rebuild: how we heal, protect, and recover

We never need someone’s permission to do the right thing. Seems like that should be obvious, but apathy and cowardice and destruction hide behind many doors, and “I’m not allowed to” is sometimes one of them.

rebuild: how we heal, protect, and recover | Shannon Guerra

Years ago when the Matanuska River was flooding its banks and the local government was dinking around with bureaucratic red tape, we watched a house a few doors down from my grandma’s tip into the river as the water ate up the ground underneath it and then proceeded to slowly swallow the house as it floated toward the Knik Arm.

It was 1991. The edge of the river moved closer to her house every day, and if nothing happened by the time it got to her property line it would be too late, because that was a mere hundred feet from the foundation of her house. So while those “in power” did nothing (and does that mean they’re really in power at all?) my dad and uncles dropped concrete slabs down the embankment to shore up the side, deterring the rapid erosion. They saved her house, and probably several others downriver, before a series of dykes were installed to keep the Matanuska in check.

So now it’s 33 years later, and in another rural part of the country we have a much bigger problem:

People are stranded in disaster areas without food, water, or fuel, and institutions and government blowhards who are supposed to help are confiscating supplies, and clearly up to something else.

[Warning: Many of these videos I’ve linked have language and other details you will not want to play around your kids. But adults need to hear it – we’re not sugar; we won’t melt.]

Citizens try to help but are blocked by government officials and threatened with arrest. Government resources are grounded instead of helping…but that doesn’t stop them from taking credit for what civilians are doing on their own.

People were dying as a senile “president” flew over, blocking air traffic from those trying to deliver supplies, undoubtedly causing more deaths from the delay.

If all this sounds unbelievable to you and you think things are fine, you need to turn off your TV and stop listening to people who are paid to lie to you, and start listening to real people. Like here. And here. And here.

A government who sent billions of dollars across the world to foreign nations now says there’s nothing left to give to citizens, but then releases a meager $750 via the flick of a middle finger to Americans who’ve lost everything.

What is happening?

If you were paying attention to what happened in Maui, you probably already know.

So…abhorrent, dire conditions in our own country. I sit here, far away in Southcentral Alaska, at my desk and on the couch and at the kitchen table with my family, remote from it all and yet hyperaware that Alaska has its own vulnerabilities and enemies, foreign and domestic. Wherever you are in America, you do, too.

But what can we do?

With such need, and corruption, and distance, what can we do that goes beyond mailing a check? How do we help, how do we resist, and how do we protect our own communities?

And I looked and arose and said to the nobles and to the officials and to the rest of the people, “Do not be afraid of them. Remember the Lord, who is great and awesome, and fight for your brothers, your sons, your daughters, your wives, and your homes.”

– Nehemiah 4:14

We create a life out of slow, single days, tiny beads on a string, and one event can wipe it all out. I look around, and everything I do is slow work: Growing food is slow, raising poultry is slow, writing is slow. Parenting and teaching and healing is slow. Supporting small businesses and strengthening families is slow.

It is easy to get bogged down looking too close at my own inabilities, and despair. The needs are immediate, relief needed right now. And we don’t know what tomorrow will bring. But we must not capitulate to the enemy’s ploy to make us feel powerless and helpless.

Prayer is fast. Miracles are fast, and they’re needed right now.

Prayer reaches across the distance and touches people at the speed of thought, bringing supernatural protection and favor and wisdom and guidance. We don’t know the details and most of us can’t get there, but God does and can, and is there.

Prayer doesn’t care about the mocking, scoffing, spitting, disbelieving. Let them berate and see how much peace they find from their ignorant faithlessness. It doesn’t care about permission or blowhards or red tape; it soars right over, blasts right through, the agreement with God’s goodness releasing His power to change situations, to create something out of nothing, to lead those who don’t know where to go or where to look, to draw water from the rock.

So there’s that, and it’s definitely something.

