When Tarantulas Cross Your Road

A few weeks ago, the day I was told the mammograms and ultrasound looked like I had cancer, Jonathan and I drove to one of his work sites after spending a couple hours up in the mountains.

And then we were on our way to a second place, when Jonathan suddenly stopped right in the middle of the dirt road and backed up. And then he told me to open my door and look out. This is what we saw! I guess it is the time of year when tarantulas were migrating. Scary, hairy tarantulas!

Like hairy-scary mammograms and biopsies and diagnoses--just crawling across your road like they own the place.

Job said, "Man is born to trouble, as the sparks fly upward." 

A few evenings ago, Danny was burning up a bunch of old pallets he'd sawed up to fit into the wood stove or burn barrel, and thousands of sparks were flying up into the sky--like trouble flies into our lives.

Like the hornets or yellow jackets fly that had built this nest in the trees we'd just been under earlier in the afternoon.

I was blessed by the first chapter of this book I found in the library several weeks ago, The Gift of Hard Things.
 

  Jesus, Who healed every sickness and disease that was brought to Him, knows exactly how to help and heal us even today. 

He knows just how to deliver us from the hairy-scary tarantulas in our lives and cover us instead with His feathers.

 

Till we can just help make October pumpkin pies, with pumpkin from our own garden, and enjoy every minute of it.

Danny--Proud Elk Hunter

This evening, I got a text from Jonathan that Danny had shot a bull elk! 

He said that he wouldn't have time to talk this evening because he was heading up to help him bring it back to camp!

In the picture below, looks like they had everything neatly organized, including the fire wood they cut and split once they arrived on Friday afternoon!

 

Tim got this beautiful photo of the camping spot. 

 And this one at night.

And this one!

 

And yet another beautiful photo!

When Danny found out that the girls had forgotten to bring a spatula, 

he whittled one! 

And then he got his first bull elk!

He had gotten a cow elk when he was 13, and now a 5x3 bull this year! 

Everyone in on the prize!

Jonathan cooking on the woodstove.  They usually take granola bars and snacks with them in the wee hours of the morning when they take off in the dark to find a spot to wait for elk, and then eat breakfast very late morning. 

They eat only two main meals a day then, and today Jonathan sent this picture of Tim successfully making biscuits in a skillet on the woodstove!

One Year Since Mama Lucas Went to Be With the Lord

 Today Jonathan and I met his father at Fairview Cemetery to place a wreath at Mama Lucas's grave. It was one year to the day that Mama went to heaven.

When I first arrived, Jonathan's dad was placing the wreath, hammer, and other things near the stone.

I loved how the camera captured rays of light coming down, as if it was rays from heaven upon the quiet scene where a few of the family were coming to remember a loved one and honor her memory with flowers and a wreath.

Carrie had brought a bouquet she had put together earlier that morning, and placed it by the headstone--right by Mama's middle name, Mae, which is also my own mother's middle name, and the name we chose for Carrie's middle name.  

Daddy Lucas had chosen this autumn wreath to bring, with the lavendar bow he'd saved from the bouquet of flowers at the funeral a year ago. He was worried about the colors going together, but they went just fine, especially since Carrie's bouquet was brown, yellow, and lavendar as well!

Jonathan pounded in a rebar stake so that we could wire the wreath to it to keep it intact in the certain Colorado winds that blow--even across graveyards! 

  

And Daddy Lucas took a picture of us--just before Jonathan had to leave to join the children down south of Alamosa to hunt elk once again, and I headed back home to check on Carrie's dog who has been due to have puppies any day.

The cemetery was beautiful with fall colors. I drove around just a little afterward, thinking about others buried there--Mary Jane McVey, Linda DeGarmo, Mrs. Karr, Dale O'Maley, and so many others--all very human people with their faults and failings, but who died in faith.

People like George and Goldie, Mama's brother and sister-in-law. George had a lisp that was a little hard to understand due to a tied tongue in his childhood and youth, and which made him the butt of much laughter.

But everyone knew he loved the Lord, and he is now in heaven with the Goldie he loved, and with Mama, his sister. 

I drew one of the flowers out from the bouquet I'd brought to send home with Daddy Lucas--and placed it on their stone.

Somehow it just seemed like a thing that ought to be done--because every life has value. 

Last night for family worship I asked Rose to read from Revelation 21, the verses about heaven, and what Mama Lucas is enjoying right now.  

Even the dog seemed to be in perfect bliss listening to what the Bible says about heaven. 

And we sang one of Mama's favorite songs, "In the Garden." Daddy Lucas has told us that Mama would sometimes sit down at the piano and play that song.  

At the graveside, Jonathan's dad asked if we could pray together, and we did, Jonathan's one arm around his father and his other around me, and mine around him. 

