So much pain

There is so much pain in the world, sometimes I don't know how we make our way.

This morning, the 25-year-old son of some friends of ours died.

I guess he actually died last week.  He was working, and a concrete wall fell on him, crushing him.  He's been on life support at the hospital, but this morning they removed his ventilator after a certain period of monitoring his brain activity (there wasn't any).

My heart is broken.

It's been a hard autumn.  Today it is raining, which seems fitting, a relief almost.  Perhaps all creation is weeping with those who weep today.

Earlier this month, the 44-year-old brother of a friend of mine died from alcoholism.  His was a long, slow death, and I suppose the death certificate reads something else, like sepsis or kidney failure.  A tragically painful life took its final downturn.  Unrealized hopes and dreams, joys never experienced.  Yet, in this case, a day or two before he departed, he prayed with the hospital chaplain and asked the Lord to forgive him and save him.

God help us all.  God have mercy on us all.  Some days I just repeat this over and over, thankful that I can.  God, Father of mercy, sweet Lord Jesus, please help us all.

Earlier this fall, a young couple from New York lost their baby, their gorgeous 2-year-old baby boy, in a drowning accident.  Face down in an otherwise picturesque pond, their pride and joy.  If it were me, how many times would I relive that day, the hours that led up to the tragedy, thinking through all the details I could have changed, and how any one of them could have prevented the accident?  How many times would I wake up in the middle of the night with my heart pounding?  How many times would I lie in bed trying to push unwelcome thoughts out of my conscious mind, trying to sleep, yet afraid to dream?

There you have it.  In the case of the 2-year-old there is a mirage, a presumption that someone ought to have had control of the situation, but we never have control.  We do not number our own days, nor do we number the days of anyone else.  We love, tend, nurse, wash and feed.  We sing and rock, tickle and groom.  We do our best to protect.  In the end, we simply cannot be there every minute.  We cannot see everything that happens, and we cannot hold back calamity.  This is the truth.

In the case of the 25-year-old, I struggle with my greatest fears, because I have two sons, and one is 25.  The other is 21.  I pray for them every day, but this event reminds me that I have no control.  I am not present to protect them in any way; I am physically removed from the overwhelming majority of their lives.  I must relinquish them to God and trust in Him, however He chooses to number their days.

Dear sweet Jesus, how I recoil from the thought of getting a phone call that tells me, "Your son has been in a bad accident.  Please come quickly."  Oh, dear Jesus.  Please help all the people.  Please help us all.

I know that the holy scriptures tell us that our hope is not in this life.  In this world we will have trouble, He tells us, but take heart, for Jesus has overcome the world.

Dear sweet Jesus, it is so hard for us to take heart.  We are only dust (Psalm 103:14).  Please help us.

Jesus wept, the Bible tells us (John 11:35).  When Lazarus died, and Jesus saw the people mourning, He wept for them, for us, for the pain we experience in the dark brokenness of this world.  He knows all the glory and joy that He has prepared for us in the future, but He understands our pain in the present, and He has compassion on us.

"As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear Him." (Psalm 103:13 NIV)

"For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are--yet was without sin.  Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need." (Hebrews 4:15-16 NIV)

Jesus Himself faced a trial that seemed too overwhelming.  He faced the cross.  On the night of His death, shortly before He was crucified, Jesus prayed that, if it were possible, His Father would take the cup from Him.  He was in anguish.  He pleaded and sweat drops of blood.  God the Father did not take away the cup, because there was no other way for His purpose to be accomplished.  However, He did send an angel from heaven to help Jesus through the night.

Help us, Lord Jesus.  Please send your ministering angels to help us in our pain.

Jesus died so that we could live.  His death bought us eternal life.  He suffered under our sins so that we could be clothed in His righteousness.

We also suffer so that others can attain eternal life.  We suffer because the world goes on.  The world will be broken until Jesus returns, ushering in the New Heaven and the New Earth.  Once the New Creation comes, all the old things will be gone, passed away.  It will be too late for any more people to repent.  This is why the broken world goes on, with all its pain and sorrow: because after this world is replaced, after all that is broken is fixed, no more people will have an opportunity to turn to the Lord.

The Lord's desire is that all men should come to a saving knowledge of the truth and put their faith in Jesus (1 Timothy 2:3-4).  He is not willing that any should perish, but He waits patiently for people to be saved (2 Peter 3:9).

Jesus knows all of our troubles.  Jesus knows the right time to act.  Jesus knows the perfect time to act.  Jesus never makes mistakes.  Someday, when we get to heaven, we will see how all these dark, painful circumstances weave into the tapestry of God's plan to create beauty and joy.  He promises that He works all things for good (Romans 8:28).  Such a difficult promise to grasp, when so many things are ugly and awful.

Please, Lord Jesus, help us when the pain clouds our vision and the darkness threatens our faith.

"Today you shall be with me in paradise," said Jesus to the thief on the cross (Luke 23:43).  He is the Savior of the world, pouring out abundant grace on all who will receive it, waiting and watching and calling for His children to come home to Him.

It doesn't matter what you've done, or what's been done to you, or where you've been, or how long you've been away.  You can even come to Him the day or the minute before you die (although you lose out on a lot of peace and joy if you wait).  All who call on the name of the Lord will be saved.  He will bring us home.

"Now the dwelling of God is with men, and He will live with them.  They will be His people, and God Himself will be with them and will be their God.  He will wipe every tear from their eyes.  There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away."  (Revelation 21:3-4 NIV)

Help us, Lord God, Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer, Healer and Deliverer.  Help us to hope, to believe, to walk in faith until the day when we see You in Your unveiled glory, facing us. 

Chickenpox (part 3, the aftermath)

 * * * This story started here and continues here * * *

After the chickenpox, none of us had any immunities.  Clearly.  Throughout the ensuing months, we experienced frequent and relentless episodes of the stomach flu.

It's just a blur.  I remember that long winter as a dark but sleepless stretch of vomiting and scrubbing up vomit, the mingled odors of sickness and Lysol surrounding us as the washing machine churned out load after load and we bought gingerale and saltines every time we went to Wegman's.

I remember feeling extremely cross while getting ready for bed, angry about the futility of bothering to put on pajamas when I knew I wasn't going to get to sleep.  I remember Shannon, poor little Shannon who slept alone on the first floor.  On multiple occasions she vomited up the stairs into the berber carpet as she came trying to tell me that she wasn't feeling well.  I remember little David, barely more than a baby himself, vomiting down the hall on the first floor, and me sopping it up with an armful of clean towels I'd just folded, then desperately pouring out half a bottle of full strength Lysol directly onto the wood floor where the vomit had been.  I ended by pouring the same full strength Lysol over my hands and forearms in a Hail Mary attempt to eradicate the germs, but got sick a day later anyway.