I had a long conversation with one of our kids about all these events, and why we do what we do – why we shop certain places and avoid others, why we spend time learning and teaching things that aren’t on a curriculum. You can’t go wrong in learning about prayer, healing, security, and food, I told her. All we can do is the thing God’s telling us to right now, today, in this moment.

For example, when you learn about healing, you learn that there are four stages to it: hemostasis (stopping the bleeding), inflammation (scabbing over), rebuilding, and strengthening.

What strikes me about this is that none of it is done in isolation: At first, the closest blood cells come together to clot and protect the wound. But then, white blood cells and oxygen come in. Then red blood cells come in, helping to rebuild new tissue.

We have a huge gash in our Southeastern states right now, and the process of stopping the bleeding, clotting, and protection is in full force thanks to those who didn’t wait for permission to do the right thing. Meanwhile, those of us holding down the fort in other areas do well to strengthen our immediate surroundings, to fight against the attempts to obliterate our communities and culture. We don’t know when our own tissue could be injured, or our red blood cells called in to reinforce healing needed nearby.

When all else fails and you are overwhelmed, unsure of what to do or prioritize, look at the core strengthening things. What foundations need shored up? What relationship needs some extra time, or just an extra hug? What small task is going to bolster your day tomorrow? Do you need an extra hour of sleep, an extra glass of water? We can get so focused on the big things that we forget the little things until they turn into big things we could’ve prevented.

And the effect of righteousness will be peace, and the result of righteousness, quietness and trust forever. My people will abide in a peaceful habitation, in secure dwellings, and in quiet resting places.

— Isaiah 32:17-18

There are so many voices out there. Many of them are good and true. But we still need to be quiet, to stop scrolling for a while, and listen for Him to speak specifically to us, just to us, in the quiet.

It’s important to starve the voices that aren’t true. We have to prioritize who we give the microphone to in our lives. We can turn the volume down on the excess noise in our society by trimming the amount of time we scroll.

We can’t go wrong in reaching out, making stronger connections, hugging the prickly kid, texting the distant kid, feeding more broth and tea to the sick kid. We can read good books, pray for our neighbors, grow and cook real food, memorize Scripture, learn new skills. We can repair rather than replace, create more and consume less. We can smile and talk with the person in line at the grocery store or post office. We can filter our media consumption, and prioritize what gives life, beauty, joy, and wisdom.

We will probably never regret doing things like deep cleaning our kitchen, taking flowers to a friend, or spending an extra few minutes talking with our kids at bedtime.

These are the things that bring oxygen, that create healing, that prevent injury and sickness, that declare to the world, We are building Kingdom culture and we have no intention of stopping. Where it’s damaged and hurting, we will rebuild and reinforce and strengthen, and as many times as it is wounded, we will keep rebuilding, and won’t wait for paperwork to go through or for bureaucrats to finish dinking around or for a government blowhard to give us the green light.

We are Kingdom people; we live in the green light, and we will keep moving forward.

We don’t need anyone’s permission to love our neighbor. We don’t need the government’s permission to protect our families or build and strengthen our culture. We just need to do it.

for those who weep

for those who weep | Shannon Guerra (excerpt from Risk the Ocean)

I was surrounded by chocolates. Or, to be honest, I was surrounded by a variety of wrappers and a few leftover chocolates that barely escaped with their lives. We pitched up and down the waves, rocking and weeping until the wee hours.

If you’ve been up all night and cried till you have no more tears left in you – you will know that there comes in the end a sort of quietness. You feel as if nothing was ever going to happen again.

-C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

That eerie calm settles on the heels of grief, and when the hits keep coming we look at the future and wonder if this is a pattern we need to just face with bleak resignation. My life as I knew it is long gone, and I don’t like the way this is heading.

I was reading the book of John and got to the part about Martha and Mary and the raising of Lazarus. And He caught me on that one little verse and kept me there: Jesus wept.

Why, though? He knew He was going to raise Lazarus in just a few minutes. If He knew it was going to be good, why did He give in to grief in the meantime?

I think it has to do with what Martha said to Him a little earlier: “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” And a few minutes later, Mary came and said the same thing.

