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Thanksgiving

Hannah

In a season of suffering and deep grief, a day set aside to give thanks can feel counterintuitive. This week as I have pressed into a list of tasks to prepare for a day of fellowship and feasting with my family I have faced endless hours of debilitating pain, a frightening drop in function on a repeat breathing test, a company that has decided not to provide my tube feedings anymore, and fatigue that binds me with so much exhaustion that a whole day slips by without me waking. Admittedly, it can be easier to find things to complain about than to be grateful for, but then in my morning quiet time I am reminded that thanksgiving is the way we enter into and experience His presence (see Psalm 100:4). To say “Thank You, God” is to perceive Him with us in our suffering.

In the dark, painful corners of a Nazi concentration camp, Corrie ten Boom wrote, “Thankfulness keeps us connected to the reality of God in our lives.” If a woman persecuted and tortured for doing nothing more than showing love and hospitality can find reasons to give thanks during the darkest days of her life, than I have no excuse not to be counting my blessings. So, I pull out my journal of daily graces and scrawl them down on the pages; the easy-to-miss but very present reasons throughout my days to give thanks to a God who is acquainted with my sorrow, and is fiercely present in my suffering.

Gratitude is not always easy to embrace. Suffering affords us endless opportunities to complain and despair and harden our hearts. For myself, some days are so acutely painful that I wonder how is there possibly anything good to be thankful for today? Yet I continually find that just that amount of belief is enough to gently turn my heart and head toward my Savior.

To those of you that are trudging through deep grief and fighting daily battles that threaten to consume you, I see you. I hear your desperation and I feel your pain. Still, I urge you to lift your head and look around. Find the daily graces, no matter how small. Your warm cup of coffee. The sunshine streaming through your window. No matter how small your capacity gratitude in that moment, you will find yourself inspired to thank Him for more and more of His gifts and His goodness.

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Seeing Stripes

Hannah

This is meant to be a PSA in the kindest possible way, because I know most people do not go out there trying to be a pain. A lot of the time it is just that they simply do not know better yet. And once we know better, we do better, right?

Have you ever noticed that most handicapped parking spaces have a series of stripes painted on one or both sides of the parking spot? I’m sure before I knew better I was certain they were for playing hopscotch over the lines, or for discretely dumping off your shopping cart when you were too lazy, I mean busy, to walk it all the way to a cart corral or back inside the front door. Then one day I found myself navigating my foreseeable future in a wheelchair and a van with a ramp that goes in and out, and I became very acutely aware of what those painted lines are for, so I’m doing my due diligence to pass this mind-blowing information along to you!

When my ramp is out and I am getting in or out of my van, this is how much room that takes…

Our ramp sticks out a decent amount, and then I have to have room to turn around at the end of it to drive on or off.

See the amount of space left here? This is never going to do. You can see I cannot even get to the bottom of my ramp, let alone turn off of it at the bottom.

How about this one? Nope. It does not seem like they took much, but this is not enough room to turn onto my ramp to get back in the car.

Assuming I had wanted to park in the spot to the left of this car… not going to happen!

This was the last handicapped spot left in the parking lot, and this person had the stripes AND the spot blocked!

This one had narrow stripes to begin with, but there was no way parking next to that I would ever be able to get my ramp and chair out.

This one is really just for amusement because this car had a legitimate tag and clearly /wanted/ to park in the handicap spot, I’m just not sure what happened.

So the moral of the story is please save the stripes for ramps and wheelchairs, not your shopping cart, or two of your tires. If you are parking next to a handicapped spot, please always assume the striped area is needed for a ramp and wheelchair. Understand it takes a little room to maneuver, so unless you’re a fan of door dings and inexplicable tire marks on the side of your car, try to have a little consideration and please give as much room as safely possible. Take a little stress off someone with wheelz and make it easier for them to get out and where they’re going on time; you’ll make their day, even if you don’t get to see it!

