Close to the Brokenhearted

"The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit." -Psalm 34:18

This is one of those verses that gets highlighted in almost every Bible. We write it in sympathy cards, and it's a favorite in Christian bookstores. When we are brokenhearted, this promise of God's nearness is pure comfort-food for the heart.

But today when I read it, God brought the faces of these brokenhearted ones to mind instead.

Ever since last Friday, when Typhoon Haiyan ripped through the Philippines, images like this have been flooding the news.

Bodies lie buried under the rubble of their homes or out in the open, rotting. On Wednesday morning, the death toll stood at 2,275, and the Phillippine government estimates that over 582,000 are now homeless.*

As staggering as these numbers are, the real danger is the health crisis that now looms with medicines, food, and clean water dwindling. Relief has been arriving, but with roads impassable, most of it is bottlenecking at the airports. If doctors, shelter, food, water, and medicines don't arrive soon, the death toll from hunger and dysentery will quickly dwarf the original casualties from the storm.

And even if all relief arrives in time, how does one simply move on after finding your 4-year old under a tarp at a makeshift morgue? 

And the Lord is close to the brokenhearted.

A beautiful truth, but how will they know it? If this statement remains only sentiment, thousands will die. 

The closeness of Jesus is meant to be tangible, just as he came himself in a literal, touchable body. Emmanuel--God with us--meant a baby who teethed, a boy who skinned his knees, and a man who touched the untouchables with very literal hands. 

Today, the Church--God in us--means that we who profess to follow Jesus must show his closeness to the broken with our practical help, our literal bank accounts, and even our physical presence. 

Why does God comfort us?  So that "we can comfort those in any trouble with the same comfort we ourselves receive from God." (2 Corinthians 1:4)

In other words, we are part of a Divine pay-it-forward, not for warm fuzzies or so that we can look good on facebook, but so that those crushed in spirit will be saved. 

If you sense God asking you to take action for the typhoon survivors, please pray about giving to one of the organizations below within the next 12 hours. At this point, hours matter. 

The Philippine Red Cross has teams on the ground to help with rescue and relief.

UNICEF is providing food, medicine and clean water to children affected by the typhoon. 

Doctors Without Borders is sending teams of doctors, surgeons, water and sanitation experts.

If you are looking for a list of other organizations that are helping with this tragedy, click here. 

*The stats in this post were taken from this CNN news article.

"Brain Child" and Transitions

 My paper-as-pregnancy analogy almost got a baby rumor started on Facebook this weekend when I posted this as my status:

“I feel like I just gave birth! My paper...this ginormous brain child...is finally all out on the page (ok, all 18 pages). Momma needs to sleep for a week.”

One of my overseas friends (who speaks Romanian as her first language) thought that I was talking about a REAL baby. Apparently the Americanism “brain child” doesn’t translate clearly.

Right now, the only school-related thing standing between me and graduation is my Spanish final exam. I wish I could say it will be a breeze, but my mind gets so turned around when confronted by the minute differences between the zillion verb conjugations ….  So it’s safe to say I have one more heavy day of study before I’m in the clear. I know that God will give me strength to persevere!

“Skillful Navigation of Transitions”

As I recovered from the sleepless night on Thursday, I was reading friend’s blogs (what else do you do when sleep-deprived, right?) and I came across a post by my Uncle Dave.

Aside: This particular uncle is like a walking, balding skyscraper chock-full of wisdom, witticisms and puns. He is the pastor of a large church in Houston, and granddad to five. He is also an excellent writer. In this case, he was sharing his thoughts on a book called Transitions by William Bridges. Ok, on to the article.

In it, he writes about something that all of us have experienced: losing something we didn’t want to lose.

It may be severe—like losing a parent. 

It may be mild—like getting a stubborn stain on a favorite T-shirt. 

But in every case, there are three stages:

1)    Death—this is when “something ends.” It may be a literal death, or simply the end of a loved season of life, a job, etc.

2)    Chaos and Confusion—the emotions we feel in the aftermath, like confusion, anger, sadness and anxiety because we don’t see a solution in sight.

3)    Rebirth—In this stage, the void we felt is now filled, even if the precious thing or person we lost can never be exactly replaced. We no longer feel confusion, and the grief has faded into acceptance or even beauty.

This resonated with me, because it gave a name to my recent emotions about friends, and about graduation. As friends move away, something ends, even if the friendship lives on in facebook chats and blogs. As I graduate, something ends, even if the next phase is full and beautiful. I guess I’ve been...grieving...in a mild way. 

