Cleaved

Today I awoke in the apartment of a friend who I became connected with in one of the strangest and most beautiful ways. I met her in another country at a conference for a few days. We clicked and she later came and visited me in the Dominican Republic, and last night she opened her home up to two traveling missionaries(a.k.a. me and one other missionary). It was a very brief stay, and even though our periods of being together have often been brief, it is as if we have known each other all our lives, and there is always the assurance that we will see each other again. This week, I have said, “goodbye” to many friends. Not for the first time, but nonetheless it has still been very difficult. Today I also had to say, “goodbye” to a fellow missionary who I had been traveling with since we left the Dominican Republic. While I know I will see her again, the weight of the farewell hit me as I was driving away. There is never a doubt that I will see these friends again but there is a pain within me every time the reality of “goodbyes” and “farewells” sink in.

 While as Christians we share the hope of a glorious reunion in heaven, it doesn’t change the fact that while we live in these broken bodies here on earth, we will continually face the partings of friends and families. I must admit that I thought with time they would get easier. But as fatality has made itself known in saying farewell to friends and family, the reality of goodbyes becomes tinged with a bit of morbidity. I am also beginning to realize that the more I open up and love the deeper the pain of partings becomes. In the midst of all these goodbyes I was reminded today of a great “goodbye” that the disciples endured. 

In celebrating the ascension today I reflected on the connection between my own “farewell’s” and those of the disciples. In my journey home today I kept thinking; “How many more times am I going to have to endure this?” Obviously; as long as I continue to open myself up to others, it will go on for as long as I live, until that day when others will be saying “goodbye” to me. The idea of this left me empty, with a sense of there being a bottomless pit and a sensation of endless falling. “How long!? How many more goodbyes? How many more heartbreaks?” Then I thought about the disciples. What a strange, sad parting the ascension must have been. Sure, there would have been joy at knowing that their Redeemer lives and because their Redeemer lives they too would live again. However, wasn’t the blood bath in which they initially said “goodbye” as their rabbi and teacher was taken from their presence enough? Now they had to do it again. Now they had to watch Him be taken from them again. Now they had to discover how to move forward without their great teacher present. Perhaps they wondered how real the past forty days were. If they had in fact lived it and not just woken from a very long dream. Now, they had to start all over again; but not without a helper. This same helper comes to us and binds us all together in our baptism. He makes us One and promises us a joyful reunion in heaven for each of the faithful who die within the grace of God. We ourselves and the disciples have hope, and while we may be cleaved for a time from one another, we are never without hope. We have Christ and all His promises and truths that He gives us in His word. So in the midst of cleaving, we can cling to the cross and remember all we have received one for all in the sacrifice of Christ. We now have fellowship not only with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirt, but with all the company of heaven. So, the more painful partings we endure in this earth give way to a greater joy of many more joyful reunions.   


John 14:18
I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you.

Don’t look back....don’t even look at the clock

When I was in high-school I had an uncle who had schizophrenia. He would do things that didn’t always make sense to the considerably sane mind. One Christmas when I was in high-school he gave me an expensive bottle of perfume. Being the sensible girl that I am I took it back the store that he got it from and exchanged it for a really nice watch. He called me up a week later and asked me how I liked the perfume, I looked I my watch and said; “Oh, I like it!” 

A year later for my birthday I asked for a cell phone. I got my first cell phone my senior year of high-school (yep...I was ruined) it was a little brick. The first official call I got was from my father. I excitedly answered and he said; “Katie! Is your sister there?” I said with gaiety at having received my first phone call, “well she is driving, why don’t you just talk to me!” He said, “Well, you guys need to go to your grandmothers house, your uncle Bill has died” What a first phone call! The same uncle who gave me the “perfume/ watch.” That summer a day before entering into college the battery on the watch died. 

I used that watch all through culinary school. I would take it off and thread it through the button hole on my chefs coat to keep track of time on breads, tasks, and competition projects. Other days I would take it off and thread it through my tank top strap or my shoe laces so I could go for a run. After Culinary school My grandmother died and so did the battery in my watch. I changed the battery and went on to another track in life. I went to Concordia Seward to study to become a deaconess. I bought a bike! (No that isn’t an A.D.D. joke!) I would take my watch off and attach it to the handle bars to avoid a tan line. 