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Life in the Balance

Hannah

You often get to see the good and miraculous in my life, and I love sharing those parts with you, but right now I am fighting from a pit so dark it seems to swallow my ability to find the streams of light I have grown accustomed to piercing the darkness. My heart and mind are tired. My body is exhausted. I have dared to hope that I am still here because God is going to bring about a miraculous healing in my life, but as time edges on and I feel the weight of not being even a shadow of who my people need me to be, I find myself dreadfully weary of this life hanging in the middle between the miracle of being restored to health and the seeming relief of death.

Red tape curls angrily around the care that I need; new rules preventing what I was able to get before, but the alternative of leaving the security of what care I do have is intimidating and perhaps foolish. I am tired of having to fight for myself; to advocate for things bigger than myself when I hardly have the strength to take a shower.

Come and save me Lord God, because you bless and protect your people, and I am yours. Give me a glimpse of the glory behind this wall of darkness to refresh my hope in you. You are my God and my protector, please answer my prayer and refresh my hope in you. Let my life be a living testament to your sustaining grace; whether by giving me the endurance to withstand whatever suffering will align my life with your heart, or by extending the grace of calling me Home.

I do not know how to gracefully live out what you have called me to, but I know you have been good all my life, and I trust that if hanging in the balance is what you have for me, you will help me find the strength to endure the calling you have set before me. So help me Jesus, I need your love to restore my peace.

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Four Friday Favorites

Hannah

A few of my favorite things…

I don’t know about you, but watching the news for me can get really overwhelming with all the negativity that seems to saturate every news outlet. I recently discovered The Pour Over, and I am a huge fan. It delivers the news to my email and shares the top stories in an honest and politically neutral way, and then gives little things like an eternal perspective and a verse of the day. It’s such a positive way to learn about what is going on in our world. Sign up with your email address at this link:

https://www.thepourover.org/

I have been such a hard core strawberry Twizzlers fan all my life it almost feels like I am cheating, but these new orange cream flavored ones are the absolute bees knees. They are soft and chewy at the same time, and the flavor is so outstandingly good it is rare for a bag of them to get opened at my house and not polished off in the same day. Try them… let me know what you think!

G L I T T E R. I enjoy having my nails painted any color, but this 40-something year old woman must still have a 7 year old girl streak, because I LOVE glitter. I love the way it catches the light and twinkles back at me, and I find myself staring at them with a quirky little smile throughout the day. This particular color is from Color Street; the little wrap stickers made for nails. I especially love their glitters because they last for like ever.

https://www.colorstreet.com/sarasigley/beautysocial/4100908

Geocaching! Lately my youngest boy has gotten into Geocaching. You can download the app on your phone and it shows you all kinds of locations near and far from you where people have created a little hiding spot to leave small treasures. I obviously cannot do the ones that involve hiking through the National Forests, but we have discovered a few in easy places around town, and he loves stopping to check on them and see if anyone has swapped out what he left there for something new. Good clean fun with a little suspense and patience to get him up and out of the house.

https://www.geocaching.com/play

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Sitting in the Hard

Hannah

This week I had to be moved to inpatient hospice again as the struggle to breathe spiraled me into unconsciousness. Thankfully I am now back home with my people, breathing a little easier, but I just keep replaying in my mind the moments where my good friend sat on the side of my bed in the shadows of the afternoon the day I arrived there.

I did not have many words, partly due to my being on my ventilator, and partly because it felt like there was nothing left to say. I was discouraged and hurting. My “fight songs” playlist of music was playing through my phone, and my friend came and sat tenderly on the bed next to me, taking my hand in hers and lifting her other hand to Heaven as she swayed to the words of the praise music that was playing. I’m sure she asked me a few questions that afternoon, but the only thing I clearly remember her saying, as tears slid down her cheek, was “this just sucks.”

When someone is going through something painful we often do not know what to say, and the result is we say too much. We have the best intentions to lend encouragement, but in these situations being the “fixer” is not what’s needed. It takes some restraint to not say things like, “you’re going to be ok, you’ve got this, I believe you are going to be healed, etc,” but being present in the pain is a far greater gift.

