The Dreamer's Prayer

A little over a year ago, I wrote a prayer in my journal. It's a stubborn prayer. The kind of prayer you pray when you can't shake the God-sized dream you've been holding onto for years. Yesterday, I thought of that little prayer. God has been answering that prayer with invisible footsteps. There is still so much that is unknown, but some of God's footsteps are starting to look a little less invisible.

What would happen if we choose to never let go of our God-sized dreams? What if we choose to pray stubborn prayers? Could we change the world?

The Dreamer's Prayer

God,

Give us creative ideas and dreams, 

the resources and anointing to make those things reality,

and the favor to make them useful for Your Kingdom. 

Amen.

Lupus and the Hand Cream Quest

I am on a quest to find the perfect hand cream for me. This may not be a very noble quest. It's quite mundane. But because my work requires I take great care of my hands, it is also quite important. It is also a lot more complicated than it probably should be. There are so many too many things that need to be considered:

- It needs to be extremely moisturizing to keep my hands from cracking and my joints from getting stiff from dehydration.
- It can't leave much of a residue so that I don't leave a greasy film on all the pianos I play throughout the day...Ew.
- It needs to be free of synthetic fragrances so that it doesn't irritate my eczema or cause me to have a resurgence of discoid lupus.
- It can't contain immune boosters (such as echinacea). I know immune boosters are supposed to be good for you, but unfortunately they are extremely harmful for people with lupus.
- It can't contain ingredients that can cause an increased sensitivity to sunlight as people with lupus are typically photosensitive as it is.
- It can't contain any ingredients that could negatively interact with the medications I take.
- It can't have any weird smells that would leave me nauseated.

After months of buying tiny-sized tubes, leaving stores with handfuls of samples, meticulously reading lists of ingredients and researching every ingredient I'm unfamiliar with...the quest continues. There have been (and continues to be) many other quests: face wash, make-up, sunscreen, shampoo...Every product has a long list of considerations. Considerations that are not on the radar for most people (read: store clerks and well-meaning acquaintances). Considerations that probably don't make sense to people who don't walk in my shoes. It's quite the ordeal.

Lupus and Work

I am nearing the end of what has felt like a very long week. This is my first week working three jobs--three very energetic jobs. I'm the piano accompanist for a local high school's choirs (all five of them), a private piano instructor, and an adjunct piano professor at a university. It's Friday morning, and I am completely exhausted, in the midst of a lupus flare, and feeling a cold coming on. A couple nights ago, my husband voiced his concern: "Are you going to be able to handle all of this?"

According to the Lupus Foundation of America, only 31% of adults with lupus work full time. I am blessed to be in the minority. I cherish my ability to work. But to be perfectly honest, I don't work because it is easy to. I work because I am passionate about what I do. And there is a high cost for my passion. My medical bills stay high, I live with constant pain and fatigue, and my social life is not very existent. My husband also pays a price. (One day, I will let him share his side of our lupus story on my blog, but here I will just say that it has not been easy for him to take care of his wife while working full time and being in grad school.)

I am not alone in the struggle to work while battling lupus. This thought encourages me and challenges me. It tells me that what I am doing is not impossible. It tells me that I can still live a full life in the midst of great difficulty.

So for those of you who live this struggle (whether you have lupus or take care of someone who does), this is my prayer:

May God give you strength for each day.

May He fill your soul with hope, joy, and peace.

May He fill your mind with creativity and focus.

May He make your work productive and efficient.

May He make your rest refreshing.

May God put people in your path who will encourage you, support you, and help you. 

May you know life and know it abundantly.

Amen.

Not Just An Inconvenience

"I'm sorry for the inconvenience," she said. "This is more than just an inconvenience," I replied. A minute later, the phone conversation ended, and I was thrust into emergency mode. It wasn't what I would consider to be a true emergency. It was not a situation that could not have been helped - it certainly could have been. Because someone did not do their job well, I was left to pay the consequences. The next day, my morning routine that prevents me from having a lupus flare would be taken away and it was too late to make an adjustment. I knew my body well enough to know the pain and fatigue that would certainly follow, the work I would possibly be unable to do as a result (impacting my income), and the expensive medical procedures that would probably be needed to recover.

The issue is not the inconvenience. The issue is that the consequences I have to pay are completely disproportionate to the size of the person's mistake. 

And so here is the lesson I hope you take from this: Consider your actions. When you have a job to do, do it well. There are consequences when you don't. You may never see them. You may not be the one to whom those consequences come. But they will come and someone will have to pay them. And the price they pay may not be worth the size of your mistake. There are enough troubles in the world. Don't be the cause of suffering. There are so many better things to cause. Cause productivity. Cause synergy. Cause joy. Cause relief. Cause good things.

Anything

I began this summer by praying "God-I-will-do-anything prayers" in the quiet of a monastery. (You can read about that life-altering journey here, here, here, and here.) I have continued to pray these prayers throughout the summer with a completely open and willing heart. Anything has taken the shape of many small things: removing my cell phone from my bedroom, giving God extravagant time every morning, reading the Bible from beginning to end over the summer, and trusting God by obeying His quiet voice with no hesitation. But deep inside my heart, I have known that a day is coming when God will lead me to anything, and anything will not be so small. It will be huge. Crazy huge. At the start of this journey, my "anything prayers" were gut-wrenching. But as the summer progressed, these "anything prayers" have become less intense. Not because I mean them any less, but because they have become easier to pray. (It's amazing how easy it is to pray scary prayers and follow God into the unknown when you have already given yourself completely to Him and have nothing left to hold back.)

Yesterday, anything started to ache in my heart. Today, my heart is torn wide open and all I want is the anything God wants of me. The anything God wants me to do...that only I can do. I have no idea what lays ahead, but I feel like my life is being turned upside down...or right side up. I feel as though there are people who are praying for me who have no idea it's me they are praying for. They are praying for a problem, a seemingly impossible situation. And God, in His omniscience, is looking at me and saying, "Get ready. Anything is about to happen."