Now when Mary came to where Jesus was and saw Him, she fell at His feet, saying to Him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” 

John 11:32

They knew it, and He knew it. And I knew it, too. It was this: You could have prevented this.

In every loss we experience, it’s true. We’re aching and heaving, and He could have prevented it. Sometimes He does, more than we realize. And sometimes He doesn’t. And He weeps and rocks with us…more than we realize.

When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come with her also weeping, He was deeply moved in His spirit and greatly troubled.

John 11:33

Then He does something else that seems odd.

And He said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to Him, “Lord, come and see.”

John 11:34

Where did they lay him? Why did He ask that? Didn’t Jesus, the God-man, already know? It was more than that, though. He wasn’t just asking where the dead man was.

He was saying, Show me where it hurts.

And that’s when He cried.

He weeps with Mary and Martha – and us – because He understands that sometimes we experience loss and pain for the sake of the expansion of the Kingdom. He knows we come under attack and we don’t know how to handle all the upheaval. He weeps with us because He knows we hurt and we often don’t understand why. He knows we rock in agony with no answers; He knows our ship swings between the violence and the lullaby.

In loss – whether it’s the death of a person, a pet, our plans, or something else entirely – we want certainty and explanation, but what we usually get first is refinement. We learn a little more about what it is to walk into the unknown, blank pages He sends us into. Please don’t misunderstand me; I’m not talking about accepting a hindrance, sickness, or other harassment from the enemy. We must not fall for his trick of casting righteous-sounding blame on God for attacks that come from the pit of hell. Denying ourselves and following Him is a mission, not a malady. The calling out of our comfort zone is our cross.

Sometimes, because He causes all things for good for those who love Him, grief and loss launch us farther and faster into His assignment for us. He knows it’s hard and it grieves Him, too. But He also knows what’s coming.

Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God?”

John 11:40

We learn not to love our life so much – not because we’re ungrateful or bitter, but because we are unfettered and surrendered. We know this place isn’t permanent.

We’re not resigned. We’re reloading. And He’s not taking our life; He’s resurrecting it.


This is an excerpt from Risk the Ocean: An Adoptive Mom’s Memoir of Sinking and Sanctification.


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music in the rubble: how we fix what’s broken

An old, broken music box made its way into our house, and before I could hide it in the bin destined for the thrift store, the boys intercepted it. And they’re fascinated. They don’t care that it wobbles on one foot because the other three are missing, or that the mechanism busted sometime in the last 35 years of disuse so that it only works when you force the cylinder drum to turn.

music in the rubble: how we fix what's broken | shannon guerra

Kav asked how it makes the different notes of the song, and I pointed to the little strips of metal comb that flick against the raised braille-like spots on the rolling drum, each making their own sound because of their different lengths. He sat next to me on the couch and forced the music to play in sporadic rhythm while I read about Nehemiah.

I love the story of Nehemiah. When you look around and see so much brokenness that needs fixed or rebuilt, it’s encouraging to see that someone else has accomplished this on a massive scale in spite of vile opposition.

If you’re not familiar, the book of Nehemiah overlaps with Ezra (fun fact: they used to be one book) and they both cover the story of the Israelites returning to Jerusalem and rebuilding after the devastation of Babylonian invasion, circa 450 BC.

The walls are down. They’re unprotected. Nefarious characters oppose their efforts. The people are spread out and vulnerable. And there’s rubble everywhere.

In Judah it was said, “The strength of those who bear the burdens is failing. There is too much rubble. By ourselves we will not be able to rebuild the wall.”

– Nehemiah 4:14

I know, it’s all totally unrelated to life right now; I don’t even know why I’m talking about this.

Repairing the walls could, for us, mean many things: reforming education, restoring family wholeness, repairing our physical health, shoring up our Bible knowledge, removing corrupt leaders. It’s close and personal, but it’s also broad and cultural. Our habits are influenced by our generally excessive and deceptive media consumption. We are tired and distracted and overwhelmed, often at the expense of taking care of our communities, stewarding the space around us, and even knowing who our neighbors are.

