Everything New

Grandmothers can be close to their grandchildren in a way unobstructed by all the expectations piled up between mothers and daughters. At least, that is my experience. My grandmother taught me to grow avocado “trees” from pits, stuff peppers, sew straight seams, and the proper way of pruning flowers.

While I was in college she (and my grandfather) sent me money orders for treats and flew me to Florida for college breaks with them. She would be awake, puttering in the kitchen when I crawled out of bed at 6 a.m. for our daily excursion to gather shells and hunt for driftwood. We played Scrabble, picked fruit, chatted and snacked.

The first time she became a great-grandmother was the first time I became a mother, and her input sharpened. It was she who taught me that I would never catch up to the little ones unless I was awake, dressed, with my shoes on before they got out of bed. She fussed at me to take short naps when they did or, “at least put your feet up.” And she quieted my fears when one of them took three years to speak. “Why should he? He has an older brother that does all the talking for him.”

When I was 27, my multi-lingual, opera singing grandmother died after three short months battling cancer. Although I had been with her many of those last weeks, it was not enough time to prepare me for the immensity of loss. I recall the dazed feeling as I was driven on one of many errands to tidy up loose ends of a life -- retrieving contents of a safe deposit box. Looking out of the window at all the people in their cars I couldn’t believe the bustle going on around me. In line at the grocery store I was struck by the insight: no one could see what I was going through on the inside. Later my focus broadened a little bit and I wondered. How many people, like me, were performing the motions of life while everything was in broken pieces in their hearts?

Simply put, my grandmother loved and admired me. That’s hard to come by. Her absence from my life was not the first hard thing I knew and it was not the last. On the inside, I am sometimes a shattered, reassembled person and I live in a world of broken people. Some of them know me. I like to imagine they recognize the dried glue at the edges or the missing chips with a futile dab of poster paint to cover the raw plaster. It’s likely that so many times of weeping have changed the timbre of my voice. Whatever it is, people encumbered by their own faults and cracks are friends with me.
Unabashedly so.

Paradoxically, these are the people that point to beauty and hope and healing with their whole lives. They are vital to know, because their confidence is deeper than steady jobs, healthy relationships or even life itself. Their hope is in the redemption of all things.
Redemption. Buying it all back and making it all new. That certainty is not a placebo for pain, but a secure joy -- particularly for those who sometimes whisper quietly into the shoulder of a friend, “I’m so weary of crying.”

"Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away."  He who was seated on the throne said, "I am making everything new!"

Thank You For The Birthday Greetings...

I spent the summer of my 16^th birthday as a staff member at a summer camp. Knowing my extreme shyness a friend initiated a stealth campaign of sorts, and my day was peppered with discreet whispers in passing. “Happy Birthday!”  People I didn’t know stopped to smile quickly, greet me, and move on. 

It was a merry way to celebrate Sweet 16.

I still don’t enjoy being the focus of public attention, but I love birthdays.  Not gifts per se, but being remembered, thought about and wished well.  I enjoy this tradition of celebrating a particular individual from among the masses, because people tend to get lost within the rushing eddy of life.  The world arena is cluttered with drama, communities are caught up in crises, churches are rife with conflict and families are battling on multiple fronts.  The needs of the whole consume the wants and preferences of the individual.  They have to.  We raise families, manage businesses, administer care, educate, and concern ourselves with all the other tasks vital to keeping the machinery of life up-and-running.

And yet.

I like acoustic music best, and a good book in the right chair with a lamp perched just so.  I enjoy different tea with friends than I do alone.  My husband is my favorite dining companion.  Snickerdoodles are my preferred cookie,

and flowers --anywhere-- make me happy. 

Those are some of the elements of me.  And I like to remember that there is a different list for each of us.  Because, submerged under the current of the collective, the faces of individuals are displayed for anyone who takes the time to look.   When I do, I acknowledge the distinct value of each one uniquely made for a special purpose.   I reflect God when I look closely at another person, because He looks closely at me.  It is this personal attention that conveys the strongest argument for my confidence in God’s promises to be a present help.

“I have redeemed you.  I have called you by name.  You are mine.”

So, I am thankful for the plentiful hugs, the dropped-off cards, the tin of bath scrub and the homemade cheesecake.  I am thankful for every whispered greeting of “Happy Birthday” – because in the crowded floods and fires of life I love being called by name.

You're Going To Make It -- You'll See

I think at the accident scene that November afternoon I must have heard discussion about where the Life Flight would take us, because I had “Pocono Medical Center” stuck in my mind. In vain the nurses and doctors would later ask me if I could tell them where I was. “Not Pocono…,” I would begin hesitantly, and wait for them to lead with “Bethlehem…” Yes, of course Bethlehem -- wherever that was. Was it close to Pocono something? I couldn’t ask aloud because the correct answer did not begin with the word “Pocono”, so I must not even be close. And yet…”This is where Donna is,” I wheezed to my husband. “Maybe we can see her. She is at Pocono Medical Center.” And there I could see that I had blundered again. I was at Bethlehem something.

I remembered so little, but I knew that Donna was in pain and that I should be praying for her. The unknown sister-in-law of a friend, she had been burned in a terrible accident and was kept in a coma for three months. Somehow I thought she was nearby, dealing with dawning reality as I was. And I prayed.