His advice for each step can be boiled down to one thing: “Stay close to the Shepherd”.

In stage one, we can’t ignore the pain or say it doesn’t hurt. We have to be authentic with ourselves and let the grieving happen. Oh, and this is a biggie: “resist the urge to self-medicate”. Above all, get close to God.

In stage two, we have to fight the tendency to withdraw or give in to pessimism. Stay connected to people. Test their advice with clear thinking and prayer. (Aka, stay close to the Shepherd again).

Stage three is all about thankfulness for the rebirth that has happened (to who else? Jesus). Cherish it and share the story—it might encourage people who lost something similar but are still in stage 1 or 2.

Good stuff for my heart. To read the full article, click here. 

My friend, Dana

I had planned to write a happy post today. My sister is in town for a rare visit, and we had a blast last night in historic downtown Bryan. But today, I am grieving the death of my dear friend, Dana Ciumac. This morning, at around 3 am, Jesus took her home to heaven.

Though I lost both of my beautiful grandmothers to cancer, my heart is feeling a deeper, sharper sense of tragedy because this was a friend who had not yet reached her thirties.

I met Dana in the fall of 2006. With my high school graduation only months behind me, I had flown to Europe for a six-month mission trip with Operation Mobilization. I was such an eager, skinny twig, excited to be abroad where nothing was familiar except the Latin sounds that the Romanian language holds in common with Spanish. Dana, who was Romanian, was one of perhaps 3 people on the team who spoke English, and her accepting hugs and smiles made me feel at home almost immediately.

She was young--only 22--but I was only nineteen and deeply admired her. She was so gentle, so cheerful, and if there was a joke or party, Dana was probably in the middle of it. Kids in the villages we visited would flock around her, glowing under the individual attention she gave so freely. As I greedily learned every Romanian word I could, she would patiently help me with spelling and correct my pronunciations. She led teams of young people as we served widows, created puppet shows for kid programs, and told people on the streets about the freedom and joy of knowing God personally.

After I left Europe, she continued to serve on the team, and I would receive emails, facebook messages, and even precious letters from her in Romanian. In November of 2009, she married a young man who had also been our teammate, and I celebrated with her by oooing and ahhhing over her wedding pictures online.

For approximately the last nine months, her husband Eugen has served and loved and encouraged her as few men could have done. He kept hundreds of supporters and friends informed as the cancer gradually took its course, always with unwavering faith in God's goodness and love. Only God could have known that a healthy young woman like Dana would die so soon, and I am so glad that He brought such a wonderful man into her life.

Even this morning, Eugen wrote: "I know that this is a shocking news for you, but I thank God that He released her from all the pain she had...Please pray for our families and all the friends that kept Dana close to their hearts.

Be blessed and don’t forget, God is good!"

Dana, goodbye, my beautiful friend. I will see you someday again soon.

A season of weddings

"There is a time for everything and a season for every purpose under heaven."

So true. And it just so happens that the season through which I'm trekking is chock full of weddings. I like this season, partly because I am a hopeless romantic who will never get over that Moment when the bride comes into view on her father's arm. I take a genuine delight in observing the groom's facial expressions because I always get a little glimpse of the joy Jesus must take in us, His bride. (And of course, I also love the fact that there is cake!)

Tonight, my own (still very new) husband and I attended the nuptial celebration for a dear friend we have known for almost four years. She was like a sunrise, so vibrant and glowing and full of excitement that your heart melted to look at her. Only seven and a half months past my own wedding, I know what she must have been feeling: the sense of momentousness, of joy and disbelief, and of the rich meaning attached to every part of the day. You just want time to pause, so you can drink the joy fully and enshrine the moment in memory forever.

This year, I will stand with two-possibly three-brides as they covenant with their loves to be faithful until death.

I read a Proverb yesterday that asked "...a faithful man, who can find?" I love my husband, and can't imagine ever leaving him, but unfaithfulness is not always so drastic. Sometimes it looks like emotional distance, or a subtle shift in allegiance to some other person or even an occupation. In the words of the pastor at the ceremony today, it can be "anything that obstructs your ability to love your spouse the way Christ loves the church." I am totally capable of that, and I won't be so naive as to think that I could never have an even worse fall.

Without Christ helping me, I can't be faithful. But with the Faithful One, all things are possible.