Something More

     There was more to him than the blond hair and long, red beard I noticed when I first met him that January day.  More to him than the too slender build and pale complexion that made me think he had been a sickly child.  He had more to share than the few sentences we exchanged on our long, first trip together when he gave me a ride back to college.  In the months to come I would learn that he had the persistence to keep loving me in spite of numerous rejections, and in spite of me.  So, in spite of myself, I began to return his love.  There is something irresistible about someone who loves you.
     It was not love at first sight, or second, or even tenth.  There was more to it than that.  And, having found something more, I have wanted nothing more.

My Heart to Break

     Apart from being a victim of violent crime or weather, there are few things in life that leave you as vulnerable as loving someone.  For that reason most of us station guards around our hearts to keep out all intruders.  That is why I was both amazed and frightened to realize I loved one of my spare sons as much as my own children.  I knew he would break my heart, not by his alcoholism or many other faults, but by leaving me.  I knew from the moment I met Lance that he was the kind who walks away.  Everything I learned about his life only made this more certain, but it was too late.  God had bonded us together, it was too late to call the guards, my wall had already been breached. When he left our house for the last time two years and four months later, it was almost a relief.  At least the waiting was over.  I knew how to lose someone I loved, that was sadly familiar territory.
     In God's recycling program experiences are never wasted.  In October 2008 I came down with Grave's disease of the thyroid, on Thanksgiving Day Lance left, in mid December I had my overactive thyroid irradiated and in a one of a kind reaction to that, began writing poetry.  By the time it became apparent I was not going to hear from Lance, I had poetry as an outlet for those feelings. I do not know the end of this story, nor even how I want it to end.  God is the author.  But I know that the God who did not waste bread, fish or a dying thyroid would never waste my love.
     There is a Billy Joel song that expresses well the vulnerability that love entails.  The first verses express his unwillingness to open his heart and be hurt, but recognition of the mistake of passing love by.  The final verse of "And So It Goes" says:

     So I will choose to be with you
     as if the choice were mine to make.
     But you can make decisions too
     and you can have this heart to break.

     And so it goes, and so it goes
     And you're the only one who knows.

     Whenever you let someone into your heart, you are giving them access from which to break it, but that pain is preferable to the deadness of never letting it be broken.  That is why God has asked us to love so many so much.  He can heal a broken heart, those with numb hearts will never see the need.  The best consolation I have found when I have lost someone is knowing that I loved them as much as I could for as long as I could.  And so it goes, and so it goes and God's the only one who knows.



 

Lift Us Up Where We Belong

     I have noticed it is in fashion for young women to display visible bra straps. When I was in high school it was perfectly acceptable to wear no bra, but a mortal embarrassment to have a strap showing.  The braless look was especially popular among the young hippy girls but had the unfortunate, inevitable side effect of causing "the girls" to rest near the hips at a young age. Some of my U of M classmates had to bend over to fasten their belts. I have a friend who sells designer bra straps with lace, rhinestones etc. This is not a good idea for those of us who must wear industrial strength bras with their wide straps.  People might assume that in a middle aged muddle we had somehow tangled our belt over our shoulders.  I am not a pilot, but have lived among them long enough to know getting heavy objects off the ground requires a significant amount of lift, thrust and hardware.  There's a reason you don't see a lot of rhinestones in a hardware store.  Let's take that as a sign--a "Wide Load" sign.

Results Not Typical

     I'm sure there is a rule of grammar somewhere that says not to start an essay with the word because, however now that I started with the phrase above, that rule no longer applies since it will be in the second sentence.  Because we live in an age of litigation (brought on by an overabundance of lawyers, and the fact that the only elected officials capable of restraining them are also lawyers), we also live in an age of disclaimers like the title above. Disclaimers provide the legal loophole that protects a company from lawsuits if their product does not do what their advertising so brazenly proclaims it will. And as oxymoronic as it sounds, we also live in a age of gullible cynicism (or cynical gullibility if you prefer).  On one hand some people are cynical enough to believe that there is a vast conspiracy among thousands of independent physicians, many of whom became doctors so that no one could tell them what to do (and to get paid to tell other people what to do) to hide the benefits of certain health products, on the other hand those same people are gullible enough to buy products proven only by anecdotal evidence.
     The reason we believe that pills will burn away our fat, a special diet will prevent cancer or a topical cream will remove cellulite is because we want good health and looks--as long as it is easy.  To quote X-Files, we want to believe.  Advertisers know that given a choice between cheap and easy the public will choose easy.  Advertisers choose easy also; producing scientific evidence for the effectiveness of a product is hard, finding someone willing to appear on TV in before and after pictures is easy.  Slapping a "Results Not Typical" disclaimer somewhere on the ad is also easy.  Their toned, cancer and cellulite free butts are covered.
     Products which have been scientifically studied, even FDA approved, have even more disclaimers.  The prescription drug touting its health benefits on one page of a magazine is followed by two pages of warnings of possible side effects--like death.  Looking at the picture in the ad is easy, reading two pages of side effects is hard.  Learning the name of the drug to ask our doctor for is hard enough, we can't be expected to read the small print too.  Besides, if there is a problem, there are also plenty of ads from attorneys hunting for people who have been harmed by medications.  Working to earn and save money is hard, suing your way to wealth is easy.  Fortunately it is also easy to read this blog and reading it will make you smarter and better looking. 

