Stricken

"A Mighty Fortress is our God, a Sacred Refuge is Your Name, Your Kingdom is Unshakable, with You forever we will reign."


For AB, Brett,  Hannah Joy, and especially, for Wendi.


Homework and all of the little things I need to do are screaming at me...I'm ignoring them to write. I've never been the best at anything except people, and perhaps words...today I just have something to say.

Ready? It's earth shattering.

I deleted this three times.

Yep.
I have something to say and I just can't say it.
Fabulous.

When I was 20 years old, I spearheaded a shoe drive for orphans on my small East Texas college campus. In the end, we collected 443 pairs of shoes. People were shocked. I wasn't. I wished it had been more. Two reporters interviewed me on that day, and when I watched the news that night, I found myself devastated by one reporter's focus. She said "Stricken with Cerebral Palsy herself..."

Worst.reporting.ever.
First of all, if you're going to appeal to pathos using the pity card, appeal by using someone who needs pity.
That reporter wasn't even present for the interview, and had no way of knowing that though I was born super early, the size of a jar of applesauce, transferred schools over a dozen times, and had just seen one of my best friends go to heaven less than a year before, I was still here. Here. Where she was, and had no place for her definition of "stricken."

Second of all,  that reporter had no way of knowing that years later I'd be blessed with a big sister whose favorite words are "NO RUNNING!" Don't you "stricken" me...reporter lady.

Now, almost six years later, I've watched several more people, most younger than me, go see Jesus, I've held the hands of people, family even, who have grieved lost jobs, academic issues, even death, but I would call none of us Stricken.

One of the things I've been blessed to be in this life of mine is an armor bearer. That means, as it were, that I get to see so many things that a great many people don't. I get to watch people grieve, wrestle, ache, and yearn. None of them have been stricken in the sense of that reporter's word.

Stricken.  With all its lovely implications. Unable, afflicted, incapable.
No, see, this is not us. Any of us.
Any of us who have found ourselves in Christ...it does not matter what we face, we are not stricken. Ever.

He found us, and even in the darkest places, He.IS.There. If we make our beds in hell, yep, He is there, too. Find for me one place He cannot go, and there, there I will tell you I am stricken.

I admit to you wholeheartedly that in this season of life I grieve a great many things: Death, the knowledge that choices affect people who didn't make them, ache for people who are stuck with the outcome of those choices, some, too young to even understand them, my inability to run fast.
 I admit that I am frustrated for the things I cannot change. I am grieved that the daughter of a dear friend turns three today without her mother. I am grieved that life, and a fallen world, have rendered someone I love very much temporarily stunned and silent...but I am not stricken...WE are not so.

Two nights ago I fell asleep next to a 20 year old much like the one in that news report, a young woman who has spent many evenings pouring her heart out to me. She fell asleep in my queen sized bed at 4AM on a Sunday morning, because she needed to be loved in a way that I could love her, watching TV and listening.

That reporters words echo in my heart every day in this season of life. Every day as I pick up my phone to send the daily "I'm here" text, to my big sister, the one who says "NO RUNNING", as I listen to the girls as they weep and process their lives, as I hear another sister tell me how the Lord has grown her heart in the last two years, and still another one tell me that people's expectations sometimes grieve her.

She had no idea. She thought she was appealing to the feelings of an audience, but she wasn't really. The story didn't do much. God did it.
She WAS creating in me a forever reminder.

See...
I do walk a little funny, but if I didn't, perhaps I wouldn't have a sister who always tells me Not to run...
I do walk a little funny, but perhaps if I didn't, I wouldn't be able to sit and allow so many heads to rest on my shoulder.

I do walk a little funny, but if I didn't, I wouldn't get to hold so many hands.

I can't run a marathon... but my heart ever chases after His.

I do walk a little funny, a little slow, but, slow and steady wins the race.

Here...in this place, as I pick up the phone to send the daily text,  or as I cradle the sleeper on my lap or shoulder, here, as I express support for dreams, and pride in who God made people to be. Here as I get the honor of knowing things not everyone else knows, or of sitting in silence, knowing what I have to say matters. Here...As I realize that the applesauce baby gets to do...all of this. Here...

Here I am stricken.

Here I wish that reporter could take a day of my life and live it...though I would really demand it back.

Here something strikes me...so deeply, so really, so forever, and eternally am I stricken that I cannot escape it.

Here I am reminded that this life is mine, it's precious, it means something, and sure, it's full of ache, every single life is so.

But...
It is not regret, or lack, or ache, or, as the reporter thought, cerebral palsy, that strikes me.

As I listen, as I love, as I get to be the one who loves deeply, who gets to send the daily text, who gets to be reprimanded for running, to hear the dreams, the desires, and on many occasions, the secrets of so many... I am stricken, but not by an illness, or some sort of condition that reporter thought she understood.
At the realization that I was called to be me for such a time as this I'm stricken, indeed.
I'm stricken by one thing, and one thing alone.

Awe.


A sacred refuge is His Name,
Courtney