Writing on the Wall

People often use the concept of "writing on the wall" to express a desire to have God communicate his will with them directly. There was one time where I experienced writing on the wall firsthand.

I was in college, in a relationship with a guy I shouldn't have been in a relationship with. He went to another college, Concordia St. Paul (aka CSP). It was far away, and I wanted to be with him so badly. So one cold winter night, I went on a walk to pray about it. And by pray, I mean tell God to make my way happen.

As I approached a playground, I asked God to give me writing on the wall to show me what to do. Then I frantically searched the snow for a message. Nothing. I decided to sit on the playground equipment. And when I sat down, my butt freezing to the metal, I was looking directly at one of those tic-tac-toe boards playgrounds sometimes have. Only for whatever reason, instead of Xs and Os, there were letters. And the letters were random in the first column. But the second column said ALI. And the third column said CSP.

Boy, was I psyched. I'd asked for writing on the wall, and I'd gotten it. Clearly, God's will was for me to transfer to CSP. Or so I thought. As it turned out, things didn't work out with the guy and I stayed at Wheaton.

But I was thinking about that recently, and about what the story in Daniel 5 is really about. So I looked it up. And I realized that the writing on the wall had nothing to do with God declaring his will. God was declaring his judgment, saying the king would lose his kingdom soon because he hadn't measured up. Daniel even says this: "You have not honored the God who gives you the breath of life and controls your destiny!" That about summed it up for me, too.

Looking back, I can say with confidence that the letters that spelled out ALI CSP were indeed God's writing on the wall. But he wasn't communicating his will for me to transfer; he was communicating his judgment at the life I was living. He was telling me it needed to stop.

It's so easy to taint God's voice with our own bias.

Roller Coaster

I haven't blogged in a long time, but I think I'm ready to get back on the blogging wagon. But first, I thought I'd blog about my life for the past month or so.

2011 has been a roller coaster year. Coming in off the tail of my Dad being released from the hospital after 3 weeks in the surgical ICU, I was rejoicing that January 1st marked 1 month since his aortic dissection. While he still had a lot of recovery to do, he was out of the most critical period.

January 1st (well, technically just a few hours before midnight) was also exciting because I won a Macbook at Group's Bombastic Bingo Bash. Yes, 2011 was off to a good start.

Fast forward 17 days. D-day. A nearly 10% lay-off at Group left me reeling as I lost many of my closest work friends and tried to figure out how to manage this new workload. Adjusting to a new boss, a new culture, a new team. Not all of it was bad, but it was a lot of change, and it was hard. It still is hard.

Then in March, we decided to get a new puppy. A third dog. But 24-hours into adding Biscuit to the family, Peanut got really sick and had to go into the ER vet, where she stayed for 2 days and ultimately had surgery. Dan and I worked to develop a routine that would accommodate house-breaking a puppy, monitoring his behavior, trying to keep our crazy recovering Nut calm, handling three different dog foods, and administering 9 total dog prescriptions, 3 times a day. And we did it.

Then just a couple weeks after Peanut was fully recovered, just as owning three dogs wasn't so crazy...Buttercup's heart gave out, and we had to make the decision to put her down. Two days after my birthday.

Meanwhile, I was battling stomach problems resulting from an antibiotic I was taking for my own health problem, and shortly after that I got a sore throat that turned into the cough that never ends. Which, it turns out, was the cause of me pulling something in my upper back and causing excruciating pain yesterday (which has thankfully lessened to mild pain today).

Needless to say, this is one roller coaster I'm not enjoying and am eager to get off. I was kind of down before Buttercup died, from everything else that had happened...but that set me over the edge. I've been dealing with anxiety, feeling emotionally overwhelmed, and motivation-wise, paralyzed. It's been taking so much strength to do each little task, and the slightest negative comment or set back pushes me over the edge. That's why I haven't been blogging. I had to eliminate all the unnecessary tasks I could.

And then yesterday something happened. I was in the shower and a song started playing in my head. It was "Let It All Out" by Relient K. The words filled my head out of nowhere: And you said I know that this will hurt/But if I don't break your heart, things will just get worse/When the burden seems too much to bear/Remember, the end will justify the pain it took to get us there.

So I put all my Relient K CDs in my car CD player and started listening to them on random on the drive to work, starting with that song. It's one of a few times in my life where I felt too weak to compose my own prayers, but music was a way to cry out to God, the words of my heart artfully composed by his musical servants.

