the susie solution

Life in a Matter of Sentences

Posted by: on: March 23, 2015

This post is really for those who know me, or know my family, or knew my mom. Here I have posted the memorial service bulletin, the audio of the memorial service, and the slideshow of Mama’s life. It’s not that I object to anyone else seeing these things – but it’s not likely to mean much. It absolutely is NOT allowed to share this post or its contents in any way, shape, or form without my express consent. Please respect our family’s privacy!!

One of the hardest things in getting ready for my mom’s memorial service last December was putting together her bio for the memorial service bulletin, and then choosing the photos for and writing the narrative for the slide show.  How do you reduce 84 years of life to a mere one page of print – even single spaced, small font?  Or to a 15 minute slide show of a hundred pictures narrated by a few hundred words?  There was so much that I wanted the world to be able to see of my mom, of the very uncommon life she had lived, of just how different her choices had been from what they could so easily HAVE been, given her childhood.  Even we kids only knew such a small portion of my mom’s life.  We just didn’t realize how small until she was gone. (I do have a very small number of service programs left, so if you knew Mama and would like one, let me know; first come, first served.) If you intend to listen to the service, I suggest you look at the program first to keep the players straight.

Memorial service program

Below is the memorial service. IF YOU ARE USING INTERNET EXPLORER, you may not be able to play the .wav file, but it works fine on most other browsers. (OR contact me and I will see if I can send it to you as a file.) Corey is the first brother you hear. As Cherry explains, Brooke was unable to attend the service because both of their girls were sick, so Cherry simply led the congregation in singing “Until Then”, while Alyssa signed it. I wish there was a video of it, so you could SEE Alyssa; it was beautiful, and Mama would have loved it so. (Alyssa is a professional interpreter, and Mama was very proud of her for it.) Mama always hated the line “And things of earth that caused the heart to tremble, remembered there will only bring a smile.” She felt, as do I, that that is unscriptural; when we get to Heaven, we will be so caught up in the joy of being with Jesus that we won’t even REMEMBER the things of earth. So she had had me write a replacement verse: “And pain and anguish here that make us tremble, will be forgotten there in Jesus’ smile.” Because of a miscommunication in the last-minute shuffle, though, the version displayed to the congregation to sing was a traditional one rather than the altered one I had sent to the girls to prepare. Alyssa, though, signed it (and I sang it) as Mama had wanted it, so her wishes were at least partly honored. Tim leads off the duet of reading with Gary. The audio includes the narration of the slide show, the actual show of which is included below, so you can skip from 9:42 to 23:30 on the timer. 

The slide show, being put together in quite a bit more haste than I had hoped would be the case, with not nearly as much time for editing and proofing as it should have had, has photos left out that should have been in and photos that are redundant.  There were also a number of photos I WANTED to have, but was unable to find – probably because Mama had spent the year giving away most of her photos of her grands. We had been very careful to take “last visit pictures” with all the relatives who came to see her but when we went to put the show together, we discovered that a great number of them were nowhere to be found on Rob’s camera, either of our home computers nor even the back up harddrive.  They were just….. gone – and there was no time to contact folks to see if they had any other copies to contribute.  I ended up having to hunt up other pics from our own albums or facebook.  It hurt dreadfully that so many of the pictures of Mama’s kids and grandkids at the end of the video aren’t of her WITH them, but just of …. them … someplace.  (I bawled about it for an hour, to be honest.)  But there is at least one picture of every person in this family that Mama loved so much.

I’d intended to record the audio narration, with Mama’s favorite hymns to fill in the gaps, but since the slide show itself wasn’t  finished until into the wee hours of the morning of the service, there was no way to accomplish that.  I’d just have to do it live.  I managed to make it through by doing it from the back of the church, so I wasn’t looking at anyone, just the screen, my script, and the microphone.  (My drama training does occasionally come in useful!)  Doing it “on the fly”, though, did lead to some gaffes, the funniest of which came when I switched horses mid-stream, intending to put something more smoothly and making it worse, instead.  The subject of my brother, Tim’s, first marriage is a terribly painful one to the family, but since out of that marriage came my parents’ first three dearly loved grandchildren, Stacy, Josh and Holly, the fact of the marriage’s existence was given the same acknowledgment in Mama’s history as those of her other kids, although I didn’t name his wife.  In the later part of the narrative, I deal with the event of Tim’s second marriage.  What I originally wrote was, “Some years after Tim’s first wife left him…”, but during the service, as I was approaching that point, it occurred to me that it would be kinder to put it in a more neutral term, so I decided to change it to, “Some years after Tim’s first marriage ended….”  What came out was a most unfortunate mix. “Some years after Tim’s first wife ended….”  (Honestly, that was NOT what I meant. Even subconsciously. At least, I don’t think so. Just in case you are wondering, the woman is quite alive and has not, to my knowledge of the moment, ended.)

The slide show has been through a couple of different processes by now to get it into this format, so the photos are not as crisp as the originals, and if you full-screen the show, the photos and titles get a little fuzzier. It is beyond my technical skills to do anything about it, and I don’t want to wait another 5 months to try to figure something else out so I can get this thing done! It is what it is.

Last summer, someone sent Mama the lyrics to a modern hymn, new to her, but that I have known for some years now. I showed her this youtube of it so she could hear the melody and the voice of the original singer. She loved it, and felt it so achingly clearly expressed her feelings of what she was going through – and had yet to face at that point. As this post draws to a close, I’d like to share it with you all as well. It is titled “Jesus, Draw Me Ever Nearer”, by Keith and Kristyn Getty.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMuVeSJTC-Q  “Jesus, Draw Me Ever Nearer”

So, there you have it. 84 years reduced to a matter of minutes. SO much left out. But it is my hope that what is included will fan the warm memories of those who knew her and maybe bring back memories long-forgotten to be treasured once again.

None of us become fully the men and women we wish we could be; Mama was keenly aware of her failings. But she was also aware of, and frequently overwhelmed by, the fact that by God’s enabling, we can all be and do much better than there might be any reason to expect, and that God’s grace is more than sufficient to make up for all the ways we fall so short. The testing of Mama’s heart is now ended – and indeed, in His likeness she DID wake!

To God be the glory – GREAT things He has done!

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Letting Your “No” be a “Yes”

Posted by: on: February 19, 2015

I got an astounding text from my 23 yo daughter the other day that read, “I think the universe just shifted. I actually like peas now!” To understand the gravity of this announcement, I must go back to her childhood. For most toddlers, peas are a favorite, not only because they apparently taste good, but because they are so easily picked up by that developing pincer grasp. Not Cherry. From the start, peas were a no-go. At our table, our kids were expected to learn to eat what was set before them, even were it only a bite or two. (OK, ok, to be honest, sometimes they were required to eat more than that if it was the main or only course. I hope they have since forgiven me.) But as she grew, Cherry was determined that the little green offenders would find no entrance; many is the time she sat at the dining table contemplating those tiny verdant orbs long after the rest of us had left. The most comical time we remember (and tease her about), was once when she was maybe kindergarten age. We had finished dinner, and to my surprise, Cherry’s plate was clean. “I ate my peas!” she told me. I praised her for it, of course, well pleased that the peas battle had been won with no bloodshed – for that round, at any rate. However, after doing dishes, I went and sat in the recliner in the living room, which has a direct view of the dining table. Glancing over, I noticed something odd under Cherry’s chair – and not just one. On closer examination, I found, you guessed it, a dozen peas! During the meal, she had been surreptitiously dropping those peas one by one under her chair when I wasn’t looking. In the manner of children, it never occurred to her that those peas would stay on the carpet as mute witnesses to her deception. She never pulled that trick again, though she found others, but once she left home for college, you could count on the fact that peas would never soil her plate, let alone cross her palate. When we found Sandra Boynton’s book/CD “Rhinoceros Tap” a few years ago, one song stood out: “O, Lonely Peas”, of which there is a comical performance you can find on YouTube.

