The Gift

Always? Always be joyful?

Is that even possible? To Always be joyful? No matter what happens?

Always be thankful!

Really? Always?

Even when life is falling apart around me?

Oh and by the way… pray too; while you are always being joyful and thankful… NO MATTER WHAT HAPPENS.

Why? Oh because it’s God’s will for his children… oh okay… that seals it…

 I will ALWAYS BE JOYFUL AND THANKFUL… NO MATTER WHAT HAPPENS!!!

Ummm… I don’t know about you… but yeah… that does NOT happen in my life.

I am NOT always joyful and thankful in all my circumstances. I don’t always pray through things.

Sometime I downright complain. Sometimes I give God the silent treatment.

 And being thankful? When we were sued for a million dollars; when my mom, dad and grandma died of cancer in two years; when our family dog died; when my husband could not get a job to save his life; when we had no hot water, waited in long lines at the food bank; got on welfare and food stamps; had one broken down car after another, with no funds to purchase a new one; gas and electric bills rolling in with 24 hour notices on them; counting change to pay for gas and sports and activities for our kids to be involved in, like normal kids; anxiety attacks that put me in the hospital; depression that tormented my husband; coaches bullying my son; mean girls spewing hate towards my daughter; broken washing machine; deep wounds coming up to the surface.

Sure I will be thankful for all those things… ummm… or maybe not.

Seven years of sorrow consumed my family like piranhas in our lives. It literally took us down to the bone. Raw, true, vulnerable. We were exposed, bare, broken… yet we kept our eyes on Jesus. That does not mean we were singing the halleluiah chours every day… but we continually looked to him, complained to, cried out to him, cussed at him. It was a purge, a volcanic eruption of every hidden and pressed down wound that was trapped in our soul. It came gushing out with a vengeance and kept on flowing for years…

But in the midst of this purge…something sneaked up on us. A quiet, secret, precious gift. The best kind of gift you can receive. You know the kind you never ever imagined or even thought of. The one that is everything you never knew you wanted. You know those kind. Well this is what the LORD gave to us.

A GIFT, all wrapped up in sorrow. We didn’t know it at the time, but the trials, the sorrow, the pain… It was just wrapping paper. It was the box that held the gift. As we went through each hard thing, as we endured each sorrow, as each wave of unexpected trial hit us in the face… we were being trained on how to unwrap this gift; how to use it. The trials were perfecting our faith, so that we could be joyful in our trials. We are nowhere experts at how to use this gift… but we have it in our possession and are doing our best to use it daily.

It seems that no matter where I turn today, sorrow, anger, grief, pain, hopelessness overcomes the world. I hear story after story of people who are overwhelmed by the tragedies of life. Do I say, “Always be joyful and thankful and pray, no matter your circumstances?” Um… no, I don’t. It is not a gift I can give. What I can give, is the expression of the gift I unwrapped in my own circumstances. I can bring comfort, prayer, love, hope. Walking out the Christian faith is no picnic. It is an everyday battle. All day and night the enemy comes to steal, kill and destroy us. All day and night, we have to fight the attack.

Thankfulness, joy, prayer… those are some to the weapons we have to fight back. Those are just some of the gifts God has given us to overcome darkness. Satan knows his days are numbered and so fights with a fury to turn us away from LOVE. In just the last two days, I have heard stories of unexpected death, suicide, homelessness, debilitating injury, cancer, rejection, abandonment, fear.

“Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let the endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing.” James 1:2-4

Here it is again, finding joy in the midst of various trials. Why? Because this testing of our faith produces endurance. Endurance for what? Endurance for the battle. The everyday struggles that the enemy hurls at us. The traumatic events that the enemy tries to destroy us with. Endurance is the power to endure (last, survive, continue) an unpleasant or difficult process or situation without giving way.

Those who endure through great hardship, who find joy, who thank God in the midst of it, who pray without fail… We are counted as blessed. (James 5:11) For we know that it will push us to be more like Jesus. It is hard and I wish we could forgo the whole process. Yet the process works the sin out of us. It is a purification process- “making us perfect and complete, lacking nothing.”

Still, God is compassionate and merciful in the process. Giving us grace through the process.

My heart is full, my mind is overwhelmed; my love is deep, my anger is intense; my resolve is mighty, my resources are few. Still, with everything in me… I will praise my God, my ABBA, who give me life in the midst of this dying world. I will be thankful that I am His, even when everything around me fails. This world is not my home. I am a visitor, a stranger, on a journey home to live forever in perfection with my Savior, with my brothers and sisters in Christ.

I long for all of you to come. I desperately desire that all seek this gift of endurance in the trials, so that you will find yourself unwrapping the JOY, the deep, true, unfailing JOY that comes from persevering and believing that God has never left you. It is there that peace comes. It is there that rest remains.

Perfection is impossible… but blamelessness is POSSIBLE. Perfection is our goal… always walking towards it. And although it can never be obtained on this earth, it is the direction in which we are going. Thanking God along the way, being joyful no matter the circumstances, always praying and talking with God about the journey. This is His will for us… this is our goal.

May today bring us opportunities to share joy, be thankful and pray for others… NO MATTER THE CIRCUMSTANCES. 

Faith in the midst of hardship

The hardest thing about faith is the ability to hold on to something that is not tangible. To believe that, no matter what my eyes see, God is right beside me.

Since we closed the restaurant, we have lived by faith. Trusting God, that no matter what our circumstances look like, He will always provide. I have cried and cussed and laughed and been seriously depressed in the process. I am not one who looks at the possibility of being homeless, or carless or foodless and says, "Praise the Lord!"

I am one who says, "What the F Lord?!?!!?" I don't talk to my God like He is some distant deity, I talk to Him like He is my best friend. Flaws and all, realistic, honest, organic, true me.