It seemed as though we had the flu bi-weekly.  When I got it, I usually threw up about twenty times over the course of about five hours before it settled into slightly less violent manifestations.

Of course, I understood that Shawn had to go to work to make a living for us.  I understood that nobody could come and help us when we were all contagious with pernicious viruses.   However, understanding the truth of the situation didn't help me soldier up under my distress.  I cried a lot, probably every day.

Later, I read a book by Jean Fleming called A Mother's Heart (it's a fantastic book; everyone should read it).  She wrote about their family being sick with a stomach virus.  They had been missionaries to China, but this sickness struck when they were in the USA.  She wrote of gathering her children into bed with her and leading them in a prayer of thanks for plentiful ice, and clean drinking water, and beautiful, modern bathrooms with flush toilets. I confess, even at the time I first read it (long after we'd been through our trying winter), I struggled to admit that I'd had anything to be thankful for when we were sick.  Sometimes conviction dawns slowly.

Eventually, the bouts of flu began to hit less frequently.  We went a month, and then six weeks.  In April, around Easter, I got sick again.  I think I was the only one that time.  I remember because my back went into spasm before I started throwing up, and the only position that brought relief from the back pain was to lie flat on my back, but that was not an option with the upset stomach and nausea I was experiencing.  It was an uncharacteristic 80 degrees, and must have either been Saturday or a holiday, because Shawn put baby Laura into the backpack carrier and went out to do spring clean-up on the yard.  I writhed in bed, alone, inconsolably miserable, dehydrated from loss of bodily fluids and the unseasonable heat, my fingertips wrinkled up like raisins.

The sickness would have been easier to deal with had it not been for the depression.  I didn't know I was depressed, and I don't think Shawn had any idea what was going on or what to do.  Anyone who has been depressed would resonate to my description of feeling utterly hopeless, hurting so badly in my spirit that, literally, breathing was painful.  Each day, I awoke to three little people already overflowing with their childhood needs, and their demands shattered against my skull, the things I had to do, no matter how I felt, and I felt completely drained and unable.  I felt alone, unworthy, forgotten, abandoned, unloved, rejected and ugly.

Yet here again was the Lord's silent, unappreciated presence.  I had no gratitude to Him for the way He enabled me--unable as I was--to rise from bed and make oatmeal, spoon it into small mouths, wipe off sticky faces, change soggy diapers and wash dirty clothes.  I sat on the sofa, nursed the baby, read story books, picked up blocks, put socks back on little feet, cut skin off apples and crusts off peanut butter sandwiches.  It was the grace of God, but I had no idea.

Their cries hit me like an alarm clock.  I responded the way one responds to an alarm clock: a surge of adrenaline, a surge of despair, the labored heaving of a tired body in a necessary direction.  I had little compassion, stunted affection.  I only knew what I had to do, and by the mysterious grace of God, I did it.  In my conscious mind, I thought, "I have made a terrible mistake.  I thought I wanted to be a mother, but I am a terrible mother.  I am no good at this at all.  I need to sleep.  I need some rest.  I need a break.  I'm going to die if I don't get some rest."  But I didn't get rest, and I didn't die, I just got the flu again.  And again.

My children were gut-wrenchingly beautiful.  I knew that.  They were beautiful and funny and smart and amazing.  I was aware, aware enough to be frustrated that I couldn't properly appreciate it.  "I am the only one who even sees how amazing they are," I thought.  "It's just them and me.  Nobody else knows.  And I can't appreciate them because I am sick.  Oh the waste, waste, waste. Who will appreciate them?  I have made a terrible mistake.  I shouldn't be their mother.  I shouldn't be trusted with them.  I can't do this.  Who will love my children?"  I wanted to die, but not really.  I didn't want to go to hell, but even heaven sounded far too exhausting.  I wanted to die like a dog, and just be buried in the loamy earth where I could finally be at rest, feel nothing, hear nothing, know nothing.  I wanted nothingness, forever.

"I want to die," I told God.  "I can't do this anymore.  I can't do it, do you hear me?  I want to die, but I don't want to go to heaven.  I want to sleep, in the earth, and decompose and be nothing."

The Lord who (unbeknownst) had been holding me together all this time, patiently empowering me to care for my family, finally had enough.  In the moment when I expressed those thoughts consciously to Him, I was aware of a sensation not unlike what you would imagine a toddler might feel if you picked him up by the back straps of his Osh-Kosh overalls and then rotated him around to look you in the face.  The Lord got in my face, and He said (not audibly, but with words), "That is not death.  When you die, you will come face-to-face with Me, and I will require you to answer for yourself."  After an initial blow-to-the-gut speechless moment, I was tempted to whine back at Him, to say that wasn't the way I wanted it to be.  However, something about His palpable presence gave me an extra measure of self-control.  I'd been given a healthy, divine check, and it did me some good.

Over the summer, things leveled a bit, for which I am truly grateful.   However, when autumn arrived again, with maple leaves turning the same saturated oranges and golds which had surrounded Laura's birth, with the days shortening into dark evenings long before Shawn returned home from work, I had a relapse of the depression.  This is one of the ways I know now that it was depression.  I began to feel a dread that deepened into a panic and spilled over in tears and angry words and clenching anxiety.

Undiagnosed, untreated depression is a terrible thing.  The Lord brought me through mine, but it was a very lengthy process, difficult, and it left scars.  I have so many regrets.  Depression leads to sin, which leads to deeper depression.  It is a terrible cycle.  Thanks be to God for His infinite grace and constant abiding presence and patient healing over time.

At the risk of sounding like I am whining, or blame shifting, I would just like to say that it would be helpful if people could understand that a truly depressed person is not capable of fixing herself.  In fact, she is not even capable of figuring out what is wrong and what might be done about it, let alone implementing a solution.  It seems to me that obstetricians hand out leaflets about postpartum depression to new mothers.  Maybe it's different now, but that is a completely useless thing to do.  The depressed person, if she is truly depressed enough to need help, is almost never going to be able to ask for help, herself.  Somebody else needs to step up and help, advocate, support, seek treatment for the one in need.

I think it would be helpful if families and churches could be educated about how to watch for people who are undergoing difficult times of stress, and how to intervene to help before utter despair and depression set in.  Sometimes we actually should be responsible for others.  Sometimes it is right to get involved, take action, demonstrate sacrificial love.