One element of Lent is the practice of giving something up – fasting from something – for the Lenten period. I have known many for whom fasting in Lent is a form of self-abasement, a way to remind themselves of what awful, terrible, no-good, very bad people they are. Frankly, I don’t see that in Scripture. Paul identifies himself once as “chief of sinners”, but that is hardly his theme song, nor does he address the believers in the various churches as such. Numerous times we see variations on the Ephesians 5:8 passage, “Once you were darkness, but now you are light.” There’s a then, and there’s a now. Although there is a Lenten element of reflection on how our sin necessitated His sacrifice, I believe the purpose of the practice of Lent and its fasting should not be to focus on US and how far we fall short and what worthless maggots we are, but on HIM, His goodness, His grace to us, the depth of His love for us. In the light of His character and His grace to us, our response is to contemplate the ways in which our “work[ing] out our salvation” needs attention, areas where we are not as conformed to the likeness of His Son as we know we should be, asking His help to “will and to do”.

Rather than self-abasement, the self-denial of the Lenten fast is altogether different. In and of itself, self-denial usually feels like a negative action, but in Lent, that negative becomes a positive. Jesus said of anyone who would follow Him, “… let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow Me.” If we stop at the denying of self, so that our fasting is only saying “no” to whatever we’ve given up, we’ve missed the point. We fast from one thing in order that we may be freed to embrace something better. Fasting is an opportunity to focus one’s mind and heart on the things of God, beginning with the saying of “no”, but then moving on to a holy “Yes” – the self-reflection of what cross we have yet to take up, and the highest good of what it means to follow HIM.

For many years Cherry would quite willingly have given up peas for Lent, but if the object given up is no real sacrifice, there is no gain from giving it up, either. There are two things that I absolutely love, and that are both rather addictive for me – as in, once I have the first bite, I have trouble stopping: any form of bread or cracker, and sweets, especially chocolate. Because of the way last year went with caring for my mother and cousin being so intense and time-consuming, with all the stress attendant thereto, indulging in sweets and breads almost without limit became a daily practice. So, for my Lenten fast, I have chosen to give up all those things.  Yes, even chocolate. It’s not that those things are evil. For me, however, they have assumed too much power; they have become a comfort that only God should be. Saying “no” to these foods is a very real sacrifice, from my mouth’s point of view, but it will enable me to say “yes” to the self-control that is the fruit of the Spirit, allowing God to reveal Himself as the One Who is Enough – not only when it comes to my gluttony, but to other areas of my walk with Him as well.

Last year I gave up iced tea, which I usually drink several glasses of a day. It isn’t a “problem” food, but because of how ever-present that glass of tea would normally be, its absence provided a frequent reminder to pray and seek God’s face. Some people give up Facebook so that they can spend in prayer and contemplation the time they would otherwise spend perusing cute kitten videos, memorable memes, and status updates. Some fast for certain meals and give the money saved to a compassionate cause, asking God to teach them His love for others. The possibilities are endless, but if you choose to fast for Lent, remember that it is not enough to just say “no” – go on to saying “Yes!”

Peas be with you!

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Ash Wednesday 2015

Posted by: on: February 18, 2015

I love organizing. It’s one of my most useful vices. Normally through the course of the year I go through just about every cabinet and shelf and closet to sort out things that no longer need to be kept, and to optimize the organization of what is left. Last year being what it was, I didn’t get to do that, so since the start of January, I have been immersing myself in catching up on it. Several boxes have gone to Goodwill already. It gives me a sense of security and freedom to know just what I have and where it is, and to feel reasonably sure that I am not allowing my house to build up a weight of unnecessary belongings.

For most of the world, yesterday was a big day. Mardi Gras is one of the biggest parties of the year, an excuse for drunkenness, lewdness, and revelry – a celebration of debauchery. I doubt that the majority of the celebrants even know what Mardi Gras means. As far as the world goes, hey, any excuse for a party, right? As for Lent itself, the world, if it has any knowledge of it at all, sees it only as the spoilsport of Mardi Gras . Even among Christians, there are a lot of erroneous ideas about what Lent is, associating it only with having to “give something up” for Lent. In reality, Lent is a positive, deeply meaningful season.

From the early centuries of the Church, a traditional calendar grew up that marked certain milestones in the life of Christ and of His Church, not unlike the Jewish festivals which likewise follow the seasons and serve as reminders of important events in the Old Testament. Most Protestant churches have abandoned that liturgical calendar, which is a shame, for, just as the Jewish people would through the year relive key moments of their history, so, too, does the liturgical calendar call Christians to reflect on key moments in ours. The calendar begins with the season of Advent, a time of preparation for Christmas, calling for reflection on why Christ came and focusing on the foretelling of His birth and earthly life. Next comes the twelve days of Christmas, celebrating His birth. January 6th marks Epiphany, remembering the coming of the Magi. The season of Epiphany lasts until Lent, and the focus during this time is the life and ministry of our Lord, with the study of the Gospels. Lent is a time of preparation for Easter, and the Easter season itself lasts until Pentecost, when we celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit. From Pentecost until the final Sunday before Advent, the focus is on the Church and the non-Gospel books of the New Testament. The final Sunday before Advent is known as Christ the King Sunday, a celebration of Jesus’ second and final coming when He shall reign forever. While none of these seasons and celebrations are, of course, dictated by Scripture, their observance gives a beautiful rhythm to the year. As put by Archbishop J. Peter Sartrain, “The liturgical year continuously exposes us to every aspect of the mystery of Christ – not because we best understand His life, death, and resurrection in chronological order, but because by being continuously exposed to Christ, we allow Him to enter more deeply into our lives. The same lesson I learn this year can be deepened next year, both because I have had new experiences and because I have allowed Christ to help me understand them in His light.”

Last week a friend gave me two little devotion booklets for Lent. One of the booklets begins with the prayer used by the Roman Catholic Church for the first Sunday in Lent which I think is going to serve as a thoughtful starting place for me this season. “Grant, almighty God, through the yearly observance of holy Lent, that we may grow in understanding of the riches hidden in Christ and by worthy conduct pursue their effects.” For some, Lent is a season of focusing on their own sinfulness and unworthiness, and fasting from some certain food or activity is simply a form of self-mortification to emphasize the point. How very different an approach, then, to consider Lent not a time to look inward only, but as a time to immerse oneself in focusing on growing in understanding, not of ourselves and how horrible we are, but of HIM, and how great He is. From that starting place, we then consider our lives and how we are living them. It is a time of doing to my life what I am doing to my house: facing up to what’s there and deciding if it’s something I should keep or get rid of, or if there’s a better way I should be handling it.

