breadcrumbs & breath

There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, Mine!

-Abraham Kuyper-

If you have not been updated on the loss of my pregnancy, you may want to start here.

The past three days have been met with a lot of waiting, a lot of physical pain, and a lot of out-of-our-control. I'll try and spare most details, but my body did not respond completely to the more natural methods of delivering this child's body from my womb. We waited awhile in those first initial days, needing time and space and quiet and The Word, more than we needed doctors and pills and interventions. But there comes a point in this process when it's time. Pills for a natural labor only worked enough to throw me into deep laboring contractions, but not quite enough to actually do their job. That was my first choice, for my own reasons, and there was so much purpose in that pain-- heartache, and hurt, but also meaning. But finally there came a time too, for my own safety, to move forward with surgery. God knew I needed a week, and He was orchestrating His own great gifts in it all. 

This post is not really about the medical side of this, though I will let you know, I am safe and well. Recovering. Tired. But safe and well. 

No. This post is about breadcrumbs that He leaves in the dark forests we have to walk through. 

Let me back up for a minute to paint with a broader brush: 

Last Spring I was tired. I was spent. Run dry. Relationally I felt like I was manic. 

On any given day, I was texting 20-30 people, checking in, genuinely caring, pouring out, asking, praying with. My circle had gotten so big, beyond my town, beyond my state, beyond this country! And I loved them all. So text, text, text, call. Text, text, text, email. 

I'll admit now, some of it is excessive. But time after time I take those personality tests and leadership skill tests and color tests and the results are always the same: "You're good with people! People feel comfortable sharing their stories with you!" 

I'm not saying this because I think I'm super awesome and you should be my friend, but because for some reason people DO share their stories with me, and then I think they are super awesome and I want to be their friend. We will get on a plane, and two hours later when we get off I'm telling Brent all about the lady I sat next to and how her daughter just got married and how hard that was for her in so many ways and don't-worry-I-got-her-email-because-I-want-to-check-back-in-with-her. 

Yes. I go off the rails a bit. 

And if people share food with me, coupled with their stories? 

Forget it. We're in this for life together. 

All that to say, it had all started feeling a little dry. 

I started to want to retreat more than I wanted to invest. 

Satan was attacking me at the core of who God made me. 

And then I got pregnant. And before I could process any of that, I was deep in the throes of my first trimester funk, in which I become some Jekyll and Hyde version of Kelsey-- I can't read and I don't want to be around or talk to people. The opposite of all things me. So I just set that part of my heart, that was feeling more stone-like than flesh-like, on a shelf. 

And then I was thrown into the valley of dry bones. 

And in my grief and pain and sadness and loss, God started rising an army up out of those dry bones. 

If you're unfamiliar with the story of The Valley of Dry Bones, you've got to read it in its entirety. It's nestled towards the end-ish side of the Old Testament, interestingly enough tucked away after the book of Lamentations. 

Kelsey-cliff-notes: There is this huge valley, and Ezekiel finds himself there among the ruins of dry bones. For those of you not raised around a lot of dead animals like myself [a completely different story for a completely different time], dry bones have been around awhile. Picked clean. Not just death, but somehow very beyond death. And then God shows up and starts telling Ezekiel to tell the bones to get up, put on flesh, and walk. He says He will breathe life into them so that they will know He is the Lord. And then the bones...the dry bones... they "came to life and stood up on their feet--- a vast army." [vs 10]. You can't make this stuff up. You can't make our God up. 

Later the Lord speaks and says, "I am going to open your graves and bring you up from them...I will put my Spirit back in you, and you will live..." 

As I walked out of that doctor's office on Tuesday, my heart was heavy, as if there were dry bones laying around. Some from the news I had just heard--from the heartbeat I hadn't, and others that were very, very dry from other busted things. I didn't even know they were there. 

And listen, when your heart starts to fill with dead bones, your hope can start to dry up too. 

And before my feet even found the parking lot on that day, a friend was jumping in her car to meet me at the clinic where she could do an ultrasound. Before my feet even found the parking lot on that day, God's breath started its movement into that valley in my heart. 

It came deeply, and like a tidal wave at times through His presence. So near. So True. So Permanent. 

