Courage to Continue

Celebration days, no matter the joy surrounding them, can be treacherously hollow with missing faces. 
Some seasons it takes a lot of courage to live. 
It is my privilege to know many heroic people.   One baked pies for family this week; eight years ago she had her last Thanksgiving with her teenage daughter.   Another cleaned house and prepared for the homecoming of college students on her first holiday without parents.   A missionary served a celebratory dinner while four of her children were filling their plates with traditional fare on a separate continent.
Sometimes bravery is found in the act of simply carrying on.  It is the husband who continues to work day after day knowing that it isn’t enough to keep up with the cost of a home and electricity and heat and food, but it is the only thing he can do.  Or the student who spends years juggling classes and the full-time job that pays for tuition.  Or the parent ready to pick up the phone at any hour, through decades of heartbreak or silence. 

One of the world’s favorite literary characters is Atticus Finch, the lawyer and father Harper Lee endowed with integrity and honor.  A widower, the primary purpose of his life was raising children amidst the social unrest of the South during the Great Depression, and imparting truth to his young son and daughter.
"I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand.  It's when you know you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what.  You rarely win, but sometimes you do.  Mrs. Dubose won, all ninety-eight pounds of her… She was the bravest person I ever knew.”
Two years ago a bride of six months had her leg, ankle and foot broken in an accident.  Many of her newlywed dreams came to a crashing end as she needed help cooking, cleaning and even bathing.  Her recovery required commitment and grueling therapy.  This Thanksgiving Day she participated in a 15K race for which she had trained months.  Conquering the first four miles of uphill climbing, she began to falter when the road pitched downward and the pain in her foot increased.   As she slowed from the disability, a runner tapped her shoulder. “I followed you up the hill and you got me here; you are not walking.”
Forty minutes later they congratulated each other at the finish line.

It takes courage to live out the details and the rituals of life regardless of circumstances. There is bravery in participating in spite of grief and loss.   I am thankful for these heroes – husbands, wives, daughters, sons, mothers, fathers and friends who “see it through no matter what.”
Their example, despite weakness or sorrow, is often what God uses to get me up the hill.

All these people were still living by faith when they died.  They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance. And they admitted that they were aliens and strangers on earth.  People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own.  If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return.   Instead, they were longing for a better country--a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.    Hebrews 11

Picture Perfect

By Wednesday night we will be six out of eight all tucked in under the same roof. And I relish these preparation days filled with list-making, menu revisions, laundry, cleaning and grocery shopping…crammed into every nook of free time. I’ve gladly abandoned new reading material in order to de-clutter closets and cupboards no one will use, swept up in the intoxicating current of anticipation: we’ll be together.
I don’t envision a Norman Rockwell homecoming, because we are not of that mettle.  Invariably I will miss arrivals because I’ll be upstairs frantically making the bed I thought had been finished, or cleaning out the shower trap for the first time since the last visit.  Likely I will find myself sweaty and terse at the failure to achieve unrealistic, innumerable goals.
But somewhere along my path of mothering, these individuals pocketed my independence and scattered it with them on their adventures and travail, and only when they gather near -- briefly-- do I feel whole.

They share a history and I love to see them in the same place...looking back or looking on. They hug and debate and praise and criticize and compete.  I’ve cried a little bit about the missing faces – wishing it mattered to all of them as intrinsically as it does me and knowing there is no way that it could.  They are made of me: genes, prayers, tears, and all my years of trying over and over to learn how to be a parent.  They are made of me – and then so much more. So I sit when there is a moment with just one…and deepen our acquaintance.  If I met him in a staff meeting, or observed her with her client, what would I see?  What if I heard her stories and his songs without already knowing the voices?  Who are they to the people with no preconceived ideas and expectations?

Dusting the cherry bookcase for the third time this week, I polish one from the collection of framed photographs.  Only the best of times were worth capturing on film and the resultant impression is cheerfully perfect.  With scrubbed and smiling faces and matching clothes, everyone is lined up in age order.  Perhaps they hated those outfits for their grandfather’s 80th birthday portrait – but I didn’t.  I hunted for weeks to find a pale yellow that “worked” for everyone.  Like preparation for this visit, I wanted all the peripherals to be aesthetically harmonious.  But those days were seldom neat and never tidy.  Likewise, the minute they crowd through the door – voices ahead of them searching for the others – order will be gone, replaced by the boisterous, messy connecting of old friends. 
And I can barely wait.

To the Trauma Team and ICU at St. Luke's Hospital, Bethlehem, PA

November 3, 2014

Trauma Team, Radiology, ICU

Dear ____________________,

I don’t know your name and I can’t picture your face.  I’ve scoured my medical records trying to piece together the list of people working in the Trauma Center at St. Luke’s Bethlehem on November 3, 2012, but the notes are a bit sketchy for my purposes.

