Category: family

Perspective & Gratitude…

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It’s amazing how an unexpected trip to the emergency room and stay in the hospital can provide a new perspective on things. After two intestinal surgeries to remediate the effects of his Crohn’s Disease, my husband is finally beginning to heal, and we are grateful.

One of the biggest things I’ve learned is that marriage worked–we truly are one. As my husband has bravely suffered countless procedures, pokings and proddings, two operations, the night of the drug-induced coma between them, the intense sleepless days in the ICU after, and the indignity of the ileostomy bag he’ll need for several more months, I have felt at least a small share of his pain in it all. Every time I have to leave him or be separated from him or watch them stick something else into him, I physically feel the pain of it and my heart breaks for him. Often it feels as though I’m leaving a part of myself behind. Despite the difficulty of all of this, we know that God is making us stronger and more united, increasing our love for one another day by day. Mikael is loved by all the nurses and providers here for his positive attitude and the way he thanks them for everything they do, even those that are painful or uncomfortable. I come to admire my Mikael more every day too.

Each one of those experiences that’s been hard or humbling or uncomfortable we’re doing our best to bless, knowing that when you bless something it loses its power to hurt you. So we bless the N/G tube in his nose that made him gag and prevented him from turning his head. I bless the nurses that see him naked and get irritated with my questions or requests (though overall, they’ve been wonderful!). We bless each thing as an instrument of God’s healing and growing work in our lives.

We’re learning to give thanks for each small miracle, and we’ve had a lot this week! We got to leave the ICU and get onto a regular ward floor, enabling Mikael to get some better rest. We’ve had good visits from family and friends and feel love and support from those who are far away. Mikael got his N/G tube out and can move his head freely! On other days he got his catheter out, an IV taken out of his left hand, and one out of his right hand. Yesterday, they took off his wound covering and the wound-vac pump that went with it. Then, the miracle of all miracles, I got the first hug I’d had in almost a week because he was free enough of tubes to make it possible!

Mikael’s making some physical strides of progress. He was able to walk all the way down the ward hallway and sit outside on the patio and I don’t think we’ve ever been so grateful to look out at the I-225 traffic on a cloudy day and feel the breeze :). Yesterday, Mikael got his first bite of real food in twelve days and began to weep it tasted so good. Today, he had his first shower in six days and it left him speechless. Both of us may sleep an hour or ninety minutes at a time here at night, but we’re just so thankful to get that much, and that we can be together, and that he’s okay.

We know that our Father is good and that we have never been out of His care. That’s definitely been proven to us by having so many beautiful loved ones in our lives! As well as we may know them, we’re learning again the words of Paul by heart, “Rejoice always; pray without ceasing. In everything, give thanks, for this is the will of God for you in Christ Jesus” (I Thessalonians 5:16-18). My favorite author Wendell Berry said it well too, “What we must do is this: ‘Love always, pray continually, in everything give thanks.’ I’m not all the way capable of it, but I know those are the right instructions.” These events that have interrupted the normal events of our life also serve as an invitation to draw even more near to God’s heart–gratitude is one of our paths and we have chosen to take it.

An Iron Will: A Tribute to Georgine…

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Tomorrow is Independence Day, a celebration of what it means to know free life. The Fourth of July marks not only that for me: it is both the anniversary of a friend’s spiritual birthday in 1950, as well as that of her “home-going” sixty-four years later. She’s been gone for three years now, and it still doesn’t seem possible that’s a reality; I can hear her voice as if it were yesterday. From the day I met her when I moved to this area in 2008, she said I was a kindred spirit and adopted me as a granddaughter. She called me her “Sweet Pea”; I called her my “Mama G”. She reminded me of the grandmother I lost when I was nine years old: Mama G’s quiet strength, obdurate determination, compassionate presence and vocal faith mirrored those of my Grandma Thelma. I was instantly at home with her.