We all have things in our lives that we need to get rid of or change; we all need to “clean house.” Let this Lenten season be our opportunity for asking our Father to shine His light into the all the corners, and then asking Him to help sort out what we need to get rid of.

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A “good death”? Depends on the destination!

Posted by: on: January 25, 2015

It was an interesting juxtaposition of events last October that as my mother was on the final stretch of her torturous journey to Home Plate, Brittany Maynard was preparing to execute her well-publicized plan to kill herself on November 1st.

Mama and Maynard both had brain tumors. (Mama’s cancer started in her lung, but metastasized to her brain, and it was the brain tumor that had the most impact in her last months.)   The kind of end Mama went through was precisely what Maynard wanted to avoid. Since the cancer was going to kill her, Maynard saw killing herself first as a way to beat it to the punch, ending life on HER terms. Maynard was lauded by many as a hero, a courageous spokesperson for the “right” to choose the time, place and manner of one’s own death. It is odd that many of those debating seem to think this is a new idea.

The practice of killing oneself – or, rather, the cultural acceptance or prohibition of it – is ancient, although the reasons for it have varied greatly. In many indigenous cultures, for example, it is common for the elderly to deliberately leave the village and wander off to die on their own, thus decreasing the drain on communal resources and increasing the odds for survival of the living. In Hindu India for centuries, the practice of suttee – a living wife being immolated along with her deceased husband – was a cultural norm. Although it was not uncommonly carried out with the aid of sedating drugs or brute force on the unwilling or fearful, many a wife went quite willingly, sometimes out of such love for her husband that she did not wish to live without him, perhaps more often because she knew that the life of a widow was a sheer misery, since it was disgraceful that she should live while her lord and master did not.  She would be forced to live out the rest of her life as a drudge to either her husband’s family or her father’s house. In Roman times, some enemies of Caesar were given an order of forced suicide to “open their veins” or to drink hemlock as a more dignified option than the humiliation of public arrest and execution, but other enemies who learned of plans for such orders, or for orders to arrest and execute them, chose to kill themselves before the orders could be given, so as to deprive Caesar the pleasure of triumph.  In Japan, committing seppuku, or hari-kiri, was (and even for many in modern times, IS) considered the only honorable way to recover honor after dishonor. In modern Western civilization, the justification for killing oneself is about the “right” to control the time, place, and manner of one’s own exit from this life. The goal is to ensure that one experiences a “good death.”

That sounds appealing, doesn’t it – “a good death”? A death that is peaceful. A death free from pain or suffering. A death that happens in a place of our choosing, where we are happy and comfortable, surrounded by the people or things that we love. A death that comes while we are in possession of our faculties and before the indignities and frailties of physical decline. Given our druthers, even if we don’t believe it’s right to force the issue as Maynard did, who wouldn’t prefer the “good death” option over Door #2? I would. I know Mama did. Those of us who loved her certainly hoped for that “good death” for her.

She didn’t get it. Her last hours were as difficult as the months preceding it had been. Her pain had proved extremely difficult to manage; she couldn’t take the usual go-to meds, and it took a lot of experimenting with others to find a good combination that worked – and then her pain would change and we’d start fruit-basket-turnover again. She was in pain at the end. She spent her last months in what is known as “paranoid delirium.” One time she passed notes to her hospice nurse about calling the FBI to rescue her because she was in danger – Patti (my sister-in-love) and I were apparently anti-government agents out to harm her. There were repeated issues with getting her to take her meds, either her being convinced that her taking them would cause hundreds of other people to die, or that taking them was what was making her sick (rather than having cancer), or alternately that they were part of a conspiracy to keep her alive when she just wanted to die and go be with the Lord! She was able to be in her own home, as she had always wanted, but once the paranoia started, she felt “trapped.” She died at home, but she was totally unaware of her surroundings. Patti and I were with her in her last hours, but I honestly have no idea if she truly knew who we were or even that we were there (consciously.) Mama’s last hour and actual death itself were horrible, traumatic for both Patti and me to watch. We sang no hymns. Our only prayers were gut-wrenching cries of, “Oh, God, please take her Home and let this be over!!!”   Mama experienced no visions of angels or loved ones already passed on, no glimpses of Glory. Her last words, between great gasping gulps for air, were, “I had no idea it could be so hard!” When she had gone, there was no look of peace and calm on her face. No, it was not a “good death.”

The world looks at a death like Mama’s and sees it as an evil. As far as the world is concerned, suffering is only “good” if it is for some kind of greater purpose that we understand and agree with and will achieve something for us when we’re done. That’s why it makes perfect sense, from a worldly point of view, to do as Maynard did. Going through the suffering and pain of cancer was for no understandable purpose; she certainly didn’t agree to take it on; and it would achieve nothing for her but death, which she could obtain on her own without going through the suffering.   People of Maynard’s convictions look at what my mother experienced and see a textbook example for exactly why they believe in what Maynard did.

But they’ve got it wrong. The world sees only the outside and existence this side of the grave, while God is concerned with the inner man, and what lies beyond death. Everything we undergo has the purpose of conforming us to the likeness of His Son and preparing us for Heaven. Everything. God doesn’t put His children through suffering for kicks and giggles, nor does He take our suffering lightly. It is nothing against us that we would prefer not to suffer; Jesus Himself dreaded the suffering He was to undergo, and said, “If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather not.” If we are to be like Him, however, we must then also say as He said, “But, hey, it’s what YOU want that matters.” Hebrews 5:8 tells us that Jesus, though He was a son, learned obedience through suffering. Now, since He never sinned, we know that this isn’t referencing obedience as opposed to being disobedient. Since we are being conformed to His image, so, too, there must be ways in which there is obedience we are learning by our suffering that has nothing to do with sin. II Corinthians 4:16-18 says “So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison as we look not to the things that are seen, but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.” No matter what was going on with Mama on the outside that we could see as she wasted away, we can trust with perfect confidence that her inner self WAS being renewed day by day. No matter how horrible and drawn-out the process seemed here on earth, in the light of eternity, it was but the blink of an eye. Any pain she endured here was the last pain she will ever experience for all the rest of eternity – and even the memory of it was wiped away as she entered her Father’s house!

For those without the Lord, well… I guess they may as well hope for that “good death”, because it will be the last pleasure they will ever know. If they remember its existence on the other side, it can but add to their torment to know that it is eternally lost to them.

For the believer, there is no such thing as a “bad” death; for us, all deaths lead but to Paradise. For the unbeliever, a “good death” is just a nicer entrance to Hell.

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Back – and forth!

