The other day, I placed a cat carrier on Facebook Marketplace. Yes, I still have Sunshine, for those who know and love my calico friend, but in my constant minimizing, I found we had two carriers from when we had two cats and moved from Massachusetts to Colorado.
The woman who bought it, was friendly and shared that she too was soon headed West on her own adventure with a new husband, a young child, and a cat. Our conversation expanded when I said something like, “Leaving home and living in Colorado for a decade resulted in tremendous growth, personally, professionally and spiritually.”
She picked up on the spiritual part, so I told her about some great churches she could check out in Denver, then hopped in my car, and with the transmission already in reverse, added a quick invitation to my home church until she left on her quest.
Hold that thought.
This summer I had the privilege of a week’s vacation in Bermuda. One hot day we took the local bus to the Dockyards and explored the cool, dim museum chocked with Bermudian history and artifacts. I learned that although Bermuda was discovered by Juan de Bermudez, a Spanish explorer, in the 1500’s, it wasn’t settled until 1609 by the crew of the Sea Venture, a British ship on the way to resupply Jamestown, the first British enterprise in America established in 1607, then foundering with fevers and starvation.
However, the Sea Venture was driven off course by a hurricane and shipwrecked on the coral reefs surrounding the pink beaches and turquoise waters of Bermuda. The passengers and crew were able to get safely to the island which provided wild pigs, fish, birds, and tropical fruit as well as abundant cedar trees for rebuilding their vessel. In a year’s time, Jamestown was resupplied with Bermuda’s bounty, and the story of the Sea Venture’s wreck and survival made its way back to England.
One more fascinating tidbit I hadn’t known before, Shakespeare’s play, The Tempest, was inspired by the wreck of the Sea Venture.
In fourth grade, I learned about Jamestown and its miserable beginnings. I had to memorize various Spanish explorers and their New World conquests. As a high school English student, I was introduced to William Shakespeare and his literary masterpieces. But I wasn’t aware that any of these Elizabethan figures and events were laced together.
Now, let ‘s get back to the mundane sale of my cat carrier. Two weeks after our seemingly haphazard meeting, the young woman contacted me again on Facebook and said she’d love to come to my church. Surprised and delighted, I met her and her family at the door. They sat with me, and after the sermon, the pastor’s daughter came over to greet her. Turns out they went to high school together.
Whether the young woman comes back to my church again is out of my control. How she responds to the gospel, also out of my realm. What will happen on her adventure out West, unknown to us both.
But of this I am sure, our meeting was what I call a divine appointment, a series of separate connections stitched together by the sovereign hand of God. So,
“If someone asks you about your hope as a believer, always be ready to explain it. But do this in a gentle and respectful way.”
1 Peter 3:15-16 (NLT)
For The Lord is the one who turns all our stories into His masterpiece. As believers, we are the mysterious conduit between the ordinary and the sublime, and you never know when your shipwreck will be the salvation of another.
And what do you do? Isn’t that the question we all dread at class reunions, dinner parties, really any kind of meet and greet where we’re asked to explain ourselves in terms of work? In honor of Labor Day, the day that honors work, I’ll share a vignette from a time when I was still a slave to the notion that my worth was defined by my academic or professional work.
May 1975. After graduation, at the tender age of twenty-something, my college boyfriend, John, and I moved in together. No promises, just co-habitating, the new name for what my dad called living in sin or shacking up.
We rented a third-floor apartment in West Springfield with only a space heater for heat which worried John’s mother, but it had a claw foot tub which I loved. No shower. The kitchen was huge but had a sloping ceiling that made most of the space unusable. That was okay. We only had a card table and two chairs to fill it.
Our landlord lived downstairs. When I handed his wife the rent check, she was friendly, but there was no space to get to know her before one of her pre-school kids yelled, “Mommy.”
The woman on the first floor looked my age, but whenever I said hi, she was too busy watching her little boys ride their Big Wheels to carry on a conversation.
One night, John and I walked to a neighborhood bar to play pool. It was nothing like the college bar where we met. The downstairs was dimly lit and almost empty save a few disheveled gents on barstools. John and I stepped up a level to a small table under florescent lights. I was no match for his skill, and there was nobody else to challenge him. I couldn’t wait to walk the few blocks home. The place reeked of cigarettes, stale beer, and loneliness.
It was New Year’s Eve by the time we were invited to our first party. The invitation was technically for John to a kind of neighborhood reunion with childhood friends. We took the Peter Pan bus to Northampton and walked past Smith College. The sky was star studded, no moon. A thin layer of snow scrunched under our boots. Our warm breath clouded the silence.
I followed John up icy steps. “Whose apartment is this again?”
John rang the bell. “Davey O’Shea’s.” We could hear music from the porch. “He’s in a band.” The door opened. A guy with long brown curls put his acoustic guitar aside and grabbed John in a bear hug.
“Johnny, long time no see. Glad you could make it, man.” He reached to pump my hand. “Welcome.” Then back to John. “The whole crowd is here. Mingle, mingle. There’s food in the dining room and beer in the fridge.”
The house was crowded and smelled like pot. Every surface was sat on, windowsills, coffee tables, sofas, chairs, stairs, the floor. We wound through the kitchen, and I grabbed my first Molson’s.
“Great to see you, Johnny!” was the chorus as we made our way through the crush of long-lost friends and acquaintances, and everyone offered a personal update.