All three of us prayed--Daddy Lucas thanking God for giving him Helen for so many years and for the five children she gave him. He prayed for them, and prayed for God's help and grace for his future. Jonathan thanked God for the godly heritage, for his mother's faith, and prayed that it might be passed on to us in the next generation. I prayed as well, and it was a precious time out under the autumn sky and sun in Colorado. 

"Perhaps I will make this a tradition," Daddy Lucas mused, "bringing a wreath for each season."

I thought that was a great idea--a wreath of flowers, or acorns, or evergreens--all entwined by prayer.

 

The Flyswatter--and the Cross

 I have this uncanny way of putting the most unlikely things together--like a flyswatter and a cross. But here's how it happened.

So Sunday morning I was at the mission office kitchen making Sunday dinner. But while the ham and veggies roasted and the banana cake baked, I went over to the quiet chapel to have some prayer time.

I couldn't help pausing at the front of the chapel where there were these two chairs where Keith and Tasbah Lavery sit, with this little green chair in between where little three-year-old Yamni sits. And there on that green chair lay an orange flyswatter. 

The reason it was there is that flies tend to enjoy coming to chapel, too, and Yamni loves to swat them before service!

That flyswatter was just a little illustration of the simplicity and welcome found in this little chapel--a place where you are allowed to come as you are.

Where the pastor sits in the same chair as everyone else and teaches from his chair instead of from up behind a high-sounding pulpit.

A place where little children are valued. The chapel has at least three little chairs set in places where young families sit with small children. Because children are welcome.

So is everybody.  

And the plaque up front, "Come as You Are," ministered to me that quiet morning. 

So did the cross. 

I know, I'm a person who is a little bit weird, but I do things like go up to a cross and just treat it like it really was Jesus' cross.

A place where He is present, because of His shed blood, still pleading for a simple person like me, over there in my old blue jacket and just-washed hair.  

And I just go up to it and lean my head against it, and bring myself and my needs to Him, without saying a whole lot.

Just leaning into the cross.

I feel sure He understands. 

And then I sit down at the piano and open the hymnal to "Just as I Am," and I play it. 

I'm sure I don't get out of it all I could if I weren't so concentrated on getting the notes right, but I think God understands notes without words, too.

 Big prayers are sometimes encapsuled in trembling notes and bowed heads,

i

in simple chapels where orange flyswatters lie across a little child's chair.

Fire in the Field!

One day while the crew was working on our house in South Dakota, I went over to see about something, and then I stood there by the garage door, looking out in the distant field.

 Larry Siegel and Burt Hartley were out there with their machines, putting in the leach field for the septic system.

And all of a sudden I saw something that scared me. 

In between the one machine and the other I saw a fire!

It had started in the grass!

And no one was noticing but me!

Just the day before, we had seen smoke on our way home from Pierre. That dark smoke was billowing so badly that we were sure that someone had to have called in about the fire already. 

But the closer we got, realizing how desolate the area was there, Jonathan decided to call fire chief Keith Lavery and ask if he should call it in. 

"When in doubt," Keith said, "call 911." 

If someone has already called the fire in, it won't hurt anything. 

But in fact, when Jonathan called in, it didn't sound like anyone else had called in yet!

Soon we saw and heard an emergency vehicle headed down the road, siren blaring. Later we learned that the fire was successfully out.

Now it was my turn!

I must alert my guys to the fire their machines must have started! 

There was just one trouble! 

Neither Jonathan nor John Holderbaum who was with him could see the fire!

"It's right there!" I pointed. "Right between the machines!"

Jonathan still couldn't see it. 

"That flame!" I said helplessly. Why could he not see it?

"It's a flag!" Jonathan said. His eyes rolled slightly. "You need your glasses!" he added a little scornfully. 

And what could I say? 

It was true. It was a flag, and I needed to go get my glasses on. 

I had been so sure it was a flame!

It was even flickering!

But come to find out, it was just a little orange flag the men had planted in the ground to mark where the trenches should be dug,

just like the other orange flags along the driveway, marking where to grade and level. 

There it was, waving in the breeze, and I thought it was a flame flickering, about to start a grass fire!

I would have been greatly embarrassed if I had not learned to laugh at myself a long time ago. 

And I didn't think much more about it until I opened some mail that my son Sam had brought with him up from Colorado when he brought the horse trailer up with our steer.

 

In the pile of envelopes was a card from our pastor and his wife, letting us know they were praying for us. 

And inside the card was printed this verse, "When thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned, neither shall the flame kindle upon thee."

The reference had been underlined, "Isaiah 43:2, KJV"

And just like that, I thought about the fire I had seen, or rather, thought I saw. 