My dear friend sat there and allowed herself to feel what I felt. She did not try to give me the easy answers or platitudes that would have taken less sacrifice than sitting in my grief. And no doubt it is costly to enter into someone else’s suffering.

The reality is those pat answers are just empty words at a time like that. Suffering is hard, and setbacks can take the wind right out of you and leave you wondering how you are going to move on from where you find yourself. I urge you to learn from my friend and be willing to love your people well in their need to acknowledge that it just sucks.

This grieving what is and what’s been taken is part of the healing that is coming, and it can’t be skipped or ignored regardless of how badly we want to have the answer to the fixing.

The next time you have the privilege of being allowed into someone’s hard, hold back the urge to find the most encouraging thing to say and listen and feel and acknowledge the obvious. This sucks. I’m so sorry you are going through this. This isn’t fair. This is hard.

Your words and your tears will mean so much.

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Providence

Hannah

Providence. A young wife stripped of her physical capacity, struggling to do basic things for herself as life moments pass by, leaving her behind.

Providence. A child living his entire young life consumed with the fear his mom is going to be taken from him. Calling her from school 4-5 days a week to make sure she is ok.

Providence. Two young girls swirling and giggling as they try on their mama’s wedding dress while she watches on, swallowing hard as she wonders if she will get to see them married.

Providence. A young boy looked over as having less worth because he is different, broken. Trying to scream his presence and purpose and his charisma for life from a body that won’t let him speak, or stand, or dance.

Providence. A thin sheet of water turns to glass as the tires screech across it, slamming the car into a semi, snatching away the life of a roommate, known, cared for, and needed.

Providence is a word I’d heard but not understood very much about until a recent sermon I heard from my pastor. I learned that Providence means God is in complete control of all things; there is no chance or fate.

This week I have rolled the word over and over in my mind, trying out its relevance, wondering if I have the guts to cling hard to the truth my mind knows even when my heart feels shredded.

What I am learning to believe about providence is that it is responsible for making an important story out of the hard path I am called to walk. When I view life through this lens it lends the hope I need to keep clinging even in these darkest valleys, though not easily.

Providence and I have come head to head this week. I have challenged why God’s complete control feels so out of control at times. I have pondered why if he is able to do immeasurably more than we can ask or imagine… why don’t we always get the answers we long for? It seems that sometimes when pursuing God, he cannot be located. What then?

I discovered reading the story of Esther this week that even in such turmoil God’s name was never mentioned, yet His fingerprints were all over that story! I knew God was trying to help me better make sense of the process and better accept particularly the things that we do not prefer or do not understand taking place in our lives. These things, hard as they may be are all part of God’s plan to develop us and take us from where we are to where he wants us to be. We may not see him, but that doesn’t mean he is not behind the scenes arranging every detail for His purpose.

Even the excruciating details. Even the ones that bring you to your knees, and the ones you don’t know how you’ll ever recover from. Every single detail with His loving heart imploring me to never give up hope that the hard parts I walk through are the beginning of something important and even beautiful that he is orchestrating.

Here I am, arms wide open, bleeding heart held out to You. Trusting you will take and use it for Your Kingdom, because I know You never waste our pain, and Your plans are so much greater than my own.

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FOMO

Hannah

As this year’s backyard vegetable gardens have started bursting with tomatoes and herbs and every size and color of squash the past few weeks I have found a gut punch creep in when seeing the ripe harvests sprawled across social media. Gardening makes my heart sing. The fresh air in my lungs and the weight of the musky earth beneath my fingers just does something so good for my soul. Only this year it didn’t.

This year as the frosty months neared their end and it was time to drop seeds into plastic cups of soil I was neck deep in my blankets desperate for endurance and relief from debilitating pain. As I considered the planning, planting, tending, weeding, and picking that would go into my garden again this year I had to swallow the hard pill that my body was not going to have strength to do it this time. The planting weeks came and went, and I was still in bed fighting for more.

