Category: Journey

Face to the Son

Posted on by K.L. Gilchrist
Sun showing through fingers
Photo by Daoudi Aissa on Unsplash

the sun to govern the day, His love endures forever.
~Psalm 136:8 (NIV)

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
~John 3:16 (NIV)

About Up

I love the Pixar movie Up. Almost all Pixar films are incredibly good with story structure and pacing, and that’s essentially why they are so memorable. But with Up, I think the Pixar storytelling geniuses were in rare form.

The beginning of the film is a fast-paced five minutes through the young, married, and middle-aged lives of Carl and Ellie Fredricksen. It starts with them as kids who want to be explorers and ends with Carl at the age of 70 after Ellie has passed away. In the middle, they buy a house, work selling balloons and photos to kids at the zoo, and plan on starting a family.

There’s a point, right in the very center of that montage, showing Ellie Fredrickson’s devastation as the doctor shares they will be unable to have children. But the scene right after she finds out, the picture of that is so deep, I’m not sure many other viewers grasped it.

Face to the Sun

As Ellie Fredricksen grieves her infertility, she sits outdoors in her chair with her face to the sun. Her hair blows about in the wind, signifying how she releases her pain in the sunshine. She doesn’t moan or complain. She simply remains still in the breeze, the sun warming her cheeks, allowing her disappointment to just…be.

No words. Just her face to the sun.

Release Disappointment

Pain is a part of everyone’s story. Actually, the only thing that is different from one human to another, is how we choose to handle our pain and disappointment. Pain avoidance never works. Resignation doesn’t really work either – it can lead to a less than fulfilling life.

The movie scene I described above is an illustration of the only thing that works when you experience real disappointment. Acceptance.

Face to the Son

Where is God when it hurts? Where is our Lord when the test results are bad, when the loved one dies, when the child rebels, or when the job goes away? What are we to do with our ever-present disappointments, the ones we may or may not pray about? What should we do? We turn our faces to the Son.

In Mark 4:39, scripture states that Jesus rebuked the wind and the waves, saying, be still. Be still meant…be cool…hear my voice…settle down. When we turn our face to the Son, we allow his voice to fill our ears and we stop listening to the noise of the raging storms of disappointment. Instead, we grow quiet, we see His presence, and we settle down. And when we settle, we can begin to accept that though the storm may rage, nothing will remove His peace.

As people of faith, we must understand that though the storms may continue, with our faces to the Son, we will go on.

No Mistake

Posted on by K.L. Gilchrist

No one can convince me words aren’t some of the most powerful things on earth.

December 2003 was the worst month of my whole life. My father was dying from terminal liver cancer. My daughter had been born ten weeks early three months earlier, and the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia wasn’t ready to release her from the neonatal intensive care unit. Specialists urged me to schedule follow-up visits about the health of my liver, which had failed before I gave birth to the baby – so I wasn’t well either.

I still remember shaking, tears rolling down my face as I sat beside my baby’s bed, reaching my hands through the clear plastic holes, my heart twisting because I couldn’t leave to see my father, who could die at any time. I grasped her teeny translucent fingers and thought, this is freaking barbaric.

I prayed and heard nothing.

I wanted instant miracles for my baby and my daddy. That didn’t happen.

What did happen is shortly before Christmas Eve, the hospital released my daughter with portable medical equipment and a feeding tube hooked up to a thin black backpack. And three days after Christmas, my friends and aunties took turns holding a bald, five-pound, three-month-old infant while I sat, numb, looking at my dad in the casket.

Barbaric.

For a full month afterward, I cycled through post-funeral tasks and cried every time I was alone. I cried because I’d never see my father again. I cried because several of my family members hurt my feelings so severely at the homegoing, I vowed never to speak to them again. I cried because my daughter was so tiny, and I was already tired of explaining why.

Then one day, the mailman arrived, delivering a sympathy card. I sat in the kitchen to read it, and a small yellow sheet of paper fell out. The information came from my father’s hospice workers, and on the paper was the poem He Maketh No Mistake by A.M. Overton.

With my baby daughter sleeping and my son at school, I remained in my kitchen and read that poem over and over again. Just a short poem. Words on a page. But after I saw them, I stopped crying.

That poem changed my life. It spoke directly to my heart, telling me the roads of life aren’t always pleasant. We pray for people who pass away. We give birth and hope for the best that doesn’t happen. We lose connections too quickly and too soon.

But God…

Some moments in life are so painful talking doesn’t help. So for the last 16 years, I’ve read that poem during times of grief. I’ll continue to read it as the years go on and accept that God sees me in and through the pain.

The poem is timeless: Through all the way, though dark to me. He made not one mistake…

God made…

Posted on by K.L. Gilchrist

God made me to be uncomplicated in my faith. to watch children & kites & sunsets & rainbows & enjoy them. to take your hand regardless of who you are or how you look. to listen to you. to accept you right where you are. to love you unconditionally. God made me to be real. to be honest. to be open. to never compare myself to you, but to strive to become my own best person. to have character and dignity.

~ann kiemel anderson

But in fact God has arranged the parts in the body, every one of them just as he wanted them to be.

2 Corinthians 12:18

Life has grown so complicated in America.

Nothing is enough for anyone.

Have you noticed that? Or is it just me?

When Anne Lamott wrote the first version of Bird By Bird, I’m sure she was encouraged to do just that. To write. To put words down on paper future authors would read and learn how to write down the essentials of a story “bird by bird.”

When Martin Luther King, Jr. composed the I Have a Dream speech, it came from the heart and wowed everyone with its honesty, hopefulness, and simplicity. He spoke with firmness and tenacity. No extra commentary needed.

No bridges. No tolls.

I believe the God I serve is a God of simplicity and He whispers to us daily, go slowly my child. Be faithful and know I made you for my purpose.

Part of my being an author is understanding that God didn’t make me something else. If he had, I would have worked at that diligently, honoring him with the skills He gave me. And I do have moments when I wonder why I hadn’t been created to be a professor or master accountant.

Or Anne Lamott.

But it’s freeing to trust God with your particular job in his universe. It means you can let go of aspirations that have nothing to do with God’s will for your life.

And you can excel as that pastor or teacher or sculptor or speaker and just be that.

God made.

And free.