Difficult Seasons

Yesterday I wrote about using web applications such as CaringBridge and CarePages to keep friends and relatives informed about serious illness or injuries.  I also recommended blogs.

Sure enough, it wasn’t long until one of my Facebook friends read the post and commented on Facebook that they used Facebook for that purpose.  I have in fact noticed a growing use of Facebook to do exactly that in my circle of friends.

In yesterday’s post, I didn’t mention Facebook primarily because people who are not your friends on Facebook don’t/can’t see the information.

But the likelihood that your friends and family are in fact on Facebook is  changing fast.  There are currently 200 million people who have a Facebook account, 60 million of them in the U.S.  That’s one out of every five Americans alive.  Further, the over 35 demographic of Facebook has doubled in the last two months.

That means that a lot of your friends and family who will be interested are on Facebook.   So, depending on your situation, it may be a very viable communication tool for this purpose.  And it’ll get better by the day.

In fact, within a year, I won’t be surprised to see it all but replace the specialized web applications like CaringBridge and CarePages.  Why?

1. People are already using it for other communication with friends and family.  They’re all comfortable with it, it’s easy to use, and it’s rapidly becoming second nature.  Why use something else?
2. I believe that within a year, most people that use the web at all will be using Facebook.  It is rapidly becoming THE communication tool that we all are on and using.

So, what’s your take.  Do you think Facebook will replace CaringBridge and CarePages?

One of the important yet time-consuming parts of having someone in your family with a serious chronic illness is being able to keep other family members and friends informed about what is going on.

You’ll soon find that if you don’t have a good way to keep people informed that you’re going to spend a significant amount of your time telling and retelling the same information to folks that care and want to know.  And you’re also going to be spending time correcting incomplete or incorrect information as well.

So deciding on a good vehicle that allows you to provide the information once and yet keep everyone that wants to be informed up to date is valuable. There are several good ways to do that.

The first two are similar web-based products, CaringBridge and CarePages.  Both allow you to set up free webpages with photos, the background story, and updates, as well as providing a way for friends and family to provide messages in response.  Both also allow you to select from a variety of privacy levels, depending on your wishes.  Your friends and family can subscribe to email notices of updates.  These services are very easy to set up, requiring little if any tech knowledge.

Another good option is setting up a blog.  Blogger and WordPress are two leading services that provide free blogs, and both are relatively easy to set up and use.  The advantage of setting up your own blog is that you have more flexibility in design and how you use it.  A disadvantage can be that subscription by friends and family can be a little more challenging for those that are not tech savvy.  However, you can rather easily add the capability to subscribe by email to help them out.

I’m a big fan of all of these services, and currently I’m keeping up with a number of people through them.  If you’re not familiar with them, check them out.

I don’t know about you, but saying no is hard for me.

There are lots of reasons why saying no is hard for me.

• I like helping people.
• I like doing new things.
• I like being liked.
• I’m not very good at estimating how much I can get done in the time available.

But yesterday morning, I said no three times.  Two times were to myself.  One was to a friend.

It was a morning when there was simply more to do than could be fit into the time available. So I made myself stop and sit down, and spend a few minutes thinking about what was going on and why.

Then instead of going to a meeting I really wanted to attend to show support for the folks there, I sent an email expressing my support, and apologizing for not being able to be there. Interestingly, there were several responses from others who were not able to attend the meeting either.  So at least some of us who wanted to but were not there had a conversation.

I also sent an email to a friend who had invited me to be a part of a fun project that I would really enjoy doing, and told her I really just couldn’t.  And I made myself defer a couple of things I wanted to accomplish yesterday morning.

Someone posted something last week that said, “You have to say no to say yes.”  I’m still trying to learn that lesson.  It’s part of working on observing the principle of Sabbath.

Last Monday as I walked into the hospital from the garage, my friend Lacy was standing at one of the parking pay stations, obviously having trouble with the machine.  I stopped and watched from a distance for a few minutes, really just wanting to say hello before heading on down to start chaplaincy rounds.

Turns out his card wouldn’t work for whatever reason.  He had decided to head back to an ATM to get some cash, but instead I was able to loan him the needed money, and after a brief conversation he was able to get on his way.

Now just exactly what do you think the odds are that:

1. I would enter the hospital just as Lacy, one of thousands of patients coming and going from the hospital that day was leaving.
2. That I would notice him standing there, behind a mask, having trouble with the unfriendly machine?  (Okay, he is taller than average.)
3. That I would actually have $10 in my wallet to bail him out (that’s actually pretty rare of itself!).

You see, to add to the complexity, I was running late.  I had planned to be there earlier, and things just kept getting in the way.  And I was hurrying (for me) from the garage to get my list.  And Lacy had been having tests that morning, and testing schedules are notoriously fluid.

Anyway, my point is simply this.  The odds of my connecting with Lacy at just the right moment to be able to help him and to get to have a friendly conversation that blessed both of us are huge.

Yet, it happened.  Against the odds.

But I’m not at all surprised.  Things like this seem to happen all the time when I just show up with the hope that God will use me.  You see, He’s already been there, and everywhere, doing His thing.  And I get to enjoy seeing the results of His work.

Amy VanHuisen writes about faith and struggle, and I often find that her blog makes me think.  Today she wrote about the loss of a young mom in their community who leaves behind a husband and three young children, the youngest only 8 days old.  She titled the post, “God, How Could You Do That?”  Amy’s writing is honest, and you’ll be blessed by clicking over to read her post before coming back to read some thoughts that occurred to me.

The first thing that jumped into my consciousness was a conversation my daughter Sara, a nurse practitioner, had with a colleague this week.  They are members of a palliative care team, and deal with patients and families suffering tragedy daily.  Faith nearly always becomes a part of the conversation with the patients and families, and sometimes among the medical staff.

The conversation went something like this.  The colleague said, “I don’t believe in God because if there were a God, he wouldn’t let the things that we see happen to people every day happen.”  Sara’s response was, “Do you really believe that God is the only force active in this world?  What about Satan?  What about the free will God allows people?”

This is a good summary of the faith struggle that we all go through as we experience events like Amy writes about, and our question often becomes like Amy’s, “How could God…”

I don’t have the answer.  But I will offer a couple of thoughts.

1. God has not yet won the final victory.  The Bible makes clear that we live in an active battle ground with God on one side and the forces of evil led by Satan on the other.  Until that final victory when God creates the new heaven and the new earth, this earth that we live on will continue to experience injustice, tragedy, illness, poverty, and all of the other things that are wrong, that are unfair.  And these come equally to all of us, whether we are people of faith or not.
2. When I read what we call The Beatitudes in Matthew 5,  I see Jesus talking about people who have suffered and who are suffering what’s not fair about this world.  He doesn’t say that we won’t have to mourn (v4), for example, but he says simply that those who mourn will be comforted.  Jesus seems to be offering hope for those of us who suffer in this life.

Which leads me to this final thought.  The more of life I experience, the more I look forward to that point in time when God claims the final victory, when all the bad stuff ceases, when God is fully in control.  That doesn’t mean I don’t love this life and getting to experience it with my family and my friends –  just that more and more often I am aware of how flawed this world is, and how wonderful heaven will be.