On my way.

The white computer screen stares me in the face day after day. But the longer my eyes stare at the white, it slowly transforms into what feels like red and blue lights flashing in my rearview mirror. The officer’s name is emptiness and I think of all the excuses in the book to defend myself.

“Do you know what you have been doing wrong?” he asks

Before I can say anything, he speaks again, “Nothing is wrong.”

Then it all makes sense.

That has been the problem. I stare day in and day out at this blank screen waiting for something to go wrong. When the waves of life, that feel like they have been crashing over you for years and years, finally still themselves to whisper. Then what?

I translate pain into writing. So I have been waiting, waiting for something to go wrong, waiting for the high tide to come once more. I have been waiting for some type of pain, waiting, because if it comes then I can write once more. 

If there was a college degree for “not being okay” I am a Harvard graduate. I’ve grown to be comfortable in the chaos. I’ve grown to adapt to the environment.

Echidnas are like baby porcupines. When they are approached by something threatening they will often curl into a ball, leaving only sharp spikes pointing out toward an attacker, and they stay like that for as long as needed. Go ahead and call me an Echidna. I have curled into a ball, lifted my spikes to the sky, and have stayed like that as gravesides and rehab facilities have attacked. But now, how do I get out of that ball?

If you have read my other post, you know that Jesus has done amazing things in my family’s life this past year. You wait and wait for the day to come when the pelting of the rain storm finally stops, but now that it has come I have found myself so empty.

I have become so good at being "not" okay, that I do not know how to be okay. I do not know how to have that same desperation for Jesus in the everyday life as I did when I sat outside my room listening to my mom and brothers fight.

I don’t know how to translate joy.

But last night, Hannah Brencher, spoke at a girl’s night for my church, and said something that left me mouth wide open.

She said, “It’s not okay to just be lost anymore. You have to be found.”

Jesus was so clearly saying to me that it’s not enough to just translate the pain anymore, but that He wants me to learn to translate the joy. He was so clearly saying to me that it’s not enough to just be content with being not okay, but that He wants me to learn to be okay. He was so clearly saying to me that it isn’t okay to just be desperate for Him in the hard times, but that He wants me to learn to be desperate for Him all the time.

And then I cried to a stranger.

I have never met Hannah. I follow her blog (you should too) but I have never spoken to her. But of course I was assigned to sell her books last night. So she was standing next to me moments after she finished speaking, and I kept fighting myself before I leaned over to her and told her how what she said hit me so hard. Before I knew it my eyes were filled with tears as I told her, “I just don’t know what to write.”

In the most tender voice she said, “that’s when it’s the most important that you go to the page.”

More words were exchanged before we ended our conversation with her just saying, “keep writing.”

So today, I write. I write because it’s not enough to just translate the pain. I write because it’s not enough to just be desperate for Him when it’s hard. I write because it’s not enough to be content with being not okay. I write because the grace that flows down daily covering me, gives me a reason to write. I write because it’s not enough to just be lost anymore.

Here is to being found.

Here is to learning to be okay.

Here is to finding Jesus is the everyday moments

Here is to learning to translate the joy.

“All is okay here. You are free to go on your way,” the officer said.

On my way I will go…

Still learning,

Adria

 

Jesus is life.

It was like waiting for the doctor to come into the waiting room and tell you they were going to make it.

It was like being Jonah in the bottom of a whale waiting for my cry to be heard.
“He said: "In my distress I called to the LORD, and he answered me. From deep in the realm of the dead I called for help, and you listened to my cry.” [Jonah 2:2]

It was like watching the little dots on an imessage waiting for a response.

It was like looking for land when you have been lost at sea.

Waiting.

Waiting.

Waiting.

I left church one Sunday months and months ago with a weight in my hand. The weight took form in a light bulb. We were in a series called “Winsome” where our pastor was nailing over and over that a desire needed to be birthed in us to see people come to see Jesus.

Light bulbs were given to us. Given to us to represent a person we wanted to see go from death to life. The light bulb was to serve as a reminder of that person, to pray for them, and when the time came that they found their way to the feet of Jesus we would give them the light bulb. Our pastor encouraged us to think of someone and to commit to praying for them to find Jesus, but as I sat in my chair while he talked my mind couldn’t find its name to one person. There was no one being laid on my heart.

My pastor said, “it could be your sister who has flushed your finances down the toilet and is a drug addict.” I can still hear the words clear as day. It might not have been my sister, but I knew, I knew my light bulb was for my brother.

Addiction has run rabid through my family this past year. I have never faced that struggles, and that is only by the grace of God. But because of that I couldn’t relate, and I searched for the compassion, but resentment was the only thing I could find.

But something shifted in me that day. My resentment became conviction. For so long I was just wishing/praying my brother would stop doing drugs, because that would solve all the problems. That would stop my resentment. That would remove my embarrassment of having to tell people he was in rehab. That would stop my mom from having to spend money on him.  But in the end none of that was the answer, Jesus was.

My prayers changed that day. Because everything I was praying was all about me. Selfish prayers are as good as no prayers.

So it began.

Days.

Weeks.

Months.

Journal entries.

I prayed. I prayed that my brother would become the prodigal and return home to the father.  But every Sunday, the “Jesus is life wall” where the light bulbs where to be screwed into, starred me in the face and was a painful reminder that I had to keep praying.

But that is when the praying means the most. When you are so tired, growing hopeless, and just want to throw the towel in. That is when it is most important to keep praying. When the words are barely coming out and your knees ache from finding yourself on them. Even then… keep praying.

Yesterday marked 7 months.

7 months that my brother has been at rehab.

