Tangled Wires of Life--and a Dove of Serenity--Emmanuel!

 Crystal and I were fascinated, as usual, with Arizona's doves. They flutter up almost everywhere you go, hiding in tree branches or alighting on rooftops where they perch, like this one, 

a living, gentle symbol of peace against the tangled wires of life.

 Jonathan and I needed that peace today, after a rough week and weekend. Jonathan was shocked at how the cancer had blown up in the week since I left South Dakota, despite the chemo, and we were both distressed that we had to wait through the weekend and possibly into next week before being allowed to know the results of my Friday PET scan, even though the results had arrived to the clinic before I had!

We knew the results were there because I was told so, but even though it was my body, my cancer, and a scan that I had paid nearly $2000 for out of my own pocketbook, I am not allowed even the smallest heads-up about what the results were. 

"Could they just let us know if there is metastasis?" I asked the patient coordinator. 

Nope. 

She explained very softly and humbly that the one doctor wanted to confer with the other one before going over the results with me (never mind that we had a whole weekend to struggle through without knowing). 

Unless I chose to trust through the weekend instead of struggle, frustrated and upset.

"I hope that doesn't mean it's bad news!" I said to the nurse who was de-accessing my port. 

"No!" he said firmly. "It just means they want to talk about it and go over things." 

I could tell he wanted to calm me. The nurses at this clinic are so incredibly compassionate and caring.

I decided to trust God, even if it all seemed distressing. 

Even if it would be easy to let people know just exactly what you think of the medical protocols that leave in the dark people who are in pain and distress.

"But God knows the results," my friend Eileen Mitchem texted.

And another friend, a disabled friend, Karen, also friend of my sister-in-law Anita, called just to pray with me.

The one person who called--another sufferer who had been through a terrible accident 20 years ago leaving her disabled but still smiling and a blessing to a lady with cancer who dissolved into tears as the lady who struggled even to speak clearly 

prayed with me over the phone.  

 

And then there was this morning, as Jonathan and I got online at 7 a.m. our time here in AZ to listen to Beavertown God's Missionary Church. Something was telling me that if I listened this morning, I was going to be refreshed and uplifted.

 

"Behind every dark cloud shines the smiling face of Jesus," was one of the first songs the musicians chose for the prelude, and the heart of a lady in Arizona standing over the kitchen sink making the first of her morning drinks knew that the song was for her.

Then before I knew it, the musicians were playing, "Jesus, Name above all names,

Beautiful Savior, glorious Lord and Master..."

And I was wafted back 31 years ago to the year I was in Ukraine, excited despite being lonely and single, teaching English and Bible to four classes of Ukrainian students in a public school. I had taught those students this chorus in English. Suddenly, 31 years later, I am in a small kitchen of a little house under the sky-full-of-noisy-jets in Phoenix, fighting blown-up cancer pain, joining out loud the last two lines of this precious, adoring chorus.

"Emmanuel! God is with us!

Precious Redeemer, Living Word!"

Jonathan coming out to the living area of this little house caught me in the middle of that song,  hands raised--me in anything but my Sunday best, not looking too great,

but caught away with memories and worship too deep for words.  

Some of the happiest memories of my life--in the middle of my deepest loneliness over there--teaching my Ukrainian students the words of this worship chorus that meant so much to me.

God always with us. Always.

To the ends of the earth and the end of the world.

Always. 

Emmanuel.

 Didn't Pastor Solomon Shaffer add the name of Anna Morley Lucas to the prayer request list, making me feel even more a small part of the service there 2000 miles away. 

Then a men's trio went up to sing, a beautiful, simple worship song saying, "If I had a thousand tongues to sing...If I had a thousand hands to raise... in praise...." 

The service melted as Pastor Shaffer invited anyone who had a need to go up and pray. The chorus was sung softly, again and again.

People with needs praying, us watching, worshipping, waiting on God.

The voice of someone with an unusual accent suddenly lifted up in praise with "Alleluia! Alleluia!"

weeping, again and again. We were quite sure it was a dear man from Papua New Guinea, a place we'd ministered with Mission Helps about 8 or more years ago now.

That simple, humble, uninhibited praise resounding with our own quiet tears, listening. 

 

 One man sharing that God had called him to go up there just to "snuggle with Me." And up there he had heard God ask him a question. "Have you surrendered your children to me who are moving to Colorado?"

Right away we knew who he was talking about--the MacDonald family who are moving out to western Colorado to pastor the church where our young son Tim attends,

our trucker boy who loves the Lord and attends this church that is in need of a good pastor. 

