemoglobin in our blood, but most of all we are aware of how it affects us. We feel weak, lack power, vigor, vitality, or colorfulness. And doctors want to determine the cause and help us get back to feeling and being better. That’s one of the areas of their expertise but it isn’t mine.

So why am I saying we should not be anemic?

Because it isn’t something that can just happen in our physical bodies, but in our spiritual walk as well. It doesn’t happen in one moment in time but slowly develops as we allow ourselves to be depleted. Life comes at us every day with things we don’t always expect and can sap us of energy that dwindles even further if it is something that continues for a period of time. We become tired and weary physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. Dealing with hard stuff does that to us and hard stuff comes in all shapes and sizes.

It can be a sudden loss, a debilitating diagnosis, an accident that upends the trajectory of our life, or it can be too much lethargy and disconnection with people that results in a sense of isolation and loneliness.

We can little by little drop off our usual spiritual habits that sustain us when life is not coming at us sideways. We may not have much energy, so we don’t pick up the Bible to do the reading we have done previously. Sometimes if we do, what we read seems to be just words that have little or no impact on where we sense we are. We can fall prey to the enemy’s devices of drawing our attention to scripture where it seemed the Lord didn’t show up or help and we identify with those and wonder if He cares or even sees where we are. Our memories land on passages where people are miraculously healed or delivered, and we have not been, or we see that it was one or two people who received those gifts while countless others in the crowd likely went on suffering in one way or another. We may know that some things are beyond our understanding where God is concerned but that doesn’t comfort us or buoy our faith. And what happens to our prayer life when we reach that point?

The answer to that is impacted by a number of things. One of those is how we view prayer overall. For us, is it a structured approach to prayer we were taught or believed was how prayer should look so that it almost becomes rote for us or is it more intimate? Is it reverential and polite using the words we believe we should use in the Lord’s presence?

Is our prayer life bordering on anemia or do we lay it all out before the Lord in a “no holds barred” way? Do we risk asking the Lord the tough questions going on in our hearts and heads?

“…the writers of Psalms, Ecclesiastes, Lamentations, and Job took their toughest questions, their heaviest weights, to God. They asked the most jarring questions, probed the darkest issues, and confessed their hurts and betrayals without ready apology.”

“If prayer was a safe place for those men and women to get brutishly honest with God, then shouldn’t it still be safe for us today?”

Margaret Feinberg in The Sacred Echo

Do we unconsciously believe the Lord can’t handle us verbalizing what He already sees in our hearts?

When we look at it that way, it can sound ridiculous. The Lord asks us to invite Him into our hearts and that is where some of the darkest messiest secrets lurk within each of us. It is also a profoundly intimate place that we tend to only allow access to by a very few people we risk trusting. So, what kind of relationship does He really desire with us anyway?

“God doesn’t want a surface, shallow friendship. He doesn’t want to be mere acquaintances. He wants to sort through the muck and mire that comes with any meaningful relationship.”

Margaret Feinberg in The Sacred Echo

Think about all those places where the writers were asking those tough questions. David never minced words in the Psalms and yet he was called a man after God’s own heart. He questioned God often and so did many of the writers of scripture. God asked questions as well in both Old and New Testaments. There is no evidence it knocked Him off his throne. He was more than willing to grapple with those who wanted authentic dialogue with Him.

Do we believe it is not okay to ask hard questions of the Lord? If we do at times, perhaps we could learn something from the ancient practice known as Jewish midrash. Margaret Feinberg defines it in The Sacred Echo:

“This method of study invites us to wrestle with God through his word. In Hebrew, midrash means to search out. Midrash asks the reader to look at difficult Scriptures, ask questions, and try to make sense of them before God. Midrash invites us to become venturesome with the Bible and to trade in a surface understanding of Scripture for a deeper grasp of a passage’s meaning and, along the way, to discover more of God and his ways. The questioning, the searching out, becomes a foundation for growth and discovery.”

Margaret Feinberg in The Sacred Echo

I am not suggesting we tell God what to do but rather that we know it is okay to wrestle with the hard questions, the ones we don’t have answers for and that He has not answered either. And let’s be honest, there are plenty of those.

The writer of Hebrews suggests that our prayers should be anything BUT anemic:

“Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.”

Hebrews 4:16 (NKJV)

Don’t shy away from wrestling with the Lord and asking the tough questions. He wants us to bring them to Him and then trust Him with the answers He may or may not give that has the benefit of an eternal perspective.

You are likely thinking that is an absurd question. Who wants to be miserable, right?