I distinctly remember driving to Fort Wayne and passing a Wal-Mart on the highway when my watch stopped. I was keeping close track of time so that I arrived at “The Fort” on time. I pulled over to take a quick break and change the battery. I took it to the jewelry counter and the kind lady played around with it and pushed the lever inward and it started again! We both had a good laugh about it. My bad...I just had it in my head that this thing goes out whenever I am making major life changes. The next day, I woke up in my own room in Fort Wayne Indiana with a massive Theological journey ahead of me and a dead battery in my watch. I took it to a special battery place, they offered for only $15 a lifetime security that said they would replace the battery in my watch for free (apart from the $15 payment) for the life of the watch. I inquired of the various locations of this special battery place and declined the offer and decided to just pay the $5 to have the battery replaced. I was on my way with a fully functioning watch. The following summer I did what I call “Watch watching.” I was in a job that caused me to constantly look at my watch and wait and hope for the next break, or better yet, for when I would be free (you know you have been there!). 

I used that same watch to calculate the time difference between New England and NE, and when it would be appropriate to call my friends on Skype. I got into another “Watch watching” job in England, and then I got into Chaplaincy where I divided the hands on my watch between “tea time” “visiting hours” “team meetings” and “charting.” That summer I went home with a new future before me. The battery died. I changed it, and went on my merry way. 

That watch sits on my desk now, may she rest in peace. Last Christmas I got very ill and I had to go to the doctor in the Dominican. I had to have an x-ray taken and went into a tiny room with a technician, he shoved me into a bathroom no bigger than a tiny closet and asked me to take off anything with metal; there went my watch. I dropped it on the floor and the glass cracked and the hands just twitched like a dead cockroach (a little ironic). There are so many little battery places on the streets of Santiago that I took it to one of the little street vendors. The kind sir fixed it for 50 pesos (a little more than 1 USD) and said if it stopped working to bring it back to him. Well...for it to “stop working” it would have had to worked properly in the first place. 

I decided to give my watch the dignity of an honorable discharge and put it on the shelf. I tried to replace it with another watch that only lasted a week. I gave up time. I gave up tracking time. I gave up placing significance on the death of a battery and decided the time is now! Our lives are changing every day. By the grace of God, I face a new adventure every day that my watch couldn’t even keep track of. I would be replacing batteries everyday were there merit in my theory. I discovered that my one eye on the past and one on my watch was no longer working. I was given the grace of a broken watch so that I would stop looking down and start looking up. Now the clock just is in my life, it is not my life. Now time is only an idea not a lord. Sometimes the things my uncle did, didn’t make sense, but he taught me something very precious in the bottle of expensive perfume that he gave me. Sometimes stopping and smelling the roses should not be exchanged for sensibility. Time runs out, batteries die, and in the end what was it all for? The woman who washed Jesus feet understood the urgency of sharing in a beautiful thing. With a broken watch and a lesson hard learned over the past 12 years, I press on knowing that what we have been given is this moment, and this day to be used for the glory and the honor of the One who gave up everything for a time to save us for eternity! 

Mark 14:7-9

New King James Version (NKJV)

⁷ For you have the poor with you always, and whenever you wish you may do them good; but Me you do not have always. ⁸ She has done what she could. She has come beforehand to anoint My body for burial. ⁹ Assuredly, I say to you, wherever this gospel is preached in the whole world, what this woman has done will also be told as a memorial to her.”

Marked by the blood of THE Lamb

I was reading my treasury of Daily prayer...as I do in the mornings...and I read a text this morning that I think we have all read several times and glazed over. Within the Exodus we hear many times of God “testing” his people. We even hear of it in Genesis where God “tests” Abraham.  Sometimes we even talk about it in our lives and in our little circles saying things like; “God is / was just testing me” or “the silence of God is just a test to see if I’m trusting Him or not” or even when we talk of others, “Job was tested.” For whatever reason this has always rubbed me the wrong way. The Hebrew verb can also be translated using the English words; try, prove, or tempt. I would venture to say that most of us think of this verb in connection to the Devil, and we confess in the sixth petition of the Lord’s prayer; “God, indeed tempts no one?” In addition, we at times tempt, try, and test God often in our own lives, as did the children of Israel, provoking God to action, most times in anger. Perhaps the notion of God doing to us what we do to him and the devil does to us is difficult to swallow because it is difficult to imagine a loving God doing what we sinners do in malice. 