Seventeen days later I was transported to Williamsport Hospital to begin the recovery stage closer to my family. My self-preservation prohibits my remembering the horrible pain and shock of that trip and my entry into the wonderful world of rehabilitation. Muscles that were too weak to hold up a frame collaborated with my fractured pelvis and ribs to make the first morning move into a wheelchair something akin to a living nightmare. I was wheeled into a common room, placed within a circle of semi-conscious wounded and told it was time for exercises. Revoltingly chipper music played while the recreational therapist coaxed everyone to flap their arms and kick their feet. I cringe remembering the bedraggled, broken crew with crutches, walkers, wheelchairs and casts, all nodding heads and waggling whatever could move.

I cried. Tears of pain. Tears of anger. Tears of insult.
I would not participate in this.
Across the room a woman caught my attention. She was grinning as she sweated and stretched. It turned into a grimace when her arm couldn’t extend further and I realized she was scarred along her neck and scalp and arms. Every part I could see was shiny and bright red. And still she moved -- obediently lifting alternating feet, and waving alternating hands.

Ashamed I began to wiggle along. Surely, if she could do it I had absolutely no excuse. As we all gridlocked near the double doors after the 30 minutes had ended, I found the opportunity to look up into her eyes. “Thank you for working so hard,” I croaked. “You were my inspiration.” And she beamed back at me. “You’re going to make it; you’ll see.”

Later that evening as I was recuperating from my accumulated two hours spent out of bed, friends from church stopped by -- the first of many visitors. They told me they wouldn’t stay long -- they were dropping off flowers. One vase was for me and one vase was for Donna.
She had been transported from Pocono Medical Center two weeks earlier.

It has been twenty months since I've seen Donna. Today she walked into my workplace with her husband. We hugged. And hugged. We told each other how good we look -- how well we move -- how beautiful we are. We shared our daily amazement at being alive and strong. Her skin is clear and her joints are no longer bound. My legs support me. My posture is straight. We talked about the twelve days we shared in rehab, relying on each other’s encouragement and progress.
We made it, as we had told each other we would.

“I prayed for you all these months,” she said. “And you were praying for me before you even met me.” That knowledge gave her courage through many difficult surgeries and recuperation, because it was evidence of God’s love for her.

I don’t like looking back at a time that was so dark -- particularly on a beautiful summer day. I want to meditate on and write about the profusion of sunflowers and tomatoes and luxuriate in the warmth of August air. However, God brought Donna to me today, and the whole inexplicable tapestry of our fellowship is in the forefront of my mind.
Perhaps He intends it to lead me to rejoice in something much deeper than the loveliness of this season. Perhaps it is something else altogether.

 

Arena Days...

I grew up believing in the God of the Bible. Every word about Him. Through the experiences of years my knowledge gained deeper perspective and understanding. But intermittent seasons were spent squirming under the concepts of God’s sovereignty over my life and “having Christ as Lord, not just Saviour.” What did that mean, and how did I do that?! I recall the terror of midnight thunderstorms when I would wonder, “Is this the judgement day? Do I really belong to God, or am I fooling myself?” Mostly, I wondered if I really, deep-down believed enough to have it count as “saving faith”.
Reading accounts of the early Christians under persecution I envied them the opportunity to just stand before the arena for once and for all and affirm Christ, die, and have all doubt removed.  What would I answer?  I couldn’t even stand in the face of my peers; surely my lack of real belief would be revealed.  But even that would be a final, resolving answer.

In my later teenage college years I denied Christ in thought, word and deed.  And still God loved me -- and drew me back, over and over again.  Sometimes I struggled and was weary of the work of repenting and believing -- but the scary times were the times I didn’t.  Sometimes I wasn’t even scared.  Bit-by-bit the work of being an adult obscured the struggle and I became preoccupied with survival in the stages of childrearing and wealth building.  God was with me in the nitty gritty, and I grabbed on to His principles and promises on a regular basis.

Looking back over these recent ten years of financial hardship, damaged relationships, loss of so many loved ones, trauma, physical pain, and battered faith, I stand believing in the God of the Bible.  Every word about Him.  I believe He holds me in His hand and not a hair can fall from my head apart from His will.  I believe He set His love on me and that He formed me in my mother’s womb -- and that all the days ordained for me are coming to pass.  I believe that He is unapproachably holy -- but that He made a bridge so that I, unworthy in myself, can be reconciled to Him.  I believe that He is continually working all things for my good and His glory.  

Surprised, I realize that I have said “YES” at the door to the arena, over and over and over and over again.  

I come across so many articles these days entitled “Why Millennials are Leaving the Church” and other such catchy phrases.  They seem to all boil down a list of do’s and don’ts -- as if by following them churches and families can avoid this heartache.  Hmmmm.  That’s me, all over again, mustering up just enough faith to get me through the 10 seconds between thunderclap and lightning bolt -- eternity resting on my believing.  

And yet, my faith, at the door to the arena, did not come from me -- it was given.  It is not a virtue; it is grace.  I’m human and fragile (and ignorant) enough to want to trade a day in Rome for the extended trials through which God is bringing me.  But it’s for a different reason.  "For I know Him whom I have believed, and I am persuaded that He is able to guard that which I have committed unto Him against that day.”