Posted by: on: January 1, 2015

Well, folks, I’m back. 2014 – “the year that wasn’t”, as it shall always be to me – is over.
The 5+ months since I wrote my last post have been stressful and traumatic and blessed. Although I haven’t written on this blog, I was, in fact, writing. From sometime in August until the end of October, I was writing occasional updates to my mom’s CaringBridge site, and near-daily emails to a circle of family and closest friends detailing my mom’s deterioration physically and mentally as she lost the ability to care for herself, lost her ability to think clearly, and fell prey to delirium and paranoia brought on by the tumor in her brain. I simply couldn’t also deal with trying to do this blog.
I lived at Mama’s from early August until the Sunday after her death, except for two weeks she spent in a nursing home in September, and five days she spent later in the hospital. My sister, Sandy, shared in the duty two nights/days a week. For the last seven weeks, my sister-in-love, Patti, was here for 3 weeks on, 1 week home, with other my sister-in-love, Beth, here for Patti’s week off. Mama was finally released from the sufferings of Earth to the glories of Heaven in the earliest hour of Wednesday, October 29th. The two months after Mama’s death were as intense as the months that preceded it. I spent virtually all of November sick with a nasty respiratory bug that was difficult to defeat, on top of which there was: clearing out Mama’s condo; cleaning my own house from the disaster it had become in my absence; rearranging my stuff to fit in all the stuff I brought home from Mama’s; planning her memorial service, putting together a slide show of her life, figuring out arrangements for the 20 or so out-of-town relatives here for the weekend of the memorial service; and, oh, yeah, celebrating Thanksgiving and Christmas. I’ve hardly had time to think. When we pulled out the calendar last night to do our usual New Year’s Eve review of the year past, it seemed so odd to look at it because frankly the entire year was just one big blur to me!
“So,” everyone asks me, “how are you doing?” Good question. Mostly I’d say I’m doing fine. For Mama herself, I can feel nothing but gladness that now she is HOME – no more suffering, no more pain, even the memory of them wiped away. For me… having been through this with my dad, I know what an odd beast grief is, hitting you at the unlikeliest of times, and being a no-show entirely at times when you’d expect it to attend – so this time I’m prepared. I haven’t actually had any big moments of grief yet; they may come, they may not. There is healing still to take place to deal with the trauma of Mama’s last months and days and actual death itself; to survive emotionally, it was necessary to essentially dissociate from it all at the time, but now that it’s all over it has to be faced and processed. Thankful I am that just as with physical healing from injuries, most of the work of this healing isn’t something that I have to “do”, but something that is happening as a natural process. It is hard to break out of feeling always on edge “waiting for the other shoe to drop”, a constant pressure to hurry, hurry, hurry to get things done because who knows what’s going to happen how soon to pull me away. I guess I have something like “phantom limb pain” – I’m still trying to juggle “phantom balls”, having trouble getting used to the fact that they just aren’t there anymore. I struggle with requests to do things for other people, no matter how near and dear; however selfish it may sound to those who haven’t been through something like this, I’m flat-out tired of dealing with other people’s needs. My emotional energy battery is dead, dead, dead. I’d give much to be able to just go away somewhere, all by myself, to a place where I had nothing that I had to be responsible for and no one whose feelings I had to worry about or whose emotional needs I was expected to meet, where I could just take a break from all of life. But life doesn’t generally give you bereavement leave, or days off. (You may have noticed.) Somehow it just keeps coming at you, day after day. Unless you’re in the grip of a mental condition such as depression or bipolar, you either get “stuck” or you choose to somehow put one foot in front of the other and keep moving, however slowly.
There is so much that has happened this last year that has given me food for thought. I have written dozens and dozens of blog posts in my head; I hope that much of the gist of them will make it to publication here as I work through things. In one of my CaringBridge posts, I made a comment that God has promised to get us through – but He never promised that it would be pretty. He certainly was faithful to get us through this past year – but it wasn’t pretty. Like a chemist’s solution, my heart and mind are a confusing and sometimes conflicting mixture of many different feelings and thoughts. I don’t know that I’ll get them sorted into any kind of neat order, but it’s ok if I don’t. Having “answers” is highly overrated.
Now that I’m back to my own life, it’s time to sally forth and see what lies ahead in this next phase. As the Lord did for the Israelites, I know that He has passed ahead of me over the Jordan and has prepared the way ahead.

Tally ho!

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His mercies never come to an end

Posted by: on: August 17, 2014

When I was a college student at Seattle Pacific University back in ’80-’81, I was part of a small group of friends who hung out a lot. We did a weekly Bible study together, and one of my favorite parts of that time was singing. April would play her little three-quarter sized guitar, and we’d sing one song after another. We sang John Fischer songs. “Love Him in the morning when you see the sun a-risin’…” We sang a lot of Keith Green. Second Chapter of Acts, Phil Keagy, Larry Norman. All the usual suspects of the day. (And all of whom I still listen to!) My favorites were always the Scripture ones. I have a little notebook where I have them all handwritten with their chords, although I don’t need the book for just singing them. I love it when I’m reading through the Bible in the course of my daily reading and suddenly find myself singing what I’m reading. It is a tragedy that actual Scripture songs – the “psalms” of Paul’s exhortation to “speak to one another in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs” – are by and large no longer sung – not even in church services or Sunday schools.

Anyway, I still sing the songs for my own pleasure and blessing. Some of the songs, of course, have extra special meaning. “When I am afraid, I will trust in You, I will trust in You, I will trust in You/When I am afraid I will trust in You, in God Whose Word I praise” is a favorite for times of fear, and I used to sing it to my little ones after a bad dream. “Peace give I to thee/Peace give I to thee/Not as the world gives, give I to thee/Peace give I to thee” is one I often use singing myself to sleep. (I sometimes substitute the word “sleep” for peace; I don’t think He minds, as they bear a certain similarity in meaning.) One of my favorites for comfort comes from Lamentations 3:22-23. (You can find several versions of it on youtube. The Maranatha singers one is reasonably well done.)

“The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases/His mercies never come to an end/
They are new every morning, new every morning/
Great is Thy faithfulness, O God/Great is Thy faithfulness.”

That’s what we often say of my dad’s death. He died of a massive, unheralded heart attack back in 1991. I said something to the coroner about how at least I hoped he hadn’t suffered too much. The coroner said, “Oh, no. He didn’t even know he’d been hit! One second he was here; he blinked; and he was at the pearly gate, wondering how he got there.” That’s the kind of death Daddy always prayed for. It was hard on the rest of us not getting to say good-bye, of course, hardest on those far away who hadn’t seen him for some time. All those last times that we didn’t know were the last, so we didn’t savor them as we would have and wish we had. But for Daddy himself, we were thankful. We said it was a mercy.

My mother’s cancer is claiming more and more of her now, requiring more and more medication to try to keep her comfortable – and even safe. She gets so restless that she will pace until she is staggering if not given enough sedative to knock her out. She hates it. She hates taking all these pills, and she often blames the pills for her problems rather than her disease. But it IS the disease, sapping her strength, stealing her mind, distorting her senses, super-charging her emotions. I believe there are still a very few in the circle still praying for a healing miracle (what for I don’t know – why wish her to stay HERE rather than go to Heaven?) The vast majority of us, including Mama herself, pray every night that she won’t be here in the morning. We say, “It would be a mercy.”

My sister’s mother-in-love has severe dementia. It’s not my story, so I’ll give no details, but it’s not so different from that of the millions of other families dealing with what is called the living death of dementia. My dad’s older brother died of Alzheimers, the younger is dying of it. The details of the stories differ, but the plot’s the same. We all shudder at the thought of ending up there ourselves, losing ourselves a piece at a time, knowing we’re losing it and unable to do anything about it, until finally the day may come when we’ve lost so much we don’t even remember that we’ve lost anything. I’ve told my sister many times that I’d rather go through what I’m going through with our mother than what my sister is going through with her dear mother-in-love.