Instead, I've noticed a trend among church people who seem to feel that it is a virtue to say no.  "I'm teaching myself to say no," they piously proclaim, as though they were actually guilty of always doing everything they were ever asked to do.  While it is certainly of value to weigh one's commitments and, with God's guidance, choose the highest priorities when setting one's schedule, I don't think telling a desperate person, "No, I can't help you," is very often a virtuous move.

The Lord worked in my life through physical illness, exhaustion and depression.  I learned that He could hold me together.  I first-hand experienced that He did not leave me nor forsake me.  He used His voice to speak truth into my mind when my mind was bending in wrong directions.  This was ultimately good for me.  However, I would be wrong to extrapolate from my experience that when another isolated young mother is having a difficult time, I ought to leave her to drown and thus discover God's grace as I did.  When Joseph's brothers sold him into slavery in Egypt, God used it for good to prepare provision for Israel many years later when famine came.  However, that does not justify the cruel acts of hatred perpetrated by Joseph's brothers.  Just because God works good out of sin, it doesn't make sin acceptable.  And just because God brings growth out of pain, it doesn't mean we should stand back and let pain run its course in the lives of people around us.

Joseph was the victim of sins committed knowingly and maliciously against him.  Sins of commission.  If I was the victim of any sin, it would have been sin of omission: people who maybe had an inkling that they could have stepped up to better support me, but found that their schedules and priorities prohibited it.  If such is the case, I have no choice but to forgive freely and eagerly, for I myself have committed more sins of omission than I could ever count.  I have failed to reach out, failed to support, failed to love.  I must not be bitter against those who have only neglected to do for me what I also have neglected to do for others.  Besides, whatever I may have suffered as a result of anyone's inaction, God ultimately used it to drive me deeper into Him, and there is no better place for me to be.

Yet, I must also use my experiences to teach me how to support others. I must allow my heart to be tender toward the hurting young mother, and others who are weak and in pain or despair.  I must guard against thinking, "She needs to toughen up.  She needs to pull herself up by her bootstraps.  She is being a big baby and she needs to gut it out and learn what she is made of."  Those are unrighteous thoughts, not humble, not compassionate, not loving, and certainly not Christ-like.

Trials are hard.  Loneliness can be brutal.  Depression is real, and comes in the aftermath of difficulties, when a person's confidence and security have been shattered.

God is real, powerful and present.  He works in mysterious ways.  He carries us through our most overwhelming floods.  He cares for us and comforts us so that we also can care for and comfort others.

Time moves slowly sometimes, and the hand of God is not always visible, although it is always here.  We, as God's people, can be His visible hands to those who are hurting, when they could not otherwise see His work in their situations.

May we embrace the grace of God as He pours it out on us, and may we recognize His good work in our lives.  May we share His grace with those around us, according to their need.  May we trust the Lord to give us all that we need to give to those in need, because His mercies are infinite.

May our hearts be filled with gratitude and love.

Chickenpox (part 2, the crest)

If you read my last post, we had arrived at the point where Shannon came down with the chickenpox.

Let me tell you, at that point I was really feeling sorry for myself.  However will I stop bleeding now? I wondered, supposing that I was at my wit's end.

Shannon had a fairly bad case of the chickenpox, with red spots spattered approximately every two to three inches apart, over all of her.  I treated her with Aveeno oatmeal baths for the itching and Tylenol for the fever, while doing my best to distract her from scratching and scarring herself.  This, while continuing to deal with thrush and bleed heavily, along with the regular care and feeding of a new baby and an eighteen-month-old.  I'm not solid on the dates, but it was shortly past Shannon's third birthday.  Perhaps it was right at Halloween time.  That would seem appropriate.

Shannon was always a trooper, and this was no exception.  Her chickenpox fever broke and the spots began to fade, just as the gentian violet began to do its good work on Laura's thrush.  I thought maybe things were looking up.  I took this picture for our 1992 Christmas card:

If you look closely, you can see that there are some faded spots on Shannon's face, 

and Laura's lips are purple from gentian violet.

Perhaps a day or two after I took that picture, I was in the shower.  I think it was a Saturday, and Shawn was at home, which would explain why I was able to enjoy a shower.  Leaning back into the hot water, I rubbed the bar of soap in my hands and then spread lather across my shoulders and upper chest.  Near my left shoulder bone, through the slippery soap, I felt a bump on my skin.  Rinsing and investigating, I saw a small red dot.  Leaning forward and looking through the steam, I scanned from left to right across my chest and found a whole crop of red spots.

I had the chickenpox.  And so did David and Laura.  I'd thought Shannon's pox had been a solid spread, but David, Laura and I had chickenpox on top of chickenpox on top of chickenpox.  They were on our eyelids, inside our noses and under our fingernails.  Can I just say, it is a nightmare to try to nurse a new baby when both of you are covered head to toe and in every intimate place with itching, oozing, crusting pox.  Oh, and Shawn had used up every vacation day and personal business day on his work calendar by then, so I was on my own to deal with it.

There is something called PPD, or postpartum depression.  I am not sure if that is exactly what I had, but I had something bad.  I am not sure how I survived the deep, flooding despair and hopelessness I felt in those days.  Something like hiccups, or sobbing, or desperate anger existed around the surface of my consciousness, and I felt--alongside the chills of the fever--like I was going to snap, except that I actually was snapping, bit by bit, a snap here and a snap there, and as I snapped, brittle and broken, I kept functioning.  The grace of God is astounding, and so is our frequent blindness to it.

I flapped, too.  I remember wearing loose clothing and flapping my shirt violently to keep from scratching.  I flapped, pulled my hair and ran up and down the stairs doing laundry because it gave me something to think about, something to do with my hands and body to overcome the urge to scratch.  I washed dishes, too.  Fed the kids.  Wiped off the kitchen table and counters.  Changed the diapers.  Adrenaline coursed through my body, and I shook, trembled, spilled tears, swallowed air and breathed panic, but I kept functioning.  By the grace of God, I took care of them.  The fear in my head said, "I can't do this.  I can not do this."  But I did do it.  By the grace of God, and nothing else, I did.  I don't know how, except that somehow He was silently holding me together.

I couldn't feel it at the time.  I didn't know He was there.  I felt completely and utterly abandoned.  I had no awareness that it was a miracle that I was able to get out of bed and take care of my children each day through that time.  I only knew what I wanted, and I was not getting what I wanted.  I wanted a kind, gracious, gentle, comforting woman to come into my home and take care of me.  I wanted her to speak kind words to me and confidently gather up my children in her arms and make them happy.  I wanted her to put me to bed and bring me tea and homemade soup.  I wanted her to care for my children and clean my home the way I wished I were able to do it, better than I could do it.  And while she was there, I wanted to fall into a long, deep, peaceful, restful sleep and wake up healed.  That is what I wanted, and that is what I did not get.  That is not real life, but I didn't understand.  I thought it was what I needed and that a person should get what she needs.  I didn't know that Jesus was enough, and He was there.  I couldn't see it until I looked back, and that is why I need to look back.

