February 2010

Frozen Point, Tx.

Lat: 29.5410638
Long: -94.5235246

Free entertainment when I was in high school was to hop on the rusty ferry that still plows the bay between Galveston and Port Bolivar.  The 30 minute crossing was really just a boat ride back and forth because the Port was nothing more than a two lane road through the finger peninsula that rode the sand to Crystal Beach.  To this day nothing much happens on the east side of Galveston Bay and unless you’re that unique brand of fisherman who loves to wade with the alligators there is really no reason to venture far.

East Galveston Bay is part of the Anahuac National Wildlife Refuge these days.  Oyster shell and crushed limestone roads (you have to be from Texas) take you to some of the best birding areas in Texas.  In the early days of the state the land was the JHK ranch which ran some 6,000 head of cattle through the salt marshes.  And that’s about the long and the short of it.  Nondescript, barren, inhabited by gators, snakes, grassy swamps and a few head of mosquito-bit cattle… a place only a Texan could love.

Frozen Point juts from the north side of East Galveston Bay and it would be just another empty stretch of shoreline if an event had not transpired on Valentines Day, 1895.  That day marked the shallow waters of the north shore with the forlorn name when a freak snowstorm came across Texas and buried the flats of the Double Bayou in three feet of snow.  The bitter wind chewed through the ranch and drove the cattle south until they reached the northern edge of the East Bay pushing the miserable livestock into the warmer shallows where they drowned by the thousands.

Ralph Semmes Jackson wrote,

“After the storm abated, the men of the family saddled their horses and rode toward the Bay shore, fearful of what they would find.  Reaching East Bay, they saw dead cattle lying so thick in the shallow waters along the shore that a man could walk for several hundred yards out into the Bay on the bodies of the dead cattle.  There was a point of land extending out into the Bay where most of the cattle made their last stand before stepping off into the water to their death.  From that day forward this point of land was known as Frozen Point.” Home on the Double Bayou – Memories of an East Texas Ranch

There are places in life that are marked with names like “Frozen Point,” names that make sense to only a few.  For those whose lives are affected it is an instant flash to a moment in time, like when those cowboys realized it was their livelihood filling the bay in front of them.  Or when the doctor walks in with that look.  Or when the phone rings with the bad news.  Or when the door opens and the State Trooper asks if your name is… from that moment on the moment is marked.  Words like cancer, malignant and chemo certainly fit the bill but beyond those more obvious signposts are those descriptors that define the very deep and private hurt this life will bring.

It is at that place, that “Frozen Point” in life, that God wants to write this epitaph.

God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God,
to those who are called according to His purpose.     Romans 8:28

Many people try to apply this verse to a future that is hoped for instead of a past that is broken.  How often people want to avoid going back to the “Frozen Point” of life, making great detours and keeping emotional contact to a minimum.

This principle takes on life when, without shame, tragedy is placed in the hands of God who causes all things to work for our good.  In my life, lived in the comforting grip of God, His “causing” brings life only when death has finished its course.  He causes, friend.  His touch brings life, His presence guides deliverance, His compassion is new every day.

• If sin has brought death, His grace-filled forgiveness brings life.

• If sickness, He visits with lovingkindness better than life.

• If crushing aloneness, His “never leave, never forsake” companionship leads me through… not around but through.

The Frozen Point becomes a reminder of both a tragedy that scars and of God who heals.

I am sitting in one more waiting room.  Jan has disappeared through another set of doors.  The receptionist is indifferent and bored, her eyes never meet mine when I ask “how long?”   The four hours of infusions, the ongoing battles with the insurance company, the violation of creams, pills and injections and the hour and a half wait for someone she does not know to drill into her hip without a hint of remorse makes this a “Frozen Point.”  It is a place where, someday, God will work it all for good.

A man is talking through an artificial voice box at the desk.  I cannot understand him but thankfully the receptionist can and knows what papers to give him.  He is new to this clinic (The BMA or Bone Marrow Aspiration Clinic), but obviously not new to the horrible things with which this life can surprise us.  I wonder at the strength that presses on whether we know God or not.  The human spirit,  breathed first from God Himself, cannot be measured until it reaches the Frozen Point and slowly continues on.

But for the believer there is so much more.  Beyond “the indomitable human spirit” there is faith given to those who fully trust in God’s plan.  It is the single most enduring heavenly or earthly force and is gained by looking up instead of soldiering on.  The eyes of faith sees God and His “causing” and knows that He alone turns all of this to work for good.

And so it can be in your life.  It is God at work, willing and doing His very good pleasure for those who trust in Him.  Yes, friend.  Even at Frozen Point.

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