Tag: Laughter

y 👈Audio

GOD LACKS NO CREATIVITY EVEN IN THE LABOR ROOMS OF CHANGE

Two years ago our gentle teenager began to steadily turn into a stranger we could hardly recognize. A new medication put an end to his seizures a year later, but the trial had just begun.

We broke into raggedy worship … surrounded by the prayers of dear family and friends. ~ R.Noel

God lacks no creativity even in the Labor rooms of Change!

Two years ago our gentle teenager began to steadily turn into a stranger we could hardly recognize. A new medication put an end to his seizures a year later, but the trial had just begun.

Light fell through the Emergency Room’s glassed-in ceiling and onto Johann’s face as he sang, “Whatever lies before me, I will be singing when the evening comes. Bless the Lord oh, my soul …10,000 reasons and forever more …” 10,000 Reason. Matt Redman

BLINDNESS ISN’T EASY ON ANY COUNT

Johann sings while waiting. Ah, yes. Blindness isn’t easy on any count, but today I froze as he sang the words – “When the evening comes???”

As he waited on a stretcher near the CT scan unit of Nimhan’s Hospital’s Neuro Science Department, an orderly changed the sheets to Johann’s favorite color – lavender. How could she have known? Was this a sign that total healing would follow? Johann, now 19 and blind from birth, can detect a few colors and has light perception.

“Ma, I love the lavender …” he said.

I bit back tears, nodding a muffled reply.

IT WILL PASS

When Johann’s seizures finally stopped, his aggression began. He was 18. “It will pass,” friends said.

The girls and Johann had a beautiful childhood, sharing music and fun, sharing games with a brother they were proud to be seen with. Now there were blows, bites, scratches, rage, and verbal battery. We went to parks on sunrise picnics, did road trips, prayed, wept, clung together as a couple, and individually with each of our girls. But when we went out in twos, Johann would scream in panic, running past the gate in search of us.

A kind new doctor changed Johann’s medications gradually while withdrawing earlier prescriptions. Dearest Lord God, now we must have withdrawal combat too?

EVEN IF YOU SLAY ME

“Brace yourselves,” the doctor said, his face filled with a compassion that scared me. The months that followed were a Gethsemane place for us. Here we would taste the bittersweet of Job and Daniel, “Even if You slay me…” Job 13:15, Daniel 3:14-18

Johann adopted us at age one. We were all being brought up together by God in His Kindergarten of Faith, but now, was He letting us out on our own?

The first hint of Johann’s illness started around his school final exams. Johann refused to touch his Braille. His dimpled grin receded faster as December stretched into January. We guided him to hand write, “I know my Redeemer lives…” then pinned it up where we could all see it. We were clinging to sanity.

“How long?” I frantically texted our second daughter, Kitsy, who was across the room. To avoid trigger words, we texted each other.

“God won’t put something in our laps that we cannot handle. Unsure how long Ma, but I’m willing to wait,” she replied. Was it just yesterday that Kitsy had screamed, “I – I want my brother back!” Now she was beaming and serene?

RAGGEDY WORSHIP

This is what happens.

One of us sinks, but another perks up with unthinkable faith or Scripture leaps out from a calendar. The movie, Hacksaw Ridge, spoke volumes to us. It is easy to fall into self-destruction, but God lacks no creativity even in the labor rooms of change.

Johann sings with the voice of an angel. His seizures took that from him, but from the pit of that hell, he began to sing again,10,000 Reasons, a song that brought me to tears. Johann was singing! Yes, with a crackly sandpaper voice, but he was singing!

We broke into raggedy worship, in the midst of cushions-flying-at-our-heads-and-worse, but surrounded by the prayers of dear family and friends. Often, I would stare at the predawn sky. God was and is present, like in those days, those three silent days after Gethsemane: “… a Rose trampled on the ground, He … thought of me most of all.” (Above All, Michael W. Smith)

OUR PRAYERS GREW DESPERATE

Lord please help me through the noise of my questions. Give the girls some joy today. Help my husband, Jeff.