On two separate days, women from my church came over to help me.  One came one day and another came another day.  Bless their hearts, there was no way they could have lived up to my unrealistic hopes.  They didn't have deep relationships with me or my children.  They didn't know what my kids liked to eat, or how I folded the laundry a specific way so it would fit into the drawers, or that I was obsessive-compulsive about organizing the kids' sets of toys when picking up after a play session.  Bless their hearts, they tried.  They did their best.  They were kind, and they reached out, and to this day I remember them with fond gratitude mixed with shame over the way I was unable to accept their help, unable to rest or relax or trust while they were in my home.  The adrenaline continued to surge, screaming, "Hyper-alert!  Hyper-alert!"  I cried with anger after they left, because they were not the perfect lady in my imagination.  I don't know what you are supposed to do when you are so broken to bits that you have nothing, no self-awareness even, when you're no more than a shell of bitter despair.  It is incomprehensible grace the way Jesus holds onto us when we are unable to hold onto Him.

Chickenpox is a particularly humiliating thing to experience as an adult.  You feel so sick, so weak and feverish and drained.  Then you walk past a mirror and see the Swamp Monster that is you, and you can hardly grasp that you look even far worse than you feel.  Most people don't get the chickenpox when they are a 26-year-old-mother-of-three.  Do you know, when I called the pediatrician's office to ask what I should do for my eight-week-old baby with the chickenpox, they told me, "A baby that young cannot get chickenpox.  She will have immunities from you, from the breastmilk she is drinking."  But my breastmilk didn't have any immunities to pass on, because I didn't have any immunities myself.  And so my children suffered with me.

One night, after many sleepless nights, Shawn and I decided that he would sleep in our bed upstairs, and take care of David in the nursery across the hall, while I would take Laura down to the guest room and sleep on the futon with her.  I remember lying on the futon in the darkness after struggling through a poxy feeding, and realizing that my bleeding had finally, somehow, tapered off.  I thought, I should be thankful.  And anyway, I thought, itching is bad, but it isn't as bad as nausea.  I was nauseated for nine months while I was pregnant.  Now I just itch.  I should be thankful.  I fell asleep.  Ironically, I woke up a few hours later with my stomach stretched tight as a rubber band, so in the end, I found myself vomiting after all.

I understood why the people from our church needed to stay at arm's length.  I understood that if I were in their position, I would not myself go into someone's house that was rife with chickenpox germs and risk bringing chickenpox back to my own children (it was a small church of virtually all young families with little children).  I understood, and it made sense, and I didn't blame anyone.  Still, it hurt when they'd drop off a meal with a ding-dong-ditch punch at the doorbell, so all I'd find upon opening the door was a box of food on the step.  I was thankful for the food.  It's just that I wanted that perfect, nurturing woman to be there, to hug me and carry the box of food into the house, to tell me that I'd feel better soon.  "Just hang on," I wanted her to say. "You will be okay, and I'll be here for you until you're okay again." 

As Thanksgiving drew near, the church wanted to help, tried to reach out.  They called and asked if they could buy us a premade Thanksgiving dinner from Wegman's.  I said no.  I was so shattered, so messed up.  I was mad because I wasn't getting what I wanted.  I wanted love and support and community.  I wanted relief from feelings of loneliness, abandonment and isolation.  I did not want an impersonal, boxed Thanksgiving from a grocery store.  So I said no thank you.

Chickenpox hits like a mace, but it leaves gradually.  First the fever and chills abate, and then the itching slowly subsides.  After that, there is the long process of healing for the skin: gradually the spots fade from dark red to lighter red to pink to pale pink.  Some of the spots scab and scar, leaving memories that will linger indefinitely or virtually forever.

I'd like to say that the story ended shortly thereafter, that the spots faded away and life went on, improving day-by-day.  That's not quite what happened.  For one thing, PPD.  It's taken me years, perhaps decades, to work out that PPD was involved.  Maybe it wasn't exactly postpartum depression, but it was depression, and postpartum hormone swings were certainly involved.  For another thing, a bad case of chickenpox in the fall can wreck your immune system for winter.  I was warned about this by one of the women who had spent a day helping me.  She'd had chickenpox as an adult herself, and she knew.  I remember her telling me, "Be careful when you get through this.  Don't try to get back to full speed too fast.  Your immune system will be weakened."  I remember listening and nodding.

But I had no idea what she really meant.

--to be continued--

Chickenpox (part 1, the background)

Many of us have points in our lives that brought us to a crisis and a change.  Often it seems that the most widely circulated stories involve a spectacular crisis--a death, a cataclysmic accident, cancer--followed by relatively rapid and deeply productive healing of a soul.

In my story, the crisis is completely unromantic, and the healing took a very long, messy time.

I've shied away from writing this story, because it's rather an ugly one, and it doesn't flatter me from any angle.  It's about chicken pox, and how the pox marred my face for a season, my heart for many seasons.  Humble and common though it may be, the experience of chickenpox squashed me and then--eventually--caused me to learn and grow, in ways that continue to this day.

I've already pointed out that it wasn't death, or cancer, or war or a terrible automobile accident.  Many people have experienced far worse things than my bout with the chickenpox.  Yet, the experiences that affect us are significant because of the changes they precipitate.  Depending on circumstances, a child could be more deeply wounded by having his friend abandon him on a school playground than by losing his uncle to death.  The universal gravity of a situation, or the lack thereof, does not define its effect on an individual.

I will preface the story with a list of things I learned through it.  This goes against my instincts as a writer; I don't like to tell the ending first.  But I think it is important for you to realize that there is a happy ending, that I did not get stuck in the sloughs of despair forever and all eternity.

(1)  I learned that Jesus is enough, and that He wants me to know that He is enough, and sometimes He needs to take away a lot of things that I hold dear in order to prove to me that He is enough.

(2)  I learned that Jesus can hold me together when I am losing my sanity.  Miraculously.

(3)  I learned that what I think I need is not necessarily what I really need, and I must trust Jesus to make the judgment calls concerning my needs.

(4)  I learned that life goes in seasons, and some seasons are rough--now and then we have a really harsh winter, or a paralyzingly dry and famine-ridden summer (I am speaking metaphorically)--but seasons come and go.  No season lasts forever.  I learned that if I hang on through a difficult season, it will eventually end, and a new season will begin.  This is something I totally failed to grasp before the chickenpox, but it brought me great hope for the future when I realized this truth.  After I figured it out, I thought, "Why didn't anybody tell me this?"  And then I thought, "Who can I help by passing this on?"

