I decided to keep my long meditations over at Floydville and use this blog to send out the interesting developments I am noticing on the web and in our culture so I renamed this blog Doug Watching. I will however notify when a Floydville post pops up.

In the last six days, my life has transformed in ways I have yet to fully
grasp. I am grateful to a world of people who’ve played various roles in
this event. First and foremost, Izaak’s gift and act of personal sacrifice
goes beyond my ability to fully express adequate appreciation. All I can say
is “Thank you for laying down your life for mine.”

As always, my secret weapon in life is my wife Kelly. She stays in the
background, taking care of me and host of other issues that allow me to
simply be. She is a gift I never deserved but received and I am thankful.
Then I think of the family and friends who surrounded Izaak and myself with
various forms of support from Jeremy’s popular and continuous kidneyblogging to the ongoing presence of my parents, Kelly’s parents and Izaak’s parents.
We were touched by so many friends it would be difficult to single some out
for fear I might forget others, but I hold the steady encouragement of
friends in my heart as a gift from heaven.

I could continue by mentioning the thousands of people who have been praying
for days, weeks, months and even years. The medical staff who tirelessly
worked to make sure both of us received the care we needed for complete
recovery. And there are countless other people who contributed in ways we
will never fully realize. I know you’re there and I am thankful.

In one sense, it seems as though a major landmark has passed. And often
during a crisis our need to reach for God and others intensifies. Thus last
week I wrote a few thoughts on learning to rest in the arms of everlasting
love. Sometimes I fear that after the event passes we might be tempted to
return to our culture’s abiding value of self-reliance. After the intensity
of the crisis diminishes, we can return to “normal lives.”

But in another sense, crisis simply reveals the illusion of self-reliance.
We are deeply dependent creatures and trust is an essential part of a truly
human community. We live in a world that often strains our capacity to
trust. We live in a world of bank fraud and corporate corruption, political
sloganeering and shameless marketing manipulation. We live in a world of
broken vows and broken hearts.

How is possible for trust to ever grow and flourish when we are continually
confronted with so many reasons to trust in ourselves but be cautious with
others. I cannot speak for others, but for myself trust in people can only
grow from trust in God. But one might say “How can I trust God when I prayed
for help and he never responded?” I might suppose more agnostics and
atheists arise from a sense of personal disappointment in God than from
reasoned argument.

My ability to trust God does not grow from a generic sense of the divine but
from a story that echoes through history. In Jesus, I behold a life of
absolute trust in the goodness of the Father. Jesus enters time as “God with
us.” This unique person who is both man and God reveals one God who is three
persons: a communion of love. Acting on behalf of the Father and by the
power of the Spirit, Jesus comes to address the deep chaos that tears
through creation replacing evil with good.

Jesus comes to address this evil by offering God’s response to this evil.
His response is to bear the chaos, the brokenness, and the death of this
disturbance within himself. When I look at his story from the outside, I see
a strange story of a young prophet who woefully crosses the wrong people and
ends up dying. His story appears to give no reason for trust in God or
people. In fact, his story appears to reinforce the reason why we cannot
ever really trust another.

And yet the gospel writers tell a fuller, more complete story. Yes, they
admit the shameful death and apparent defeat. But then they bear witness to
another reality that changes everything: resurrection. In the resurrection
of Jesus, their faith is reborn and their world is recreated. What appears
to be tragedy turns out to be comedy of the highest order. Good truly
prevails. The Father ultimately vindicates the Son and the Son’s message of
reconciliation.

So when someone is convinced that God abandoned him or her at the critical
moment in life, I can only look to Jesus who reveals that what appears to be
abandonment today may in fact turn out to be vindication tomorrow. We see
the amazing story of vindication repeated again and again throughout history
in the lives of Jesus’ followers. Paul dies an apparent failure in his
mission to the Gentiles and yet his message of grace continues to echo.
Countless early Christians died at the hands of pagans and heretics as they
stood for the truth revealed in Jesus and yet that truth did not die and
continues to reverberate around the world.

