Friday, August 30, 2024

Monarch Metamorphosis: The Broken Beauty of Transformation




Unobserved, the metamorphosed monarch breached her chrysalis.

My gaze focused instead on my mother, undergoing her own metamorphosis at the end of her Alzheimer's journey. In the prior week, she had stopped eating and drinking, stopped opening her eyes or responding to us. Every visit could be my last.

Watching her shoulders and sternum labor to pull air into her lungs, prayer words fled. In their absence, I clung to the old hymns we both loved. The nurse had told us that hearing was the last sense we lose, so I sang to Mom of the old rugged cross and amazing grace. I reminded her Jesus loves her and how sweet it is to trust in Him.

When voice failed, I tended Mom's dry skin, matted eyes, and crusty lips. Going to wash my hands, I saw her: a female monarch imago, wings still wet, wrinkled, and limp, feet clinging to the translucent shards of empty chrysalis.

Three times my husband and I have served as monarch midwives: the final two months of his father's life; the summer of his mother's passing; and this spring, the final six weeks of my mother's life. We only succeeded in saving one caterpillar from April predators. Once it had pupated and hardened into a chrysalis, we took the almost-not-yet butterfly in its cleaned habitat to my parents in hope that my father would behold the beautiful miracle of transformation in the midst of his great loss.

Then royalty emerged sight unseen while he was walking and my back was turned. We nonetheless marveled at her wings, which she now slowly opened and closed, drying them and stretching like an athlete warming up.

Mom's ragged, strained breathing and rapid pulse calmed enough that Dad sent me home so he could be alone with Mom until my sisters' afternoon visits.

Soon her struggle resumed. Dad summoned the nurse and the rest of us daughters. We sat close and held her hands, shoulder, foot— anything we could reach—as to a life preserver until the nurse came.

Nurse E made non-committal hmms as she took vitals and listened to Mom's heart, abdomen, and lungs. We helped clean her and salve her pressure sores in the tender awareness we might be preparing her body for those who would prepare her for burial.

Then the nurse told us it was hard to say how long remained. Mom could continue days like this, in this liminal struggle.

"It is a mystery. You are people of faith. It is in God's hands. We need to trust Him. It will happen in His time. Keep talking to her. She can hear you."

Hearts breaking with Mom's obvious suffering, we thanked her, told her we loved her, told her it would be ok (would it?), told her she could go Home to Jesus, told her it would be just a little while and she could rest.

Then, a miracle came: Mom opened her eyes. She gazed straight into Daddy's eyes, not through or past him at the visions and hallucinations of many weeks. She saw him and he her.

We gasped.

Seizing the moment as she held his gaze, Dad called her by her name and told her he loved her. He said she was his best friend, the love of his life, a wonderful wife and mother. He said that he was so thankful for all the adventures they'd had, that he'd miss her terribly, that he'd see her again soon.

He told her that fifty-five years ago her daddy had walked her down the aisle and given her to him, and now he was walking her down the aisle to give her to Jesus.

Even the nurse wept.

We sat in silence in the sacred moment until, praying through the taut suspense, I told the smart speaker to play the album Evensong by Keith and Kristyn Getty.

Their music had provided the songs of my mother's life's evening. We watched their Family Hymn Sings from the early pandemic hundreds of times. Mom delighted in seeing their young daughters on the screen. Their hymns played in the car and at home.

When Kristyn began to sing, "I heard the voice of Jesus say, 'Come unto Me and rest,'" I exhaled the breath I didn't know I was holding. Her lyric Celtic soprano voice enveloped us in comfort and anchored us to the presence of Christ. Encircling our beloved mother and wife letting our hands on her frail limbs, we waited and wept, speaking softly to her when words arose. Her eyes fluttered closed again.

When the track changed to "Softly and Tenderly," we gradually joined the song, inviting Mom to her Home in Jesus. For months, she had spoken daily of going Home, needing to see her long-deceased parents, being on a journey. She was so near, almost at the threshold. We sang to tell her it was all right. It would be all right. She could go Home.

Youngest sister laughed through tears at the marvel that our reticent dad was singing too.

Mom's anguish slowly calmed, her breathing regulated. We waited and watched, uncertain, until the nurse said the crisis had passed for now and she could leave. She instructed Dad on care for the night ahead and assured us she would check in as soon as she possibly could in the morning.