That is why I'm taking a stab at this memoir today, because I believe that there are flashes of hope and sparks of victory buried in the tale, truth that might help someone else who happens to read it.

Here we go:

It actually started in the late winter of early 1992.  David was a fussy baby, and Shannon was a curious, energetic toddler.  I was overwhelmed.  I'd hit that point after pregnancy where my joints lost their pre-delivery looseness and started to spasm into the old back and neck problems that had plagued me since our car accident in 1988.  It's difficult to care for two very young children when blinding pain hits every time you lean down to pick one up.  Shawn was traveling a lot, family support was as distant and elusive as ever, and the dark, gray Syracuse winter dragged on with no sign of spring.

Then the nausea hit.  After it failed to abate over the course of time, I took a pregnancy test and yes.  Another pregnancy.  I tearfully considered my situation--my overwhelmedness, my utter exhaustion, my isolation--and I wept.  I simply had no idea how I was going to handle it, how I could possibly take care of the little lives that depended on me when I felt like I was, myself, dying.

The pregnancy was difficult.  It's just hard to be pregnant and nauseated while trying to care for a one-year-old and a two-year-old, with no family support and no breaks, ever.  It's particularly hard when your husband is a frequent business traveler.  The Lord heard a lot of complaining from me in those days, and I say this to my shame, but it is true.  Here are two good thoughts:  The Lord had grace for me, even while I despaired and watched the waves that crashed over the sides of my sinking boat instead of turning my face in trust to Jesus--the Lord had grace for me anyway.  Also, the pregnancy hormones made my joints loosen up, so the back pain was assuaged; at least the pain in my neck, if not the pain in my lower back.

The delivery was rough.  Laura was posterior with a facial presentation.  Afterwards, my midwife said, "That would have been a C-section if it had been anyone but tough old you."  I thought she was buttering me up, flattering me.  I did not think I was tough.  Granted, I almost bled to death, and yet I survived, so that demonstrates a certain toughness, I suppose.  I remember a geyser of black blood spurting up from between my legs on the delivery bed, and the midwife jamming her arm into me up to her elbow while screaming, "Methergine!  Somebody bring me methergine!"  Insanely, someone had swaddled Laura and tucked her into my arm at my side.  I was aware of a fear of dropping her but I couldn't move, couldn't speak.  There was the jamming pressure of a syringe of methergine being slammed into my thigh--I was so far beyond pain, nothing hurt anymore--and I thought, maybe they will listen to me now as I tried to speak, to tell them someone had to take my baby, keep my baby safe, don't let my baby fall.  Someone heard me and turned to Shawn who was huddled on a chair in the corner of the room with his head between his legs, unable to lend a hand.  I understood.  I thought, I need to sit down and put my head between my legs, too.  And then I realized that I was already lying flat on my back.  At that point I grayed out.

Later, I made a few scenes.  I was given a room to share with another new mom who had contracted an infection which kept her in the hospital for a few days.  Her mother was with her most of the time, but when her mother went home, around 11 p.m., she kept her TV on.  Around midnight, she still had it on.  I asked if she was planning to turn it off at some point.  "I will turn it down," she said.  But I could still hear it, and the screen flashed light into my eyes.  I'd been awake for over 40 hours at that point.  Frustrated, desperate, I left my bed and dragged myself to the nurses' station, limping and bedraggled, bloody, wrapped in the sheet from my bed.  I asked for a different room, tears running down my face.  "I have a one-year-old and a two-year-old at home," I told the nurse sitting behind the desk.  "I need to sleep now,  because once I go home I will never get to sleep again."  That nurse sneered at me, but her supervisor hissed, "Put this woman at the top of the list for a private room."  I went back to my room and tried to sleep, but the TV was relentless.  I ripped the sheets from my bed and carried them to a nurses' lounge I'd passed on my way to the nurses' station, earlier.  There, in the empty lounge, I nested myself among my wrinkled sheets on a cool vinyl sofa and turned out the light.  I fell into a blessed sleep in the quiet darkness.  A few hours later, a light woke me, and there was a stern-faced nurse with my tiny new baby, who needed feeding.  Dull fear surged in my stomach as I prepared to be reprimanded.  However, she was kind, a kindness that moved me to more tears.  Isn't it odd, how kindness sometimes makes you cry, when cruelty would not?

At home, I continued to hemorrhage, and the hemorrhaging was generally worst on Tuesdays.  So much blood.  I didn't know you could lose so much blood and keep going.

At the same time, Laura had thrush.  Neither Shannon nor David ever contracted thrush.  It was a new thing.  It required treatment for Laura, and treatment for me.  For me, after every time I fed the baby, I had to wash my nipples with soap and water, and then spread them with a gritty, caustic, anti-fungal paste.  Then, right before the next time I fed her, I had to wash off the gritty paste, do the feeding, wash again after the feeding, then apply anti-fungal paste again.  In our little cape-cod house, the upstairs bathroom sink faucet was broken and only delivered cold water.  During the days I could use warm water in the downstairs bathroom, but during the nights I gutted it out with the cold water upstairs-- these were chilly October nights-- multiple cold water washings ending with the application of the caustic paste, which was in a foil tube.  One night, in the dark, after I washed the second time, I grabbed the tube and applied the ointment.  It went on smooth, soothing, comforting.  For an instant it felt marvelous, until I realized that I'd mistakenly grabbed the cortisone cream they'd given me in case of hemorrhoids. So I had to go back, wash in cold water yet again, and apply the caustic anti-fungal paste instead.

For Laura, there was a medication.  Nystatin.  The directions on the bottle from the pharmacy said, "Give one teaspoon twice daily."  It made poor baby Laura convulse, folding violently forward--and projectile vomit, splattering volumes of curdled breast-milk across the floor, like a full glass of milk, spilled.  Alarmed, I read the pamphlet that came in the box with the medicine, and it said not ever to swallow the medicine, only to swish it in one's mouth and spit it out.  Well, obviously a newborn can't swish and spit, so I called the doctor's office and asked if I should just put some of the medicine onto a piece of gauze and swipe it around in her mouth.  The nurse told me, and I quote, "If the directions say to give one teaspoon, then you give one teaspoon."  I gave one more teaspoon.  I watched my child convulsively projectile vomit one more time.  I threw the medicine away and found some gentian violet at the drug store, with which I proceeded to treat the thrush on my own.  My faith in doctors was eroding.

