Lost

If you are just jogging along in life, and you start to notice your friends are becoming a little distant, do you evaluate?  If those who have been consistently supportive and faithful begin absenting themselves from your presence, do you ponder?  If someone who loves you and desires your best approaches you with concerns, do you self-check?  What if your most devoted friends are suddenly no longer available?  Not going to help you move, not going to keep your kids while you have surgery, not going to spend twenty minutes over a lousy cup of coffee.  Perhaps you find yourself increasingly alone, or left only with those who are weaker, less mature, or not really attached; your community is composed of the sycophantic, the parasitic, or the psychologically unstable. Perhaps everything of real value is beginning to slip through your fingers.  Or perhaps you are throwing it away with both hands. Perhaps it is time to hold an intervention on your own behalf.

Dear friend, you have chosen a path which I and others who love you cannot support. You are choosing this way of the will above your community, your reputation, and your very salvation. You have relinquished your strength to another, becoming weak and ineffectual, blown about by every wind of doctrine.  You are choosing to live a lie, and present that lie as a covering for your sin. You are choosing to hide - and thus enable - grievous sin in others, to the great harm of the innocent.  You have turned from the light that once filled you, and are stepping into waves of darkness.

And so, Beloved, fellowship between us must be broken for a season.  I will always love you, always encourage your best self.  I will be nearby as you traverse this wilderness, but I will not follow you into it.  As you pursue your stiff-necked, willful way, I will prowl the side roads and hallways of your house, anointing your doors with tears and prayer. When you at last repent, I shall rejoice greatly. In the meantime, I pray that your influence will be constrained, the damage you do will be minimal, and that soon you may be found clothed, and in your right mind.  May God have mercy.

Dear LInda

Dear Linda,

I feel like my chest is filled with ice water.  I’m trying to be happy for you, but oh, how I miss you.  You haven’t really been with us for some time now; you have been slipping inside yourself inch-by-inch, and it has been very difficult to watch.  Every time I visited you, I would pray for just one more good conversation.  I decided to write you this letter because words, particularly written words, figure strongly in our relationship.  Over the past month I have been picking up little occurrences, funny incidents, tiny annoyances, that I wanted to thread like pearls on the necklace of our conversation, but you have been unable.  It’s okay; I know that somewhere in your heart and mind, behind and beyond the pain, you wanted that conversation too.  There are so many things I need to tell you, things I did tell you over the years we shared, but I want to make sure you know. 

You saved my life.  Not my physical life, but the life I live, my day to day, my family, my mind, and my self. 

You were unfailingly supportive of me in every way.  You encouraged me in anything I tried to do.  You made me feel like you were my biggest fan, and that you believed I was able.  When I told you I was toying with the idea of going to Serbia you immediately said that you thought I should go, so I went.  If you had let that pass, I would have let it pass as well.

You respected me, always.

You liked me for the person I was, and in doing so, you enabled me to become the person I am, and the person I am becoming.  You saw, somehow, that person I was under all that stuff.  It was as if you were seeing the butterfly inside the caterpillar, or the flower in the seed.  And we did see eternity in an hour, didn’t we?

You trusted me with your own stuff.  You trusted me to help you carry your burdens, and you carried so many of mine.

You encouraged me when I was completely flattened and could see no hope anywhere.

You were Jesus to me.  You were so full of the love of the Lord that it spilled out of you and all over me.  I would not know Him as fully or walk as closely with Him if I had not known you.  Every good thing in me comes from Him, filtered through you.  You have been His vessel for me, and for many others.

You laughed.  The best laugh ever.  I long to hear it again.

You needed me.  You told me that I was good for you.  Once recently, I came to see you and our other friends were not able to be there.  I explained that they were not coming, so that it would be just me.  You smiled, and said “just you,” like I had given you a gift.  I never felt so loved.

You accepted me without ever trying to change me.

You had real compassion for me.  You got angry, frustrated, and hurt on my behalf.  You also rejoiced with me, and were proud of me when I did well.  You cried with me and for me.  No one had ever done that.  For the first time in my life, I was worthy of someone’s tears.

You gave me the courage to believe that I am valuable, and that I have something to offer.

You saw the Lord in me.  You called me a true disciple.  My weak faith took a great leap of growth in that moment, and being His disciple took on renewed importance that has never left me.

Your friendship has been the great blessing of my life, shining to illuminate the facets of my other blessings so that I can value them rightly.