 

Mama G was an example of the faith and perseverance of the saints to all who knew her. She modeled for me how one could live well with serious illness, something she coped with admirably for almost half her life: the chronic and inflammatory autoimmune disease Lupus targeted her as a young mother. Everything she did over the next decades came at a cost, but she counted it all worthy of the price she paid. She told me often with great sincerity that she counted it a true joy to share even a small bit of the suffering that was our Lord’s, and she lived out its truth. Her best friend says she had an “iron will”. As Proverbs 27:17 says, “As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.” She helped all her loved ones (in other words, everyone she knew) to be shaped into the mold of our Savior. In the spring of 2014, she contracted pancreatic cancer, the same disease took my Grandma Thelma’s life. They say it’s the most painful way to die: since the pancreas sits on a bundle of nerves that travel throughout the whole body, its sensations are akin to those of crucifixion. Though a nerve block relieved that pain for a while, in the end she suffered its fullness. Again, she counted it all joy and faced it with that iron will, her eyes on Jesus. A few short months later, she went Home to be with God. In life and in death, she celebrated free life that did not come without a cost; her soul at last found its final rest. 

 

I am only one who loved this precious woman of God, she was precious to many, but I remember and miss her every single day. As I face each new dawn and dusk, I hear the words to one of her favorite hymns Carolina Sandell Berg, modeling the acceptant trust with which she lived all the days of her life, Day by Day:

 

Help me then, in every tribulation,

So to trust Thy promises, O Lord,

That I lose not faith’s sweet consolation,

Offered me within Thy holy Word.

Help me, Lord, when toil and trouble meeting,

E’er to take, as from a father’s hand,

One by one, the days, the moments fleeting,

Till with Christ the Lord I stand.

Just a Farmer…

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He’s always said he was just a farmer. Just. As if that were a simple achievement.  Many before him had tried & failed to make 160 acres of Iowa land their own. He tilled his own land for many years in a time when the corporate U. S. farmers began to really take things over. Hanging on to one’s own land required a steady touch & hard work, strength & patience, resilience & perseverance. In order to mold the land, one had to be willing to be molded by it. Those who would tend to that rich Iowa farmland produced strong crops of corn & soybeans. Those who could surrender to the land’s natural rhythms found themselves enlarged in kind; their lives yielded faithfully, just as the fertile soil.

 

He was only a soldier who did his duty. Only. Alongside many others, he helped to turn the tide of evil & tyranny that threatened to consume the earth in its second world war. My grandpa’s quiet humility is typical of what has been termed the greatest generation. in 1942 at the age of twenty, he’d enlisted in the U.S. Coast Guard & trained in Baltimore before being stationed at the largest U.S. naval base in Norfolk, Virginia. Though he could have remained stationed there, he asked for sea duty. In times of peace, the Guard stayed close to our shores, but in World War II, it came to the aid of all our boys stationed throughout the world. As a small part of efforts to bring aid & transport troops, he’d crossed the Equator many times, passed through the Strait of Gibraltar, Suez & Panama Canals. His ship sailed to Calcutta, India & what is now Pakistan, had seen the Philippines & much of the South Pacific by the time he got out in 1946. They were crossing through the Strait of Gibraltar when they learned the war was over in ‘45. All his brothers & brothers-in-law had also joined up, & they all came back home safe, never forgetting how fortunate they were to have done so. That simple Iowa farmer had seen the world, had been a part of saving it.