Every time I glanced out my window and saw the barren garden beds sitting empty of their Springtime sprouts it hurt my heart. I decided it made me too sad to stare out at boxes full of empty dirt all summer, so I had my wingman take me to the store and I chose packets of flower seeds in beautiful colors and patterns. I summoned the energy to rake through my garden beds and pluck the stray weeds from the tilled soil. The packets were torn open and sprinkled across the soft soil and covered in compost. Finally I gave the ground a thorough soaking with the hose, and collapsed back into my bed anticipating what would grow.

It didn’t take long for small green stems and leaves to start pushing their way into the daylight. I was thankful something was growing, but as I scrutinized the growing plants I could not tell the difference between something I had planted and just another weed, and I started to doubt if anything worthwhile would be coming from my garden this year. That was about the time I saw the first post of a friend showing all of the produce she had pulled from her garden, and I felt sad and resentful and just really missed working the earth every day.

I finally had the strength one day to go out and have a look around. Picking my way around the lumpy landscape to get to my garden beds, I could suddenly see past the tall tangles of green that had taken them over. Dotted among the foliage were colors; orange, pink, yellow, purple. As I took it all in I felt the Holy Spirit whisper to my tired heart, “this beauty is for you.” A hug that gathered all my disappointment and not feeling good enough and wrapped it up in grace that extended beyond what I could have imagined.

Those simple flowers in their elegant gowns were the reminder I needed that this life will not always be what I want it to be. There will be places I fall short and mountains I cannot climb, but in place of those if I look in the right direction there is so much beauty to be found. Beauty that says I am still worth it and I am deeply loved. I may not be bringing in baskets full of cucumbers and zucchini to prepare for my family this year, but every time I look out my window at the messy tangle of green that has taken over my garden I see those beautiful colors standing tall in all their glory and I know that I am seen and known and loved. So are you, my friend. In your deepest disappointments things may not look like you wanted them to, but look around and you will find that there is still beauty to behold.

PS- for those of you wondering what on earth FOMO means… fear of missing out 😊

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Permission to Mourn

Hannah

July 14, 2011 Was the day I entered the wildness of grief, and I learned in order to get out you must go through.

As much as I’d like to tell you that grief will be orderly, neat and tidy, predictable, and unfold in five stages, it will not . Grief expresses itself in surprising and confusing ways. You must give yourself permission to mourn; you must choose to heal instead of choosing to stay stuck in that spot. You must choose to move forward.

I have had to decide to live many times since in the face of my daughter’s death. It’s a decision you will have to make too. Not just once. But over and over again choose life. Say yes. Life has other plans for you too.

Grief is wild and messy and unpredictable and uncertain and ever-changing and unsettling and unnerving.

There may be times when all you want to do is sleep, and there may be other times when you can’t sleep at all. There maybe be times when you can eat and eat and other times when you have no appetite at all.

When your arms physically ache to hold your beloved , when you have heart palpitations and stomach pains and fight to keep your balance, this too is grief.

You’ll think you are going crazy. You are not. You have entered the wilderness of grief. And in order to get out you must go through. You must give yourself permission to mourn.

It’s in the telling the story of what happened over and over and over again that you are able to see and come to know the truth, the magnitude of what has happened.

It’s important to comb through the details. To relive the sights, the sounds, and the smells. Go ahead and ask “Why if, and “Why didn’t I,” and “if only.”

Make sure nothing is off limits. Look in every corner. In every crevice. Turn over every rock.

So that nothing is secret or hidden. So that no part of the experience is hands- off or locked behind a closed door. Allow no part of the experience you’ve lived through to have any kind of power over you. Walk through all of it.

And yes, it’s painful. Especially at first.

But keep on telling your story. Over and over and over again.

And after much time has passed, and you’ve told your story more times that you can possibly remember, you will come to the day when you begin telling it again. Like you’ve done so many hundreds of time before, because you know that telling the story is a path to healing.

And you discover that you can’t tell it. Not one more time. You don’t have the energy or the desire, or the strength, or the need to tell it one more time.

You just can’t do it.

And with your exhale you say to yourself, this is what healing feels like.

I invite you to sit down in the chair next to me. And when you are ready to talk I’ll listen.

To all of it,

Permission to Mourn-Tom Zumba