Evie, a tall, brunette in black polyester pantsuit told us she’d graduated Brown and was currently at Harvard Medical School. John whispered as we passed, “Showed me her underpants in third grade.”
Rob, a stocky guy in chinos and a blue button-down shirt, told us he graduated University of Penn and was currently in the psychology PHD program at Ohio Wesleyan. John whispered, “Not allowed to ride his bike to elementary school or sled down Clarke’s hill.”
Griswold, a tall redhead told us he was at Western New England law school. John whispered, “Hucked a chunk of ice at me from the top of the playground snowbank and broke my nose. His dad, also a lawyer, sent lots of presents.”
Everyone I met that evening gave a kind of curriculum vitae without being asked. I guess it made an impression because thank God, no one was interested in me. What would I have said if someone asked, and what do you do? What were the euphemisms for I’m a dime-a-dozen English major shacking up with John in an attic tenement, paid minimum wage at a bookstore, and friendless? And what would John’s whisper have been? Picked her up in a college bar?
After midnight, and more Molsons, I lost track of John and sat on a love seat in the foyer next to a girl with long blonde hair and tortoise shell glasses. She offered no preemptive CV. Instead, she listened as I confessed what it was to be out of college with no clue, no plans, no peers. She patted my shoulder and said, “You sound so lonesome.”
Did I carry the same stench as those disheveled gents on the barstools? Were they as desperate as I was for someone, anyone, to listen, to care? Why did I need a girl with a college degree to tell me I was simply lonely? Suddenly I was wiping sloppy tears from my cheeks, flooded by the shame of exposing my weakness to a stranger. Or was it the ridiculous hope that without any impressive credentials, I was worth a bosom friend who understood?.
John appeared and took my hand as we walked back into the freezing darkness. His whispered comment. “That blonde girl, Margaret, is a pastor’s daughter.” It had been a long time since I’d been to church, but his quiet comment called to mind a hymn from when I was a little girl, “What a Friend We Have in Jesus.”
Looking back, it was a hard transition coming out of a collegiate bubble where my academic success or failure was constantly graded. It was a hard thing not to transfer some kind of marking system to my professional status. An easy thing to equate my professional and financial accomplishment to my personal worth.
So, whether you’re a young woman heading to college for the first time, a new graduate thrust into the world of work, or coming off a summer vacation weary of going back to a stressful or unrewarding job, here’s what I didn’t know way back when.
Jesus is the bosom friend of every disheveled soul who yearns to be
seen and clean,
with a worth that
cannot be earned or burned.
And friends of Jesus, are the friends I need.
Labor Day is a day of rest from work. So, let’s remember that Jesus’ earthly resume wasn’t impressive to most, a carpenter turned itinerant preacher.
But let’s rest on Jesus’ heavenly credentials: the miracle-working son of God, crucified to pay for all our whispered humiliations and regrets,
who invites us to his victory party.
Where: our heavenly father’s home,
When: now and forever
Attire: Come as you are
No gifts necessary. Gifts provided.
Bring a friend if you like
Photo by Antonio Visalli on Unsplash
“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith-and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God-not by works, so that no one can boast.”
I always knew I was adopted although I can’t remember ever being told. My adoptive mom and dad were wonderful parents, and however they informed me I wasn’t their natural child, it registered of little import, a simple fact which sat quietly wrapped on the shelf.
That is, until my adoptive mom died, and a friend gave me the book, The Girls Who Went Away by Ann Fessler. It captured the scenarios of many women’s unplanned pregnancies, and what it was like to hide your child’s gestation and surrender him or her for adoption during the 50’s when I was born. Reading these traumatic accounts, I was able to imagine what my birth mom must have gone through while pregnant with me, and I wondered if, as a fetus, I could feel the storm of her emotions. Before birth, did I record, or react to the turbulence of her inner sea?
According to Fessler’s book, I was probably four days old when surrendered to a foster home. Adoption records show my foster mom was visibly upset when she had to let me go after nurturing me for nine months. In fact, I learned much later, she was the one who bought the little pink dress I wore when I met my adoptive parents. I always thought that dress, which they kept in a cedar chest, was the one tangible link between me and my birth mom. Rather, the adoption agency suggested my foster mom buy me a new outfit, to help her release me to my permanent parents.
I was an only child until I was six when my parents were able to adopt my brother, so I was never exposed to a tiny baby close-up until I became a mother myself. I never witnessed the intimate affection between a mother and her baby, nor the endearing qualities of a vulnerable little one.
I recall a single incident with my infant cousin at my grandmother’s farm when I was five. An aunt handed me her brand-new baby who promptly squirted a poop right through his diaper and covered me in a seedy, orange guck that resembled what I clawed out of a Halloween pumpkin, except it STUNK! That’s all I knew or wanted to know about babies for years.
All to say, I had little experience with which to imagine myself as a babe during my exile in a kind of foster purgatory while my destiny was decided outside my control. That earliest era is a bright blank in my brain, a mystery I never thought to solve.
Then one day, holding my own nine-month-old daughter on my lap, I realized she was the same age I was when transferred to my new home. I’d always imagined myself a pooping larval blob like my infant cousin, but no. If I was anything like my daughter, I was a lively, cognizant human being babbling my first language. If I lost her in the grocery store, she’d cry her heart out until I reappeared. No one else would be able to comfort her. No one else would do but her true parent.