There are so many moments I was looking forward to sharing with you.  I wanted you to celebrate Ben and Carrie’s wedding with me, to make a fuss over the veil I made for her, to love her and take her to heart as you have me, to help me love her well.  I wanted you to hold and bless my grandchildren, and teach me how to be a truly great Mimi.  I wanted to share their stories with you.  Then I wanted to do it all again for the rest of my sons.  You saved their lives also, you know, by loving their mother well.

I wanted to continue to talk over every decision with you, before and after.  You have been the salt in the meal of my life, and just now, I have no appetite for the saltless remnant. 

I am constantly thinking of music I want to share with you, books I want to discuss with you, and questions I want to ask.

I wanted to help you write your story.  We had that planned for the summer, and it hurts me to leave it undone.  Do you recall when we read and discussed Phantastes in book group?  You brought up the passages concerning the girl who had the lovely globe that was broken by Anados’ Shadow.   Later, as Anados is lying imprisoned, the girl comes to him, bringing the song of freedom born of her loss.  You said that you hoped to be able to live this way, and I, barely knowing you at the time, told you that I saw this in you already, that you were doing this very thing openly all over College Heights.  As I got to know you, I realized that the pattern of your life was this story; you were the maiden with the broken globe.  This passage so mirrors your life that MacDonald could have written it with you in mind.  You took broken pieces of your life to your Father, and he gave you a song to carry among prisoners, so that by your sharing it you might free those who would hear it.  You have done that for hundreds of people, all your life.  I cannot begin to calculate how many souls you sang to freedom, but the Lord knows every one; I believe you will be presently seeing some of the fruits of your efforts, and Heaven is full of those who would not have been there if you had not had the courage to sing your story.

I wanted you to help me through the next thirty years of my life.  How can I navigate without you?  I need you to talk me through this great loss, to cry with me as you have so often.  It is so selfish, I realize, but I want you to take some of this hurt into yourself as you have every other hurt I’ve ever brought to you, lessening it so that I can bear it.

A couple of things I did not have opportunity to tell you, but they are important.  I am grieving, of course, but I am not angry with you for going, or with the Lord for taking you.  I am so glad you are no longer in pain, physical or emotional, and no longer helplessly dependent.  I love picturing you running, or riding your bike again, with your golden hair streaming.  I love thinking that you are resting now, with no tubes or drugs, safe in the arms of the One who loves you best.

I suppose it is silly to write all this in a letter, but I think you understand and are smiling over it.  I will continue to write to you, I’m sure, because I cannot imagine stopping.  I believe you will know; our Father will let us continue to love one another.  Sharon and I got you sunflowers as our offering to your memory.  We were contemplating red roses, because they symbolize love stronger than thorns.  Sharon pointed out that we all brought our own thorns.  Boy, did we!  But our love has been stronger.

I believe you were sent into my life because our Father knew I needed you, and you have put down roots in my heart that can never be removed while I live.  I will love you and treasure your friendship all my life. 

I’ll be along directly, my friend; save me a seat.

Grace, Again

I wrote and posted this a year ago.  I'm posting it again because it is all still true.  Praying this grace for Oklahoma.

Grace, A Year Later

Today is the anniversary of the most dramatic and galvanizing event in the history of our small city; it is Tornado Day.  Everyone here was impacted, some in ways unutterably horrific and some, like myself, with only inconvenience and irritation.

Only inconvenience is the answer I gave, and usually still give, when asked if the storm "got us".  The storm "got us" most significantly by allowing us and those we love to be bathed in grace.

The storm took down a building where we (Hub) had a young man working, the son of my dearest friend.  For hours we thought he was gone.  For hours men dug with bare hands and back hoes.  One of them was the boy's father, thinking and feeling what can be known only to a father facing a gut-wrenching near certainty of unspeakable loss.  One was my Hub, fighting tears and time.  Both, and many others, fighting for Stephen; desperate to find him, desperately hoping he would be found elsewhere, safe and well.  I felt, in some weird, metaphysical way, responsible.  I was trying to help my friend, his mother, hold onto hope while trying to push aside the paralyzing thought of how I could ever face her if.