Misery comes to us all and it has many forms. It comes in illness, accidents, loss, loneliness, betrayal, any and all forms of suffering. Make no mistake about it – life is harder than we might have thought it would be. We need much encouragement and support from one another to navigate the rough seas and rocky shores. Sometimes that is hard to find, and it is then apparent there is only One who can be there all the time – day or night, holidays, and weekends.

There is no reason to look for misery. It will find us from time to time, but when it does there is a snare that can occur in us as well. We naturally can get lost in the misery. It becomes our major focus, and the struggle is real and can be prolonged to what seems unendurable lengths of time. Over time the enemy can use it to add to the misery we already are experiencing if we are not watchful.

In my undergraduate college days, I took a course in Children’s Literature that required I make a collection of poems and quotes that could be a resource when I became a teacher. Even though I still have that collection all these years later, I recall few of the treasures I discovered in completing the project save one. That one has echoed in my mind and heart often since then and it points to a truth that confronts us in times when we become focused on the struggle.

“If you wish to be miserable, think about yourself, about what you want, what you like, what respect people ought to pay you, what people think of you; and then to you nothing will be pure. You will spoil everything you touch; you will make sin and misery for yourself out of everything God sends you; you will be as wretched as you choose.”

Charles Kingsley

Those words are hard to hear. Maybe that is because they speak such piercing truth. In a life touched or permeated with suffering from any and all forms, it seems to be paradoxical to ask us to look beyond the keen pain and need we feel for ourselves to see how this can ensnare us and add to the pain and misery we already feel. It can cause us to doubt anyone cares about us or considers our difficulty, even the Lord. We may not recognize how this impacts the anguish we may feel already.

What do we do when we recognize our own relational poverty?

Our response to that question is important and significant. We are tempted to think that surely no one, not even the Lord, would expect me to be able to look beyond my own suffering. We have nothing to give. Isn’t it time to be able to receive?

What do we see Christ pointing to in such times? He tells the story of the widow who gives her last penny. He asks the man by the well who has waited for someone else to help him into the healing waters if he really wants to get well. In the midst of the anguish of untold suffering on the cross, He responds to the thief on the cross beside Him.

It costs us little to pray for others whether we know all they are dealing with or not. It costs us little to thank someone who tends to us in our suffering whether it is a nurse, another caregiver, a friend, neighbor, family member, or the Lord. It costs us little other than looking outside ourselves to notice someone else. And when we do, it is amazing what can happen.

Too often we think that serving or blessing someone else means some formalized ministry or program or giving money. Those are good, but sometimes we miss the opportunities right in front of us – the person waiting on us who looks tired that we can encourage even in a small way by a smile, a word of appreciation, or even asking if there is something we can pray for them about. When we notice such things, we are much like Jesus because that is what He did.

“Sometimes I think the best gift that can be given to someone in need is a long afternoon together on a shady porch with a pitcher of iced tea.”

Margaret Feinberg in The Sacred Echo

“And if you give even a cup of cold water to one of the least of my followers, you will surely be rewarded.”

Matthew 10:42 (NLT)

What can I give out of my poverty?

What can you?

Surrender.

The word seems repugnant to us. We seem to come into the world hardwired to hold on and fight instead of surrender. When we see a newborn infant, we see hands clenched closed. What is he or she hanging onto? Beyond what the developmental process might be, it is still metaphorical. For the whole of our lives our hands close over the things we want to keep, the things we want to hold onto.

Perhaps we fear what will be taken from us or perhaps it is simply hard-wired to seek to stay alive and value the gift of life for as long as we possibly can. Life will teach us there is much to learn about what surrender means and when we are to “let go” versus to fight to hold on. Not every white flag of surrender is a defeat, but every battle should not mean a white flag is the first thing we wave. If we choose it first it may be because we don’t value what it is that can be taken away from us.

When we fear to surrender it often means we are fearful of what will be taken from us, but Margaret Feinberg suggests we misunderstand:

“Surrender means willingly giving something over, while stripping is having something taken away. True surrender is not something that happens to you; it is something you willingly do.”

Margaret Feinberg in The Sacred Echo

Her words offer a bigger perspective on what surrender means and one to carefully consider since we have such an aversion to it.

Yet as we grow from infancy into adulthood, we discover life is a series of cycles of letting go or surrendering and holding tight and hanging on. It is a hard thing and over time we get a great deal of practice.