I assume the mid-century adoption model of immediately separating the baby and the birth mom was to nip that kind of imprint in the bud. Obviously to prevent heartbreak. But how could the fact of me sit quietly on my birth mother’s shelf? At the time, I was prompted to find her. To tell her it’s all right. I’m fine—as far as I know.
My brother, adopted at age four and placed in two separate foster homes before adoption, searched for his birth parents, and found nothing but tragedy which put a damper on my thoughts of finding my bio. mom. Besides who would she be if I found her? A stranger? And who would I be to her? A living scar? And where would I fit in her life? She probably had another family by then. What would happen if I were to burst out of my wrapping paper into her life?
Spoiler, I finally found my birth mom and my birth dad, but that’s another whole story.
Insight, perhaps the circumstances of my birth and adoption had a far greater impact than I realized. Perhaps it imprinted me with insecurity. Perhaps that’s what launched my longing to belong. Perhaps that’s what led me to look for affirmation and worth in illegitimate ways.
Then again, you can’t blame everything on your parents. These tendencies are common to man. Perhaps that’s why separation and adoption are central metaphors for all that’s lost and found in becoming a child of God.
Because you are now part of God’s family, He sent the spirit of His son into our hearts; and the Spirit calls out, “Abba, Father.”
Galatians 4: 6-7 (VOICE)
Abba means daddy. The kind of daddy who will come back if you’re lost and crying in the grocery store. The daddy God who revealed himself when I was lost in the world and crying my heart out.
Last week I was on vacation in Bermuda. Yesterday my half-niece set sail at seventeen with an all-girl crew in the Newport to Bermuda Race. Tomorrow is Father’s Day and my heart still bursts with affection for the man I called Daddy who was also a sailor. This essay is a rerun from last year, but I hope it demonstrates afresh how an earthly father can help navigate a child’s heart towards a trustworthy God.
My father always had a sailboat. He knew about hoists and turn buckles, jib sheets, and rudders. He knew how to come about, how to go before the wind, and how to tack on a close haul. He knew how to jibe without knocking anyone out of the boat. He understood buoys and lighthouses, channel markers and currents, and how to read charts. He taught me starboard was on the right and port was on the left because, “We just left port.”
He put me on the bow in shallow water to call out rocks, and he measured the depths in fathoms. He knew how to dock and moor a boat. He knew how to scull in a dinghy so small, you had to sit back-to-back if there were two of you. He taught me how to row and how to paddle. He let me hold the tiller with his hand close by. He taught me how to hoist the mainsail when it was time to embark and how to lower the boom when it was time to go home. He could navigate between rocky islands and beach a boat on the sand.
He took us through Woods Hole in a pea soup fog and all the way to Martha’s Vineyard. Our little vessel surfed wing on wing up and down gigantic ocean swells that heaved like mountains breathing.
He could read the water like a map. When the waves rippled with ridges as tight as corduroy, he knew to head straight into the wind because it spelled a gust so strong it could slap the sail to the water in an instant. He was a steady captain, and when he was at the helm, I knew no harm would befall me.
When he died, I felt at sea. We sold his sailboat and emptied out his workshop in the basement. He was born during the depression, so everything was saved. He went to work as an engineer during WWII, so everything was raw material for fixing what was broken. There were peanut butter jars full of flat head screws, and jelly jars of roofing nails. All labeled and sorted from every other kind of nail, screw, grommet, or fastener in pickle jars soup cans, and Sucrets tins. There were jib saws, table saws, and bow saws. There were batteries and jumper cables, oil cans and oil pans, grease guns and tubes of grease. There were ropes, chains, pulleys, drills, chisels, screw drivers and hammers, pinchers, pliers, wrenches and axe handles, just in case your axe handle broke, and your axe head could still be sharpened.
Photo by Ricky Kharawala on Unsplash
I went to college in the 1970’s with a revamped toaster from the 1940’s. When I got straight A’s he bought me new tires for the bicycle he’d bought me in fourth grade, my first 26 inch turquoise Schwinn with balloon tires, coaster brakes, and one speed. He babied his 1970 Oldsmobile Toronado into the mid 90’s, its engine still throaty as a cabin cruiser. When all the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put Humpty together again, they could always call my father.
At his funeral I realized that the most important people in his life were not important people. The congregation held no Nobel laureates, but couples my father had served sauerbraten or hush puppies from the head of our dining room table, couples who’d played bridge at card tables crowded into our skinny living room, a cut glass bowl of peanuts on their right elbow, a matching ashtray on their left, both wedding presents.
Mr. Beck worked with my father. He was 6’5”. My father was 5’6”. Mrs. Beck was close to six feet. My mother barely five. Munching canapés and crackers in the kitchen, where people always end up before dinner parties, they reminded me of the giants and the midgets I’d seen chatting behind the tent at the Altamont fair.
Mr. Wanty was our neighbor. He’d sit opposite his wife Clara, holding his cards in his left hand, picking at them with his right, nothing more than a shrunken pincher, a congenital birth defect. Sometimes my parents were invited to parties, and my brother and I would beg for the Wanty’s mischievous son, Doug, to be our babysitter. We played Hide and Seek amongst the boxes of sewing scraps, suitcases, sleeping bags, window fans, summer suits, winter coats, and family photos all piled in closets where Doug could never find us.
Mr. Kittle also worked with my dad. His wife had polio as a child and hung her cane on the side of the card table. The Palmers were second generation Italians. I marveled from across the dinner table that their skin was always tan. The first time my dad said the Pospisel’s were going sailing with us, I thought he said Mr. and Mrs. Popsicle.