Across town, drama was playing out in a different way.  You certainly know the story of Malachi, The Boy Who Lived.  Malachi survived a blow to the face by a cement block, which should have killed him instantly, was helped by friends who, providentially nearby and providentially prepared, gave him the proper treatment and carried him to the hospital.  The triage team didn't know where he was when his family arrived.  It was a war zone there, and there was not time for niceties like insurance information or, often, for patient names.  There was no billing by the hospital that night; helping people became paramount.  Malachi's family searched for him room-by-room and bed-by-bed.  When he was found on a stretcher in a side hallway they were told that patients put there were seriously injured but stable enough to wait; many weren't.  He was bathed in grace.

While searching for Malachi, his brother found Stephen, unhurt but stunned and shocky, contacted his family, and sat with him and kept him present until his father arrived.  Hearing the storm approaching, he had gone not to the designated "safe area" in the building but to the bathroom adjacent to it.  The safe area was destroyed, but he walked out of the bathroom unhurt.  He should have been killed, but wasn't.  He was bathed in grace.

Rumors were flying that night, of course.  Malachi's sister was receiving texts asking if it was true that Malachi had been killed before she had even been told that he had been injured.  A person who would send a text like this is more reptile than human.  My first notice, not that I'm anyone, was someone receiving a text and casually (not, but sounded so) stating that Malachi was heading for surgery and was not expected to survive.  Again, not true.  Please, please, if you have any shred of human decency and are ever unfortunate to be present at such a disaster, please do not phone, text, email, or speak any "news" of which you yourself are not personally witness.  It is not the time for gossip.  The truth is hard enough in such circumstances, and it is hard enough to communicate with the physical and electronic systems all clogged by frantic people trying to find the truth about those they desperately love.  Keep your mouth shut, your fingers off the buttons, and if you have to talk things over, do it in prayer.

Malachi was at my house last night, making music with friends.  He is as awesome as he's always been.  He has a few small scars but his face is unmarked.  He is more thoughtful, perhaps, than a year before.  Or perhaps he is just more determined to voice his heart, which he regularly puts on display at frictionlesstea.blogspot.com

Stephen starts a new job today, so will be around here less often for a while and he'll be missed.

I care deeply for both these young men, the sons of my friends, and friends of my sons.  (How cool is that?)  I am thankful every day that they were spared when so many, equally beloved, were taken.  We need to remember the One who protected their lives, and we need to remember those who were lost.  We need to remember not the storm, but the Calmer of the storm, and the fact that we who belong to Him, whether present in time or out of time into eternity, are awash in limitless grace.

All Good Things

Recently Lance asked us to create a list of all the good things that had happened in 2012.  I found this list to be a great catalyst to gratitude.  I share it here, and encourage you to make your own list.  I would love it if you want to share privately or in the public comments.

Many of the good things of 2012 are on-going good things from previous years, and many are just hints or promises of good things to come.

 In 2012, we met son-number-one’s Important Friend.   She is a lovely, compassionate, strong and independent young woman.  Son-number-two says she is solid, and that is high praise indeed.

 In 2012, son-number-two decided he would graduate from OCC in the spring of 2013 and pursue training as an EMT/paramedic.  He is working toward this, it has not happened yet, but it came onto my view-screen in 2012. 

In 2012 The Girl Who Lives in Our House left a dangerous and demeaning situation, which we all encouraged her to do, and for which we are all very glad. 

In 2012, my dear friend-of-years took a month-long sabbatical to examine her own soul, mind, and heart, pray intensively, rest, and begin to formulate a vision for the rest of her life.  This event makes my list of good things because I love her madly and anything that moves her more deeply into the amazing person she was made to be is a good thing. 

In 2012, another dear friend-of-years had a gastric by-pass, a decision that she took several years to come to, and it has revolutionized and probably saved her life.  This is a good thing because she has been suffering greatly.  It was difficult watching her grow sicker; it has been glorious watching her grow more healthy almost before my eyes. 

In 2012, another dear friend-of-years left a job she has hated but to which she has been shackled for too long, and a town that she called the toe-jam of the Midwest.  She has moved to a job she enjoys, in a town that is much more convenient for a blind woman with multiple sclerosis.    This is good because she is happier than she has been in years and I no longer have to bolster with frequent all-night phone calls in which we discuss false friends, imaginary parties, and which book character she is most like.

In 2012 another dear friend-of-(few)-years accompanied her husband on his sabbatical, a six-month teaching job on another continent.  She developed some very sweet friendships and left a large part of her heart there, as one will in such situations.  She came back having rediscovered that life at a slower pace is sweeter, and determined not to let circumstances run away with her again.  She is keeping sane office hours, delegating more of her duties, and is much less stressed.  She has more time to love people, which is the thing she does best  of all.