You didn’t know my name at first, and what you saw was not my normal face.  I had been in a car accident and sustained damage to my liver, kidney, spleen, lungs and heart.  My femur was broken, my pelvis was broken, my ankle was broken, my arm was broken; vertebrae, sternum and ribs were broken and I had burns and lacerations on my body.  I am not wealthy or influential or important, but that didn’t matter.  You saw broken and damaged places and you applied yourself to saving my life.  If I understand all the transcripts correctly, it was days before you knew your efforts would be sufficient -- but you exercised your gifts and your skill and persistent, hard work.  After three weeks I was well enough to be transferred to a hospital closer to my home, although I still wasn’t coherent enough through the drugs and the pain to remember much about those days in Bethlehem.  

I cannot imagine what it is to see your side of things in a trauma unit.  But I know how deeply I dig for a word that is beyond “grateful” to give you some kind of glimpse into my side of it.  I walk every morning for an hour on two strong legs, filling my lungs with fresh air as my heart pumps.  I have full use of my eyes, brain and hands for my daily tasks.  I can’t believe the gift to my husband and our four children that you kept me alive -- that they don’t have to go through life with that shadow of sorrow.  

I am THANKFUL every day for the wonder of being here and being whole!  And almost every day I am conscious of your efforts on my behalf.  You should know I do my best to be a good return on your investment into my life and to multiply outward the gifts given to me.  My prayer is that you are blessed beyond measure for the work you do.  

May God continue to give you clear vision, steady hands and a courageous heart as you face broken people and push the limits to bring healing.

Most sincerely yours,

Stephanie

A Mirror Dimly

I've heard there's a hole in the ozone layer south of New Zealand and unprepared visitors to that island become quickly burned by the solar intensity.  This thin sky phenomenon creates a captivating metaphor --because I have seen an opening some days ...to a realm beyond the material.  Closing quickly, or vanishing behind clouds, it is only enough to entice, never a portion big enough for satiation. 

When the world splits a little I feel the echo of eternity and by that faint drumbeat each relationship and task reverberates within the fulness of its setting.  The glimpse can come through a Sunday morning or an evening reading or the stillness within reflection.  Fleeting as a flash of light, it is the closest I get to seeing the thread that connects me to the One that made all things and made me.

At those moments everything strains to grasp at the vanishing dimension because I know there is so much more.  I want to remain knowing and wanting so much more.  The rote duties of my day-to-day are sacred because they are the tasks entrusted to me.  But they are not the goal.  My significance is great in the context of my smallness.  My worries, heartaches and sorrows are relegated to their proper places when I comprehend they are "light, momentary afflictions".  I am as Elisha's servant permitted at times to see the armies of the Lord ringing the battlefield upon which I seem outnumbered.  

"Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away...
For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known."


As human skin is too frail to withstand prolonged unobstructed exposure to the sun, perhaps my soul clothed in mortality can only survive small glimpses.  Still, while I cannot live chasing those moments of brilliance, I endeavor to carry a measure of their remembered glory into the filtered days.

Important Enough

Yesterday we barreled along the railroad bed and scrambled up the stony rise to stand shouting and cheering somewhere along the eleven mile mark.  One hundred twenty-three runners had set off an hour earlier and this was our last chance to applaud them before the finish line.  I showed off a little -- leaping extra high and running harder than I've done.  I was wearing sturdy shoes and it was a great day to be alive.  

Most days are not so definitively exhilarating.  But then again, most days are not conversely tragic.  The majority are filled with the ordinary that only becomes bittersweet when juxtaposed with calamity and loss.  Two years ago we were very different people.  Most human beings alter over time, but we are a group that is dramatically changed.  We don't talk about it often, because there are few words for the feelings always gurgling beneath the surface once you have caught a frank look at mortality. 

I try to leave the bills always in order now, and pick up my dirty laundry from the floor in case someone else has to unexpectedly deal with the mess.  I don't wait for the right time for certain conversations and I let go of hurt more quickly.  Most importantly, I notice the gifts of the everyday moments.  

In Thornton Wilder's play "Our Town", Emily, who has died in childbirth, wants to go back and see the dear home in Grover's Corners one more time.  She is advised to pick the "least important day" of her life, as "it will be important enough."  As she stands among her family, unobserved, she grieves for what the living are missing, caught up as they are in the details of life.

"EMILY:  It goes so fast. We don't have time to look at one another. I didn't realize. So all that was going on and we never noticed... Wait! One more look.  Good-bye.  Good-bye, world.  Good-bye, Grover's Corners....Mama and Papa. Good-bye to clocks ticking and my butternut tree and Mama's sunflowers.  And food and coffee.  And new ironed dresses and hot baths....and sleeping and waking up.  Oh, earth, you are too wonderful for anybody to realize you!
Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it--every, every minute?

STAGE MANAGER:  No---saints and poets maybe.  They do some." 

It would be too exhausting to live each moment under the weight of the uncertainty of life, and it is a relief to trust that timetable to God.  "In your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them."  But there is a wisdom gained when you look at life from the other end.

At the finish line yesterday we clapped and yelled and proudly waved.  
In the spirit of poetry we hugged a little harder and stood a little closer; 
...and we took the time to look at one another.