When I visited my own doctor regarding my profuse bleeding that was not stopping, he gave me some little red pills and apologized, "You will have to take these every four hours," he said, "even during the night.  I'm sorry."  I wanted to laugh, except that it wasn't funny, but really, it was no problem.  Night was not very different from day.  I was up.  Two to three times with Laura, two to three more times with David.  No harm in being up for a pill.  No extra harm, anyway.

"You have to stay off your feet," the medical people kept telling me.  "You have to rest, so you can stop bleeding."  But how do you rest when you have a brand new baby, and a one-year-old, and (now, a few weeks later) a barely-just-three-year-old, and no help?  "I'm not vacuuming," I told them.  "Somebody has to change the diapers and make lunch."

So.  All of this, and I felt that nobody had ever had such a difficult lot in life as I.  Then one Sunday after church, Shannon, who was wearing a cute little sweater dress outfit, began to writhe and complain. "I don't like all these 'squito bites!" she cried.  Thinking it was the knit fabric of her outfit making her itch, I slipped it off her, and there she stood, in her little bare skin, all covered with spotty red chicken pox.



--to be continued--

Never give up

"One day Jesus told his disciples a story 

to show that they should always pray 

and never give up."

 ~Luke 18:1 (NLT) 

Sometimes I feel like giving up.  That's the honest truth.

Praying is hard work.  Praying when you don't seem to receive the answers you're hoping for, that's exhausting.  Praying for things that are far away, things you can't see, things that are mysteries to you, things you have no way of monitoring (let alone controlling) -- it can be excruciating.

Sometimes I drop to my knees, feeling the stiff numbness of lupus spreading into my slightly swollen toes and ankles, and my heart hurts.  "I can't do this anymore, Lord Jesus," I say.  Tears sting my eyes.  I've forgotten my reading glasses somewhere, and I can't see to read my Bible or the selected verses I've printed out for my prayer time.  How can the prayers of a messed up, discouraged, disorganized person like me have any effect?

But Jesus tells me to persevere.  Jesus tells me to keep praying.  Jesus tells me not to give up.  Furthermore, Jesus tells me that it is not about me or the power of my prayers.  It is about Him and His infinite power, His perfect wisdom, His incontestable dominion, His unfailing love.

I can rest in Him because it all rests on Him.

“Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest," Jesus says.  

"Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls," Jesus says.

"My yoke is easy, and my burden is light,” Jesus promises.  His yoke is easy because it rests on Him, so I can rest in Him, next to Him, but in Him.

Jesus walks with us through our dark times.  "I will never leave you nor forsake you," He says.  Immanuel.  God with us.  He is here.  He is near.  He is constant.

Jesus sits by the side of His Father's throne and intercedes for us.  The Holy Spirit also intercedes for us, with groanings too deep for words, the Bible says.  If God is for us, who can stand against us?

And the miracle: our prayers rise to God and become like the fragrance of incense in His holy nostrils.  Our fearful, fretful begging and pleading is miraculously turned into a fragrant offering as He listens and attends to our needs, our broken hearts.  How can He be so unfathomably good? 

I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, says the Lord.

I do not willingly bring affliction or grief to anyone, He explains.

He will not coerce anyone to follow Him (oh how I sometimes wish he would), but He finds no joy in watching the rebellious reap what they sow.

For God so loved the world, He gave His one and only Son that whoever would believe could have eternal life.  He gave His own Son, His own life, to purchase our deliverance.  This mission has already been completed.  It is finished, Jesus said, and it was.  It is.

He is not willing that any should perish, and so He waits, patiently, graciously, extending opportunity after opportunity, orchestrating circumstances, shining the light of His Spirit into the corners of this darkened world.  To all who will receive Him, to those who believe on His name, He gives the right to become sons of God.

His desire is that all men would come to a saving knowledge of the truth.  The Bible tells us this in 1 Timothy 2:3-4.  I remember that now, because the numbers go 1-2-3-4.  As simple and straightforward as counting, God yearns to save humanity from sin and destruction.

This is my hope.  He is the saving God, the God who has always planned and executed everything for the salvation of His people.  He saves, rescues, delivers, heals, restores.  This is His character, His nature.  He is kind and gentle, and He longs to take us into His arms, feed us real food, clothe us in clean linen and wipe away all our tears.

Because of who He is, because the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases and His mercies never come to an end, because of His unfailing love, His almighty power and His lovingkindness, I must not give up as long as there is life.

Even if death comes, there is still hope, because even at the last moment, a heart can turn, as the heart of the thief on the cross turned (Luke 23:40-43).  The owner of the vineyard (Matthew 20) paid the same rate to those who came at the last hour as he paid to the ones who had worked all the day long.  There is hope to the very end, no matter how bleak things appear.

I must always hope, always pray and never give up. 


 

Economics . . . and my healthcare plan

Today on Facebook, I saw something that said, "I think a man with a helmet defending our country should make more money than a man with a helmet defending a football."

Well yes, of course.

But.

"Should" is a tricky sort of word.  There is the way things should be, and then there is the way things simply are.

Obviously we ought to have more respect and honor for a man who puts his life at risk to defend our country than for a man who plays a game.  But "should make more money" is a pipedream.

Football players make more money than soldiers for a reason: because people like to watch sports and are willing to pay money to do so.  Additionally, when sports are televised, advertisers are willing to pay lots of money for commercial slots to sell their products to the large audience tuning in for the game.  Football raises a great deal of revenue; therefore, football players make a lot of money.  National defense does not raise a lot of revenue; therefore, there is not a pile of money accumulating for the soldiers to split.  Whether or not this is "as it should be," is rather immaterial.  What are you going to do?  Force people to watch the news about military skirmishes around the world, and prevent them from watching football, in order to generate higher prices for ad space during the news, and then somehow send the extra revenue to the soldiers' families?  Even if that would work (and it would not), it would violate all kinds of freedoms and rights of the public.

There are no money trees.  The government does not generate money.  The government only takes money--through taxes--wastes a bunch of it, and then redistributes what is left.  All the money that exists is only around because someone worked to earn it somehow, originally through providing some sort of real goods.  Money can then be traded for services, or even stolen--or taken by the government in the form of taxes--but at the beginning, it has to be derived from some real resource.

This is why I think health insurance is unethical and should be phased out.

Health insurance is a business.  It exists to earn a profit.  In other words, the people who run health insurance companies run them so that they can make a profit off them.

Insurance is like a gamble, a lottery; except to win, you must get very unlucky.  In other kinds of insurance, we understand this.  We pay for car insurance hoping that we never have an accident.  Many, many people drive and have no accidents or only very minor ones.  They pay far more into their car insurance than what they ever get back out of it, but they have it so that in the event that they are very unfortunate and have a catastrophic accident, there is financial coverage for the damages.  Because there are relatively few catastrophic accidents, car insurance companies can sell their product at a profit and still keep enough in the coffers to pay out in a bad year of accidents.