About this time we also experienced professional setbacks. Could it really get any worse? It could. You cannot re-route through Gethsemane if you want to finish with colors.

Some of my own prayers irritated me. “Thank you Lord for the trials You send us.” Gratitude was the best thing we could do – thanking God for a little bird in the window, for a relative who sent a gift, for a glorious sunset, or even for Johann’s question, “What is happening to me?”

GRATITUDE KICKSTARTED JOY

Yes, it did and some things I have no words for.

I began to blog and paint again. A friend called asking why I had dropped off social media, and asked if I would consider an art book contract with a Christian publisher. The theme? Hope for the Hurting. My head said, “No,” but God nudged me to say, “Yes.” So I did.

Jeff started painting too, and though he is not one to be poetic, he titled it, Autumn Blush. It was soul harvest time. Our daughter, Kitsy cooked offerings of love. This once hyper, young teenager was turning out exotic recipes in the midst of COVID-19 lockdown rationing. Our eldest daughter, Vihan, had begun a fellowship for those her age and older, and we now joined her online — not easy to do with Johann intolerant of a particular chord on the guitar or insisting on rocking right in front of camera, yet his presence reaches more people than we think possible.

As I write, light falls through the curtains and Johann asks what I’m doing. I tell him I am writing about his song, 10,000 Reasons, and he smiles his lop-sided smile.

SING LIKE NEVER BEFORE

Outside a Koyal bird calls. There will be rain tonight after a sweltering Indian day. Ah, Lord God, more reasons to bless Your name even if our son isn’t well yet.

“Sing like never before, Oh my soul.”

Worship Him for His Spirit of matchless comfort in the presence of our frail humanity.

Unconditional healing is God lifting our innermost being, no matter the ordeal. Oh, the awe of holding hands with God, of being loved by Him in the midst of pain, learning to love Him back and to love each other unconditionally, like He does.

We are learning.

y 👈Audio. Read by RaylaAudio Player00:00

We were in tears recording this. It was a healing all by itself. … Very special hugs from our son who knows you are praying… ~ Rayla Noel

Rayla Noel lives in India with her husband, their three children and a God who never runs out of Creative Ways to help them graduate from His School of Faith.My Grace is sufficient for you; for My Power shows best in weakness. 2 Corinthians 12:9 AMP

Streets around me

This post inspired by Writing/Believing Sight Unseen‘s post about streets, so I said I’d have a go at my own streets around. He said he would look out for it so here goes 😅

I’m still not a Google map person, when people come home here in Bangalore, I tell them we’re the lane opposite the huge Banian tree complete with tap roots and birds yelling in it…. uh

past Bamboo shop man’s enclosure for new buildings coming up.

If they’re on a lane further down I must guide them left of CMR law college but which left, depending on which side they’re facing. If they’re facing my tree, then I’m on their left.

Owwwwgh! Which tree they ask, theres more than one tree here. I realise I don’t know location address. Postal address says Reddy layout. Google says I’m at Chingalingakua…..

but this is a post about streets around me,

I’ll try again. If I go out (forget people coming home for now)

if I turn left of my Banian tree, towards the Flyover, there’s the little uphill lane past Chemist and Bake,

past the Aquarium blue roof place(can’t remember name)

alongside two storeyed apartment where recently a biker still in red helmet, well he ran up those stairs to first floor but forgot his keys still in bike. He looks down, sees me, and with friendly grin, asks if I can get keys off his bike and throw it up at him….. that lane.

Go up that lane 2 minutes and seven or more trees to your left, (with cheeky monkey in them),

you get to the Ayyapa temple Cross, rich with people arriving and leaving off blue and white bus, red bus, auto rickshaw and car and bike. There’s a food stall, a toy shop and a garment store across, not to mention cheerful vegetable vendors in carts, they sell some of the best grapes I’ve ever had, wine coloured ones, they’ll stain your shirt if you’re not careful, that street junction

which breaks into a two way Flyover where I happened to get stranded, waiting for an auto rickshaw with my then 8 year old blind hyperactive son….that Flyover

leads to a larger location called JBnagar, aha we finally have a name!