Results Not Typical

Growing Weary

     In the dead of winter I am desperate to see green growing things; now, near the end of the summer, I am growing weary.  The price of the beauty and utility of plants is eternal vigilance: watering, weeding, mowing, gathering.  The flowers themselves seem hot and weary, the vegetable gardens have begun to fulfill their imperative to reproduce and perish.  Though it is the hottest part of the summer here in western Montana, in the evening stillness I begin to hear whispers of the coming autumn, "Soon there will be rest.  Soon there will be rest."  The vegetable gardens will be harvested and rest from their labor of provision, the flowers will keep blooming boldly in the face of the coming frost.  The insects will die, unmourned by most of us.  I like to visit warm climates in the winter, but I am glad I live where the land takes a winter vacation.  God stewards, both plant and human, who work so hard at their seasonal labor, deserve some time off.

What My Children Taught Me About God

     In spite of my earlier assertions that the great wisdom I have to share is going to waste since I am rarely asked to give devotions, (I'm unasked, therefore I blog) I have actually spoken at two baby showers.  I was only asked to speak at one of them, I was in charge of the second and I was the easiest person to draft for devotions.  Many women share how to teach your child about God and that is certainly a good thing, but I spoke about the things my children taught me about God.  Naturally, my first living theology lesson came with my firstborn.  Baby manuals led me to believe that my newborn would sleep most of the time, but my daughter was too young to read the manuals and so was awake more than she was asleep.  That would have been fun except for the fact that for the first two months of her life, if she wasn't eating or sleeping, she was fussing.  It wasn't colic or some other insistent fussing, but persistent fussing nonetheless.  Frankly, I was not getting a lot out of the relationship.  What I learned from my tiny theologian was unconditional love and hope.  My love for her did not depend on her behavior and every night as I put her to bed I hoped the next day would be better.  A couple months later it was.
     I learned two poignant lessons from my second child.  When my son was a preschooler we lived in a house with a detached garage and on one my many trips to the garage with the detritus it requires to take children anywhere, he started screaming, "Mommy don't leave me".  Aloud I was murmuring reassurance but inside I was thinking "You dumb cluck.  What in your experience with me causes you to think I would ever leave you?"  Then God zapped me with the memory of the many times I questioned His presence with me after many years of experiencing only faithfulness.  "Connie, my forgetful child, (the spiritual way of saying you dumb cluck) what in your experience with me causes you to think I would ever leave you?"  Got it, Lord.
     The second lesson came when my son was 8 years old.  Unknown to me, at a relative's house he had watched a movie he knew he wasn't allowed to.  Several days later, after I tucked him in bed he called me back to his room and tearfully confessed what he had done and how much some scenes had bothered him.  Would I please forgive him? I was thrilled that at such a young age he was sensitive enough to the Holy Spirit to recognize his sin.  I was delighted to forgive him.  Until this time I had looked at God's forgiveness as a spiritual equation, we input confession and God inputs forgiveness, a transaction he completes because he promised to.  This experience helped me realize that God is as pleased with our sensitivity to his Spirit as I was to my son's.  He doesn't have to forgive us, he delights to forgive us.
     The hardest lesson I learned from my children was letting go.  This was an ongoing lesson as my children spent more and more time away from me but high school graduation is what hammered it home.  The year my oldest was graduating we were studying Matthew in BSF and I got to see how Christ prepared for separation from his disciples.  As a Christian mother I was feeling compelled to tip my daughter's head back and pour everything she needed to know down her throat, to dump the whole theology truck on her, but I noticed that Jesus gave his disciples only what they were able to understand.  I also noticed that immediately after they finally got the very first thing they needed to know about Jesus, who he was, he started preparing them for his departure.  Jesus had to do the same thing we do, teach them what he could and trust the Holy Spirit to take it from there.  Of course omniscience would be handy as we release our children, but I don't think Jesus was relying on his omniscience.  For the most part Christ deliberately handled life with the same tools that are available to us, in this case, trust.  He could leave his newborn followers because he trusted God to finish what he started.  I learned to do that too.
     Remember story problems from math class?  I hated story problems, but the tests of life are nothing but story problems.  And so I learned theology 101 from my three living lessons.  Those principles have stuck with me much longer than anything I was taught in theology class in Bible college.  This theology is fixed in my mind because it is attached to my dearest memories, my children.

Ordinary Magic

     As much as it pains me to admit sentimentality, there is a Hallmark movie I love called "The Magic of Ordinary Days".  It is a movie in which almost nothing happens, like "The Shawshank Redemption", except for the plot, which is totally different.  In this story the pregnant bride gradually falls in love with the man she was more or less forced to marry.  The ordinary days worked their magic--creating love.
    This reminds me of the summer I spent taking our home movies to Walgreens, having the 8mm cassettes, for which we no longer had a camera, converted into DVDs.  We even had some old reel movies with no sound.  What impressed me as I watched the weekly installments of the newly converted is that it wasn't the special occasions that touched me the most, it was the ordinary moments.  My young kids showing off on the swing set or scooping the guts out of  pumpkins, the kitten playing in a box, these are the times that move me to tears.  What was so ordinary then is irretrievably precious to me now.  The children are grown and gone from home, there is no one left to carve pumpkins, the kitten lived to a ripe old age and is buried in the back yard.  The magic was in the ordinary days-capturing love.