Tag: Loss

Journey Through October: Conquering Fear

On By sashakatzIn Journey Through October: Conquering FearLeave a comment

~week one~day two~

The Reason I Didn’t Read

I flinch at the thought of pain. It hurts. A season of pain usually means someone I love will be suffering. Maybe I will be stretched beyond my human capacity. There will be loss. I will have to dig deep into Him to locate answers, find direction. I will need to seek Him for air to breathe. For peace in the night.

I will have to apply the wisdom of the past to know He will deliver. I will have to Walk by Faith and Not Sight. I will have to believe that my greatest hopes for the circumstances will be worked out both in His perfection and creativity. I will have to take a step of faith to know His outcome is better than anything I may conjure up as good in my own heart or mind.

I will do all of these things while my heart is hurting. While I don’t understand. While I dream about better or different days. In between redoing the past and how I could have made things different. Had I been given the chance to replay. Surely things would have turned out better. Or, at least, less painful.

The past already taught me that once pain has come into my soul, it will take some time for the dirt to become fertile again. The barrenness will have to be carved out. Removing what is prohibiting or holding me back from growth. It takes a while for flowers to bloom again. Turning those pages felt like an invitation to relive all of it. All my pain. This is the reason why I didn’t read.

The Beauty of the Body

On By sashakatzIn FemmeFuel by Sasha Katz5 Comments

When the road you are walking on shakes and the thunder vibrates your path, it’s hard to keep your faith from flustering. It’s hard not to question your walk, your direction. It’s hard not to let a dart of doubt strike you – – it’s hard not to have a faith puncture right in your side. It’s the reality of the hardships of this life. We are a human lifetime short of eternity. And, sometimes we feel it more than we want to.

I think about the girlfriends in my life. I think about my own life. I think about how we, in a healthy way, process difficulties. It’s about giving my time and timeline to God. Turning over my thoughts to Him. Hearing Him lead me to scriptures. It’s a process of letting go, giving God the reins and going where He leads. It’s a process of building up faith to the point of total commitment to God’s plans for your life. You are eventually washed in the belief that God is only good and His care for you goes on indefinitely. This is how, for the most part, the believer processes hardship, life’s difficulties.

I tell you about these things because they’re true. But it’s only half of the story. There is another piece to a walk of hardship. God’s hand also holds you through the body of Christ. Recently, God has shown me the beauty of the body. I want to share with you a few examples of the body of Christ working in the lives of me and the sisters I have the privilege of knowing.

Many of you felt the tremor of our former pastor’s resignation last Spring. The open wounds and sadness were sort of like a Florida summer weather report where the constant rain and heat feel indefinite. But then came the ladies retreat at end of summer. I had a moment of taking in the hundreds of ladies worshipping God with pure hearts. With the kind of Crazy Love that Frances Chan writes about. With the kind of abandon that you only find when you know you have been saved by a Savior. As the Lord was allowing me to take all of that in, my faith was built in the way of the faithfulness of the body of Christ. No matter what happens on the top, where man sometimes fails, the body of believers has the ability to remain intertwined and faithful to the Living God.

Have you ever hit a brick wall? It’s the place where your faith and your life circumstances intersect. You know that God is good and His word is right, but that doesn’t gel with the facts you are facing. I had a period where my marriage seemed to be at the end. We could not see eye to eye on nonnegotiable issues for both of us. The reality of that brought me to my breaking point. At my weakest moments, I laid out my rock-and-a-hard place personal trauma. My best friend C said we are going to fast and she did that with me. Other close friends prayed and called me and took action to circle around my hardship. God worked through all of the efforts of the body of Christ to knock down an immovable brick wall.

I also see the body of Christ faithful in the way of meeting needs. And, you know, my sisters, the need is great. I think of my friend S whose dad’s life on earth ended. I think of my friend Y whose husband just had another serious surgery. I think of the 11 year old girl in my son’s class who just lost her dad unexpectedly. I see the body send meal after meal. I see the body send cards and give cash gifts to help with expenses. I see the body jump at the opportunity to be there in times of need.

What I know is that no person is an island even with God at her side. He is our sustenance. Our breath. But He made us to also need each other. Sometimes it feels like a leap of faith to accept food or money or prayers or help from a sister. It’s not natural in our culture to turn your back on complete self sufficiency. But, in God’s richness, He gives deeply through His body. I pray, I really pray, that whether you are on the giving side or the receiving side that you genuinely take in the love of Christ offered to you through the body.

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The Power of Impossibility

On By sashakatzIn FemmeFuel by Sasha Katz1 Comment

By Sasha Katz

If you think about all of the times in your life that you were down, crushed, broken or hopeless, there is always a strain, grain or thread of impossibility.  Even when you force your hurt or beat up self to be practical, problem solving or option seeking, impossibility eventually strikes your potential plan and you are back to square one.  Like a deer in headlights, you stop when you come against impossibility.  There are circumstances in this life where change feels impossible.

We all have been there.  Impossibility comes in the form of lack of funds.  When I was heading back to law school for year two, my grandma wasn’t able to help me out anymore.  I had no ideas and no funds to cover the deficiency.  I was already working and my loans were maxed.  I had no more human capacity to make up the difference.  I sat with the financial aid counselor (who I had no idea was a believer) and she said that a man had left a trust fund to my school for scenarios like mine and she had the authority to give me what I needed for the year.  And, then she said – – Your Father knows what you need.  God blew out what I viewed as impossibility.