Perhaps ‘God testing” rubs because I used to cheat on tests, (I started and stopped that in the second grade) or perhaps it is because I hate tests, or maybe it is because I always think that whoever is giving the test is secretly out to get me. I have never had a very positive perspective on tests. I get nervous, I choke, I forget everything I should know or that I once had committed to memory. Tests in my mind have been a “make or break” deals. The worst of all the subjects for me was spelling. I can only hear out of one ear, so when covering homophones I just grabbed a shovel and a plot of land and started digging because I knew I was going to die, and I didn't want to be "that student" who raised her hand after each word and said; "Could you repeat that in another sentence?" So, going back to God then; as one who “tests.” I think the problem in my perspective and perhaps for others, is we think there is a mark with all tests. You study, you take the test, you pass or you fail, done. God however, doesn’t work like that. He continually tests and not for a mark or grade. He continually places us in situations where we can look to Him and trust, or look to ourselves and see what happens. It isn’t to prove anything to Him, it is only to show us. Just like with the children of Israel wandering through the desert. He continually tested them not to prove their worthiness of entering into the promised land. No, he already selected them to enter the promised land. God is faithful, and committed. The teacher knows his subject better than the students. He gives them these little tests to show them just how faithful He truly is. So they can know for their future wanderings that He does as He says He will. He tests, so that we know Him better and so that we do not have to test Him. He examines us and our hearts so that He Himself can know how to teach us better of Himself. He shows us our sin, to show us our Savior, and He tests our very being so we know what we might become, but only in and through Him.

I find it interesting that there really isn’t a “pass” or “fail” in God’s testing. Sure the Israelites and many of the Patriarchal fathers turned their back on God when they needed to be trusting Him, but the beauty is that it isn’t a fail because God is still faithful and uses those moments to teach us. Our greatest fail was in not listening and trusting His words that He breathed on us in creation. But our greatest gain is learning that our failures are blotted out by the very Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. The very One who took the test in our place, and completed it in all faithfulness as only God could do. Every test is gain as we look to the one who washed us clean and made us white. In Christ we have one who goes before us, and completes what we otherwise would fail. He makes our bitter waters sweet, He promises us healing and cleansing from our sins, and He feeds us with His very body and blood. To quote my supervising pastor at the end of every one of His sermons; “Thanks be to God, for this Jesus Christ! Amen!” 

Exodus 15:25-26 So he cried out to the Lord, and the Lord showed him a tree. When he cast it into the waters, the waters were made sweet. There He made a statute and an ordinance for them, and there He tested them, and said, “If you diligently heed the voice of the Lord your God and do what is right in His sight, give ear to His commandments and keep all His statutes, I will put none of the diseases on you which I have brought on the Egyptians. For I am the Lord who heals you.”

Fighting Against Death

Today was difficult. I cried my make up off and it didn’t take many tears to do that, but even still...it was the first time I cried this much in and among my friends and deaconess students. One of our deaconesses sent me a message to let me know that a woman we had been visiting quite regularly had gone severely ill. This morning I received the call that she had passed away early in the morning and they were trying to find enough money to get the body from the hospital to the home. I have written on funerals before and how they have to burry the body immediately so I have explained that things go quite quickly. 

While the deaconess students and I are all still learning together how these things work and how we communicate the Gospel in the midst of pain and suffering, we know in one another the unity of Christ that carries us through these difficult events. The woman who died left four children behind, and their pain was made known. They suffered for not being able to stop the effects of sin and death upon their mother. My friends; the deaconesses, suffered for not being able to stop the pain of what that death would bring. I suffered to see the tears that rolled down both the children’s faces, and my friends faces. I suffered because it rendered me helpless. My heart has held many people up in prayer as sin has played it’s nasty final card of death, and every time I feel so powerless. Yet every time my arms are held in those of one who is carrying a cross much larger than mine, I am reminded; here God has given us, one to the other so that He can be made known, and I am humbled and honored. 

As I watched both the children and my beloved friends, I saw them fight against death while holding the promise of eternal life within their hands. Here a mother had left her children, yet God has not. God remains present in His word, and in the Body of Christ.  Here in the final days of lent, just before Palm Sunday, a mother no longer walks the lenten path of repentance and reflection on her saviors death, but she lives in the light of the resurrection. She lives to sing the Easter hymns now while we remain to sing the lenten ones. She lives to praise her Savior face to face. Tears may flow and doubts, worries, and sadness linger over our heads and block the light of the blistering sun but not the heat itself. Yet; we hold the light of the world and all His promises, and we support and love one another in these promises. Because He lives we too shall live. Because He lives, we cling to those promises in our veil of tears.

Christ Is Risen, Christ Is Living:

1.)Christ is risen, Christ is living, Dry your tears, be unafraid!

Death and darkness could not hold Him, Nor the tomb in which He lay.

Do not look among the dead for One who lives forever more;

Tell the world that Christ is risen, Make it known He goes before.