Vindication cannot be understood in the moment but only in light of history.
I may not see vindication today or tomorrow but I can trust a God who is
faithful and will vindicate me through His love in Jesus Christ. By
realizing that God is truly faithful, I can trust him with my life and rest
that I do exist for a purpose, my life is not a meaningless occurrence and
that in the end He will vindicate me in His love.

This trust allows me to rest when the daily barrage of disappointments
challenge that trust. It allows me to move beyond a momentary trust in the
midst of disaster to an abiding trust through both the good and the bad. It
allows me to rest in peace whether sitting at a dialysis machine or enjoying
the gift of a new transplant. And from this trust in the absolute
faithfulness of God, I can begin trust other people.

Reciprocal love is an illusion without trust. It is simply a contract. But
trust moves relationship beyond a social contract to a communion of love. By
cultivating trust in other people, I can enjoy the fruit of an eternal
loving community even now. Trust is a gift for living moment by moment in a
world of broken people. It is a gift of God that gives us hope to reach
toward to future restoration when everything I see questions that hope.

So how do I cultivate trust in other people? It is not a technique or a
formula that our science obsessed culture always looks to discover. It is
not some secret wisdom that has been hidden and only the best–selling
motivational writers have unveiled. Trust is organic more like gardening. It
is something cultivated day in and day out.

When I plant a garden, I face a host of small responsibilities to keep the
plants healthy and productive. I plant seed, water the ground, remove weeds
and allow the wonder of the sun to awaken life. There is no magic technique
that makes gardening more enriching. In fact, as many people can attest, the
tomatoes from a simple home garden consistently taste better than tomatoes
produced with the very latest technological advances.

Cultivating a garden means that there will be disappointment. Some plants
will simply not produce as I had hoped. Other times external conditions like
too much blistering sun or too much flooding rain diminish or even destroy a
harvest. And yet, gardening also surprises us with delight of fresh
vegetables that often overshadows store-bought counterparts.

Cultivating trust in the people around me requires small daily attentions.
There are times of weeding, times of planting, times of watering, times of
waiting, time of harvest. All these small attentions enrich our lives in
ways that money, entertainment, and more stuff simply cannot do. Of course,
we will experience disappointment. In fact, profound disappointments that
can even cause us to despair of life. And yet there are also surprises of
delight that simply cannot compare to any artificial technological
reproduction.

As we rest in the ultimate faithfulness of God, we are free to risk a life
of trust in other people. And this risk is very real, yet the reward in one
sense makes us human.

As I recover and relearn life as a kidney transplant recipient, I realize my
essential priorities are still the same. I realize I need people and I need
God’s unfathomable grace. So I return to the little details, the little
things, the little dailies of cultivating trust and building relationships
with friends and strangers that will transform a barren plain into a
fruitful paradise.

I wanted to take a moment to send out a short note about Doug’s surgery.  We just received a phone call from the transplant coordinator, and she said that the Doctor has successfully harvested the kidney from Izaak and sealed his incision.  They are preparing to implant the kidney in Doug. 

I will not barrage you with emails about Doug’s condition, but I know that many of you have been thinking and praying for Doug and Izaak.  I am liveblogging all updates on my blog: http://www.jeremyfloyd.com.  Please feel free to check it often.  All items are in reverse chronological order.  You may click on the category "Doug & Izaak" to see all pertinent posts.

Thank you for your outpouring of compassion.
With kind regards,

Jeremy

Jeremy P. Floyd
jeremy@jeremyfloyd.com
http://www.jeremyfloyd.com

After lying in bed for two hours dreaming that I was sitting my den, I thought I might sit up and dream that I’m back in the bed. In a few short hours, I’ll drive our to the dialysis clinic. Then I’ll go to lunch because you can never go wrong with a right meal. And then, Kelly, Izaak and I will drive over to UT Hospital and check in. We’ll spend the night at UT and then on Wednesday morning, the surgery will begin. I feel like an anxious spaceship as the count down moves closer to blastoff.