Some of us were broken after years of disuse, and we stopped working, too. It takes a lot of pushing to get us to play, to force the music out. But the music is still there, inside, waiting.

I had a long conversation with a friend a couple weeks ago about difficult seasons in motherhood and ministry, and the complications that come into play (or more accurately, that come against our play) when those seasons move from hard to devastating, and we fight depression. This isn’t an easy thing to write about for a broad audience because the internet is full of weirdos and quasi-Christians and armchair quarterbacks, but I already wrote a book about my own experience with this so I’m gonna trust you all here.

Also, depending on where you come from (i.e., our experiences and circumstances), it’s easy to take a religiously shallow view of joy. The person who’s never experienced great loss or sacrifice has a hard time identifying with those who have, and when they encounter someone who’s broken they face a fork in the road that forces them to choose between humble compassion or proud religious cliches. One side admits it doesn’t understand or have all the answers, and the other pretends it does while moralizing ignorant drivel that is really no help at all.

Job recognized, as only a person in pain can do, that simple answers not only fail to relieve pain, they can literally drive a person further away from God.

– Dr. Henry Cloud, Changes That Heal

In the early years of our endeavors – like parenting, adopting, ministry, business – do we know anything about anything? We’re just doing our best with whatever work we’ve put our hands to.

And when we see that our work is working (the kid is obeying, the sickness is healing, the sales are coming in, the people are growing, progress is happening) then work becomes play. Hope and expectation make work into a playground, because our efforts are rewarded with fruitfulness. The little dopamine hits of motivation go a long way. Things are going great, we think, I must be pretty good at this.

She did not know anything about gardening, but the grass seemed so thick in some of the places where the green points were pushing their way through that she thought they did not seem to have room enough to grow….She went from place to place, and dug and weeded, and enjoyed herself so immensely that she was led on from bed to bed and into the grass under the trees. The exercise made her so warm that she first threw her coat off, and then her hat, and without knowing it she was smiling down on to the grass and the pale green points all the time.

– Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden

It works, we realize. If I push this button, then this happens. Maybe it doesn’t do it with perfect predictability, but it does it pretty much every time. So of course we keep on doing it.

But what if we push the button and nothing happens? Well, maybe things in the background are happening. So we wait, and keep pushing, and wait some more. We know these things take time. We know God has a plan. The details are more complex than what we can see on the surface. So we keep trying…and trying. And sometimes it works, and we keep going.

But other times, for a long time, we don’t see anything happening. We still push the buttons, but without enthusiasm or energy. The playground has turned into a penal institution, and what used to be play has become drudgery.

And that’s when we stop. We stop expecting, we stop hoping, we stop going. We stop working.

Hope deferred makes the heart sick,
    but a desire fulfilled is a tree of life.

– Proverbs 13:12

When I was talking to my friend, I told her how I came to a slow realization in my own brokenness that I actually had a valid need for happiness, and it was such a pivot point for learning to conquer depression.

We tend to think of happiness as an extra – it’s nice, of course, but truly hard-core Christians can go without it; it’s a perk if you get it, but totally not necessary. We concede to joy, yes, because joy has more spiritual connotations and we know it’s mentioned in really important things like the fruit of the Spirit, but then we make hair-splitting efforts to separate joy from happiness, as though they’re not really the same thing. Because, they say (whoever “they” are) you can have joy without being happy…but really, can you?

I don’t think so; it’s just rhetoric. Once you take the spiritual spin off it, that’s like saying you can have rage without having anger. And when you’re fighting for the motivation and ability to just keep putting one foot in front of the other, those kinds of hollow arguments might make the speaker feel clever about themselves for a minute but they’re a total waste of time for those of us trying to navigate darkness.

But joy isn’t based on circumstances, some will argue. And that can be true, but it doesn’t nullify the related truth that circumstances change our outlook and perspective on things. God cares about our circumstances. So we need to shift our gaze from arguing about words to actually solving problems, and one of the big problems is that many Christians have a hard time feeling okay about being happy.