I sit here... waiting... waiting for life to take a turn. A financial turn, a job, a home, a car. Still in the same place we were when the restaurant closed. 6 years of hardship... 6 years of lack... 6 years of hoping and believing BY FAITH.

I don't see it. I don't see when it will end, but I believe, BY FAITH in a God who loves me that is soon. It is not easy. Money continues to evade us, cars continue to fall apart on us, and a home continues to be out of reach. I breathe... my heart rate rises, my head pounds. It’s getting old, worn out, tired.

Aren't you, the reader, tired of hearing the same old story about the Beukers? Still without a job or a steady means of income to sustain us? Haven't you questioned our motives, intentions or work ethic, due to the situation we are in? I would, if I were on the other side of this.

God always provides. He doesn't fail us. But it doesn't make the reality any easier. It doesn't make waiting until the final hour any better. I still cry when we don't get the job applied for. I still cuss when the car doesn't work and we have no money to fix it. I still get depressed when I don't know how we are going to feed our kids. I don't share it as much. I don't want to be "that person." You know the ones. The ones who always need something, who are always down on their luck. I want to be the person that is always helping, always giving, always encouraging.

I wrote a blog when my mom was dying called, “Jesus wept.” It was about the notion that Jesus cried when he heard that Lazarus died, EVEN THOUGH, even though he knew he was going to raise him from the dead. The emotion of a friend dying was so great, that even the Son of God, who knows the beginning from the end, let out an emotional burst of tears.

That is where I am today. EVEN THOUGH I know my God will provide, THROUGH FAITH, the emotion behind the reality burst out of me with great intensity. I am ready for this season of my life to be over. I realized the other day, that half of Elijah’s schooling years have been hardship. HALF! It started his 6^th grade year and now he is in 12^th, getting ready to graduate. It’s pretty much all my other two kids know. They were too little to remember the debt free, stay at home homeschooling mom. They mostly remember loss and lack.

That overwhelms my emotions, and pours out of me. No matter how hard we have tried, there has not been much respite. It has been a constant pounding of the waves of financial hardship. My legs shake from the weariness of trying to stand in the pounding. My body shakes from the cold water that just pushed me over and tossed me around.

We, Bill and I, made a decision. We need to be in a place where he can work, where there are opportunities for employment in his field. So our eyes are including areas that are not in the Central Valley. Fresno, is our home. It has been the city we have chosen to raise our kids. Twelve years we have lived here. We are faced with the certainty that without a job, with unemployment benefits gone, living on faith and food stamps, a borrowed car and a rented house going up for sale… we are in the same situation we were when we lost the restaurant…two steps away from being homeless, AGAIN!!!

Have we not learned the lesson? Have we missed something? I am waiting for the moment. You know the moment when you finally make it to the other side. When you can look back and say, “Awe, I did it, I pushed through and overcame.” The Joseph moment. That is what I affectionately refer to. The moment, when, after all the hardship he went to, was finally released from prison and made ruler of all of Egypt, right beneath Pharaoh. Or how about the Job moment. After losing everything, he remained faithful, never turning his back on God, and God restored all that he had lost, 7 times over. Even Job told the Lord to curse the day he was born, because the hardship was so great. I have never done that. I just say, “What the F?!?!?” to Him.

There is only so much you can do, only so much you can say. For me and my family, homelessness and serving God is so much more fulfilling than doing something unethical to make a living. But it doesn’t make it easy. In fact, it is excruciatingly painful and exhausting to keep having FAITH in extreme hardship. In addition to the financial burdens, we have been faced with the death of both of my parents, and the emotional trauma that came with their rejection of me as a person.

Then there are my kids, who I try to protect. They too have experienced hardship. My older son faced racism- yes, my predominately “white” son was discriminated against by his coach, who is African American. It has torn me up. Infuriated me. I have found myself looking to Martin Luther King Jr. for quotes and encouragement. It has made me have even more empathy than I ever did before for ANYONE who has been discriminated against due to the color of their skin or race. More hardship, but for my child. My daughter experienced bullying from her cheer coach. She learned to stand up in the face of hardship and was then punished for it. My sweet little girl, who loves everyone, began to turn cynical and angry. She saw injustice and experienced the ugly side of nepotism. We had to help her process the pain of watching the bully stay and coach and her being asked to leave her team for standing up to her. Even today, she is fighting through it, learning to overcome the abuse of a coach. My middle, highly dyslexic, struggles academically. We had to fight and claw for him to be tested for a 504 plan, so that he would have an equal opportunity to succeed in school. He fights stigma of having a disability with humor and being goofy, but I know it hard for him.

FAITH… more faith… believing the hardship my children have faced will benefit their character. I try to show them the positives of being discriminated against, being bullied and having a disability. Empathy, being an overcomer, loving your enemies… I try to stay positive and let it drive their love for all people. Let is marinate to give them savory faith. The financial hardship gives them a broader spectrum of compassion for others. They are blessed! I mean blessed! My extended family floods them with blessings… Aunts, uncles, grandparents… they shower them with the things we cannot. So they do not lack in material things. They do not live in poverty. They know they are loved, they know they are safe. They know what it is to have plenty and they know what it is to have lack.

So faith remains to be the constant in our lives. The one thing that never changes, the one thing that we can all depend on. Faith, is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. That is the story of our life. The story that has carved the deep crevices of character and compassion into our hearts.

I write, to help me process, to help me breathe. My heart rate is slowing down, my blood pressure is lowering. It is my therapy. My way to live. It gives me a canvas in which I can paint the picture of my heart. I stand back and see color. There is no rhyme of reason to the strokes, but it is our life. There is no more room to paint. I hope that soon the Lord will give us a new canvas to paint, a new book to write.

For now, I will go back to my reality, hoping, believing, and living by FAITH.