But when the grief would come and my throat felt dry, not from my weeping but from the dust of the bones in my heart, God's breath was most evident in His people, in my people. That ever widening circle that I just wanted to and needed to invest in, started closing in on me. And each one that stepped forward, that showed up, that prayed, that said "me too", that said "whatever you need", that sent flowers, that mailed cards, that sent texts, that dropped by... each one was the breath of God. Breathing. Breathing. Breathing into my valley of dry bones. 

Friends who didn't hesitate to offer their couch, their spare-bed, and ordered pizza. 

Friends who hugged me and cried with me and prayed over me. 

Friends who reached out to Brent. 

Friends who watched our girls. 

Friends who offered to drive over 6 hours to just come sit with me, a lost art in grief. 

Friends who consistently checked in and gave me advice, encouragement, wisdom. 

Sisters who wept with us and prayed for us: one who covered the time we were asleep in prayer as she was awake half a world away.

Friends who said, "Let's go kayaking, if you're up for it, and sit on the water and talk."
A friend who said, "In sickness or in health," and has shown me he meant it with the gentle way he has sat with my soul, even in his own blistering pain. 

Friends who walked through their own grief again, just to enter into mine with me. 

Moms [and dads] who, in their own grief and exhaustion, kept showing up and watching girls and being anywhere we needed them to be. 

Friends who brought lasagna.
A boss, who has given Brent the time to be present in all of this with me. 

Friends who said, "Whatever you need," and meant "absolutely, whatever you need."

Breathing. Breathing. Breathing. 

Through others, God was breathing into the deepest recesses of my heart, gathering up dry bones, and commanding them to come alive. Out of dust, out of ashes, an army was rising. 

Yesterday we stayed with some friends while we waiting for a process that never really started Slept in their home praying for a procedure that would come today. And it was breath. 

And then today, all throughout the hospital I did not want to be in, God kept depositing breadcrumbs that kept leading me back to His faithfulness, reminding me of His goodness and the depth of His love for me. 

Breadcrumbs. Breath.

My nurse, who had the day off but called me from her personal cell phone just to see how I was and if I had any questions and asked how things were going.

Breadcrumbs. Breath. 

In a friend who just showed up, in her scrubs, not on my service but offering her hand of comfort in the operating room. A hand of comfort when I couldn't be with Brent, as I was put under anesthesia I had never experienced and was anxious about. A hand of comfort, a friend who loves Jesus, a squeeze and a rub as I cried and fell into that deep, dreamless sleep. 

Breadcrumbs. Breath.

And then, waking up and foggily looking over to see the giant smile of another nurse friend from our church, who made sure he was the one with me in the recovery room. Comfort. Who retrieved Brent as soon as possible. Who wheeled me to my car. 

Breadcrumbs. Breath. 

My friend who let us stay the night kept joking about all the people I knew, all the connections, all the "right people in the right places." 

And it's the first time I thought back to this spring. 

To the lies Satan was telling me. To the self-preservation I thought I needed to instill in my life by setting more boundaries and closing my circles. 

But here is the truth: Relational investments rarely return void. 

Instead, God takes what you pour into others, and He fills others with His very breath to breathe back in to you when dry bones start to settle in your heart. 

God puts others as these little breadcrumbs in your path, as answers to prayer you didn't even know you should pray for. 

When you fight for community when you don't feel like you need it, God will use that community to surround you when you're in the valley. He will use that community to speak to your heart.

Over the last week others, without knowing, have spoken to my valley of dust and said, "God is going to open your graves and bring you up from them." 

You know when the Samaritan woman went to the well thinking she needed water? [John 4]

And Jesus showed up and said, "Water? Psshhh. Here's some living water. Here is me." 

He is in the business of offering the exact and only thing we need. 

Himself. 

Often that comes in the quiet, still small voice of the wind. Of His presence. Through His word.

But so often He pours that Living Water through His vessels and into the spaces that are empty enough to be filled.

This grief will keep coming, prickly and tangled up in strange places. But so will the waves of mercy. The Living Water. The Breath and the Breadcrumbs.

"Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ....There are many parts, but one body...there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it." 1 Corinthians 12: parts of 12-26]

 Christ is our ANCHOR in the storm. Not rescuing us out of it but keeping us secure and holding us through it. And when our tether lines gets a little long and tangled with grief or unfilled in parts, He uses His body- our friends and family- to pull us back in, to shorten the tether for us and remind us our Anchor is secure. 

So if it has been you: thank you for being a breadcrumb, broken off from the Bread of Life.

Thank you for breathing the very breath of God back into this valley of dry bones.