The need for happiness flies in the face of any legalism we grew up with, because in those circles we’re mostly taught to quietly suffer for Jesus because God loves us very much and has a miserable plan for our lives.

Instead of experiencing the full gospel, we settle for the self-righteous parts that make us look good and pious, and make excuses for the parts that other people might judge us for if we lived them out too loudly.

(Quick side note: If we diminish our faith and understanding of God to meet the approval of others, we are succumbing to fear of man rather than fear of God…and that’s idolatry.)

In shunning one extreme, I fell for the other, and needed to find equilibrium again. But when I realized I needed to be happy, I also realized there was something more to “the joy of the Lord is our strength” than trite religious sentiment. I needed to see that what I was expending myself for was actually worthwhile, and that my pain had a purpose. I needed to rediscover important things like laughter and beauty.

If I was called to push that button, I had a genuine need to see something light up or make some noise. Because my life had value and God wasn’t calling me to waste it in futility.

It is good to give thanks to the Lord,
    to sing praises to your name, O Most High;
to declare your steadfast love in the morning,
    and your faithfulness by night,
to the music of the lute and the harp,
    to the melody of the lyre.
For you, O Lord, have made me glad by your work;
    at the works of your hands I sing for joy.

– Psalm 92:1-4

My friend told me about this group of moms she was once a part of – ambitious moms, doing-all-the-things moms. And she realized that the kids in this group didn’t need their moms to do more things; they didn’t need better activities or more resources. They needed happier moms. They needed more peaceful, less stressed-out moms. They needed their moms to have a stronger mom culture.

But it’s not just a mom thing; we all need a stronger culture. We all have personal and cultural walls that need fixing. They broke down when we stopped working, but what if we could figure out how to make the work feel like play again, and we started rebuilding?

In hard, broken seasons, too often we make excuses for the music not playing. We tell ourselves it’s not necessary because there are so many other important things to be focused on. So we sit in the quiet and the quiet gets louder, and we forget that we were made for joy and purpose.

But the Holy Spirit is calling us to push that drum a little, and see what notes come out. Remember who you are, Love, He says. Remember the things you used to delight in, the things I made you to light up over. Do not neglect the joy inside you; pursue it so others will see its fruit.

…She could not believe that she had been working two or three hours. She had been actually happy all the time; and dozens and dozens of the tiny, pale green points were to be seen in cleared places, looking twice as cheerful as they had looked before when the grass and weeds had been smothering them.

“I shall come back this afternoon,” she said, looking all round at her new kingdom, and speaking to the trees and the rose-bushes as if they heard her.

– Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden

When Kavanagh turns the wheel, he doesn’t know he’s working to make the music come out. The music is his motivation; he pushes the drum and joy emerges. If it didn’t make music, he wouldn’t bother turning it. He would abandon it and find something else to do.

In our own situations, we look around, exhausted and overwhelmed at these broken areas, but God has buried music in the rubble.

So we ask Him to help us find it, help us push the wheel, help us hear. And we begin to pick up on faint strains:

Five minutes of peaceful conversation in an otherwise strained relationship.

The ability to calmly stand up for ourselves in a conflict.

Four hours of solid sleep when we’d only been getting scraps of rest.

A text from a friend who is praying for us. And the Holy Spirit reminding us to pray for another friend, and to send them an encouraging text, too.

And then we start noticing other things, and we have the strength to rebuild in other ways. Smaller things like giving better eye contact, or picking up trash as we walk, or eating fruit instead of sugar. The shy person is brave and says hello, the lethargic person reads something a little harder than they’re used to. The dad figures out how to fix the music box…or the mom finally remembers to take the bin to the thrift store.

We’re all on our own part of the wall, building and rebuilding, making our own sound, cleaning up the rubble. These are the notes we play. There’s joy – yes, happiness – in these tiny accomplishments, and music emerges as we feel the wheel moving under our fingertips.


P.S. If you’re curious about the story of Nehemiah, The Bible Project has a great 8-minute video here.

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