God's promise was that when we walk through the fire, we shall not be burned.

Neither shall the flame kindle upon us.

It may flicker and flash and crackle, but it will not kindle upon us.  

Just like the fake fire I saw in the field, it will be as if it wasn't even a fire at all. 

Just an orange flag flickering in the breeze. 

I am taking that as a promise for myself in these days of uncertainty about my physical condition and uncertainty about many other things as well. 

The devil may want to start fires and billow smoke and scare us half to death,

but God has promised that we shall not be burned,

nor shall the fire kindle upon us.

 

Unexpected news--and Golden Leaves in the Sky

I was not expecting the news I received Tuesday, nor was our doctor. Mammograms and an ultrasound had been scheduled to follow up on a doctor appointment, and I was sitting in the ultrasound room waiting for the radiologist to come with her results. 

"It looks like breast cancer," the radiologist told me bluntly. "And the lymph nodes look suspicious, too. You'll be contacted by our office to set up an appointment for a biopsy. 

Do you have any questions?"

Two or three sentences, and then do I have any questions?

I did not.

No questions at all. My mind drew a complete blank. I wonder why. 

I have always been thin as a rail, and then there is a mass.

The ultrasound lady, I thought, had tears in her eyes. I looked back at the radiologist. 

I did not know what to ask, and I said so. 

Finally, I came up with a question. 

"What is it that makes you believe it looks like cancer?" I asked falteringly. 

"There's a mass," she said, "and there's calcifications. And the lymph nodes look suspicious."

"Suspicious." Whatever that meant. 

She left and the lady who had done the ultrasound after several mammograms brought me a paper about what to expect when you go in for a biopsy.  

Needles. Snips of tissue. Six or eight of them, and then they will want biopsies of lymph nodes, too. It will sound like a stapler. You have to lie still even when you get stapled way down deep. 

And stuff like that. 

"Not to scare you, but it will sound like a stapler."

No, I'm not scared. Of course not.  

It was too surreal to scare me.

Plus, I had felt such crazy peace nearly every time I had started to worry about the lump I'd discovered a while back. 

There was so much peace that I almost didn't go to the doctor. Finally Jonathan and I decided I really should go get checked out. And the doctor confirmed that it didn't seem to be anything serious. 

But just in case, he had ordered mammograms and an ultrasound. 

So after the nearly two months it took to get through a glitch and then wait 6 weeks till they could get me in, I went in.

I wasn't too worried; I was sitting in the waiting room praying for everyone else in my life.

Like my family, like Jonathan who had been to the Men Arise retreat in western Colorado, and my dad who is struggling on a daily basis with his kidney failure, dialysis, and now heart valve functioning at only 15%.

And my suffering brothers and sisters in the world.  

Ukraine. 

Just laying the burdens at the foot of the cross, like the men laid their heavy rocks at the foot of the cross one day at the retreat, representing their burdens. 

And there I was, 

me too. 

With the peace of God enveloping me, His presence so real that when I started asking Him to be with me, I stopped and just thanked Him for being with me, because that Presence was so real. 

When I walked, quite weak, back out to the van, I picked up my phone, wondering who to contact first. 

Jonathan, of course. I saw he'd sent a text wondering when I'd be out. And then I saw a message from Elizabeth Albertson. She knew nothing about anything regarding my appointment or my day.

But there was a song written by Amy Carmichael, one of my favorite authors, "O love of God, let me maintain a constant victory."

Elizabeth sang it for me over Messenger. 

I read it, and then, just because, I listened to it, too. How did God know? How did he nudge a young friend to send a song?

Then I called Jonathan.

And he had already been planning, after dropping his truck at the mechanic, to take me for a ride in the mountains near Woodland Park. 

So that is what we did.  

I wasn't supposed to be so happy, but I was.

I reveled in the beauty of God's creation.

Peace like that could only come from God as I looked at the golden leaves against the sky.  

We ate lunch together in a pretty nook not far up Rampart Road.  

We are moving on with our lives, because our lives are in God's hand. Tomorrow, Lord willing, some of us are going up to South Dakota again, because a crew of men from OH, are coming to help on our house, our driveway, and our septic system. And I am going along to cook. They will be staying in the motel up the hill and taking care of their own breakfasts. Hannah is along to help, and later next week Carrie.

Biopsies are already scheduled for about three weeks from now.

Until then, we lay our burdens at the foot of the cross

and leave them there,

carrying a song away.   

Yes, really.

I'm catching myself singing. 

That is not me, singing out loud. 

This is crazy. 

Just crazy. 

Little things like dogs in the house bug me, and then when I'm told it looks like cancer, I find myself singing.

"O love of God, let me maintain a constant victory!"