Since the surgery was finalized a few weeks ago, I’ve felt a slight anxiety like a child feels before a big vacation. The night before our family packed up the car and headed off for our summer adventure, my sister and I overflowed with jitters. For some reason, on those nights our beds simply couldn’t contain all the jitters and we ended up lying on my parent’s bedroom floor. I say lying because we rarely slept. We simply closed our eyes, rolled around, and looked at the clock every 30 seconds.

This relates to another anxiety I shared with many of my fundamentalist friends. We sometimes feared that the rapture would occur before something really good happened in our lives. So if my family was planning a big trip to Disney World, I might fear that Christ would decide to split the Eastern sky before my big day with Mickey Mouse. Oh the horror that time would end before I got ride Space Mountain.

Of course rapture fears penetrated more than just vacations. On more than one occasion, my folks came to pick me up late from school, and I was certain that Christ had raptured his church, the tribulation was now underway, and I was most definitely “left behind.” With an overactive imagination, I could easily envision multiple terrors unfolding before my very eyes.

The only cure for this unhealthy addiction to terror was and is trust. If I could but simply trust my parents, and the Lord, I could rest that things would work out fine. Trust played a fundamental, unspoken role in so much of my childhood life. I never worried about food (which is good because I like to eat). In fact, I never really thought about how my parents would provide the next meal. My only concern was that the bad taste of the vegetables would not overpower the good taste of the dessert.

I trusted them to provide my every meal because they were trustworthy. Over and over and over and over they provided. They fed me and clothed me and protected me and implicitly taught me that they would unquestionably take care of me. As I reflect on their provision, I think of how the ancient Hebrews understood faith.

For the Hebrews, faith was not an affirmation of some abstract set of ideas. Faith meant to trust in a God who is trustworthy. The weight of trust is on the Lord. Like a sleeping child cradling in the encircling arms of a parent, trust is resting, often unconsciously, in the care of our loving Creator. As they trusted in the trustworthiness of God, they would be changed into an image of that trustworthiness.

In other words, the character of God that makes him absolutely reliable would be stamped into the very fiber of their being. His faithfulness would manifest in their lives, and they would become a faithful, trustworthy people. In spite of their weaknesses, He was still trustworthy.

And even now as I write in the middle of the night, I continue learning the gentle lesson of trust. I continue learning to trust a God who is present but not necessarily visible. He is always and has never not been present. Just as He taught a struggling nation of nomads to trust Him in cloud day and the fire by night, He still teaches His people to trust in His unfailing presence.

On the day I entered the dialysis clinic He was present. On the day I sat at school thinking the rapture had occurred He was present. From the moment of my conception to the day I take my final breath, He was, is and will be present. And all along the way, His Spirit gently, softly teaches me the rest of trust.

We are not all called to the same journey. Some people will scale mountains, some people will build cities and some people may only wash dishes. But each of us is called to rest in His goodness. Each of us has the pleasure of learning to trust in the faithfulness of the Lord.

I’m a slow learner, but I’m learning to delight in His lessons. And even now I lean my head back into the arms of everlasting love.

Izaak Standridge, a young man in our church, has passed the testing and
qualifies to donate a kidney to me. The surgery is currently scheduled for
June 14. Izaak has been a part of my life for about 10 years. He is college
student with a passion for history and political science. When my kidney
first took a downhill turn this spring, Izaak immediately responded by
offering his kidney. This was a big decision and I didn’t want to encourage
him, but let him decide this compeltely on his own.

After discussion with his family, Izaak pursued the donor program and went
through a series of tests to check our compatiblity, his health condition
and his kidney funcitonality. After passing all the tests, the surgeons met
with Izaak this week and scheduled a surgery.

As an act of such sacrifice is hard to fathom, and I can only respond with
heartfelt thanks. Izaak has demonstrated a level of Christian action that
few of us ever embody. He acted in a way that demonstrates the community of
Christ and life poured out on behalf of others. I am grateful and honored by
his offering.