Since Mom could linger days yet in these labor pains of struggle, Dad sent us girls home for the evening. My husband had arrived to pay his respects to Mom and inspect the butterfly. Under his guidance, Dad released the butterfly into the garden, her wings dry and body ready to drink deeply of spring's nectar. She fluttered to a shrub and soon soared out of sight, her transformation complete.

I kissed my mother and told her I'd see her soon.

That night I slept barefoot but fully clothed. The expected, dreaded call came in the 3 o'clock hour. My mother's beautiful spirit, itself reflecting the imago Dei, had taken flight. Her threadbare tent, translucent chrysalis of flesh, had served its present purpose. She was Home with Jesus awaiting the resurrection of her body also.

Our earthly home is less homely without her, but we will see her soon, when Jesus softly and tenderly calls each of us Home too, whether in death or at His soon appearing, when our mortal flesh is clothed with immortality and death is swallowed up in victory.

Come soon, Lord Jesus.

 

Christina R. Leone Moore, August 2024

 

Wednesday, August 7, 2024

Enlarging the Boundaries

 

Gibbous moon in rose-clouded sky at sunset

For the harried, hurried, faint of heart, or short of attention span, feel free to skip ahead to the TL:DR section.

Click here to listen to me read the post, with Moose Tracks chiming in a bit at the end. 😉

“Lord, you are my portion and my cup of blessing; you hold my future. The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance.”

‭‭Psalms‬ ‭16‬:‭5‬-‭6‬ ‭CSB‬


Celebration

Good morning to you, crumbles! Or shall I say, “Happy blog anniversary”? Today marks 14 years since that first welcome blog post. The first series we explored was called “Blessing the Boundaries.”  At the time, I had crashed into the worst lupus flare I had ever had, one from which I have never entirely recovered. The Ebony Dog and I lived on the sofa, and my chest hurt almost too much to breathe unless I lay on my side.

In that wilderness season, my dear husband Amore told me I needed to start a blog to find my online people and redeem that time. Through that initial post series, I sought to make peace with the very narrow boundaries the Lord had imposed on me (us). I sought to proclaim His boundaries as good and pleasant and to find joy in this “inheritance.”

My health is better now than in those early days, but I am substantially homebound again and don’t know when that will change. We have walked through the loss of Amore’s parents and sister and the recent loss of my mother after a long journey with Alzheimer’s. I have had cancer twice and a long list of surgeries. We have moved house and lost my faithful Ebony Dog but gained Moose Tracks (Mayhem).

Through all this, the Lord has used this place and other online interactions to link me with kindred spirits. He has made real friendships from long-distance interactions with people I may never meet this side of heaven.

His boundaries have indeed proved good, pleasant, and joyful.


A Need

Over the last year or so, He has brought new friends to me through this place, my online home. From them, I have learned that many people with energy-limiting conditions—ME/CFS, Long COVID, fibromyalgia, autoimmune diseases like I have, and many more—find screen reading too challenging to undertake long or often. For some, it exacerbates a wide range of symptoms. However, they may be able to listen instead of read.

Other new friends are caregivers as I have been. Stewarding that gift and responsibility means their best chance to engage with my posts is in their ears while they walk or work on household tasks.

For those new friends and readers, I began recording most posts, but Blogger isn’t very friendly to adding that feature, is it?

It has also become increasingly clear that the normal isolation of chronic/prolonged illness, caregiving, and aging has intensified in desperation and alienation, especially with numerous churches and ministries discontinuing the remote worship, discipleship, and fellowship options that opened up the world to this population at the beginning of the pandemic.

While I can’t address any of these illnesses, the needs requiring care, or the debilitating aging process, I have been praying over what might be mine to do to offer gospel hope and encouragement in this peculiar time. Joni Eareckson Tada has said that people with disabilities constitute the largest unreached people group in the world. The number of people suffering with chronic illness and disability has grown very rapidly since 2020 and does not seem to be slowing down. With regard to Long COVID alone, for example, the research team led by Dr. Danny Altmann estimated a year ago that some 400 million people around the world are experiencing some level of long-term illness months to years after their initial infection. 