One summer we went camping with the Bollingers. Mr. Bollinger drove his motor boat and my father sailed his sailboat to a small island in the middle of Lake George. It rained all night, and with the morning light, the Bollinger’s boat was almost sunk at the dock. But my father tinkered, bailed, and got the boat up and running. On our way home, I wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d walked on water.
I was not my father’s natural child. At age thirty-five he and my mother sought me through adoption. I was the cherub he pulled through the snow in a bright red sled. I was the little monkey he teased at the breakfast table, telling me if I drank all my milk, I would see another monkey at the bottom of the glass.
I played the straight man, curled up on his lap, as he read me the paper. “Mr. Schultz of 1632 Union St. reports his schnauzer, Fritz, has been missing since last Tuesday. Anyone with information as to the dog’s whereabouts should call Dickens 6-8045. Mr. Schultz fears little Fritzy has been eaten by a monster he noticed in his backyard. It had four purple horns and smelled like a dead rattle snake…”
The story got more and more preposterous until I realized he was making it all up.
At age six we played flying angel. My father stretched out on the living room carpet on his back. With my hands in his and his feet on my belly, I flew until giggles toppled me from the sky. At sixteen I practiced cheerleading jumps in front of our picture window. At night, with the curtains opened, it became a huge mirror against the darkness. My father sat on the couch, watching my acrobatics along with re-runs of Bonanza.
When the Vietnam War appeared on our television set, my father and I argued at the dinner table. When I went off to college and started living with my boyfriend, he called it shacking up. But by the time I married that boyfriend and brought home three grandchildren, it was smooth sailing again, my father’s hand on the tiller while my toddler daughter put pink barrettes in his balding comb over.
Finally, there came the day when my mother called, “There’s nothing more they can do for your dad in the hospital. I’d like to bring him home. Will you help me?”
We set up a hospital bed in the same dining room where my father had served his friends and neighbors pork chops and apple sauce. Now they were coming to say good-bye as he struggled for breath.
Looking at him, pale and diminished, I remembered the day he pulled the halyard, the rope that raises the mainsail, before he’d clipped it to the sail, and the end got stuck at the tippity top of the mast.
“Annie Girl,” he used my pet name, “Do you think you could shinny up and bring down the halyard?”
My little biceps bulged as I climbed the million miles of aluminum towards the heavens. Looking down, my father seemed small. I couldn’t believe he’d made a mistake and was asking me for help. When we docked the sailboat in a bay beside an old Adirondak farmhouse, there was a Free Kittens sign over a basket in the front yard. “Go on,” he said. “You can bring one home.”
The day before he died was an ordinary day, as ordinary as any day before death comes to call. I was vacuuming the living room. My mother was washing dishes. My father called from the dining room. “Annie, who’s behind my chair?” We’d moved his ten-ton recliner from the living room next to his hospital bed, so he could sit up and look out the window.
I walked into the room. “There’s no one behind you Dad.”
“Where’s your mom?”
“In the kitchen.”
I went back to the living room to vacuum.
Again, he called, “Annie Girl who’s behind me?”
I returned and proclaimed the space still vacant.
The next afternoon his spirit slipped away, and my soul went as white and numb as the lifeless shell remaining in the same naugahide chair he’d sat in since I was four.
The morning of his memorial, I rose from my seat on cue and walked to the pulpit. It was the lonely public moment to speak a few words of eulogy. As I looked out at the ocean of grieving companions, I spotted the Becks, towering above the rest. There was Mr. Wanty, his thumb and forefinger holding the program of my father’s farewell. Mrs. Kittle rested her cane on the cushioned pew. I saw the brave Bollingers who’d shared our small island in a storm. There were the Palmers, the Pospisels, the Lordis, the Rockwells, the Mac Laurens, all fellow sailors. I don’t remember what I said that day, but as I opened my mouth to pay my father homage, I realized he’d trained me all his life for this moment. This moment when his hand would leave the tiller forever, and I would navigate solo the rest of my life.
I sat back down then rose again as the congregation sang my Dad’s favorite hymns: “Onward Christian Soldiers,” and “What a Friend We Have in Jesus.” Silent tears streamed my cheeks as I recalled how my dad had chosen me like a kitten in a basket and treasured me as his own. Words can lie, but actions speak the truth. He’d chosen friends of every size and shape, the crippled, the lame, the outsider. In his basement, in his closets, there was no such thing as junk, only raw materials. Everything saved to meet whatever collapse or calamity appeared on the horizon.
Just follow the chart no matter the weather, no matter the waves, and never give up.
Photo by Jarrett Fifield on Unsplash
That day he called me, called me three times, perhaps there was someone behind my father’s chair, an angel, come to ferry him to his final harbor, my father, my captain!
I recently reread Mary Karr’s Liar’s Club, and a few nights ago, finished Annie Dillard’s An American Childhood. Both are memoirs. Both are masterpieces, yet so different in so many ways.
Karr’s story is set in the stuffocating heat of east Texas, in a mosquito-infested neighborhood near the oil refinery where her dad worked. Dillard’s takes place in the privileged echelons of Pittsburg, PA in a neighborhood full of large homes with large lawns shaded by Buckeye trees.
Both memoirs focus on the authors’ childhoods through the time they left home as young adults. Karr is dealing with a hard drinking dad and a mom who is mentally unstable. Dillard’s parents are well-to-do members of Pittsburg society who frequent the country club.