2.)If the Lord had never risen, We’d have nothing to believe.

But His promise can be trusted: “You will live, because I live.”

As we share the death of Adam, So in Christ we live again;

Death has lost its sting and terror, Christ the Lord has come to reign.

3.) Death has lost its old dominion, Let the world rejoice and shout!

Christ the firstborn of the living, Gives us life and leads us out.

Let us thank our God, who causes Hope to spring up from the ground;

Christ is risen, Christ is giving Life eternal, life profound. 

1.) ¡Cristo vive, fuera el llanto, los lamentos, y el pesar!

Ni la muerte ni el sepulcro lo han podido sujetar.

No busquéis entre los muertos al que siempre ha de vivir, 

¡Cristo vive! Estas nuevas por doquier dejad oír.

2.) Que si Cristo no viviera vana fuera nuestra fe:

mas se cumple su promesa: ¨Porque vivo, viviréis.¨

Si en Adán entró la muerte, por Jesús la vida entró:

no temáis, el triunfo es vuestro: ¡El Señor resucitó!

3.) Si es verdad que de la muerte el pecado es aguijón, 

no temáis pues Jesucristo nos da vida y salvación

Gracias demos al Dios Padre que nos da seguridad,

que quien cree en Jesucristo vive por la eternidad.   (LSB #479)

For he was drawn out of the water....

He said my name! He smiled at me! She ran to me! She yells my name and stands up for a hug. All these things may be seemingly ordinary, but they carry much weight for me. In our group home are six children with varying disabilities. Some can’t walk well if at all, others can’t talk, and one can’t hear. In all this I find it amazing that at times they are mindful of me! I can’t tell you how my heart and face light up to see Ramona running to come give me a hug. A girl who is particular about having “motherly” figures around chose me! Then there is Estephanie, who is a beautiful young woman in a wheel chair until she sees me, then she lifts herself out of it and gives me a hug. She wants nothing more than to share her life with me and to have me walk alongside of her...me! Moises is a favorite. He wasn’t always. In fact, it took me a long time to notice him and to understand why he was always hitting me. I thought he didn’t like me. But today, when he saw me, he gave me this beautiful smile, just absolutely gorgeous, then he hit me. It is his way of playing. One day I could have sworn he said my name. 

All of these things overwhelm me with honor. That they would rise above their disabilities to acknowledge me! Many times we think our work is to acknowledge the least of these and to serve them, but there is a great reversal here. I can’t fully explain it, but that these beautiful people would show something to me, and share something that is in them that most people don’t get to see; that is precious. Some people can’t get past the spit and drool, some people can’t get past the timidity of each child. Some people don’t wait long enough to see the little boy in the corner merging to play around. Some people can’t handle the broken because they see something they can’t fix, or something that society has told them is wrong. If I ever thought I was condescending to get past these difficult barriers, I was sadly mistaken. The children have condescended to me, and not in a haughty, arrogant demeanor. They respected me and loved me not for having deserved it, but because they are free to do so. They acknowledge me, not because I stoop to their level, but because they have risen to mine. I am humbled by these children, and amazed at the beauty and power God has displayed in them. I am also honored that I can be a voice for the wisdom that they have to give and to share! God is truly using the weak things of this world to make known his mighty deeds.

Luke 1:51-52

He has shown strength with His arm;
He has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.

He has put down the mighty from their thrones,
And exalted the lowly.

To my Katie....

To my Kaite, On the occasion of her departure for the Dominican Republic. I love you. You use this book well. Dad

My dad gave me his Minister’s Prayer Book the day I left for the Dominican. Both law and gospel in that sweet little message. I hate to say it, but, the jacket sleeve explains why I perhaps have not been able to “use this book well.”  It says; “The aim of this book is to deepen and discipline the minister’s life of private devotion.”  Perhaps I have not been able to use the book as a deaconess intern but I have used it as a daughter. On the jacket cover where I found the purpose of the book I found a piece of tape to preserve and hold down the jacket flap. On the following page where my father wrote his note I also find his library seal. Throughout the book are his markings, notes, highlights, and impressions of where paper clips once were. It even still has a mixed smell of his cologne and office. All of these are little reminders for me.

To “use this book well” I suppose I should find value in it and use for it. As I just stated, perhaps as a deaconess intern it isn’t as valuable, but as a daughter it is a treasure. I was a daughter before I was a deaconess intern and so for that it influences the type of deaconess I am to be. As I thumb through the pages I find myself gravitating towards those parts which my father has highlighted. I read them and know at some point for one reason or another my father clung to them. He was once where I am now, his hands once pressed these pages. That he would give this book to me as a comfort says that it offered much consolation for his personal devotional life and for the sharing of the word with others. I cherish every mark, every note, every folded page not for the author but for the previous owner. Even if the book itself has nothing to offer me, every bit of it that reminds me of my father reminds me how much I am loved by him. For that alone I feel I can say I have used it well. 