In 2012 we learned that one of our dear pro-life advocate sisters in Eastern Europe is expecting her first daughter after two now-teenage sons.  What joy this tiny girl will bring to her family of birth, as well as her family-of-love in America.  I am very excited at even the hint of a possibility that I might soon get to meet her.

In 2012, we had kittens born in our house; in fact, they were born in our favorite chair.  They have been a mixed blessing, and that is all I am going to say about that.

In 2012 son-number-three wrote me a note explaining that when he seems angry, it is sometimes just angst, and when he is angry, it is not always with me.  I have put this note in my keep forever box.

In 2012, I returned to tax preparation.  It turned out that this is the last year I can practice without a formal examination by the Internal Revenue Service.  It was good timing; I can sit the exam with a full year’s work fresh in my mind.

In 2012, I became a full-time university student, putting one course of study on hold for another.  This came about because I realized that my current work, which I love, does not love me. 

In putting aside the previous study, I came to realize that I had not really been working at all, but just poking at something and hoping it would suddenly burst into glorious flower all on its own, swallow me up, and make all my dreams come true.  Late in 2012 I realized I need to look subjectively at who I am, what I can do, want to do, and was made to do, set a goal, make a map, and go.

2012 was the year I started my blog.  I have been shockingly absent these past months, but what I have written and published has been tremendously rewarding to me.

In 2012, I realized that my youngest child is a child no longer, but a remarkable, loving young man of great talent and deep faith.  He is patient, kind, gentle, and loyal, and wiser than a 15-year-old has any right to be.

2012 was the year of the almost-babies.  For a brief few hours, we had the promise of having four babies added to our home.  I began to love them from the first hint, and still grieve their absence.  This is good only in that it reinforced to me that one can do the right thing for the right reason, and be glad and relieved, but still so broken-hearted, disappointed, and sad.  They were mine for an hour; I will regret their loss forever.  This situation has personalized to me the scope of tragedy that is our foster care system to the point that I am seeking the Lord’s heart in the matter of what role I may play in the advocacy of children.  I do not know what He has in mind; His answer did not arrive during 2012.

  

2012 was the year I began to let go of things I cannot control.  It was the year I began to recognize my own need and deep longing for worship, and to pray for a heart of worship.  It was the year I began to desire the Lord’s pleasure, and to try to live so that He will delight in me.  It was the year I committed to walk through whatsoever doors He opens and to remain on course until He redirects me.  It was the year I began to see His remarkable faithfulness.  Situations that should not, could not, would not end well were held on an open hand, with an acknowledgement of my own powerlessness and shortness of vision, and many declarations of, “It is what it is.  I cannot solve this; You can.  Do what you want.”  I found that He delights in showering me with tiny miracles, or in being my solace when He does not, which is a very good thing.

A Tiny Grief

My friends are used to hearing me cluck and mumble about how badly I want a baby.  Even now, at my advanced age, I long for the warm little body, the sweet smell, the incarnate love that is a baby.  All my life I have either had a baby or had this longing for a baby.  It will be with me until I die.

Yesterday, while minding my own business at The Store, I received a call from DFS offering us not one but four foster children, the oldest being 3-year-old twins.  We are not registered foster parents.  I believe I've spoken here before about how our own children got through childhood relatively normal by the pure grace of God.  This was going to be a "kinship" placement, meaning we know the family involved and they had given the caseworker our information as a possibility.  I must tread lightly here so as not to violate anyone's privacy.  If you know who I'm talking about, please keep mum about it.

The fact is, according to the case worker, that every foster home in our county is full to capacity.  Part of the May 22, 2011 damage was a great loss of foster homes, and there were far too few to begin with.  Hub and I talked it over and decided that, with maneuvers that would make Bobby Fischer scratch his head, we could just about pull it off.  Sons numbers three and four were reluctant but cooperative in helping us prepare for the home visit at 9:00 that night.  We were ready.  Those of you who have seen our house may now pick your jaws up from the floor.

Son number one, a social worker, agreed with us that it would be murderously hard to undertake four tiny children on less than 24-hours notice, but that it was the right thing to do.  Aside from this one lone voice of support not one person, not one, thought we should do this.  Son number two was nearly in tears as we discussed the situation.  He had a long list of objections and every one of them was legitimate.