The same holds true for homeowners' insurance.  Most of our homes do not burn down, but we pay into the system just in case.  For those whose homes do burn down, there is enough there to cover their damages, and the insurance companies still operate at a profit because of all the payees who did not have a tragedy.

Health insurance should, similarly, exist to cover catastrophies when an illness or injury would otherwise wipe out a family's finances.  It used to be more like this, and it used to be called, "Hospitalization."  But somehow, health insurance broke somewhere along the line.  Somehow, health insurance started paying for people's basic health care rather than traumatic health catastrophies.  And then, when that proved not to be viable, the rates skyrocketed out of the stratosphere. Think about it: how could health insurance possibly work?  Car insurance and homeowners' insurance work because not everybody suffers calamities in these areas; in fact, a relatively low percentage of people do.  That's why the insurance model works--lots of people pay in, so that there is coverage for the unlucky few.  But almost everybody gets sick at some point.  How can you possibly insure against that?

Health insurance companies, because they are companies, operate at a profit.  So, if they are taking money from you and paying out for your healthcare, in order to produce that profit, they are going to charge you more than what the healthcare costs in the first place.  It's not a good deal for the consumer.  That's how they make a profit.  They take in more than they pay out.  It's very simple. This is also simple and obvious: we would be better off without them, because we would rather not be forced to pay for our healthcare plus a surcharge so the health insurance company can make a profit, rather than paying for the healthcare alone.  This shows up in crystal-clear obviousness if you have ever been without dental benefits and have considered the financial efficacy of purchasing a dental insurance plan on your own, as opposed to paying out of pocket.  It is much less expensive to pay out of pocket.

Case in point:  we bought one of the original Obamacare Marketplace Health Plans.  It cost us $1000 per month in premiums, and there was a $12,000 family deductible that had to be paid out of pocket before any coverage even began.  This means that between your monthly premiums and your deductible, you are guaranteed to spend a minimum of $24,000 in a year before you receive any benefits.  If you don't spend out your entire deductible, you might spend less than $24,000, but the insurance company will not pay out any benefits at all in that case.  Except, a free yearly physical was supposed to be included in that, but the physical would be qualified as "not covered" if you actually discussed any new or pre-existing health issues with your provider.  Basically, you could have a free blood pressure check and cholesterol screening, along with a professional weighing and height measurement and perhaps a bit of nutrition and exercise counseling.  Period.  Seriously.  This is not a good deal.  It is not a cost effective way to structure health care.  Even if I paid out of pocket for my yearly physical along with the rest of my medical expenses, is it doubtful that even I--with the expenses incurred by lupus--would exceed $24,000 in doctor bills in a given year (in doctor bills alone, if I didn't have insurance premiums to pay).  This is what I am saying: insurance companies take in more than they pay out, so they can be profitable.

If someone were to contract cancer, that would be no longer be the case, and by getting unlucky in life, he would get lucky in the health insurance lottery, but nobody really wants that.  The crazy thing is (I noticed this when shopping the exchange for health insurance plans): Plans don't always cover cancer or major injuries anymore.  You often have to add special riders to get that type of coverage.  I do not know how many consumers are reading the fine print to realize this.

Recently, my insurance company denied a standard blood lab run with a general physical.  Over the course of trying to figure out what was going on, I was told many different stories:  It is covered, but coded incorrectly.  It is coded as preventative but needs to be coded as diagnostic.  It is coded as diagnostic, but needs to be coded as preventative.  I should be covered.  Oh, nevermind.  It's not covered.

I submitted a formal written appeal and received back a letter with the word DENIED, all in caps, just like that. Somebody enjoyed writing DENIED, I am quite certain.  In the fine print, the letter stated that under the Affordable Care Act, "the frequency and eligibility of services is subject to change."  Well now.  As you might imagine, this statement did not increase my feelings of happiness, security, affection for President Obama or respect for insurance companies.

At the end of the day, this is what we need:

1.  We need to phase out insurance and go back to a fair fee-for-service medical system.

2.  We need billing reform.  Doctors are currently forced to inflate their bills to protect themselves from insurance companies adjusting allowable charges down to where the doctors could not remain solvent.  This should be easy to fix if we phase out the insurance altogether, but doctors and labs will need to reduce their rates.

3.  We need tort reform.  People should not be able to sue doctors the way they do.  Incompetent doctors should be barred from practicing, but good doctors should be protected from frivolous lawsuits.  Life is messy and people get sick and die.  Doctors cannot prevent this from happening in every situation.  Indeed, every person who has ever been born either already has or will at some point die.  Doctors can't stop this.  Doctors are not God (and even God has His sights on the next life, not this one).  Doctors usually do the best they can; doctors usually honestly want to help people.  If they wanted to be rich, they would be insurance company executives, not doctors.  If we stop suing doctors for every uncontrollable negative outcome, they will be able to stop purchasing expensive insurance against lawsuits, and that will also allow them to reduce their rates.

4.  If we are concerned about access to healthcare for people in poverty, we should develop community clinics, free and open to the public, that would provide a basic level of healthcare to all citizens.  This would include physicals for children, services for injuries such as stitches and bone-setting, education on nutrition and hygiene, maternity care and delivery services, and medications for common illnesses and infections.  These clinics would be funded by the government and staffed by government employees, similarly to the way public schools function.  The buildings could even be annexed to public schools.  Each clinic would have one or two doctors for oversight, but they would be predominantly staffed by NPs, PAs and nurses.  They should be open 24/7 and take the burden of the uninsured off hospital emergency rooms.

5.  Health insurance--if it survived at all--would function more like other insurances: people who could afford it (or whose companies chose to offer it) would have health insurance in place to cover health emergencies and catastrophic illnesses.

6.  People with the money to do so would be able to purchase whatever health services they desired, outside of a health insurance system, and costs would be lower because health insurance would not be around giving doctors cause to increase fees.  In fact, doctors' fees would decrease, because in a more organic fee for service system, doctors would experience the need to compete for patients. Insurance companies would no longer dictate which doctor you could see!  Besides driving costs down, the competition would motivate doctors to provide the best services possible, weeding out incompetent doctors.

7.  We should encourage medical professionals themselves to design concierge service clinics, where patients could pay a monthly rate to receive whatever services they need over the course of a year.  In essence, instead of paying $1000-$1400/month to an insurance company for possibly no benefits, you would pay $1000-1400/month to a medical group that contracts to provide services for you as needed (no high deductible).  Let me tell you, you'd get a ton more for your money, and you wouldn't have to worry about pre-authorization or surprise claim denials.  Large companies could contract with these concierge clinics, or even design their own for their employees.  The clinics could contract with hospitals.  This is a fabulous healthcare option, but it is rendered impossible by President Obama's current healthcare laws, which were written by the very insurance industry that profits most from them (and from blocking creation of a system that would allow people to circumvent insurance).