Karr’s problem is navigating a mother she can’t trust because of her unpredictable highs and lows. Dillard is trying to navigate steady parenting headed for a predictable lifestyle she’s not eager to join.
Both authors narrate their stories with a unique voice. Mary Karr uses the earthy, barroom diction of her dad, with descriptions like, “A butt like two bulldogs in a bag.” Dillard uses the ethereal language of the intellect. “Consciousness converges with the child as a landing tern touches the outspread feet of its shadow on the sand; precisely, toe hits toe.”
These authors clearly understand their stories and are able to express them in a manner that helps readers better understand their own.
Dan. B. Allender, author of To Be Told, puts it this way,” Your life and mine not only reveal who we are, but they also help reveal who God is.” The idea being we are God’s messages sent into the world to proclaim his truth and mercy with our very lives.
At a recent conference, songwriter, author, and speaker, Linda Story, asked what engineer in his right mind would design a piece of equipment without knowing ahead of time what he wanted it to do? God as our creator, makes us with his purposes in mind.
“For we are God’s masterpiece. He created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do good things he planned for us long ago.”
Ephesians 2:10 (NLT)
In other words, your life in Christ is no less a masterpiece than Mary Karr’s or Annie Dillard’s even if it isn’t written down in eloquent prose. Whether you’re a writer or built with completely different talents, your life, your story, is one of God’s messages to the world.
Perhaps Mary Karr and Annie Dillard’s stories could agree on this, that God alone is the heavenly parent we all long for, and His way is the only way to live a satisfying life. My own story points to God’s protection of the vulnerable, the redemption of the shamed, and the freedom of being adopted as His chosen, beloved child with a fresh new identity.
Your life may be more heart-wrenching than Mary Karr’s, more privileged than Annie Dillard’s, or as ordinary as mine. The truth is, the Lord doesn’t bake cookie cutter people. So, don’t compare yourself. Love yourself. And love your family and friends with all their quirks and flaws with the lavish love of Christ. Every believer, no matter her place in the universe or her personal plight, is a voice in the chorus designed to sing the grandeur and grace of God.
Michael Angelo wasn’t a writer, but one of his masterpieces is painted on the ceiling of the Sistine chapel. And what does it depict? Adam’s finger reaching across the heavens to point to his maker.
Photo by Alexei Scutari on Unsplash
What is God’s message through you? Think about it. You’re a masterpiece too with good work designed especially for you.
A whiff of lilacs and I’m back in the arbor atop Thorndon Park, awash in college-girl angst, looking for love and my place in the universe. One beat of Stevie Wonder’s wah-wah pedal in “Superstition”, and I’m back in the college bar where I first met my husband as a young stud.
Why do the 5 senses have the ability to transport us to a specific time and place and all the emotions that go with it? Google this phenomenon and neuroscientists will give you the physiological answer.
As a writer, I mention this connection because the five senses are the power tools in your writer’s toolbox. If you want to put your reader in the room with you as you create a scene, tell them not only what you see, but what you’re tasting, touching, smelling, and hearing. The more vicarious their experience, the more likely they’ll resonate with your narrator and her discoveries. And that’s what stories, fact or fiction offer isn’t it? A chance to learn about yourself through the lessons learned by others.
Here’s an emotional flash memoir to show you what I mean.
Joe Dempsey, the bartender at the Orange, died the week before I graduated from Syracuse University. I’m pretty sure he was a senior, and would have graduated with me. Joe was the 6’3” fixture behind the downstairs bar, his beefy hands passing out drinks and receiving payment every night that I worked upstairs as a busgirl.
Every night that is, until a closing-time altercation with customers who weren’t ready for the party to be over. I heard there was a car chase through Thorndon Park, and somewhere on that lilac-scented hill, in the dewy hours of a May morning, Joe’s curly blonde head slammed against the inside of his tin can van as it hurtled off the curve. His heart stopped mid-beat.
I suppose you’d call Joe an acquaintance, not a friend. I didn’t go to his proper funeral, but I did go to the end-of-the year luncheon at the Orange for all staff.
My boyfriend, John, said, “I don’t want to go. Too sad. It’ll be like a wake.”
So, alone, I walked into the upstairs of the Orange and filled a submarine roll with cold meat from a platter set on a table in the middle of the dance floor. The juke box was mute. Jeff, the manager, was sitting on one side of a red vinyl booth. Harry, the old fellow who owned the place, was spread out on the other side of the table.
He narrowed his toady eyes and sucked on a Carlton. His smoke highlighted dust motes floating in the stale air. “Ya done good kid.”
Good? What was good? I’d mastered how to put ten bottles on my fingertips at once and release them into a chute that led directly to the basement.
“Thanks,” I managed, between bites of my humongous sandwich and slurps of free beer.
I stood in the center of the small dance floor, usually so crowded, vast in its emptiness, noticing things I’d never noticed before. The whole room stank of bathroom cleanser. The windows were made of glass brick. The linoleum was so worn it was hard to say for sure if it was supposed to be green. A space so thrilling in the dark, pathetic in the light of day.
Bret, the upstairs bartender, walked in with a girlfriend I didn’t know. Maybe John was right. I had nothing in common with the people in that room except drinking and Joe, and no one dared speak his name.
I made my farewells and grabbed a cup of free beer to go.