Lately, though, I’ve realized that that’s really a skewed perspective. There are not gradations to God’s mercy. He was not most merciful to Daddy, less so to Mama, and being least of all so to Barb. Either His mercy is the same for all, or He is cruel. Either His love is steadfast for all, or He is indifferent. Either He is faithful, or He is capricious and untrustworthy. We accept all three attributes as equally true across all times and all situations, or we reject them all together. They’re a package deal.

There will be times of emotional turmoil when we will cry out, “Lord, I believe! Help Thou my unbelief!”, and in His forbearance and tender-hearted mercy, He will do just that, but at some point we have to face the question of whether we will choose to trust God’s mercy or not. He doesn’t OWE us any explanations for His actions. If you think He does, then you have set yourself up as HIS judge, which is a pretty ludicrous place to be. Even if He were to give us a full explanation, our finite minds are not capable of understanding His infinite reasons. Occasionally He may give us a glimpse, but if we predicate our trust on God defending Himself to us, then we don’t actually trust Him at all. We believe God is merciful because He says He is, or we believe Him to be a liar.

No, God is being just as merciful to Barb now as He was to my dad then. God will be just as merciful to Mama whether He takes her Home tonight, or she has to endure weeks more of suffering. His purpose for Mama and for Barb is just as Good and Righteous as His purpose was for my dad. His presence with their spirit is just as real whether their mind knows it or not. Our spirit is given us at the moment of conception, long before there is a cognitive mind to comprehend anything about the world. (Remember how John the Baptist leapt for joy in utero at the presence of the Lord, also in utero?) Our spirit endures as long as we have the breath of life, whether our cognitive mind comprehends anything around us or not. Barb’s spirit is still alive and well inside her crumbling frame, and God is still working on perfecting her, conforming her to the image of His Son. We cannot SEE this, yet God’s Word tells us that that IS God’s purpose for us in this life; Scripture doesn’t contain an exception clause, “…. Unless something happens to your mind or body to screw you up.”

Suffering is a result of sin being in the world; it wasn’t God’s idea. Yet somehow in His divine Providence, He still causes all things, even our suffering, to bend to the task of accomplishing His purpose for the good of those who love Him. What my mom is going through, what Barb is going through, what all those around them are going through because THEY are going through what they’re going through (got all those antecedents?) is all – ALL – consistent with God’s love, His mercy, and His faithfulness.

If Mama is not here in the morning, it will be a mercy. If she is here in the morning? It will be a mercy. His mercies are new EVERY morning. Great is Thy faithfulness, O God! Great is Thy faithfulness.

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The Shadow Lengthens

Posted by: on: August 5, 2014

And so it is coming. We’ve known since December 6th that Mama is dying. But knowing in the theoretical doesn’t really prepare you for the reality. Having never been present during the dying process, it is all new territory. And although she was present for both my dad’s mother and her own father’s slow journeys to their deaths, this is new territory for Mama as well, of course. You don’t get a practice run for dying.

She stopped her cancer drug about a month ago now and officially entered hospice care. The drug was more or less holding the lung tumor at bay, but doing nothing for the brain tumor, and though it was keeping her alive, it wasn’t giving her a LIFE. The decision to stop was not hard. She knows her destination and is eager to reach it. It’s the dying process itself that scares her – a not unreasonable fear given the likely symptoms involved.

The doctors promise that you don’t have to die in pain and discomfort, but they don’t always make clear that to do that, you will have to be on massive amounts of drugs, and that the side effects of those drugs can be as difficult to manage as the symptoms of the disease itself – especially if, as with Mama, you can’t tolerate some of the best drugs for the symptoms.

In the last month, and especially in the last week, Mama has deteriorated noticeably. Quite probably the brain tumor is exacting a high price by now, and the lung tumor is also likely to be far more vicious. The cancer may have even spread further. Certainly she has more frequent and worse pain, has absolutely no energy, and now is dealing with some mental confusion. It doesn’t seem likely that she can go on for too much longer. None of us would want her to.
Yet it still comes as something of a shock, this adjusting to constant new realities, this realization that change will be the new “normal” from here on out. For all the grieving I have already done, I keep finding new depths to plumb – and I expect it will go on until, and after, she is gone. I dread her being gone, even while I pray for the Lord to take her quickly. It’s such an odd mixture of emotions.

But what I’m going through is nothing new. Children have been helping their parents through death since Seth and his siblings watched Adam and Eve die. Being at the tail end of the Boomer generation, many, many of my friends have already lost their parents, or are in the same process, or expect to be there before long. In one way, it is irrelevant because no one else has gone through MY loss, and yet, in another, it is a huge comfort to me to know that I share my lot with others. It was the same when we lost a child to miscarriage between our 4th and 5th children, and I discovered at my women’s Bible study that of the 12 women there, only two had not suffered the same loss – and of those two, one had not married until after her child-bearing years were past. What I am doing in taking care of my mother is nothing extraordinary, either. It has been done by millions of children, is being done by millions of children, and will continue to be done by children until the Lord comes.

In his first letter, Paul tells the Corinthians that “nothing has overtaken you but what is common to man.” Although he was talking specifically about temptation, in reality, the same thing applies to all of life. None of us goes through anything really and truly unique. The exact circumstances may vary, but the kind of trauma, the kind of loss – in these, too, there is nothing new under the sun. Most important of all, in His temptation in the wilderness, in His suffering and death, Christ somehow experienced every human experience. There is no trauma or loss that Christ cannot relate to. He is not standing by watching what we are going through and saying, “Man, I wish I knew how to help, but this is beyond Me.” No, He is ever-present, sure and steady, our Rock in the midst of the flood. As He wept at Lazarus’ tomb, weeping at the destruction brought about in His creation by the entrance of sin, He shares our grief at the death of our mother, but beyond that He stands with us to give us the strength to bear up, the peace that even this is one of the “all things” that He is working together for good for those who love Him, and the sure and certain Hope of the Resurrection to come. What blessed comfort!!

“Jesus walked this lonesome valley
He had to walk it by Himself
Oh, nobody else could walk it for Him
He had to walk it by Himself.

You and I must walk this valley
But we don’t walk it by ourselves
No, He gave His live to walk it for us
So we won’t walk it by ourselves.”

Limited Time Offer

Posted by: on: July 7, 2014

One of the most enjoyable courses I ever did in homeschooling was in critical thinking.  We used a book from Critical Thinking Press (marvelous source for all kinds of thinking-related materials.)  The book first had a short course in logic (e.g. The statement “All dogs are mammals, and all mammals are animals, therefore all dogs are animals” is true, but the statement “All dogs are mammals and all cats are mammals therefore all dogs are cats” is NOT true.)  The book then presented various blind spots, mind traps, and slick tricks that people use and/or fall prey to, dissecting each of them carefully by applying the principles discussed in the first part.    Political speech and advertising, not surprisingly, provided that vast majority of fodder for the analysis.