I was different after that. I wouldn't say healed, but not so dejected. And then my boss called me into her office yesterday and let me know about some assignment changes that would ease my heavy work burden. The yoke is starting to lift.

I don't know what this roller coaster of 2011 has next. I'd like to think it's over. But I do know this: those song lyrics reminded me of a time I'd written them in my journal. Which reminded me of something else written in my journal, just before the lay-offs, when I knew they were coming and thought I might be a victim. I wrote about how I'd reacted when everything went so awfully for me at my old job, and how I didn't want it to be like that. I wrote, "So no matter what happens...I want to trust in God's plan and his faithfulness."

But oh, how quickly I forget.

Euthanasia

I can hardly start off a blog about euthanasia without sharing how my sister used to hear about the topic on the news, not really listening to the story, but just hearing the topic come up a lot, and think those kids in Asia were a real problem.

But really, I've been grappling with the topic myself since Buttercup's death. When we made the decision to euthanize Buttercup, it was very hard to do. But it was without a doubt the very best thing for her. She was in pain. She was dying, and there was nothing we could do to help her. We had the choice between forcing her to live maybe another couple of days, in agony, unable to eat or drink...or bringing her immediate peace. The vet assured us we were making the right choice.

And that got me thinking - people think that it's OK to euthanize animals but not people because people's lives are more valuable, or something. But I gotta say - we honored the value of Buttercup much more in euthanizing her than in forcing her to live in pain just so we could have a little more time with her. If we really value people, why do we make them live in pain when there's nothing we can do to save them?

Now maybe that decision needs to be made in a living will type of thing, because a feuding family might decide to put someone down just because they don't like them. But when I think about it, Buttercup was more than alert enough her last day that, if she could talk and reason, she could've told us what decision she wanted us to make. I imagine there are many situations like that, where people have an illness with no cure, where they're in excruciating pain, but have the presence of mind to say, "I'd like to be put to sleep now." Why don't we honor them the way we honor our pets?

Mr. Biscuit

In all the chaos of Peanut's surgery, I never did explain how we came to adopt Mr. Biscuit. So here's his story.

Biscuit, like Peanut, was an "oops puppy." Him even more than Peanut. We went to the pet store just to play with the puppies (which is dangerous unless you live in a place where you aren't allowed to adopt a dog...). There was this little brown one I wanted to play with, but another family asked to take him out. So as we stood around watching the other puppies and waiting for the family to finish, someone else finished playing with Biscuit and handed him to one of the employees.

Dan was standing by the employee, and she was trying to help another customer, so she just handed him to Dan to hold for a bit. We snuggled him a bit, then put him away and played with the brown one. Dan learned that Biscuit had been in the pet store for 2 months, and that made us really sad.

So we got him out and played with him some more. We liked how he was fun and playful, but mellow at the same time. We thought he'd be a good balance for Peanut. We weren't so sure about the cost of buying a puppy, but they told us they'd give him to us for what he'd cost them. Which was really cheap for a pet store dog.

We talked for a while, deliberating and playing with him past the pet store's closing time. He had this little pink blanky to chew on and play with. And in the end, obviously, we decided to get him. They even included the blanky, which will always be a nice memento.

When we got home, Peanut was curious right away. She was pretty excited that there was a new friend in the house! Buttercup just walked over to me and looked at me like, "What is WRONG with you people? Are you kidding me?" But she did end up warming up to Biscuit pretty quickly once she realized he could be pretty mellow AND could take some of Peanut's crazy attention off of her.

Heavy

I went grocery shopping today. I didn't get a ton, but what I got was heavy and/or bulky, including a big tub of ice cream, a watermelon, and a pack of 8 rolls of paper towels.

I hate making two trips to carry the groceries in, so I stuck all the bags on my arms, poked a hole in the paper towel packaging so I could hook my finger in it, and trudged to the door. It was a lot of weight, and everything felt so heavy.

And as I made my way to the door (and struggled to open it), I realized what a great physical metaphor that was for how I've been feeling emotionally. So heavy. Even before I lost Buttercup, but that just made things a million times harder. So I feel like I'm walking around with these heavy watermelon-filled emotional bags, and I don't know how to really set them down.

"Then Jesus said, “Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest." - Matthew 11:28