Tender tantrums of healing

I’m fascinated at the way our human body mends, physically, emotionally, socially…

*From our visit to valley near Kolar gold fields*

…

It takes tiny baby steps, and It may not even look like a mending. Have you ever darned? Y’know, stitched? I’ve watched my Ma do that, her tiny needle sashaying across a tear in the fabric. She’d turn it over and go again with her needle;

I’ve tried it, but I’m also impatient. My Ma wore a regular old fashioned ‘thimble’ – iron one-finger gloves, they filter/ no they take my needle jabs.

Healing is a many faced darling. It is the firm face of a good Physician, the Ouch! of Physiotherapy… it is God saying, “Be Still and know….” when you’re about to get that needle in your vein. It is the songbird in the storm, she’s yelling sweet delivery in your ears but you can’t hear her for the waves.

It is a boat with no sail (it may seem). It is trusting, leaning of your entire personality on a Thing you can’t see or feel but you know a certain shift. You are Changing, moving, rising, falling. It’s the scab in the wound, or the simmering scar. You’re watching this through cataracts of pure sweet rain in the desert.

Oh yes, if you’ve been there, healing is a darling savage thing.

Last week I had a Word, a power word that began to heal me. Was this, “Lean on Me..” from the Bible, and not words I do not know- They followed me room to room and out the door and in the street and among other faces. It overpowered other words, like a sword. You must know by now, if you’ve read previous posts, this is from a real place. Peace can be faked?

This Post Title got me grinning. It is true, tender, raw, achy raw, real.

Sometimes we do not heal externally, but we are settling down deep within. It is a sunrise in another world deep in your spirit.

I’ve watched a broken man heal like that after his only son was killed in a mobile accident. Don’t ask me how, but I watched his eyes go calm, like he had a new secret.

I’ve seen it in my husband Jeff too, in a few good friends we have, seen it in strangers when they choose not to pick up a fight and they could’ve but they just walk away with a generosity that I’m certain hurts to give away.

You could find silence aggressive, if you’re wanting a fight. A doctor might find it uncomfortable if a patient smiles at a terminal verdict.

Thimbles.

For soul. Psyche. Sometimes I’m the finger, sometimes the Thimble, for myself, for another:

the resistance against dis- ease, the breaking of new skin, the breaking away from old muscle lethargy;

the stir of new sensories, the cry of a newborn, the severing of umbilical cords to past routine habits of Thought; a departure from mindset, withdrawal symptoms of an addictive pattern that must go…

the birthing of a bud, it must sprout off stem, it must spilt in halves and quarters in petal, it must give away its aroma, must explode pollen, must yield to the light, draw sap from stock, must route to Leaf for supply, it is no more in a sapling, It now must host it’s own new sub- support, it must break out and be a whole new creation. This does not happen in a static state of Nothing. It takes a Movement. It faces Change, It must eat Dew and drink the air like never before. A new Bud does not argue with the Process; It can die, It can live.

You and I are more than the birds of the air, the flowers of the field. As I write this, there’s news of a dear cousin’s passing, but she had this peace that passes all human understanding. She leaves behind a legacy of Faith and Love and Strength that looked past the transient temporary into the eternal that was present in her thoughts and everyday activities.

I’m staring at the Act of healing, and how it arrives in Departures & Arrivals of events. I’m amazed at the power of the human mind to overwhelm our frail bodies. There is a secret core we are given, and we cannot give that away to other voices that rule us with Fear, panic, desperation.

I believe there are mysteries to this thing we call Healing, and we will know it better, when we know better. But today a Still Small Voice captures me with Its Word Cover- like a Thimble : “Be Still and know that I am God…”

Yes, healing happens first in the place where we know the things that rule our securities.

(Would love for you to read this one 👇on prayer. It’s worth the five minute read by Mitch Teemly).

Prayer is Air!

Connecting With God