The Gift of Presence…

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There’s a faithfulness in presence. On the other side of my Grandma Thelma’s kitchen, and the table she always seemed to have prepared, sat Grandpa Ray in his screened back porch. No matter when we’d arrive for a visit, there he’d be in his chair, calmly smoking his pipe, ever composed and even-keeled. He never seemed caught off guard: throughout each day until supper and sunset, there he remained sentinel, regardless of what moved around him. He wasn’t an excitable man, and despite having spent his life as a barber, he wasn’t a talkative one. Even as a child, I wondered why he held himself aloof, always a bit removed even from those he loved most. I still know relatively little about his life, beyond the fact that he married my grandma when my dad was in high school, after my dad’s biological father had passed away. Grandpa Ray was the only paternal grandfather I knew, and though he never said he word, I knew he adored us. He  died soon after Grandma passed, so in my mind and in that reality, he was always with her.
Though I never understood his cautious engagement with life and people, I think it was through him that I first learned that presence itself is a gift. Grandpa Ray was an observer of the quiet and beauty around him, enjoying his vantage point of the lane through the apple orchard and the bluff of southwestern Wisconsin. More than that, he regarded relationships and life with acceptance and wisdom. On the rare occasion where he would choose to comment, it was clear he’d been paying attention all along, and his voice was respected. “[His] good opinion [was] rarely bestowed, and therefore more worth the earning” (Austen, Jane. Pride & Prejudice). Though he was a man of few words, on the rare occasion he was out of the house, it felt rather empty without him. By the time I knew him, and perhaps before, he’d realized he could do little to control life, little he could understand of it. Still, he faithfully offered his attendance, and stood beside us all; his was the faithful gift of presence.

Offering the Cup of Salvation…

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The Psalmist echoes what I would imagine Bartimaeus sang in praise:

 

“I love the LORD, for He heard my voice; He heard my cry for mercy.  Because He turned His ear to me, I will call on Him as long as I live….Then I called on the name of the LORD: ‘O LORD< save me!…our God is full of compassion…when I was in great need, He saved me….For You, O LORD, have delivered my soul from death, my eyes from tears, my feet from stumbling, that I may walk before the LORD in the land of the living…” (Psalm 116).

 

“How can I repay the LORD for all His goodness to me? I will lift up the cup of salvation, and call upon the Name of the LORD.” This is the response our Messiah, our promised and long-expected One desires from us.  When we are granted our freedom, our sight, may we have eyes to see those around us living in darkness.  When our thirst is satisfied by His rivers, may we lift His cup to the thirsty.  
Doing this work with Jesus will not only bless others, but as Mother Teresa says, it will make us happy too.   “If we pray the work…if we do it TO Jesus…if we do it FOR Jesus…THAT is what makes us CONTENT.”

“You Don’t Owe Me a Thing”

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My sweet sis always says everything happens for a reason. She’s ridden enough of the roller coaster of life that this statement is deserving of respect. I find her calm and steady assurance that all will work for the good ever reassuring. Though my “little” sister and I have always been friends, it wasn’t until our adulthood that we became true allies to one another in every area of life. It is she, more than any other, who offers me the greatest sense of belonging, strength and understanding. She gave me a gift for my high school graduation that set us off on this new depth of connection. It is a framed picture that still sits on my dresser; our smiling faces look enthusiastically up at the camera from the lens of childhood, our arms protectively around one another. It also holds a short poem: “My sister deserves to know, that even though I don’t always show it, she is absolutely essential to the happiness that lives within my heart.” Reading that, I knew that whatever sense of juvenile competition or disagreement had kept us apart, she had loved me always, and always would. She deserves to know this too…she is forever my love.
She became a mother young, and has always been a working mother. Though of course I may be a trifle biased, her two daughters are amazing and beautiful, soft and strong, sharing many of my sis’s wonderful qualities. Her name is Alyssa, recognizing the sweet fragrance and appearance of the alyssum flower, but meaning logical. Though she is quite rational, and this appellation indeed fits her, I think it’s her bold and logic-defying belief in the presence of God’s master plan in all things that inspires me most. She has worked hard at shaping her thoughts in this way, and to do what Winston Churchill suggests of optimists: “A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.”  Coupled with this strength is an unshakeable loyalty and dedication to those she loves, accentuating her beauty more and more every day. Another quote, by an unknown author, reflects the power of her life best: “After all this time, the sun has yet to say to the earth, ‘You owe me.’ Look what happens with a love like that: it lights up the world!” What a powerful gift, to pour yourself out for others, and still look them in the eye as if to say, “You don’t owe me a thing”. Her love most certainly shines as one of the brightest lights in my journey. “Blessed are those who give without remembering, and take without forgetting” (Elizabeth Bibesco).