One very successful sales ploy is the “limited time/amount” sale.  The “Call now!  Operators are standing by!  This offer good until only midnight tonight!” TV ads.  The “lowest price of the season” ads in the newspaper.  (Ever notice just how many “seasons” some stores have??)  The “Only 5,000 of these minted!  Don’t miss out!” commemorative coin.  The “I can only offer you this price today because the boss is on vacation” car deal.  Marketers know that there is something deep in our psyche that reacts to the idea that there won’t be enough of something to go around.

The weeks since my last post have been the calmest I’ve had since Thanksgiving, with only one or two minor unexpected things cropping up, and a few major issues resolved.  Although I know these days have had the precise number of minutes in them as any of the days preceding them, they’ve felt hours longer.  I’ve gotten so much done!  Last Thursday, I actually got my sewing machine out for the first time since mid-November.   I had only just started a set of curtains before Thanksgiving was upon us, so I hastily got them done enough that I could at least hang them from the rod so our guests would have something nicer than an old sheet over the window.  With Mama’s cancer diagnosis coming right after Thanksgiving, and all that has been since, I hadn’t touched those curtains again.  I’ve now gotten them done, and not only the curtains, but two covers for throw pillows on the couch.  Hurray!!!

Why didn’t I get them done before now?  I just didn’t have the time.  No time.  No time.  That’s been my mantra for the last 7 months:  I don’t have time.  I don’t have time.  “No time” became a reason – or an  excuse – for not doing all kinds of things.  Exercise?  No time.  Eat right?  No time.  Keep in touch with friends?  No time.  Work on projects?  No time.

I’m not denying that things have been quite hectic – they have been – but two things recently have helped me realize that it was my perception of how busy things were that had more to do with the problem that the actuality of what was going on.

The first thing was that I read an interesting article in Readers Digest a month ago about insights from a book called “Scarcity:  Why Having Too Little Means So Much”  (by Shafir and Mullainathan).  The book’s authors are social scientists who have studied people in the context of a variety of contexts of scarcity – people who are financially poor, people who are extraordinarily busy, people who are dieting, people who lack social companionship – and what they have found is quite interesting.   To quote the RD article,

“…whenever we perceive a lack of something – be it food, money, or… time – we become so  absorbed by it that our thinking is altered. … ‘Scarcity captures the mind.’  the authors write.  ‘The mind orients automatically, powerfully, toward unfulfilled needs.’ … in all kinds of  circumstances, the psychological effect of scarcity was remarkably similar:  a kind of tunnel    vision that can help us focus on the immediate need … but that can also have negative long-       term consequences, both in terms of ignoring other important areas of our lives and not making       good decisions for the future.  ….  Fluid intelligence, cognitive capacity, and executive control all   come under what Shafir and Mullainathan term mental ‘bandwidth,’ and even the slightest               suggestion of scarcity taxes our ability to reason properly, control our impulses, and think clearly.”  [emphasis added]

So, for example, the chronically poor may be great at squeezing 6 nickels out of a quarter, but they tend to be poor at making decisions that will lead to longer-term financial stability.  People who are dieting may become so focused on what they are eating – or rather, on what they are NOT eating – that they can’t focus on their work.  Looking back, not only on these last 7 months, but on other hectic times in my life, I can clearly see scarcity-mindset-induced tunnel vision, poor impulse control, and brain fog in my own life.  Faced with a belief in the scarcity of some resource, we all fall prey to the same kinds of effects.

The other thing that happened that jolted my thinking about how much time I have was a conversation with my younger son.   When he dies, his epitaph should be, “I was reading this article the other day….”  You see, he is ALWAYS reading.  He pulls up the most interesting facts and theories from all kinds of sources about all kinds of subjects.   What amazes me is where he finds the time to fit it in!  You see, at the time of the conversation I refer to, he was spending time every day working out to keep in top physical shape, as is expected for a physical trainer.  And taking a class in Muy Thai kickboxing.  And one in jujitsu.  And learning how to kite board.  He had a standing pool game night with friends once a week.  Played in an ultimate Frisbee league every week.  Went for frequent hikes with friends.  Was working part-time 20 to 30 hours a week.  And, oh, yeah, did I mention he was in his last quarter of his senior year getting his bachelor’s degree in kinesiology?  I asked him if he actually did things like, you know, sleep.  Eat.  Relax.  He responded, “Mom, there are 168 hours in every week.  Even getting the 8 hours of sleep a night that I do still leaves 112.  My various classes and work and hanging out take about 80 hours a week, which still leaves around 30 hours for other things.  Besides, reading is as ‘relaxed’ as I get.  My brain’s always moving!”

Hmmm…..

I have those same 168 hours in MY week.  I added up how I typically use them and frankly, it’s too embarrassing to share!  I wasted more time than I want to admit watching TV or catching up on facebook, or doing things that, while more-or-less useful didn’t advance the causes that really needed advancing. There’s a considerable amount of time that I simply can’t account for.  I am not the ADHD Energizer bunny that my son is, so it’s not that I would expect to rival his level of activity, but I can see now that even in the busiest of my weeks, I actually HAD time that I could have used to get things that mattered done.

Instead, I had tunnel-vision, getting hung up on the idea of needing large blocks of time to do things, rather than breaking projects down into their component tasks that would take smaller blocks.  Those curtains?  It took four hours total to finish them.  That’s only 8 half-hour sessions, or 12 of 20 minutes, or even 24 of just 10.  There’s no way I couldn’t have found that much time in the last 7 months.  Ditto with finishing the pillow covers or any of the other many sewing projects languishing on my sewing table, or the many computer projects waiting to be done, or who knows what all else! (Writing blog posts, unfortunately, isn’t something I can do in snatches.  It would be like trying to swim laps in a wading pool!)

Going back to the “poor decision-making” aspect of the scarcity mindset, I can see how many times I did something that “saved” time for the short-term that actually COST time in the long run.  For example, if I put something down “for now” where it doesn’t belong, I may forget where I put it, resulting in time spent looking for it, or the object will gather friends around it, resulting in taking a much longer time to put everything away than it would have taken to put them each away properly in the first place.  Oftentimes I didn’t take time to plan things out thoroughly, resulting in backtracking, undoing, redoing, leaving things undone, and so on.  Taking the time to plan things in the right order would have cost time in the short run, but saved time in the long run.

All this has gotten me thinking about how we fall into the same scarcity trap spiritually.  When we worry about running out of any earthly resource, what we’re really worrying about is whether we are going to run out of God as well!  We start acting as if we were on our own, having to fend for ourselves.  We get the same tunnel vision, unable to see anything but our fear.  We have the same poor impulse control, jumping at anything that looks like a solution.  We lose our ability to reason, our minds “hamster wheeling” round and round on “what ifs.”

God promised that HE will always be sufficient.  Always.  If we don’t have time to do all that we need to do, HE will be sufficient to deal with the consequences of anything left undone.  If we don’t have money enough to pay our bills, HE will be sufficient to help us deal with the consequences.  If we never meet that “Mr./Miss Right”, then HE will be sufficient to help us live a life as full as the single life He lived.  Whatever our shortage, His grace is sufficient.  His strength is sufficient.  His power is sufficient.  HE is what we need, nothing less, nothing more.  There’s no such thing as scarcity when it comes to God.  He has never run out, and never will.  If we focus on how much there is to have of Him, we’ll lose our fear of not having enough of anything else.