I headed back to M Street and walked up the steep hill to Thorndon Park to my favorite spot, the lilac bower, then in full bloom. As my lungs inflated with the intoxicating purple fragrance, I closed my eyes. Was I drawn to this idyllic garden or magnetized to the site where Joe’s soul was kidnapped? Underneath the canopy of blossoms, death seemed surreal, an unnatural intrusion.
I continued to the top of the egg-shaped drumlin and sat cross-legged on the cool grass. Glancing down at my smooth thighs glistening in the sunshine with fine golden hairs, my own death seemed an impossible inevitability, and yet the hulking grandson of a legendary prizefighter was no match for the silent, sulking force lurking just below the surface of existence. I surveyed the campus below where I’d prepared for a future which could, in an instant, be erased.
Death pointed a boney finger at my life and whispered, are you making a difference? What will you do between now and nothingness? Who will care when you’re gone? Are you on course? Who knew? I was a small boat without a rudder. Swamped by waves of emotion I couldn’t name. Taken to a depth I couldn’t fathom.
A week later I walked across the stage of the Carrier Dome to receive my diploma. Was it only seven days? In light of eternity, time blurs. The end of an era speeds up as it winds down. John watched with my parents as I marched by in a white robe with others whose last name began with the letter C. Joe’s ghost floated somewhere behind me in the D section. D for Dempsey, and death.
My daughter in Texas recently told me jasmine smells like joy. My backyard is currently fragrant with lilac, for me, forever, the potent decoction of life focused by death.
Dear readers what memories are brought to your mind by a scent? A song? The feel of sand beneath your toes? Your grandmother’s cooking? The odor of a locker on the last day of school? There’s a story there. Your story. And our stories are one of the powerful ways God portrays our fallen nature and his saving grace. Make it come to life for your listeners with your 5 God-given senses.
“They triumphed over him (meaning the devil) by the blood of the Lamb and the word of their testimony.”
Just being real here. Much is made of motherhood in Christian culture. Greeting card companies make a fortune on this holiday. But what if becoming a mother was far from a Hallmark experience? What if being a mother feels like an overwhelming task whether you’re raising toddlers or letting go of young adults?
For example, I was born out of wedlock, the result of an unwanted pregnancy. What was Mother’s Day to my biological mom all those years my existence had to remain a secret?
What was Mother’s Day to my adoptive mom all those years her infertility was a hopeless disappointment?
Although I was married when blessed with three little ones, how best to mother remains a puzzle, I’m still sorting out. But now I know why Titus 2:3-4 encourages older women to teach younger women how to love their children and their husbands because as a grandmother God has revealed a thing or two.
Let me explain. I became a mother and a believer at almost the same time and was able to stay home with my little ones. Delighted as I was with my darlings, honestly, part of me grieved the affirmation and satisfaction I lost when I let go of my career. Newborns are exhausting, and who can keep a toddler from putting a plastic Tupperware lid in the toaster to see what happens, or whacking off tulip buds with a plastic baseball bat because it’s so much fun! An experienced mom once told me, “Motherhood is unacknowledged work.” Amen sister. The hardest work I’ve ever done at home or elsewhere.
Photo by Lubomirkin on Unsplash
For me, even harder because I saw being a mom as my new job, which made my children my products. Therefore, I was responsible for their performance. If my kid threw a tantrum, or bit another kid on a playdate, that meant I wasn’t doing a good job. If my kid did poorly on a spelling test, I was equally inadequate. As a brand-new believer, I also felt personally responsible for their salvation. Therefore, until they were “saved” their eternal damnation was all my fault. This was mistaken thinking which caused much angst and frustration. Looking back, I had little grace for myself or my children. What a burden to put my identity and self-worth on their tender shoulders.
Then grandchildren landed in my lap like shooting stars ablaze with joy.
Every grandmother I’ve met since, has shared some version of why are grandkids so much easier than your own children?
Here’s how God revealed this to my own heart. With the birth of each grandchild, I felt not only a groundswell of love for them, but a greater awareness of God’s immense love for me.
Because I was no longer directly responsible for my grandkids’ care or behavior, I discovered that love without judgement is love without limit. And this I realized is the love of Christ, God’s love absent all judgement for sin. All judgement paid on the cross. Nothing left to separate me from God’s overflowing, never ending, delight in me, simply me.
Not me the teacher, not me the writer, not even me the mom, just plain me without any adornment or achievement. I experienced God’s love as if I was naked, just emerged from the womb like my adorable grandchildren. The Christianese expression born again made fresh sense, and being liberated from mom shame, allowed me to love my whole family with a lightness I’d never known before.
So, the week after Mother’s Day, here are truths I learned the hard way to counter any regrets, disappointments, or confusion you may feel.
Your child has a sin nature just like you do this side of heaven.
God is not surprised by failure or misbehavior.
God’s love is not affected by poor performance.
Motherhood is a relationship, not a job.
Your child is not your product and doesn’t equate with your worth
Your child’s salvation is in God’s hands not yours
Let mistakes bring you to your knees not despair
God will use your worst and your children’s worst for his best
Nothing is irredeemable
Jesus is the end of judgement
Love without judgement is eternal
Motherhood is not your core identity. You are the holy, chosen and beloved child of God.
Dear readers, no matter how your journey as a mother began, or how it’s been so far, remember to love yourself first with the flood of love that spills from the heart of a Good God, and watch his grace shower your family for generations to come. This is just the beginning of becoming a grand mother and wife at any age.
Now sin and death no longer define us, but grace does: God’s favor has been given freely to us through His Son, Jesus, who liberates us from sin’s power.