I aprpeciate all the prayers and words of encouragement, you have offered
and now I ask for one more prayer. Please pray for the surgery, for Izaak’s
health before and after the surgery, for my health and that my body will not
reject the kidney but will adapt and that I’d be able to wean off the
medications.

I will continue to update you in the days and months ahead. Praise the Lord!

As one of the tallest boys in class, I was expected to play basketball. So from the fourth through the sixth grade, I dressed, practiced and played in almost every game. In three years of play, I scored one basket. The whole school cheered: it was a glory day.

Of course, the actual accomplishment of one basket in three years could not begin to compare with the vast accomplishments in my mind. For in every game during those three years, I spent most of my time sitting on the bench and imagining that I achieved amazing feats of athletic prowess, bringing the whole school to their feet in admiration. In my dream world, I enjoyed endless accolades for one victory after another.

It’s nice to be glorified.

Whether for beauty or skills or intellect or performance most of us like to be recognized, to be lauded, to be praised. My overactive imagination gravitates toward new ways of winning esteem and glory. In fact, it seems that whatever activity is at hand, I suddenly become the mental hero in the midst.

If I am watching a spy movie, it’s just a matter of minutes before I begin envisioning my own escapades among the notorious enemies. Soon I’ve rescued the captive, captured the enemy and saved the day. A small parade in my honor might be appropriate.

When I felt called to preach, I imagined that I was being commissioned to launch a new reformation on the scale of Martin Luther’s project. Standing before a congregation of the faithful, I envisioned uttering such powerful words that people fell to the ground in tears. Like Taliesin of old, my words would clench the tongue of every person in the room, as conviction spread like wildfire.

Even sitting in the hospital room, I’m pretty good at finding glory. I see myself fading from this life and passing from this world to the next. As doctors and nurses and family and friends gather round the body of this poor dear soul who died so young, I suddenly come back to life. Light streams from my body and everyone trembles in the glory.

We live in a world that lusts for honor and glory. From jobs to church to family to the community, we want recognition. We want someone to say that we are of value and that we matter, that we make a difference. We yearn for a glory that others will recognize and acknowledge.

But the glory of this world is fading. The trophies tarnish, the memories fade, the light dissipates. As the poet reminded us, it is better for the athlete to die young with his glory still in tact than to die old and watch it gradually fade over time. Whether he dies young or old, it will fade. He will be forgotten.

Paul says, But he that glories, let him glory in the Lord (2 Corinthians 10:17). There is so much conflict, so many self-esteem problems, so much discouragement that comes from the longing, the frustrated craving for honor and glory here and now. But glory is due to the Lord alone. Outside the light of God’s glory, I have no lasting glory. It is all temporary illusion.

The truly free person can let go of glory. She can be overlooked. She can be forgotten. All claims to honor and glory and success can be stripped away and she can still rejoice. The human heart is so subtly evil that we can glory in anything. We cry out for revival and if revival comes, we glory in our accomplishment. As we fall before the Lord in humble repentance, we glory in our brokenness. Whether in disaster or in success, we can still find a way to glory in self.

The Lord strips us of all glory except his own. We have no true glory. It is all illusion. Isaiah was a prophet who used his tongue to proclaim the holiness of God, but in the presence of God, he realized he was a man of unclean lips. The very thing he offered as a thing of glory was unacceptable outside of God’s grace.

The only one worthy of glory is the Lord. It is the Lord’s work. It is the Lord’s love. It is the Lord’s victory. We glory in him alone. The mystery is that God’s glory, God’s love, God’s presence completes, sustains and will ultimately meet my deepest needs. Our need for significance, for acceptance, for value comes from His unconditional love.

Success and failure are temporary conditions. What looks like a success today could be disaster tomorrow. And what seems to be failure after failure after failure might simply be the prelude to a great achievement. Our challenge is to be faithful in what we are called to do and then rest, trusting God’s purposes, God’s love and God’s glory alone.

As I learn to rest in God’s glory alone, I can let go. I am free to embrace humiliation along with exaltation. Like Paul, I can say, “I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do everything through him who gives me strength” (Philippians 4:11-13).