Impossibility comes in the form of relationships.  It was not that long ago that I determined that my husband and I would not see eye to eye on tithing to our church.  We had been fighting about it for more than a year.  My prayers seemed useless because our battle just heightened each time we went to war on the issue.  I think it was in the middle of one of our furious matches on the issue, that I was sitting at the dining room table, and a resolution occurred to me.  I probably yelled the resolution instead of suggested it the way the Holy Spirit had gently put it into my mind.  But, in any case, my husband yelled back, FINE (or whatever form his agreement came in).  Resolved.  Years of fighting pretty much resolved in one Holy Spirit moment.

Impossibility comes in the form of loss.  I didn’t know this pain until my dad died just before Christmas of 2009.  We spent some time talking about legacy at our couples bible study this week.  It brought me right back to my dad and my memories of losing him.  Right now, I see his clear blues eyes looking into my eyes of the same color, not just on the day he walked home to the Lord, but on every intimate occasion throughout my life.  There were moments during the first year after his arrival to heaven that stopping the radical tears and pain seemed to be an impossibility.  His blue eyes and the healing of the loss of them took the gentle hand of the Lord washing over me, the wise counsel of my mom and time.

I don’t know exactly what impossibility looks like for you.  I have impossibility even right now.  It stops us in our tracks and pushes back the mind and heart as you search for ways around and through impossibility.  I also don’t know what your break through looks like.  I don’t know what mine looks like either.  However, I have learned that it is beyond me to know how it is that the Lord plans to make possible what is humanly impossible.  And, really, it doesn’t matter how many times in a life that we face impossibility – – when it appears, it is real.

We certainly have the option to believe that He does impossible things rather than the hopeless alternative.  We have the option to let those close to us pray for us and minister to us.  We have the alternative to talk to the God of impossible things.  And, even if our prayer seems feeble, useless or powerless, if our prayers sound insufficient, small minded or limited, they are worthwhile and received by the God who planned from the beginning of time to take you to the other side of impossible.

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. . . Until I See Him Again

On By femmefuelIn Best of Sasha Katz, FemmeFeatures by Sasha Katz, Love4 Comments

By AbbyA

Loss. We lose days as time passes. We lose time as days pass. Sometimes we lose our children from our view in the park – – even if just for a minute. Sometimes we lose our minds – – even if just for a minute. We lose pocket books and wallets. We lose keys and credit cards. Socks in the dryer. We lose innocence in maturity. Idealism in reality. Sometimes we lose sight. Sometimes we lose our way. But we never lose our faith.

I lost my dad in the cold of winter last year. My sweet dad with grey-blue eyes. He walked right into eternity before my eyes. The stepping into eternity was not a surprise to me. It was the sickness and dying that was not part of my understanding. I walked the hospital halls. I pet the big white horse of dog that came to comfort those on my dad’s floor. I listened to my dad talk for a while and then go back to rest. I watched my dad acknowledge doctors and visitors and drink juice and ice. Not knowing it at the time, I watched my dad see my children for the last time. I understood that my dad was coming home from the hospital for the last time. It is by His grace that we are saved and by His grace that our spirits enter into His presence. But it was very hard for me to find His grace in the physical act of dying.

My dad did not find it hard to find His grace in his sickness and dying. He believed – for real – that his God would never leave or forsake him. He believed in things like communion with God, honoring His commandments and sharing truths with love. He didn’t change in his dying. He simply became stronger in the spirit until eternal home and ultimate healing called him. And because of faith, my dad walked out of our earthly exit door and into His grace. Most assuredly, the painful experience of dying was erased as he walked through God’s front entrance and into the foyer of His joy.

Unlike the worthwhile pain of childbirth, death leaves you without a new life to distract you. Looking into sunsets and bright stars in the night resonate unreachable loss. The beating of the heart on the inside begs for just a little more time, a rewind. A go back. Inconsolable prayers asking God for the impossible. For a time, there is no room for healing. The pouring out of pain has to reach its end.

Our loving God gives us room to grieve. He whispers in places that were not complete even before the loss. He writes in fullness where there were pieces missing. He sings in perfection where there was lack. His handling of our humanness is a grand marker of His Godliness.

As He gently points me toward His plan, I find gratitude for the loss. Not for the loss of my dad. For God’s divine wisdom to allow temporary loss. It is in loss that we grow exponentially. Somehow the earthly losses cause us to gain in the spirit. Somehow the spiritual gain covers over the earthly loss. The covering does not extinguish the pain. It opens up the door to light in darkness. The covering is a shadow of the promise of eternity.

Through loss, God deepens our spiritual perception so that we can see what is just beyond the sunsets and bright stars in the night. He makes us aware that the beating of the heart on the inside is also beating for what is to come on the other side. I see my dad experiencing heaven. It is beautiful enough for me to receive God’s plan that brought him home too early and too young. My view gives me almost enough of my dad to settle my wish that he was here with me. I ponder that God planned it that way.

If I can grasp His wisdom, I may see that He pours Himself into my heart so that I desire to see Him in His fullness. The pouring out is a sort of introduction for seeing Him face to face. The pouring out sustains me and overflows me, but it doesn’t quench the cry in my heart for eternity. Isn’t it the same with our losses? His love sustains the loss, but His eternal promises sing us home. Until I see my dad again. Until I see my Heavenly Father face to face. I can be confident that anything lost will be found.