My reasons for going forward were also legitimate.  First, I had and have been praying for these children and the entire family.  I prayed for their safety, for their emotional well being, that they would land somewhere safe, where they would find compassion, patience, acceptance, and love.  That ultimately - the ultimate ultimately when it is all settled and they are a re-united family or not - they would receive the best situation for them, whatever that looks like, so that they could grow up as undamaged as possible.  Having prayed that for them by name, repeatedly and with great passion, how could I say it would be too inconvenient or too expensive or too hard to move over a bit and make room for them?  How could I say it was too great a sacrifice to change their diapers, fill their bottles, wipe their noses, and tie their shoes.  Those are such small things, and so needful to these bewildered and beleaguered children.

Second, I have over the past four months or so, been praying for the sake of my own soul that whatsoever doors are opened, I will with faith walk through them.  That I will do what is given me to do unless the Lord Himself stands in front of me.  Now this scares me every day, and it scares me more now that I see it in print.  I know I don't always live it.  I fail daily.  But I wasn't going to miss something this obvious.  I hadn't sought these children.  How dare I turn them away when He had sent them, the least of these?

So we plotted and cleaned and I began to mother them in my heart.*  We met with the case worker.  We were accepted and approved and starting to get really nervous.  Then he told us that he had to notify the other family that they wouldn't be needed after all.  What?  What other family?  We thought there was no other family?  But there was.  There was a foster family that was willing and prepared to take them all.  So we did the right thing and let them go to the family that could give them the best care.  We let them go to the family with the mommy who could really be there for them 24/7 as I could not.  We let them go to the family that already had the beds and the toys and the training in place.  And in spite of ourselves we were relieved.  And sad.

I went to bed feeling as though I had betrayed them somehow, even though I know full well that they are better off.  All day today they have been on my mind.  As I pored over Florida Bar v. Brumbaugh with my eyes, my mind was thinking that, if things had gone differently, it would be bath time, with bubbles and rubber ducks.  That it would be time for stories and snuggles.  That we could be having glorious fun with play doh and our hundreds of cookie cutters. That I would be giving someone a bottle, and receiving more nourishment from the experience than the baby was.  And there is an ache in my heart that wasn't there before yesterday.  I am having a tiny grief for a lost possibility.  I know myself well enough to know that I will always, to a certain degree, regret the decision we made.  You will all see me and I won't look any different, but I'll be different.  I'll be the one mourning the loss of four potentialities.


*Nod to Anne.

Under the Piano

Some dear people in our acquaintance recently lost their 36-year-old daughter to an aneurism.   It was obviously unexpected.  Aneurisms do not send notice. 

To:  Mrs. Happily Unaware

       111 Oblivious Way

Dear Mrs. Unaware;

A representative of our conglomerate will be calling on you at . . .

Remember that old movie device where someone on a city sidewalk would be struck by a falling piano?  This particular family seems to be perpetually under the piano.  I know we live in a fallen world and bad things happen, even to very good people, and God is good.  I know and believe He is good.  Still I wonder why some are such piano-magnets.

I haven’t spoken to this family.  I haven’t written a note.  I know I should.  Words, after all, are “my thing.”  On this instance, however, the muse has been silent.  What a crock of cop-out.  But it is true that I don’t know what to say.  Even the sweet truth that God is faithful, a truth that they know through experience far better than I, sounds like a platitude at a time like this.  Still, it is the only comfort there is. 

What I would like to say is that it has all been a horrible mistake.  That their daughter is not gone.  That she’s just been vacationing in some small Amish village where there is no cell service.  That she will be dropping by soon to hug them and collect her three children and return to the life she had been living on Oblivious Way until last week when she went to bed Unaware and they thought she had slipped away to Heaven.  She had really only slipped away to Iowa, and the Heaven journey is scheduled for later.  Much later.  After they have gone ahead of her.  Because parents should never outlive their children.  Never. 

Of all of life’s blessings, children are by far the best.  And of all losses, this is by far the worst.  While this sweet family would not deprive their daughter of Heaven, would not snatch her back to this hard life after the rest she has found, they would give anything and everything short of their souls and their other children to turn back time and somehow change this before the fact. 

This family is already under the shadow of another piano, rocking in the wind and worrying at its fraying strap.  Let us pray for them.  Let us pray for one another without ceasing.  In the end it is really the best we can offer one another.  In the end, we are all under the piano.