Our boy needs a pastor, and the father back east is surrendering his children to move there--and God is letting him know it's "going to be okay." God is going to be with both him and the children he's releasing to God. 

And me, the mother of the boy needing a good pastor, knows that God is going to be with my boy, too, and with his mother wherever she ends up in the next little while. 

During testimony time, someone asked for a song number, and as the musicians began to play, I was amazed. 

Not another of my favorite old hymns that is so rarely sung! Yet it had been sung a couple Sundays ago at our church in South Dakota, and now again in Beavertown, a hymn I had sung once in Ukraine when I had been asked to sing at a Messianic congregation where my missionary friends the Durfees attended. 

"From every stormy wind that blows, 

From every swelling tide of woes, 

There is a calm, a sure retreat,

Tis found beneath the mercy seat. 

There is a place where Jesus sheds
The oil of gladness on our heads;
A place than all beside more sweet:
It is the blood-bought mercy seat."

Jonathan's beside me shaking with tears, not just crying. He's bawling. We keep slipping our arms around each other. 

"There is a scene where spirits blend,
Where friend holds fellowship with friend;
Though sundered far, by faith they meet
Around one common mercy seat.

 Ah! there on eagle wings we soar,
Where sin and sense molest no more;
And heaven comes down our souls to greet,
And glory crowns the mercy seat.

 

And the Dove of the Spirit has slipped into a little house underneath the jets, surrounded by concrete and electric poles and wires and block buildings and poor wilted bushes with dead roses, 

has slipped inside by a lady with blown-up cancer and her husband with blown-up distress, 

and walked with us--

Emmanuel. 

 

When You Feel Like You've Been Through the Mill

This morning as I dragged myself to the kitchen after a week of chemo and other cancer treatments, the thought went through my mind, "I feel like I've been through the mill."

A few days ago, Crystal and I discovered that Queen Creek Olive Mill wasn't very far from my clinic, and we decided to go after treatments one day to take the little tour. 

 I was barely functioning, but it was a non-chemo day, and I was fascinated with the story of an entrepreneurial family moving to Arizona, which had perfect climate for raising olive trees. Some years ago, maybe twenty, they decided to start growing olives

Here are a few of the trees.

And here, just as you head in toward the gift shop and venue, is a basil and herb garden.  I stood there breathing deeply of the wonderful aroma of the fresh basil--an herb they use for some of their own edible creations in the shop.

The tour started outside for ten minutes in the heat (but thankfully in the shade of tall olive trees), where we learned that a press similar to the replica above was what was used in the long ago past to press olives. 

And after the olives, seeds and all, had been thoroughly mashed between those stones, the mash would be pressed through woven mats in a machine similar to this replica. 

 From that machine, the oil would be transferred to great vats similar to the replicas in the distance.

Replicas of olden vats for olive oil. 

Nowadays, huge machines are used.  

We were taken into a processing room where olives are processed when in season. This huge machine above does the mashing.

And this one does the pressing/spinning which finishes getting the oil out of the olive pulp.  

We were treated to a 3-minute video that told the brief story of how olives are picked and processed.  

I snapped a picture of this monster machine that literally drives  over the olive trees in the grove, shakes the branches with special "fingers," and harvests the olives.

Olives pouring into a huge container 

Olives on a conveyor belt. (on the video screen, of course) 

 Crystal and I, while waiting for the tour, had enjoyed roaming slowly through the enormous gift shop with all its tempting delicacies--coffees, creamers, pastries, cold specialty drinks such as prickly pear cactus lemonade, various sauces, olive oils, jars of olives, numerous Italian pastas, and other desert specialty items.

We looked, but like good children who have been told by mama to look and not touch, we looked but we did not buy anything! The oils were about twice as expensive as in the store. But I did almost purchase a package of bow-tie, non-gluten, naturally multi-colored pasta for Sam's new girlfriend who cannot eat gluten. I wanted so much to buy that, but do you spend $11 for something not much different than you can get from a regular store for about $6?

And I wanted to buy an olive wood Christmas bell--till I looked at the price. This ornament was also unique. 

But the prices! Whew!

So if you go for this tour, prepare for a good time but hang tight to your wallet!

I thought about the olives innocently growing on all those trees, just living their peaceful, uninterrupted lives

until a monster comes along, ripping them from their stems and roots, dumping them into huge wagons and disposing of them in a highly impersonal machine that mashes each one, seed heart and all, in with all the other ones in one great big mashy, mushy mess!