His is the Best Ever exclusive, limited time offer.  It’s only good for His children, and only good for Eternity.  Don’t wait!  Call now!

Oh, I’m you. How are fine?

Posted by: on: June 8, 2014

Since sometime last Fall, my life has been crazy.  If I didn’t have my phone calendar to keep track of what appointments are when, I’d be totally lost.  I mean, I do try to make sure I transfer all appointments to the big wall calendar at home, but the wall calendar doesn’t have an alarm that goes off a half hour before the event to remind me, “Ahem.  You ARE remembering that you have an appointment at A:BC o’clock, right?”  For most of February, and all of March, April, and May I had at least one appointment or scheduled necessary activity, if not two, and sometimes three, either for me, or my mom, or my cousin,  almost every single day of every single week.  June was looking a lot better, but that got turned on its head as well.  Let me elucidate….

My daughter:  I didn’t mention in the previous blog that Bethy ended up on a week of modified bedrest that first week of February because of premature labor.  I was so booked up that I was only able to come over to help for one morning, I think.  (She had plenty of other help, for which we were both thankful!  She has many othermothers, and a flock of friends.)  Early in the morning of February 13, my newest granddaughter, Rosalie Julia, made her grand entrance.  For the next month, I helped when I could, but with all the medical crises of my two caregivees, it wasn’t as much as I’d have wished.  Rosie’s sisters adore her.  Stay tuned for once she starts crawling; that tune may change! Rosie is a smiley, smiley baby, and a total people-person, very interactive and talkative.  I can hardly believe she’s almost four months already.

My mom:  Since the February 8 post, it was determined that the brain tumor hadn’t grown at all and was, in fact, slightly smaller, if anything.  The severe nausea abated, though she continues to have problems with milder, occasional nausea even now.  She had bad problems with gas for a couple more months, the only relief for which proved to be ginger ale.  She was prescribed lidocaine patches for her back pain.  These help a lot, but are impossible for her to put on by herself, so she had to have the services of a health care aid friend.  We ended up changing doctors, and bless the day we did.  The new doc discovered that she has two collapsed vertebrae since all this started.  She did finally resume the cancer drug at its lowest dose at the end of March, and has been able to tolerate the mild side effects.  By early May, she had regained a lot of energy, and was back to doing 10 or 15 minute walks around her community, doing housework and gardening in short stretches, dressing in her normal skirts and blouses instead of easy-to-put-on sweats.   Then two weeks ago, she suddenly lost all energy and was huffing and puffing as badly as she had when she first was diagnosed, so weak she could barely walk, and was somewhat incoherent in her thinking.  Blood work revealed an elevated white blood cell count and a CT, pneumonia. (Bright side, it showed the lung tumor has shrunk some.)  So that night they started her on a quinine-related antibiotic, levoquin. Emotionally, these last months have been extremely difficult (no duh, huh?).  It’s hard being jacked this way and that, it’s good, it’s bad, maybe you’ll live for years, maybe you’ll be dead within months.  Even with a strong faith, KNOWING the suffering that all but certainly lies ahead is not a pleasant prospect – and is hard not to think about.  So she had asked for medication to help deal with the anxiety/depression.  As it happened, they started her on Zoloft the day after starting the levoquin.  That night about 10, she called me to tell me that she’d been hearing and seeing things that weren’t there since sometime mid-day!  Into the ER.  They immediately replaced the levoquin with a cephalosporin drug IV, and took her off Zoloft.  Her white blood cell count was even higher than the previous day’s had been.  A head CT the next day didn’t show any obvious reason for the hallucinations, so they were put down to a reaction to one/both/combination of the drugs.  She stopped seeing things by the end of that day, and hearing things by the next morning, and since her white blood cell count had come down significantly, too, she was allowed to go home.  She is very slowly recovering from the pneumonia; it may take a month.  However, the head CT showed that the low dose of the cancer drug is not being effective on the brain tumor; it has grown substantially.  The CT also revealed a number of a type of small strokes called lacunar infarctions. (No, I’m not making that name up; my mom has brain farcts.)   She is now on a 325 mg./day aspirin regimen to prevent more of them.  There is nothing predictable about her situation, and that’s all there is to it.

My cousin:  Longer time readers will recall that I am also caregiver for my husband’s cousin here in town, Marie.  She is a brittle diabetic who has never taken care of herself as she should, and is now suffering all the consequences of it.  Every system in her body is affected.  She’s almost blind as a bat.  She has virtually no feeling in her right foot, and only partial in her left.  She has many vascular problems as the arterial system is both deteriorating due to the diabetes, and getting clogged from plaque due to poor diet and a near total lack of exercise because of severe arthritis in her hips, back, and neck.   She has had some silent heart attacks.  The vascular shutdown has led to her developing vascular dementia, the primary reason I had to take over her financial, legal and medical affairs.  How she has pushed herself to do what she does to keep on going and to do things for herself, in spite of her extreme pain and near-constant exhaustion amazes me; I don’t think I could do it.  She truly is a role model for me.  Her son got out of a 20 year stretch in prison last year.  She has spent the last 20 years living for this time, dreaming of what it was going to be like, but things have gone very badly.  Her son has inherited not one of her traits of independence, of making do rather than asking for hand-outs, of being grateful for what you have, of integrity.  She has seen all her dreams of the future blown to smithereens as she has realized that the son she has sacrificed for all these years is NOT the son she actually has..  Her health – physical, mental, and emotional – has deteriorated in the last 6 months in a nosedive, bringing extra visits to cardiologists, vascular surgeons, psychiatrists, physical therapists, CTs, MRIs, urgent care, as well as more frequent check-ups with her regular provider.   She has had an incredibly hard life ALL her life – you’d never be willing to see a movie of it because it would be too intensely depressing! – and to now realize that the end of it is going to be just more of the same **** she’s dealt with for the entire memory of her existence……  it’s no wonder she is now dealing with severe anxiety and depression, in spite of her heart and soul love for Jesus.  She is deeply appreciative of the love and care I and my family  have shown her, but having never been loved before in all her life, she does not know how to receive it.  Although WE consider her as part of our family, she always thinks of herself as an outsider.    

Me:  Trying to cross some rocks across a river last September, I took a fall.  Didn’t go all the way down – caught myself on my hands going forward, but really did a twist.  For most folks, it might have resulted in a few hours or a day or two of feeling a bit sore, but because of skeletal abnormalities I have, it really did a number on me.  As usual, when I’ve had to stop because of an injury, when I did try to start again, it set off headaches, so I backed off and waited, then tried again, more headaches, waited , tried… and the wait between got longer and longer, and I couldn’t get past the headaches.  Then the roller coaster ride of my mom’s and Marie’s situations started, and even attempting to exercise went out the window.  My eating habits devolved to whatever was easiest to grab, because eating healthy takes time, energy and thought, none of which I had to spare. I had a lot of trouble sleeping, in spite of my meds.  I felt like I was just a leaf in a river, going down rapids at that, with no control.  But in March I finally started seeing a physical therapist, and though it’s very slow going because I’m not as faithful at doing my exercises as I should be, it IS improving.  Last week I even did my treadmill three days.  I’ve been doing a lot better at prepping veggies so they’re ready in my frig, so I’m eating better.  I’ve even cooked actual meals a few times a week for the last month.  My doctor figured out that the dose of thyroid I take had gotten too high for my body’s needs, and since we lowered it by a third, I am sleeping ever so much better.