We loaded up the car and drove 3 ½ hours to what they call his “blessing” aka when he leaves to come home. In the back of the room we sat, me and the rest of my family, as one man after another got up and shared about my brother and the impact he has had on them while he has been in this treatment center.  Then he got up. The words that came from his mouth were words that sent me into flashbacks of night and nights of begging God to do what only he could do.

Jesus did it.

They offered the chance for the family to say something if they wanted. As I walked to the front of the room, where 51 guys waited for me to get words out, I knew this was the time. I explained the “Jesus is life wall” and the winsome series, etc….

You see, I held on to that light bulb. I held on to that light bulb, with faith that Jesus would bring my brother home, and yesterday it made a change. It went from being a weight in my pocket, to being a tangible way of showing my brother that not once did I stop praying for him, not just me but so many others as well.

The moment when I handed him the light bulb that I have held on to for so long will be engraved in my mind/heart for the rest of my life. But something else will too…

Talking in front of that many guys can be intimidating, especially when you know the journey they are on, but as I looked out and saw so many of them eyes full of tears something clicked in me.

For some the tears came from the sentimental aspect of the moment me and my brother shared, but I think the message to most of them was, “she didn’t give up.” 

I think that’s it.

I think that sometimes people just need to know that you won’t give up on them. I think that sometimes people need to know that you will walk the road back with them, hand in hand. I think sometimes people need to know that the messiness doesn’t scare you off. I think sometimes people need to know that even if it takes months and months that you will wait. Because all those things simply say, “I believe in you.”

Yesterday my brother came home from rehab, but more than that, yesterday my brother became the prodigal returning home.  Seven months clean, which is what we all desperately wanted. But more than that he knows it was all Jesus, and that is something that makes all the waiting so worth it.

Today, we celebrate. We celebrate a simple little light bulb. We celebrate it finally finding its way to the person it was designed for. We celebrate the returning of the prodigal. We celebrate that Jesus works while we wait. We celebrate that my brother now has a story to tell.

A story that says, “Jesus is able.”

A story of someone walking out of the darkness and into the light.

A story of someone going from death to life.

A story that he will now go and tell.

 

Keep praying.


Jesus is life.

the calm after the storm

Yes I know that the old saying actually goes, "the calm before the storm."

In a way it is almost like my whole life has been chaos, and survival mode. Well maybe not my entire life, but from the time that wintery day rolled around in November and my father lost the fight to cancer, it has been chaos.

There has been good, I don't want to pass over that. But there has been bad, and when you are in the middle of it the bad always overpowers the good, or the bad just clouds your vision from seeing the good.

Grief looks so different for everyone. My family is a prime example of that. There were six of us, and we had all just lost our dad, but the way we all coped was so different. Some of that is contributed to the age variations we all were, but in the end it all looked/looks different.

Honestly, it is like my dad dying was the first domino to fall and after that everything just kept falling. It has been funeral after funeral. It has been rehab after rehab. Tears and more tears. Doubt and more doubt. Fear and more fear.

The list could go on...

I don't want a pity party, or a comparison game of "my life has been harder than yours." That is not the point of this post. The point of this post is so if you are the one that feels like the calm will never come that you can be encouraged that the calm will in fact come.

I know that sometimes it feels like it is one thing after another. My little brother looked at me one night through tears and said, "Adria why does everything bad happen to our family?"

I've been waiting, waiting for twelve years to be able to say, "we are all okay."

Today, today I can finally say we are all okay.

With my oldest brother coming home from rehab next week, the last prodigal is returning home.

Last night my oldest sister and her husband were over and we were looking through old pictures and crying laughing, and I kept taking pictures and sending them in our family group message. It was then that I realized that the calm had finally settled over my family. Why did a group message make me realize that? Because for so long a group message with all of us in it has not even been possible.

My family has this obsession with Lord of the Rings. The author of those books, Tolkien, has this quote that says.....

"It's like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were. And sometimes you didn't want to know the end… because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing… this shadow. Even darkness must pass.”

Maybe that is you today. Maybe you are wondering how could the end be happy when there has been so much bad. How can life go back to the way it was?

Maybe that is you, because that has been me. For twelve years I have wondered how life would ever go back to the way it was. The way it was when everyone was in the same place for holidays. The way it was when the emptiness of someone missing didn't feel so heavy that you can barely breathe. The way it was when every night didn't consist of tears. Maybe you are wondering just like I wondered.

But in the end, this storm, it is only a passing thing.

-Anna is now happily married and expecting her second child.
-Allison is an amazing fourth grade teacher.
-Joseph will come home next week and finish up getting his degree at Georgia Tech.
-Jonathan lives in Idaho where he is living his dream working on a ranch.
-I am in college at Clayton State, working part time, and coaching volleyball.
-Jacob will be a senior next year and just started his very first job.

And my mom, the one who has loved every one of us through it all, is in Mexico this week! That is a big deal. True proof that things have calmed down, and boy didn't she deserve that trip.

So, to you, to the one who is waiting for the calm. Hold on.

It might be days.
It might be weeks.
It might be years.

But even darkness must pass.

And until it does, keep singing His praise.

"Even when the fight seems lost I'll praise You
Even when it hurts like hell I'll praise You
Even when it makes no sense to sing
Louder then I'll sing Your praise." Hillsong United

What a journey it has been for my family, and I am not naive, I know it will continue to be a journey. But this I know to be true, Jesus is our hiding place, our shelter within the storm. He is the foundation that my family has stood on, the only thing that has kept us from crumbling.

That day will come.

That day when you will be okay.

When that day comes, what a story you will have to tell.

When that day comes, you will look back and see Jesus has been faithful all along.

Press on.