And from there, the whole mashed pulp gets sent through a pipe to another machine that squeezes and presses and spins--otherwise extracting oil. 

Oil!

Ah! The whole purpose of the picking, the dumping, the mashing, the pressing, the spinning, and the painful extracting till nothing is left of the original olive except beautiful, delicious, aromatic, healthful, tender, smooth oil--minus all the pulp and mash and anything distateful.

When we feel like we have been through the mill, maybe we have.

Maybe God is putting us through the olive mill of His divine purpose until nothing is left except what is useful, beautiful, tender, smooth, healthful, and delicious!

Grand Piano in the Airport--and "You Are My Hiding Place"

 Last Saturday when Crystal and I arrived at the Mesa, AZ, airport, we discovered a shiny black grand piano posing in the corner near the carousel, just waiting to be played!

 

I encouraged Crystal to play something, so she chose "I Have the Joy, Joy, Joy Down in My Heart," and "You Are My Hiding Place." 

 

"You are my hiding place. I will trust in You." Beautiful words and melody both. I stood nearby, watching and listening, as did many others.
"Please tell your friend thank you for playing," one lady came to me to say. I told her that was my daughter, and that I would tell her. 

One never knows what might happen inside an airport on the way to a cancer clinic.

Monday after my blood labs were drawn and my first IVs done, we came home to our little house at Gospel Center and folded newsletters and stuffed, addressed, and stamped envelopes. I had brought the newsletters down and Crystal had looked in three different stores to find envelopes--to no avail! We found a box of personal size envelopes in a Goodwill! I refolded some of the letters, and we got them sent.

This is similar to one of the pictures I have in the newsletter--Jonathan and me holding up the star quilt that Beth Montour's family gifted us after Beth's funeral. It meant so much to me. 

We had to leave the funeral meal before everything was over as I was unable to manage such a long evening, so we weren't there when the quilt would have been presented. 

So it was Sunday night after church meal at Mission, as Jonathan and I were getting ready to leave, that Kim Lavery rushed over with a big bag and let us know the Montour family had wanted me to have this quilt. 

I took one look and realized that out of all the dozen or more quilts displayed behind the casket, flowers, and memory posters, this was the quilt that I had liked the most!

I remembered noticing those colors and deciding those were my favorite colors of all the ones there.

And didn't that very quilt come into our home as a gift--

the quilt hanging silently behind the wooden cross that Ned Sherman had crafted for Beth's wake and funeral and burial.

I am amazed at the beauty that God is bringing into my cancer journey.

Every time I had come to Arizona in recent months, I'd tried to go at least once to visit Beth who had the same kind of cancer. I discovered what a beautiful family she had--so loving and devoted and yet who allowed her the freedom to make her own personal choices about her health care, and who cared tenderly for her to the end. 

As I watch (as Hannah did the other day) what may be the gathering storm in my own cancer journey, with the cancer literally blowing up right under my eyes in the last week and a half, I find myself needing a hiding place--a shelter in the time of storm.

Two weeks ago, a storm tore through Winner, SD, the town where Beth lived and where Ned and Judy Sherman live and minister at the Raymond Montour Memorial Chapel.  

This granary fell over on a tractor near there.

At home, we'd heard that baseball-size hailstones were headed our way, so Crystal parked her car up close to the garage and covered it with tarp and cardboard battened down with heavy logs the best she could! The protection probably wouldn't have stayed long if the wind had been bad, but thankfully the storm bypassed us. 

We don't know if, in the future, the storm will hit and blow away what is precious or valuable to us, but we do know that God is our hiding place, and that He is a shelter in the time of storm. 

Our efforts at protecting and saving ourselves are so pitiful, so small, like cardboard over a windshield. But You, O my God, are my hiding place, and I will trust in You.

Angel Wings in the Morning Sky

Do you see what I saw when I went out the door yesterday morning for a walk before clinic appointments?

It looked like angel wings to me! 

I was grateful for the clouds over the sun as Crystal and I took our early morning walk before heading off to the clinic, but the words to a favorite hymn came to me. 

"Under His wings I am safely abiding, Tho' the night deepens and tempests are wild,
Still I can trust Him; I know He will keep me. He has redeemed me, and I am His child.

Under His wings, under His wings, Who from His love can sever?
Under His wings my soul shall abide, Safely abide forever.

 Under His wings, what a refuge in sorrow!
How the heart yearningly turns to His rest!
Often when earth has no balm for my healing,
There I find comfort, and there I am blest. 