The stress has certainly pushed my bipolar buttons and I have sometimes found myself close to the edge emotionally at home.  But I always remember this:  Once the appointments are done, I get to go home to my nice, normal life.  Mama and Marie don’t.  I’m not having to live with cancer like Mama.  No matter what I may need to do for her, it will never be as hard as what she is going through, and what she has yet to go through, barring the unexpected gift of a sudden death from something else.  Unlike Marie, I don’t have diabetes and arthritis and dementia and and and, so that all I have to look forward to is getting worse and worse and worse.  None of my kids are breaking my heart.  I don’t worry about any of them becoming homeless.  I’m not lonely and isolated, unable to drive, with no hobbies and nothing to do but watch TV and hold my chinchillas.    The same loving Father is with us all, and gives grace to us all, but I have to readily admit that I have the easier portion right now!

When people ask me what I’m up to these days, I often roll my eyes (and sometimes laugh) and tell them, “I don’t HAVE a life right now – I have other people’s lives.”  To a great extent, it’s true – my life is taking care of THEIR lives.  But in reality, my life isn’t my life anyway.  The verse that keeps going through my head in the last months is from Psalm 31 “My times are in Your hands.”

Years ago, when my migraines and fibro were at their worst, and I felt terribly guilty about the weight my kids, especially Bethy, had to carry to make the household run, God made the point to me that what was happening in MY life was His will for THEIRS as well.  (In the years since, He has shown me one impact my illnesses had on my kids:  they all have a deeper level than usual of compassion and understanding for the hurting and the sick and the weak.)  God’s purposes for events in our lives are never limited to just “us”; He has much broader things in mind.  Much as my mom and Marie sometimes (ok, with Marie it’s ALL the time) feel guilty for the fact that they need my help, or for how much of my time their needs take, it’s not their choice – it’s God’s purpose for this time in their life, and His purpose for ME for this time in their life, too.   

These times are sometimes stressful, sometimes exhausting, yes, but when I keep the perspective that my times are in HIS dayplanner, I know that I’ll get through – and be glad that I kept the appointment!

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The Gathering

Posted by: on: March 2, 2014

“The evening wore on…. That’s a very nice expression, isn’t it?  With your permission, I’ll say it again… The evening wore on.”

Harvey fans will recognize the line.  Language fans will recognize the pleasure of a phrase that manages to capture a world of nuance in a very few words.

One of the blessings I am thankful for in my heritage is that I come from a family of word lovers.  My maternal grandmother, Grandma Gunny (a.k.a. GG) immigrated to this country from Sweden when she was four.  Because her mother did not allow her to play with neighborhood children (afraid they would make fun of her for being foreign), GG learned her English in school, which resulted in her using a very proper variety of the language rather than the colloquial version she would otherwise have absorbed.  Being an avid reader, she acquired an impressive vocabulary.   Until dementia closed her mental dictionary, I never knew GG at a loss for just the precise word to use, no matter how obscure.  She was a crossword puzzle and word jumble fan, as are my mom, several of my siblings and I.  Although GG wasn’t a game player, the generations since are very fond of Scrabble and other word-based games.  My grandfather was also a voracious reader, and that love of reading cascades down the generational lines all the way to my own grands.  No matter which family members were present, conversations around our table were lively affairs, and puns were ALWAYS on the menu! 

It is to GG that I attribute my own passion for the nuances of words, and my delight in the intricacies of the construction of language.   She wasn’t a writer, but I couldn’t write as I do without the influence she had on developing my appreciation for words as both tools and toys. 

Solomon wrote a proverb I like to apply to those of us who love language.  “Like apples of gold in settings of silver is a word fitly spoken.”  Using just the right word carries an immense satisfaction.  Think of just the ways to indicate the act of moving one’s legs to travel from one place to another.  One can walk, of course.  How pedestrian.  (Like I said, puns are always on the menu.)  But there’s no need to merely “walk” when you can saunter, skip, mosey, sidle, strut, slink, march, sashay, float, or trudge!   The whole tone of a story can depend on just that simple choice of words.  For example, think of the opening line of so many well-known jokes:  “A man walks into a bar….”  Now substitute one of the words I gave above for “walks”.  Each of them gives an entirely different feel to the set-up, doesn’t it?  (And I don’t know about you, but I have a verrry hard time using “sashay” or “skip” referring to a guy.  One more nuance!) 

Sometimes, which word you use in a situation depends on your perspective.  The quote at the beginning of this post obviously came from someone who enjoyed the event.  If it was an evening spent at a fashion show, most guys would probably describe it as “The evening dragged on.  For-e-ver.”  When my husband spent 5 years in Japan, one difference he had to get used to in language perspective concerned one person being called to approach another.  In English, we call and say, “Come here” and the response is, “I’m coming.”  The referent point is where the CALLER is, and that the responder is coming TO him.  In Japanese, the caller also says, “Come here”, but the response is, “I’m going” – the referent point being where the RESPONDER is and the fact that he is leaving FROM where he is at now. 

Since my mother was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer, the words “death” and “dying” have understandably become rather a more common part of our vocabulary.   For most of us – even believers – our thoughts of death tend to focus on it as leaving – leaving the world of the familiar, leaving family.  But there is a phrase that is used a number of times in the Old Testament that I have long loved because it turns that reference point around.

First used in Genesis 25:8, it says of Abraham that he “… breathed his last and died in a good old age, an old man and full of years, and was gathered to his people.”   And was gathered to his people. 

Remember how Jesus said, weeping over Jerusalem, “How often I would have gathered your children as a hen gathers her chicks…”   If you’ve ever seen a hen gathering her chicks, you know the tender, fiercely protective action it is.  She doesn’t just hold her wings out and say, “Here, chick, chick.”  No, she actively pursues and gathers them in.  Only a chick that flatly refuses to come under her protective wings will be left to fend for itself.  We who die in the Lord may not have another human being around when we die, but we will never be alone when we die.  God doesn’t just open The Door for us to walk through as He waits for us on the Other Side.  Even as we breathe our last breath, He is there to gather us in.  We don’t have to do a thing.

My mother is an old woman, old and full of years. Like Abraham, she will leave behind family members who are still living.  But, like Abraham, “her people” – OUR people – the true gathering of God’s family – isn’t here on earth, anyway.  

Our referent point is here; God’s referent point is eternity.  We feel we’re being left behind; God knows that, in Him, we are never apart.  We see dying as leaving our family; God knows it to be joining the Family.  

At the end of our days, whether our life wore on, or dragged on, or something in between, for all the uncertainties and mysteries that lie in just what Death is, it is a comfort to know one thing for certain:  at the end of it all, we’ll be gathered Home.

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To most people, a solution is the answer to a problem. To a chemist, a solution is something that's all mixed up. Good thing God's a chemist, because I'm definitely a solution!

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