An Opportunity

In praying for the people whose names and situations I know and the millions I don’t, the Lord has led me to enlarge the boundaries of this writing ministry in order to diversify and expand the ways that the Lord’s work through me can serve the reader or listener. The next step toward that end is to move most of my online energies to Substack: crumbs from His table fellowship here.



Substack makes it much easier to offer and access audio versions of the blog posts. Comment conversations also seem less cumbersome there. That platform additionally opens up numerous new ways of interaction such as a dedicated chat space for subscribers; discussion threads where readers’ thoughts are the featured attraction; video posts and messages; and even a private subscriber podcast for listening to post readings on the go through most common podcast players.

Dreams I have for the fellowship include a Brave Hearts Book Club tailored to those with energy-limiting and financially draining conditions. By choosing Christian classics in the public domain, I can record (or embed) one chapter or section at a time with a few questions to generate discussion. Those who want to and can read the selection can access that kind of ebook at little to no cost if a physical copy is too pricey.

At other times, we could potentially have Zoom book discussions or community Bible reading and prayer or mini-retreats on a spiritual discipline which I’ve found helpful. (We can also have guest writers and teachers.) In this season of loss, it has blessed me to dream about the possibilities (even while daunted by the change).

Topics of more limited interest can have their own sections to which interested readers can opt in if they wish to access the material.

Much of that lies in the future. For the present, the transition itself is the order of the day.

You may be wondering how much effort and complication this will require of you, dear readers.

TL;DR

  • If you read now via RSS feed reader or on the web and have no interest in audio versions of posts, posts in your inbox, and the other prospective added features, you don’t need to do anything. I will continue to post written and photographic pieces here, though without audio or comment interaction.
  • If you already receive posts via email, between now and the next post, Lord willing, I will export those subscriptions from Mailchimp to Substack. You also don’t need to do anything. You should be receiving a welcome email from the new platform. You may still reply to me directly from the emails instead of in Substack comments if that is more comfortable.
  • If, however, neither of the above applies to you, and you want access to audio and video posts and, Lord willing, the kind of online encouragement, discipleship, and fellowship sketched out above, with the style and tone you are used to here, you are cordially invited to subscribe to the new crumbs from His table fellowship at crumbsfromhistable.substack.com
All my Substack content is free, just as this place is. If—and there are no definite plans for this—a paid subscription option became needed in future, we would offer scholarships and/or discounts of some sort so that those who need this community are included, regardless of ability to pay.

This is such a small beginning in the face of immense need, but the crumbs of my loaves and fishes are before the Lord. May He be glorified in multiplying them to sustain faith and hope in those He brings to this fellowship.

I would be grateful for your prayers with and for me and the community which will come together in His time.

“You reveal the path of life to me; in your presence is abundant joy; at your right hand are eternal pleasures.”
‭‭Psalms‬ ‭16‬:‭11‬ ‭CSB‬‬

Sunday, August 4, 2024

“A Little Sanctuary”

""Therefore say: 'This is what the sovereign Lord says: Although I have removed them far away among the nations and have dispersed them among the countries, I have been a little sanctuary for them among the lands where they have gone.'"

‭‭Ezekiel‬ ‭11‬:‭16‬ ‭NET‬‬


Beloved of God, if this Lord's Day finds you worshipping alone or with only your household, take heart from that word of the Lord. I pray you would indeed find Him to be "a little sanctuary" in this time of isolation and exile from the house of God.


In addition, I offer you these words of encouragement from 19th-century English pastor Charles Spurgeon. He struggled with the autoimmune disease gout, which regularly kept him from attending worship services in the church he pastored. His wife also suffered with chronic illness that rarely permitted her to hear her husband preach in person. These thoughts encouraged me. I pray they bring hope and comfort to your heart too.



"Now, notice, God says to his people, when they are far away from the temple and Jerusalem, 'I will be to them as a little sanctuary.' Not, 'I have loved the people, and I will build them a synagogue, or I will lead others to build for them a meeting-place; but I myself will be to them as a little sanctuary.' The Lord Jesus Christ himself is the true place of worship for saved souls. 'There is no chapel in the place where I live,' says one. I am sorry to hear it, but chapels are not absolutely essential to worship, surely. Another cries, 'There is no place of public worship of any sort where the gospel is fully and faithfully preached.' This is a great want, certainly, but still, do not say, 'I am far away from a place of worship.' That is a mistake. No godly man is far away from a holy place. What is a place of worship? I hope that our bed-chambers are constantly places of worship. Place of worship? Why, it is one's garden where he walks and meditates. A place of worship? It is the field, the barn, the street, when one has the heart to pray. God will meet us by a well, a stone, a bush, a brook, a tree. He has great range of trysting-places when men's hearts are right….