 Under His wings, oh, what precious enjoyment!
There will I hide till life’s trials are o’er;
Sheltered, protected, no evil can harm me.
Resting in Jesus, I’m safe evermore."

When I looked up who wrote this hymn, I found it was a minister, William Cushing, who was beloved by young and old. Soon after his wife died, he developed a creeping paralysis that took away his voice. But after retiring from ministry, he asked God for something to do and discovered he could write. Despite the loss of his voice, he wrote hymns and songs for others to sing, including "Under His Wings," "Down in the Valley With My Savior I Would Go," "O Safe to the Rock That Is Higher Than I," (one of my favorites), "Ring the Bells of Heaven," and "When He Cometh to Make Up His Jewels" (anther of my favorite children's hymns).   At the end of his life he joined the Wesleyan Methodist Church at Lisbon Center, New York.

I appreciate the comforts like these angel wings in the sky that the Lord gives along the way as I am here at Oasis of Healing again here in Mesa, AZ. Crystal snapped the picture above of me waiting for IVs and chemo.

How precious to know that in the middle of difficulties, pain, and things out of our control, we can rest under God's wings.

Huge Concrete Pour at Martin

The SIM project at Martin, a large multi-purpose building, is moving along. 

A huge step was just taken last week--the whole concrete floor was poured in a single day! 

A local concrete crew of about 12 men arrived and did a super job.  

Meanwhile, Jonathan and Danny and another work guy were working on plumbing and electrical conduit. Then a day or two later, they trenched for the propane line to the building. 

 

This is from another angle, with the mission parsonage in the background.

Danny must have been inside the trench for this picture!

This is the Martin Lakota Chapel, from which Jonathan is trenching.  

And that in the distance is the all-purpose building to which the trench is going. It was decided to trench pipe from the propane tank that was already there, to save having to have a second propane tank on the property with separate hookups and bills and paperwork.  

I'm thankful that my medical issues have not kept Jonathan from continuing to work much of the time for SIM as planned. 

And I, though busy with medical issues, pray for them all.

Jonathan Donates His Own Life Blood

Last week LifeServe did a blood drive in our little town. Our pastor's wife has been involved in the local blood drives for years, and she got after our family to get involved, too!

So Jonathan did! I am too small and don't weigh enough. Crystal didn't want to lose a whole unit of blood before doing a big drive for an Amish family the next day, and Danny had a sore throat, which promptly disqualified him. 

And Hannah was too young. So only Jonathan donated blood last week. 

I did a write-up about it and sent it to the Mellette Newspaper, but I don't know if it will be printed. Here it is:

On a very hot Tuesday on July 30th, Life Serve once again came to Sacred Heart Hall in White River, SD. Thanks to a former scheduler for blood drives, a newcomer named Jonathan Lucas was convinced to donate blood for the first time here. "I've actually donated blood once before in my early 20's," he says. He and his sisters donated blood for a particular person in need, and that grateful lady said she considered herself part of their family after that!

Jonathan's wife Anna was on the verge of needing a blood transfusion last year during cancer treatment, reminding Jonathan of the need for blood donations. Forty-six years ago, Anna's mother nearly died of a hemorrhage after giving birth to Anna's younger sister in Custer Hospital. An ambulance had screamed off to Rapid City and returned in record time with the right type of blood or Anna's father would probably have been left alone with eight children to care for. Thanks to blood donors, Anna still has her mother, 84 years old.

"Why is that bag of blood sitting on that 'rocking chair'?" Anna asked curiously. She was watching her husband's dark red blood flowing through the narrow tubing into the 1-unit bag sitting not on a rocking chair but on a flat metal plate that was seesawing up and down.

"To keep the blood from clotting," the nurse explained, deftly clamping the tubing shut and slipping the needle out of Jonathan's arm. "Hold this gauze tight for a moment," she said, getting ready to wrap his arm and the gauze with criss-crossed blue tape.

"You must sit down for fifteen minutes," insists Mathel Ambrose, former scheduler for blood donations, leading the way  to the snack table where granola bars, various chips or popcorn, and drinks of cold water, apple juice, or orange juice awaited each donor. There Jonathan munched popcorn and sipped orange juice, joined shortly by another donor.

"How many times have you donated blood?" Anna inquired of the man.

"I don't count," the donor shook his head, and Mathel added, "I don't count either. I don't have to count stars in my crown." Donating blood, in their opinion, is not something to brag about, but a way for willing people to simply serve their community--donating their own life's blood for people whose lives literally depend on it.

Thank you, LifeServe and each quiet donor, for serving our communities with something so life-giving and life-saving!