Looking back on 2014

“The Skin Horse had lived longer in the nursery than any of the others. He was so old that his brown coat was bald in patches and showed the seams underneath, and most of the hairs in his tail had been pulled out to string bead necklaces. He was wise, for he had seen a long succession of mechanical toys arrive to boast and swagger, and by-and-by break their mainsprings and pass away, and he knew that they were only toys, and would never turn into anything else. For nursery magic is very strange and wonderful, and only those playthings that are old and wise and experienced like the Skin Horse understand all about it.

"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"

"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."

"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.

"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."

"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"

"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

"I suppose you are real?" said the Rabbit. And then he wished he had not said it, for he thought the Skin Horse might be sensitive. But the Skin Horse only smiled.

"The Boy's Uncle made me Real," he said. "That was a great many years ago; but once you are Real you can't become unreal again. It lasts for always.”
― Margery Williams, The Velveteen Rabbit 

I can't count how many times I have wanted to blog this last year but every single time words failed me.  How do you write about a journey you don't understand?  What do you write as the journey itself is stripping away every thing, every comfort, every mask you didn't even know you were wearing?  I don't think I've ever felt so naked...so completely and utterly vulnerable in my entire life.  We started on this journey with so many hopes and dreams and over the last 1 1/2 years, every single one has been shattered and stripped away.  Were we wrong to come here?  No.  Every time we have brought that question to God, He has come back to us with affirmation that He called us here.  Have we done something to offend God or make Him angry?  No.  Every time we've asked that, He's affirmed His deep love for us and our family.

Why, then, when a family has done all it can to obey, do dreams shatter.....unemployment goes on and on until all finances are depleted....despite every possible life change, cancer comes back....the bottom drops out?  Was God pulling a bait and switch?  It felt like it at times but He reminded us that He SO LOVED the world, that He sent His son for us.  Some of this will sound really trite and pithy but it hasn't been that way for us.  It's truly been a deep and constant wrestling between TRUTH and what we felt and experienced.  When you experience life on the most basic level, without all of the "things" and without your normal comfort zone, it really does come down to will you believe that God loves you when everything is stripped away?  Will you really believe Him that He will provide for all of your needs when you've spent your last dime and there's no job or financial relief in sight?  Will you still believe that He heals when cancer comes back?  And will you still love Him when He allows the trials to continue well beyond anything you think you can handle?  Will you love Him if your circumstances never change?  There just aren't enough words in the world to describe the anguish that goes on while TRUTH and feelings battle.  Some days you're able to rise above and believe God over the overwhelming feelings and other days, the feelings consume you, pulling you into deep despair.  After a while, the journey begins to take it's toll and you watch as every hope and dream is shattered into tiny pieces, your heart along with it.  Deep grief pours over you as you think of each loss and struggle to make sense of it, desperate for God to break through the darkness.  Desperate for some measure of relief.

Eventually some relief came for us.  It wasn't all at once and didn't give us that "aaaaahhhhh" moment we were longing for but it did come.  But more importantly, God was there with us.  He didn't let us go through the horrible darkness alone.  He WAS faithful.  He DID provide.  He HAS healed.  He IS enough.  It may not have been the way we wanted and dreamed but it was the way He wanted.  And just as He didn't withhold even His own son from us, He didn't withhold during this journey either.  I think we often feel that if our lives aren't full of happy, then somehow God is withholding from us.  I'm starting to wonder if maybe the reverse is true.  What if going through deep hardships and journeys are the real treasures in life?  If I think about it, my deepest, most amazing encounters with God have come when I have been the most devastated and broken.  Miracles haven't come in my life until I was in a desperate place of needing them.  We're starting to catch glimpses of the real treasure of this journey.  And it has to do with Him stripping away the useless things and comforts to bring us more of Himself.  To bring us to a place where we have no choice but to press in to Him in order to survive.  To make us more real and connected to Him, without all of the distractions.  But, wow, it sure is painful to get to that place.  

We have no idea what to expect from 2015.  We're hoping and praying for our breakthrough to come on every possible level but also realizing that God may have different plans.  "Surrendered" has new meaning for us.  I'm so looking forward to closing the chapter on 2014 and yet I don't want to rush past how God has been there for us, tenderly loving us and strengthening us as we faced some of our darkest moments.  I'll close this with 2 verses God put across my path today which I want to share as they are perfect for our hopes for this next year.

"This is what the Lord says— he who made a way through the sea, a path through the mighty waters, “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.
Isaiah 43:16, 18-19"

"Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.  Philippians 3:13-14"