“Life, it seems, follows a relentless cycle: in our early years we accumulate, but in our later years we divest. Both of them have a place in this life. Both of them are a struggle. Both of them are liberating.”

Joan Chittister in The Gift of Years

How true are Joan Chittister’s words! Often, we discover we are accumulating more than we realized when we are packing up for a move. All those drawers and closets, basements and attics are “treasure” troves with things we never got around to making decisions about and whether they were worth keeping. Yet we keep doing it even after a move, the process begins again even if slowly at first. Mail accumulates in our inboxes and on counters and tables in our homes. Photos keep piling up whether in print or digital format. Each thing we have requires a decision and the struggle of letting go of things stalls the process more times than we intend until we are about to move or suddenly look at something and wonder why we have kept it.

It’s often been said that one person’s trash is another person’s treasure. We don’t usually start out planning on acquiring a collection, but it happens nonetheless in small and big ways. We seem to be indecisive about what is important to keep and what we need to get rid of and much of the time that process is over-focused on material possessions that we have worked to get or acquired in some way or another. The critical shift is determining what we value and why more than whether we keep things. And that changes as we gain more experience in life. Over time we start to recognize there are more important things than success or “stuff”.

“…we have learned that the things we amassed to prove to ourselves how valuable, how important, how successful we were, didn’t prove it at all. In fact, they have very little to do with it. It’s what’s inside of us, not what’s outside that counts. It’s what we learned along the way, what we meant to other people along the way, what we became inside – along the way – that is who we really are.”

Joan Chittister in The Gift of Years

For as hard as it may be to make decisions about giving up “stuff”, other areas are harder for us.

“…surrender takes many forms – everything including your schedule, your possessions, and of course, your heart. Surrender asks us to hand over not just what we have but who we are to God.”

Margaret Feinberg in The Sacred Echo

When we give our heart to the Lord as believers, we tend to have little recognition that it will be an ongoing process of surrender and learning it means giving over everything. We give our hearts and trust Him for eternity. How is it so easy for us to struggle in trusting Him with so many other things we may face?

Over my lifetime I have had multiple opportunities to deal with that truth about myself and one always comes to mind that happened maybe 25 years ago. It was one of those doctor’s visits that we hear the word, biopsy, that sets all manner of fear invading our hearts and minds. And on that day on my drive home that was exactly what was happening. I moved directly from biopsy to malignancy and chemo and on it went. About a mile from home, the Lord asked me a question: “And?” My answer after that litany of fears was that I might die. Again, I heard the question: “And?” By now it was becoming clear to me that He had something He wanted me to see. (Sometimes we are so thickheaded!) My response then was that I would be with Him! And I would tell you that I sensed He must have smiled as I sense He responded, “Would that be so bad?” By now I was smiling, and peace flooded through me as I recognized that in this life or the next, He was always with me. Even though He gave me many choices, some would not be mine.

“True surrender is not a single action but a process in life, yielding ourselves – our whole selves – to God. Breath-taking opportunities for surrender will surface throughout our lives, but grabbing hold of them begins below the surface, in the deep places of the soul where God is already preparing us not just for those moments but for himself.”

Margaret Feinberg in The Sacred Echo

It can happen so easily to any one of us. It lays in wait and catches up with us. We let the feelings and hurts, and misperceptions stay stuffed inside. Then we fall prey to the enemy’s devices. He wants to disconnect us from one another, ourselves, and God and the enemy is cunning and waits for just the right moment.

C.S. Lewis gives us a perfect example in his powerful story set in Narnia, The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe.

Life was hard in London during WW II and there was special concern for the children. So, hundreds of them were sent into the English countryside away from the relentless bombing for protection. Can you imagine being put on a train to travel to an unknown place to live with strangers without any idea of what would happen and if you would ever see your family at home again? It was fertile ground for so many taunts of the enemy.

Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy had already been dealing with the absence of their father and by now the oldest siblings had taken on a somewhat parental role. Little wonder that Edmund might chafe when Peter and Susan started giving him direction. Not unusual for that to happen among siblings under the best of circumstances.

Lucy seemed to be unruffled by that, but Edmund was trying to find his place and absent one, he was prone to behavior that showed his anger. The feelings he didn’t actually express festered in the darkness inside of him and as they did, the enemy saw his longing. Edmund had no idea who Aslan had called him to be or what lay ahead if he did not yield to the darkness growing in his heart.