Here’s another insider look at my writing process in hopes that if you’re a writer, this will help you get your own words on the page, and if you’re a reader, it will portray how God is always at work in those who trust him.
Whenever I lay down on the couch to watch TV, Sunshine, my calico cat, likes to join me. She always positions herself on my chest, her face as close to mine as she can get. If I’m really slouched, I literally have to look through her ears to see the screen. But there she purrs, sometimes sparking my nose with hers, or tickling my cheek with her whiskers.
If I’m writing, it’s no different. She walks across my desk and tries to lay down in my lap. If I push her off, she tries to sit on my computer. If I’m reading in bed, she nudges her way between me and the book and nestles under my neck like a fur collar. Wherever I am, she wants to be as close as possible to me, the food lady, the one who lets her in and out, the one who lets her sleep on my bed, even if she might barf up a hairball.
This fact was called to mind a few days ago as I was watching a PBS nature show. Like many I’ve seen before, it featured scenes of big cat cubs snuggled beneath their mother’s head just like Sunshine snuggles with me. Under a leopard’s sharp teeth, or a tiger’s powerful jaw, her cubs are protected, and somehow as small and defenseless as they are, they know this is the safest spot on earth.
And just like that I had the title of this blog, Beneath the Roar. And with it, the theme, If God is for us who shall stand against us from Romans 31-39.
I love the way the Message puts it:
“31-39 So, what do you think? With God on our side like this, how can we lose? If God didn’t hesitate to put everything on the line for us, embracing our condition and exposing himself to the worst by sending his own Son, is there anything else he wouldn’t gladly and freely do for us? And who would dare tangle with God by messing with one of God’s chosen? Who would dare even to point a finger? The One who died for us—who was raised to life for us!—is in the presence of God at this very moment sticking up for us. Do you think anyone is going to be able to drive a wedge between us and Christ’s love for us? There is no way! Not trouble, not hard times, not hatred, not hunger, not homelessness, not bullying threats, not backstabbing, not even the worst sins listed in Scripture:
…None of this fazes us because Jesus loves us. I’m absolutely convinced that nothing—nothing living or dead, angelic or demonic, today or tomorrow, high or low, thinkable or unthinkable—absolutely nothing can get between us and God’s love because of the way that Jesus our Master has embraced us.”
Now that’s the encouragement I wanted to send, but how to flesh it out? A flash memoir illustrates what that looks like with real life incidents.
All week, I came up blank until this morning when I first woke up and my mind flooded with moments when I was most vulnerable:
At four days old when I was sent to a foster home.
In fourth grade when my adoptive mom was hit by a bus and critically injured.
As a young married, pregnant with my second child, my marriage falling apart.
As a brand-new Christian without a clue how to live out my new faith.
And who did God send when the enemy was stalking me like prey? His people.
As a baby Christian, God sent my first believing best friend, Sharon Gamble, now an author, speaker, and founder of Sweet Selah Ministries that helps women rest in the presence of God.
As a pregnant young woman contemplating divorce, God sent a neighbor, Gloria, who first shared the gospel and went home to heaven ahead of me.
While my mom was still recovering from her injuries, God allowed me a wonderful summer in the care of my Aunt Ruth, a godly woman now pushing 100 who still sends me birthday cards that miraculously land on my exact birth date no matter who is running the post office.
As a helpless infant, he sent me to a foster mom who loved me so much she had a hard time letting go, so the adoption agency suggested she buy me a new outfit I’d look nice in for my new parents. I never met this woman, but I still have the pink dress and booties she picked out.
So, whether you’re a writer with a hairball stuck in your pen, or a reader feeling as weak as a kitten ( honestly aren’t we all) let’s remember we are cubs of the king.
Last week, I got some lovely responses to my post about how to begin telling your God story, so this week I planned to give you another writing tip, but on what topic?
Every time, I sat down to write, I felt exhausted. I hadn’t slept well all week, my mind busy replaying personal worries and bad news around the world.
This morning I woke up to the thump of a bluebird on the window. I know the sound because during mating season, I’ve heard it so often. The first time, I thought someone was knocking at the front door, but there was no one there. The next time, I thought something had fallen on the floor in the kitchen, but there was no mess. Again and again, thump, thump, thump, until I saw a male bluebird bashing himself against the glass as if his own reflection was his enemy.
This morning when I heard him again slamming himself at my bedroom window, I got up and thought whoever wrote, “If happy little bluebirds fly beyond the rainbow why ,oh why, can’t I?” never met a real bluebird.
Yet what a lovely metaphor, Disneyesque blue birds flitting above the cares of this world. Thank you, stupid blue bird for the idea of talking about figurative language.
As a former English teacher, I know the simple definition of a metaphor is one thing compared to another, but not in a literal sense. For example, My grandfather was a mountain of a man. If we add the word like or as, it becomes a simile. He was as tall as a mountain, his hair like a snowy peak. But you readers probably know that already, and I’m no longer an eighth-grade language arts teacher.
So, I want to talk more broadly about how symbols can enrich a theme, adding meaning and depth beyond what literal explanation can offer. Symbols stand for something greater than themselves. And they don’t have to be fancy.
For example, I started this essay with my exhaustion. The next thing I spoke of was the self-inflicted damage a macho bluebird incurs literally fighting himself. I didn’t say there was a connection, but it was there as subtext for the astute reader. The blue birds were a symbol of my blue mood and the way I kept bashed my own head against my worries until I was unable to rest.