"Now, dear friends, God says, 'I will be to them as a little sanctuary,' that is to say, an accessible throne of mercy, an accessible place of mercy. When men have no mercy on you, go to God. When you have no mercy on yourself -- and sometimes you have not -- run away to God. Draw near to him, and he will be to you as a little sanctuary….


"If at this time you have lost many of the comforts of this life, and seem bereaved of friends, then find in God your 'little sanctuary.' Go home to your chamber with holy faith and humble love, and take him to be your all in all, and he will be all in all to you. Pray after this fashion -- 'O Lord, so work in me by thy Spirit that I may find thee in all things, and all things in thee!'


"The Lord has ways of weaning us from the visible and the tangible, and bringing us to live upon the invisible and the real, in order to prepare us for that next stage, that better life, that higher place, where we shall really deal with eternal things only. God blows out our candles, and makes us find our light in him, to prepare us for that place in which they need no candle, for the glory of God is their light; and where, strange to tell, they have no temple, for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple thereof. The holy leads to the holiest: living upon God here leads to living with God hereafter. Oh, that God would gradually lift us up above all the outward, above all the visible, and bring as more and more into the inward and unseen! If you do not know anything about this, ask the Lord to teach you this riddle; and if you do know it, ask him to keep you to the life and walk of faith, and never may you be tempted to quit it for the way of sight and feeling. For Christ's sake we ask it. Amen."


From Charles Haddon Spurgeon, "A Little Sanctuary"


A Little Sanctuary accessed August 4, 2024, at 12:27 PM CDT

Monday, July 29, 2024

A Prayer for the One Grieving a Parent


The text of the blog post on a background of a photo of forget-me-nots


O God,

Father of the fatherless,

As lovingly mindful of each son and daughter as our own nursing mothers:

Enfold Your bereft children in Your own ineffable, unfailing love;

Console Your desolate chicks with Your sheltering wing;

Guide Your lost sheep with generous wisdom;

Carry the wounded and weary lambs in Your arms;

Abundantly provide daily bread for Your little ones;

Defend your cubs with loyal strength;

Apprehend the wanderers and bring them home to Yourself;

Nurture, cultivate, and celebrate every green sprout of virtue, worship, obedience, and calling;

Sing Your delight as our lullaby;

Establish broken hearts in the sustaining hope of restoration,

Until our Homegoing or our Lord's return.

Amen.

Wednesday, June 26, 2024

Totality







Grief is the soul’s totality—

Quenching color, light, song—

Darkness engulfing light,

Stars and planets twinkling 

At midday, breath stolen,

Chill breeze sweeping warmth away—

The light of God’s own countenance seems

Extinguished in the weeping vale.


Yet, though obscured, the sun still shines,

Undimmed, undamaged, undiminished.


Cosmic pebble nearest pale blue dot

Blocks from this dust speck’s eyes

The giant flaming star round which

Revolves the solar system.

Light flees,

But no sun departs;

Small obstacle in close proximity

Hides its great and glorious distant radiance.


Slithering shadow snakes snap at heels,

Unenvenomed phantom enemies,

No more harming sky-gazers

Than moon can harm sun.


This terror of great darkness,

Portentous and awesome—

Casting beholders facedown in dust and ashes,

In confused anguish and loss,

Foundations shaken—

Lasts only light and momentary minutes,

Measured by eternity’s rule.


However endless seconds seem,

They are but a blink, a breath,

Now, for a little time, if needed,

Until grave is swallowed up in victory.

Soon, soon, and very soon,

We shall always be with the Lord:

No more darkness, no more death;

Sorrow and sighing flee like stars 

At the sun’s resplendent revelation.


In the darkness, we wait.

In the darkness, we trust.

In the darkness, we hope

In unchanging truth:

The sun shines on;

God’s promises fail not;

His faithfulness endures,

While we see it not.