Ruth Bears Witness: Recent Episodes
Carly Absher
“Do not urge me to leave you or turn back from you...your people will be my people” (Ruth 1:16). My name is not Ruth but I love her story. As a multiracial family, many people do not see or experience the world the way we do: racism, managing rare diseases (like PANDAS & cancer) and foster/adoption journeys abound - slamming us into systems of oppression and injustice that I never knew before. But Jesus...I bear witness to what He is teaching me in this “new” world as He heals our broken pieces.
In ongoing suffering that has no end, there often isn’t a tangible reason. Connection with Jesus is ultimately the answer that remains elusive when trying to make meaning out of pain. But if we choose to lean in rather than avoid the hurt, we begin to find Jesus in his humanity looking back at us with love and tenderness. He knows.
You would think “fighting” cancer would take a toll on my person. But maybe not so much….as a person of faith, I see myself as a created being. I’m learning to see how precious life is, how precious I am to God. How precious you are to God because you were created by a God who says that we are loved and WE ARE GOOD.
Less than 2 years after finishing treatment from breast cancer, I find out I have a new aggressive cancer diagnosis - a whole new horizon.
Very few people can actually imagine the perspective of the father who seeks Jesus’ healing for his ill son whose ailment is described as “demon possession” in the Bible. It sounds very familiar to families with children suffering from Auto-immune Encephalitis and uncontrolled epilepsy. But we can re-imagine what this father was really asking for if we have lived through the same hell ourselves. In this episode I Re-imagine the father’s back story.
Many people like to throw around the word “diversity” as if it is something that just happens. Divine Diversity requires a lot from each of us if we want to really know, enjoy relationship and deeply love believers from all walks of life. My son’s soccer team shows us how it’s done.
I’ve had the privilege of learning from many many BIPOC professors, mentors, friends and family members throughout my life and they have taught me so many valuable lessons that I see most White Folks rarely learn and enjoy the rich intimacy of multi-racial relationships with people from vastly different cultures and experiences outside of their own. And BIPOC experience a broad scale of injustice from hardly ever to every single day. It’s up to White Folks to be aware and sensitive to that spectrum.
A closer look at what hate is - anything that isn’t loving is hateful. White Christians must face the level of impact White Supremacy has had on their hearts and minds to truly love people outside of their circles well. Where do you stand on the White Supremacy Continuum? I am recovering from its devastation on my heart.
I had a vivid dream about a dear friend who is a fellow breast cancer survivor but this dream had so many layers to it, another way to understand how Jesus is grieving the self inflicted wounds of dominant culture supremacy in His Bride, the church.
(WARNING: extremely offensive language is used in this podcast as I tell our story). I never knew the depths of hate and violence of racism until it touched our family. It’s worse than I imagined and my words can’t even conjure up the charged shocks in the air of imminent and unreasonable danger. And so I speak as a reforming White Supremacist.
6 months after our daughter’s first round of IVIG, her symptoms began returning. Within a few months, the Emergency Dept’s entrance became a revolving door again. Until she had IVIG in the ED on PANDAS Awareness Day (October 9th)
PANDAS is dangerous both for the child and for the family. Thousands of families suffer with stories eerily similar to ours but without healing in the end. Because the can’t get diagnosed or access treatment. I won’t stand for it.
After 7 years searching, praying, begging for help to heal a very sick daughter, we finally narrowed her diagnosis down to PANDAS and we had to pay every single penny to heal her.
I checked my daughter into an inpatient psychiatric unit for the third and last time. I felt like something was different this time, something HAD to be. And the grief was as much as I can bear.
For the most severe cases of mental illness, there’s no way to live a stable life that a family unit can sustain. I describe 6 things to help parents unburden themselves, relinquish aspects of constant crisis that is out of their control.
As the years go by, our daughter doesn’t heal, rather she continues to deteriorate despite psychiatric interventions. But I can’t stop believing or hoping for God to bring a miracle. And to heal me.
I have never experienced a time in motherhood where my children, any of my children weren’t suffering from neuro-psychiatric disorders. And for years, I fought just to get in the door to get help.
The night before I turned 38, I found myself reflecting on a dizzying roller coaster of a year. I knew we had a lot of work to do to rebuild our lives after so much trauma. Only Jesus could have kept our family and our world intact.
Many years ago, I hiked up Mount Rainier with some girlfriends from my church. I fell in behind a seasoned Rainier Guide and mimicked his every move. All these years later, I recall those lessons learned in the middle of cancer treatment and fighting my daughter’s health with her PANDAS diagnosis.
My 3rd Round of Chemo happened to be scheduled on Good Friday. I couldn’t sleep the night before in anticipation and dread for what awaited me the next morning. But God is still good, even when things are seemingly bad.
Waiting. And some more to find out the next steps of my path through cancer treatment. And with treatment, more lessons learned.
I have turned to Psalm 91 over many seasons of heartache. Breast cancer was no exception - in fact, God made a very strong point of reminding me over and over through the loving gifts and encouragement of family and friends.
Looking for the beautiful things God places in our worlds while walking through difficulty. More mammograms, ultrasounds and Biopsies reveal more cancer.
The hardest week of my life, in the middle of trauma while saying goodbye to my foster son, and checking my daughter with untreated PANDAS into a Psychiatric Residential Treatment Center... I discover I have breast cancer.
All too many White Christians listen to “false prophets” on TV, in the pulpit, or even from each other. Systemic racism exists in America but White Christians needs to look closer, come near to it, and re-imagine a more just society. I am guilty of every charge I lay against White Supremacy in this episode.
Vivid dreams help me to describe the elusive lie of White Supremacy and how it affects every one of us. I am guilty of all charges laid against White Supremacy.
We have dedicated our lives to learning from BIPOC and immigrant families so we can parent our internationally adopted son with eyes wide open. But the white world around us tells us we are wrong. So I have to dismantle and disconnect from anything interfering with my ability to love God and love all people the way Jesus calls us to.
The worlds I’m straddling: one of privilege and one of oppression so often tear me in two. And watching the White Church ignore systemic racism is so difficult to reconcile. I am guilty of every charge I make against the White Church in this episode.
Facing the juxtaposition of extreme poverty with excessive wealth during a study abroad trip in Bangalore, India sent shockwaves through me as White Middle Class American who was used to seeing a Redlined social-scape, although, I didn’t know we had Redlining to thank for this phenomenon at the time.
In this story, I find myself a bystander as a gunshot victim is rushed to the hospital in the middle of the night...and I am reminded of other issues of racism threading through my life and my dreams. But Jesus weaves them all together. I am guilty of every charge I lay against White Supremacy in this episode.