“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.”
Matthew 11:28-29 (NIV)
Using the metaphor of an oxen yoke, he acknowledges that life can be unbearable, full of figurative burdens too heavy to carry alone. He implies that without him we’ll be crushed by the weight of the world, unable to move forward. But by his side, he offers an entirely different experience. With let me teach you he acknowledges our independent nature that wants to do things ourselves no matter how ridiculous the load. By asking our permission to be our teacher, he endorses his wisdom and our need to trust it. My literal explanation seems wordy and clumsy compared to Jesus’ elegant symbol of an immense oxen yoke around a fragile human neck.
That’s because symbolic events, and images condense and deepen meaning.
Take the ultimate symbol of the Catholic crucifix bearing the broken body of Jesus. It tells the complete gospel without a word. One God/man taking the brutal punishment for all our sins. Likewise, the empty Protestant cross denotes a risen Messiah that death could not hold.
All this to say, as you record your story, events and images will fly into your writing just like my blue bird did. So, look for them. Be aware of their symbolism and use them to strengthen the meaning of the story, the Lord has given you.
And remember, don’t be your own worst enemy, bashing yourself with impostor syndrome. Don’t exhaust yourself like I did, losing sleep over what the Lord offers to carry for us. As a Christian writer, you’re not working on your own. The Holy Spirit bears the other side of the yoke placed on you as one of the Lord’s storytellers. He’s right beside you, just as he told you he would be—using a metaphor.
“For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.
Matthew 11:30 (NIV)
Translated that means don’t be a hard-headed blue bird when you can fly over the rainbow.
Because many of you readers are also writers, let me show you how to begin telling your own flash memoir.
Just let memories float to the surface, one by one, not knowing how they’ll connect, but trusting that as they pour out, the Holy Spirit will reveal a theme, a phrase that encapsulates a truth He’s leading you and your readers to understand more deeply.
I’ll start with a memory of watching TV as a little girl when June Cleaver was a sitcom mom, wearing a shirtwaist dress and heels, yes heels, while she blissfully ironed her husband’s shirts and cooked meals inspired by Betty Crocker. She was my mom and every other mom who manned my Leave-it-to Beaver neighborhood.
I remember watching Captain Kangaroo and Romper Room until I was old enough to catch the school bus. I remember boys fastening playing cards to the spokes of their bike wheels with clothespins, so their two-wheelers sounded like motorcycles. I remember the neon pink streamers I stuck into the white rubber handles of my first blue bicycle and tooling around the neighborhood looking for playmates.
I remember the door-to-door Fuller Brush man, and the truck that delivered Charles Chips in a yellow can. I remember the galvanized milk box that the milkman filled with glass bottles capped with a thin cardboard stopper and a pleated paper lid.
Saturday nights, I recall watching the Laurence Welk Show, the stage in front of his bandstand haloed with soap bubbles while women in chiffon dresses danced with tuxedoed partners to his champagne music. I remember Myron Floren, playing “The Beer Barrel Polka” on his accordion and Jo Ann Castle plinking out honky-tonk piano while I romped around the living room.
How can I forget Liberace flouncing onto the stage in a glittering cape and seating himself with a flourish at a grand piano topped by a candelabra. I was sure if my parents just bought me a piano, I could perform like these icons.
That calls up the Ted Mack Amateur Hour, an old school American Idol that featured teenage girls in majorette boots twirling batons and ventriloquists who talked to dummies with wooden faces like Howdy Dowdy’s. My favorites were the tap dancers in spangled costumes who slapped their patent leather shoes on the floorboards mimicking Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire.
This leads me to the Ed Sullivan Show where I first saw the Beatles. But way before I had a crush on Paul, one of the show’s regulars was a mouse puppet with an Italian accent named Topo Gigio who joked with Sullivan, calling him Eddy.
Italian Americans reminds me of Perry Como, a crooner who also had his own show. I remember him wearing a collared shirt and V-neck cardigan long before Mr. Rogers ever zipped up his sweater. When I Googled Perry Como, I found he was nicknamed Mr. Casual because of his trademark outfit. I also stumbled upon a video of him singing “Catch a Falling Star.”
That triggers an image from the depths of my brain. I’m less than five years old in a little blue dress with bands of rick rack above the hem. My head is bowed over a star-studded locket around my neck. When I open the case, a miniature music box plays Como’s tune, “Catch a falling star and put it in your pocket. Never let it fade away.”
Never let it fade away. I am no longer that little girl who watched Ted Mack and Captain Kangaroo. The milk bottles and Fuller brushes of my childhood are now antiques found at flea markets. This week three people in my orbit passed from this life into the next. One of them was the husband of the woman who taught me to tap dance, finally, at my local senior center.
What I remember about her husband was she called him Mr. Wonderful. He was ready to meet his maker, and I am grateful for the way his faith and kindness brushed my life.
When it’s time for my star to fall from this sky into eternity what do I want others to catch from my life and put in their pocket? The grace of God that can never fade away. How about you?
So that’s how you start my friends. You don’t have to be a Hollywood Star, for your story to matter. As believers we can make God’s power and love visible in our ordinary lives. Try it, and see where the Lord leads.
For now, we can only see a dim and blurry picture of things, as when we stare into polished metal. I realize that everything I know is only part of the big picture. But one day, when Jesus arrives, we will see clearly, face-to-face. In that day, I will fully know just as I have been wholly known by God.