When Edmund stumbles into the winter of Narnia and discovers Lucy has not lied about this country beyond the wardrobe of the professor’s house, he is easy prey to the white witch. It might seem he is just fond of Turkish delight, but he is really looking for something more than that to satisfy the hunger inside of him to feel important, valued, and capable. If somehow that nagging emptiness had not been there, there would not have been room for the anger, bitterness, jealousy, and rebellion to grow. Perhaps then he would not have been foolish as to accept the false promises of the white witch masquerading as the Queen of Narnia offering him candy and rulership of her kingdom one day, if only he would comply with her request to bring his brother and sisters to Narnia to meet her.

The trap was perfectly suited to Edmund, and it would lead him to betray those he loved.

This wondrous tale written as only C.S. Lewis could write can quickly cause us to not feel much affection for Edmund. Perhaps we need to look closer to what moved him to take those steps and consider whether we also could be duped. Evil seduces us by appearing to be good and offer us something yummy and appealing without telling us the cost.

The seduction was easier because the children didn’t know the prophecy, had never heard of Aslan, or what the call on their lives was to be.

It’s vital for us to know the Bible and the truth that fills the pages from Genesis to Revelation and it is even more important than we may realize to teach these things to our children from the time we hold them in our arms and rock them to sleep. For it is God’s story and the most important story they will ever hear or learn. It can show them the right path, help them make the best choice, and save them from the evil conspiring to seduce them. If this story isn’t woven into the fabric of each of our stories, each of their stories, we and they can be duped not unlike Edmund.

Holding onto the hurts, misunderstandings, comparisons, judgments, unmet longings, and more can tempt us to look in all the wrong places for something to make us feel better. If we don’t know the story, God’s story, we will never know that He is the only One who can satisfy those longings, meet us in our hurts and emptiness, and do for us what only He can accomplish.

The enemy’s lies that we will never be accepted by Him if we tell Him the truth of what hides within us are meant to isolate us and deceive us from recognizing He already knows and is just waiting for us to come to Him so He can clean it all out and make us whole. Only if we have a steady diet of the words He left for us can we overcome the hunger that can be stirred in the confusing daily lives we live. He wants us to not initiate with evil and the imprisonment it brings, not to be deceived by the angel appearing as light.

What are you really hungry for?

Only One can fill the emptiness you feel.

Our stories are woven together one stitch at a time. Some stitches are tight, others loose. Each stitch adds a new color or shade, a new texture, or guide for the design.

Some would say that we are adding the stitches, but that would mean the patterns that develop are entirely of our own making. Some might say that others add the stitches or God Himself does, but that would mean we have no part in the creation of our stories.

Perhaps it is better said that our stories are actually an interweaving of stitches of our Creator, God Himself, as well as stitches that we also add to the fabric being created.

Though the patterns may appear random, they are made up of a collaboration of designs between God and ourselves. Some are purposeful and well thought out while others happen almost accidentally.

But all of them are important for it is our stories that we not only remember but also the stories that remember us.

We may think that others add stitches as well, but the fabric is always ours and it is our choices or lack of them that determine the weave.

Stories, true legends, begin in the midst of a setting, a context that tells us something about how the stories begin.

Some stories begin with “once upon a time”, but those are only the ones we call fairy tales, made up of imaginings.

‘Once upon a time’ stories seem always to have certain qualities and characteristics that pull us forward toward what we believe will be a certain end where the heroine of the story is rescued from the villain.

The trials of the heroine, the circumstances of birth, the twists and turns, which take her into danger, may vary from story to story, but the result we are looking for is always the same.

We look for the hero, the white horse, the one who makes all things right again.

Perhaps our own stories do not begin with those words because we have no belief, we are royalty or that a prince has already rescued us. Therein lays the snare for us all, for the exact opposite is the truth.

We are indeed royalty but have forgotten who we are (if we ever knew) or the truth has been hidden or stolen from us.

So, our stories take us on paths that are often rocky and full of danger, and we lose our way with no hope of any rescue. It is the tale the true villain of all our stories desires us to believe. It is the tragic fairy tale we come to believe is reality.

The true story is that we are betrothed to the Prince, now King, who will come for us to lead us into the banqueting hall beneath his banner and celebrate his love for us and ours for him. The true story is that we will ride into battle together to defeat the villain whose lies we have believed once and for all and the end of the story will be grander than any fairy tale ever written.

Our stories are far grander than fairy tales for they are made up of real moments. Some are lavish and ornate. Some are dull and gray. Some are bold and dramatic. Some glitter and sparkle with life. Some are dark and foreboding. Some are airy and delicate. Together they become the history of us, the present of who we are, and the hope of who we are becoming.