8.  We should encourage and incentivise medical research to develop less expensive treatments for conditions like diabetes, so that they could be available to the poverty stricken.

9.  We should use a system of vouchers for healthcare, whereby everyone would receive vouchers to be used at government healthcare facilities.  Over the course of treatment, people would either receive more vouchers--as they complied with their treatment plan, or have vouchers revoked, if they refused to take responsibility for self-care.  People who lost all their vouchers due to non-compliance would then have a choice between giving up their free healthcare opportunities, or giving up their personal freedom and being institutionalized in a state-run infirmary where compliance would be enforced.  People who purchase private healthcare on their own would have freedom to chose and follow whatever treatment plans they wish.

10.  We should set up a special non-partisan task force of highly experienced doctors, medical researchers, medical ethics specialists, hospital administrators and economists to study what exactly could be reasonably covered by the government in public community health clinics.  We should shelter this group from lobbies and other outside influences. We should strive for compassion while being realistic about what medicine and the government can and cannot achieve.

The fact that we currently have laws that force citizens to purchase health insurance from companies run by the same people who wrote the laws, who are rich and getting richer, whose only purpose is to run a company that makes a big profit . . .

This is ludicrous.

This is unconstitutional.

This is not freedom.

This is an egregious abuse.

This must come to an end.

Economics are economics.  Money doesn't grow on trees.  The government can only do what it can do; it is not omnipotent.  People get sick and die sometimes, and this cannot always be slowed or prevented.  All babies are not born perfect.  We need to be both realistic and compassionate as we figure out how to live within the limits and constraints of life in a very imperfect world.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

This would be a viable solution to the healthcare crisis we are experiencing.  The trickiest part is figuring out how to phase out the health insurance industry without throwing our economy into a crisis.  Nearly 500,000 people make their living working in the health insurance industry in the USA.

Politics, etc.

Gmail is freaking me out lately.

Today I was reading an email about some meeting dates and times, and I noticed that gmail put in a prompt called, "Add to Calendar."  I clicked it, and it did add the date to my calendar.  Then I added the location to the calendar item, and gmail automatically mapped it for me on google maps.  This is convenient but invasive.  I've also received notifications on my phone telling me that I am late for an appointment or need to get on the road to an airport to make my flight.  These have been based solely on emails I've received, and not even calendar items.

Shawn says we don't have to worry about whether Hillary or Trump becomes the next president, because Google--having total access to our "privacy"--will be the government before anybody knows it.  Shawn (although he might have been joking) is generally right about these things.  He said that the whole Y2K thing was ridiculous and would amount to nothing, way back from the very beginning, when everyone was panicking (and even his own wife bought a few furtive gallons of water to hold in reserve).

We watched a documentary on George H. Bush last night, and I teared up remembering what a dignified president he was, motivated for the good of our country and the good of the world, making decisions based on sound reason rather than personal gain or party politics.  Unfortunately, that seemed to be the undoing of the Republican party.  I guess the Republican party didn't appreciate being disregarded in favor of sound reason.  Newt Gingrich saw his chance and leapt upon it.  I think GHB's biggest mistakes were in trusting his party to support him, and in granting too much credit to the masses, believing that they would be able to understand what was best and vote accordingly.  He was a good person (as far as people go--we're all fatally flawed), and he mistakenly assumed that the majority of people are motivated by morality and reason, as he was.  He didn't realize that people are selfish, lazy and greedy.  They are.  We are.  This is the problem with every political system.  The sinful nature of man wrecks every social system from socialism to capitalism.

Capitalism works a little better than the other systems for awhile, because it is actually based on the premise that man is greedy and will be driven to attain for himself.  So it starts out realistically.  But then it implodes, because the reality is sordid.  In a vicious Darwinian pattern, the strong gain power over the weak, the weak become bitter and hostile, and class wars ensue.  This becomes a pathological situation when democratic voting is supposed to make the decisions.  Factions are pitted against one another, resulting in anger, hatred and violence.

Democracy is also flawed by the fact that, in a voting environment, the people who promote themselves as politicians are never the solid, quiet, humble people who would be best qualified to serve.  This played out in living color in the Republican primaries, where a host of arrogant, aggrandizing adversaries all competed for the nomination, and none would back down for the good of the nation, or even the party.  The end result has been disastrous.  It was already broken anyway, but just like President Obama did with healthcare, the Republicans took the broken machine of their party, dropped it into a pit, and ran a tank back and forth over it a few times until it became an unrecognizable heap of rubble.

I guess the good point about a monarchy is that, being born to the position, a king doesn't have to campaign for his office, and therefore doesn't necessarily need to be brash and boastful.  You could get a humble and wise king, once in awhile.  Maybe.

Socialism and communism are doomed to fail before they begin.  You just can't realistically throw a bunch of unredeemed people together and expect that they will all cooperate and share for one another's best.  Even in churches, which are supposed to function this way (see 1 Corinthians 12:12-31), where the bulk of the people are supposed to have been redeemed and to have begun the process of being sanctified, where they are supposed to esteem sacrificial love above all else, selfishness still rears up and wrecks things.

So yes.

When I was a girl, washing dishes in the kitchen sink, my mother used to come up behind me and say, "Don't waste water.  There will be a day when you will wish for clean water from a faucet.  Mark my words, the persecution is coming."

Seems she might have been righter than we'd hoped. But the Bible does tell us there will be tribulation, and the forces of evil will conquer the saints on earth (Revelation 11:7, 13:7).  Of course, this is only on the current, fallen earth.  There is still our sure hope in the new world to come, the new, redeemed creation of God, the eternal kingdom where we will enjoy everlasting life.

Thus, with Google tracking everything, here is my manifesto:

I am a Christian.  I believe the Bible, and I worship the God who created the Universe and revealed Himself through the Bible.

I believe that there will be no other remedy for the sickness of sin in the world than the remedy of Jesus Christ's redeeming death and resurrection.

I believe that the cleansing forgiveness of Christ enables us to receive new, God-infused hearts, placed in us by the power of the Holy Spirit.

I believe that our hope is in the coming of a New Heaven and a New Earth where God Himself will care for His people and reign in incorruptible righteousness and power, forever.

My hope is in the unfailing love of God and His promises of full redemption, salvation and glorification for those who put their faith in Him.

Hard times will come, but for those who persevere, the end will bring deliverance and joy.