My heavenly father is much the same. He gives me all his comfort, all his promises, all of his word and claims me for His own though baptism. He also gives me the law in order to give me the gospel. In His word He says; “You use this book well” so that he can tell me “I love you.” We hear His word, we know the law upon our hearts, but do we understand His communication of love? Do we see how precious His seal upon us is in times of difficulty? Do we treasure the trials He gives us to draw us closer to Him? We may not always see a treasure disguised as something normal and irrelevant. In our baptism we have been blessed beyond reason and comprehension. We hold something so normal as water and word, and receive something so grand that we can turn to every day in trials, griefs and difficulties. Then in our final moments, we can know without a doubt that it is ours. We hold all the riches of heaven as real as we hold a thin wafer and drink some wine. He gives it to us, and he gives us the means by which we may know it without a doubt. He has equipped us for the journey, and promises to be forever with us. 

Luke 7:22

Jesus answered and said to them, “Go and tell John the things you have seen and heard: that the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor have the gospel preached to them.

“There are greater honors and higher ranks, but there is no other office that refreshes the weariness of the heart and brings comfort to the poor and speaks peace to the dying and shows a lost world the way home.” -Hermann Bezzel 

DA ME!!!!!!!

DA ME!

Ellos dicen a mi: 

“Da me” cuando tengo nada

“Da me” cuando estoy cansado

“Da me” cuando estoy vacio

Tu me dices:

“Tomalo” cuando estas solo

“Tomalo” cuando no hay nada

“Tomalo” Cuando estas cansada

“Tomalo” cuando estas vacio y descansas en me

Dios es mi luz y mi salvacion a quien temere

This is my attempt at poetry in another language. I have been writing poetry for several years and have 108 pages of writings. Little of my writing; in my opinion, is good. Most of my poetry is just embarrassing. Few people know of my practice because I refuse to share it. The above poem I share because it is easy to do for the fact that it is in another language. I have found there are many things that are easier to do in another language. For example; looking like an idiot and saying stupid stuff. I do it every day. Another thing that I can do is pull the "but....I didn't know because I didn't understand." Probably one of the greatest things about speaking in a foreign language is that you can adopt a new personality. Here, people love abundantly always greeting with a hug, asking about family and saying “Te quiro Mucho!” I am rarely an affectionate person. I depend upon my warm smile, and my bubbly personality to allow people to feel as though they have received a warm hug so that I don’t have to awkwardly draw close to them. I have ways of keeping a safe distance. I also depended upon that same smile to say “I love you” so that I wouldn’t have to choke on the words as I awkwardly say them. All this is to avoid “awkwardness.” 

What is awkward in allowing someone to know your sincere sentiments towards them? Since when did it become weird to give a hug? What made me ever think that I should withhold the words of “I love you” from someone I do love? While it is beautiful that another culture and language makes it easer for me to express my emotions and wear them for all to see, it makes me sad that the most beautiful sentiments that I have to share would remain hidden in word and deed. Don’t worry, I’m not about to share 108 pages of poetry, but I do wish to share my double Latin American personality with you. 

There is an outpouring of love that comes with faith. There are times when words aren’t needed and love needs to be shown in action. In fact, the greatest display of love was quite possibly the most horrific, awkward and most rejected. Veiled as a foreigner in human flesh; the son of God came to us, spoke with the language of the people, and learned our ways as his own. Then when he had shown love in every way possible, he emptied himself and became obedient to death. A touch, a word, an action in love carries the most powerful affect when accepted and the most detrimental when rejected. Having been drained of all he physically had to give he took on the punishment of death so that we would not have to know such chastisement. He loved us in ways we couldn’t possibly fathom. He expressed it in ways that we fail to. He continues to love and communicate that love to all his children in the service of the word and the sacraments. What if his love had been withheld for the awkwardness that it carried? Because he loved us, we too can love with reckless abandonment and know that even when emptied of all that we have, He fills us with his abundant love, and his mercies are new every morning.  

Mark 12:29-31

New King James Version (NKJV)

29 Jesus answered him, “The first of all the commandments is: ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. 30 And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.’[a] This is the first commandment.[b] 31 And the second, like it, is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’[c] There is no other commandment greater than these.”