#9 - A Remembered Promise

I will repay you for the years the locusts have eaten. --Joel 2:25

I kinda went crazy when my daughter got married fifteen or more years ago. My marriage to her father had been one of disappointment and heartache. I found myself spending hours outdoors in my garden the week before the wedding, crying, weeding, transplanting, fertilizing.

Three days before the wedding I started shopping for pretty jewelry. I didn't know why; I'd never had any. I lost my credit card. I switched to my check book and came home having spent money I didn't have to a pile of yet more telegrams and phone messages from my daughter's father. The back story on this isn't pretty, and my spirit broke in the ugly face of the terrible, haunting marriage that had been mine. My sixteen-year-old son came home and found me curled up under his baby blankie, crying.

I blubbered out what I'd done. He sat with me on my bed while I showed him all the jewelry, the bracelets and rings, the necklaces--the pearls and diamonds and precious stones. A single mother with three children, this was lunacy.

"I think I know what you're doing here," said my sixteen-year-old at last. "I think you're buying yourself the nice things he never did."

I stared at him. That's exactly what I'd been doing.

"I'll tell you what," he said. "We're going to take all this back to the stores tomorrow, and I promise to someday buy you a pretty ring."

Blake's promise touched me deeply. But the years went on.

At Thanksgiving, he called and asked for advice on a ring for his girlfriend. What kind of stones? Color of gold? Wide band? Thin? I could only offer what I liked. "When are you going to pop the question?" I asked.

"I don't know yet."

Christmas came. Blake handed me a large box. Inside was a lot of newspaper and, what's this? A ring box? I felt the instant sting of tears. I glanced to Blake. He was smiling. I flipped the velvet lid--and saw  the prettiest diamond and emerald ring ever. My breath caught. I could not breathe. I couldn't. The tears leaked. Still I couldn't breathe. Finally, I whispered, "You remembered."

"Yes, Mum, I remembered."

His dad had been a selfish man who resented me even the basics. I look back and can't believe I lived in such barrenness. The gift this Christmas was not the ring; the gift was Blake's remembered promise given as a teenager but which he never forgot. Surely this kind of love and generosity makes up for all the years the locusts ate.

Dear Lord: Sometimes when you make it up to us, we get far and above what we ever expected. Thank you.

#8 - A Gift Unexpected, Request For Forgiveness

Now some of the scribes were sitting there, questioning in their hearts, “Why does this man speak thus? It is blasphemy! Who can forgive sins, but God alone?”—Mark 2:6-7 (RSV)

Gwen LaVelle

When I was divorced in 1982, I needed the love and support of my old high school youth group leaders. I hadn’t seen Jeff and Gwen in years and was living in another state, but when I contacted them I was in for a rude awakening. Their harsh condemnation was crushing and for years I carried a deep sense of grief and loss.

In 2008 I returned to Arizona for the first time in 36 years. A friend told me Gwen wanted to see me. I was surprised—and not that sure I wanted to see her. But how could I not?

Waiting for her at my friend Carol’s house, I paced the floor. I'd determined I wasn't going to let the loss pass without comment, but I wasn't sure how to handle it. I'd never stopped loving Gwen and her condemnation was a badly healed wound.

To my surprise, Gwen came up the walk and gave me her beautiful smile, a smile I've never forgotten and which has returned to me over the years in the most unexpected moments. She gave me a well-remembered hug, too; and before I could catch my breath she gave me a warm and weepy apology.

Me 2008

Her condemnation, she explained, had been bothering her for years, and she'd prayed for years that God would give her an opportunity to tell me just how how sorry she was. “I was young," she said. "I was stupid, I followed the script. Will you forgive me?"

Forgive Gwen? Refuse a gift I never expected? Sometimes forgiveness is sooo easy.

Prayer: Thank you for never forgetting the barrenness of our grief and loss, and sometimes allowing restoration to that which was lost through forgiveness born of you.

#7 - Pure and Faultless

Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress. --James 1:27 NIV

Leika, Loving Life!

Once upon a time a little girl lost her mother in childbirth. Then her father in Haiti's earthquake. And then her  granny took her to the orphanage, and she lost the last member of her family. Her name is Leika. She is my newest granddaughter. Finally, after three-and-a-half years of Haitian paperwork, seven-year-old Leika is finally home with her "forever" family.

My daughter and son-in-law went the end of January to get her, a little girl with so much loss: mother, father, granny, home, language, culture, weather, friends, caretakers. I haven't met this castaway yet; she has to first learn who her new family is, her now home, her new siblings, everything new. And then I can.

Until then, Heather and Dallas give a daily report on Facebook. Daily I check the updates. She's taking all things in stride. She met her first escalator at the airport in Port au Prince. She loved it. Up and down, up and down. She met her new big brothers (Rome, 12; Kodi, 10) at the escalator in Seattle. "Go!" said her parents. Up and down on the escalator three siblings bonded. Once "home," it became apparent she loves the outdoors--oblivious to the cold, playing for hours at the pond, on the trampoline, in the swing. She's funny. She's smart. She's a total tomboy. She and her big brothers are hitting it off to the point she won't sleep in her own pretty pink room but on the floor with Rome and Kodi in theirs.

Someday they'll start bickering as all sibling do and someday Heather and Dallas may even wonder why they ever did such a thing. But this I know. Taking on an orphan is pure and faultless before God, an everlasting responsibility with its own reward.

#6 - Hot Lava! Living With Anxiety

Phil, Heather, Blake
when Hot Lava was big!

When my boys were little, they had a game they called “Hot Lava!” They spread every towel we owned all over the house and leapt from one to another—safety zones in the hot lava flowing through the rooms and down the hall. 

Twenty-five years later, their wonderful game became in my struggle to find consistent work. Only it’s not fun. For six years I've been leaping from towel to towel, part-time job to temporary job, unable to linger comfortably, poised for the next jump, always looking ahead while looking back. The longer I go without permanent work, the less likely it'll ever happen. Depression dominates my little game of "Hot Lava."

I’ve been writing a great deal about how God has kept me more or less solvent the last six years, providing much-needed “safety-zone” towels of summer jobs upon which to land. He’s even provided adventure along the way and moments of peace. For this I’m grateful.

But as I begin another winter scrounging for seasonal work in Alaska or the Yukon, familiar anxiety builds. Can I find work? If so, will I find housing? In both Alaska and the Yukon, affordable housing is nonexistent. The stress descends and I find myself physically and emotionally taxed. I know I can’t keep this up. The anxiety is killing me.

But unlike the boys who folded up the towels and put them away when they grew weary of the game, I have to keep playing. It's February and real work is forthcoming so I'm back to embracing seasonal employment in the Far North. 

Is it possible to keep playing Hot Lava without the worry? If I could manage it,  I might even enjoy it the ever-changing scenery.

At Christmas, my daughter gave me a devotional book by Sarah Young. She suffers chronic issues of her own. Her short daily devotionals are not take-away points gleaned from easy living with the occasional bump—but rise from a space of unrelenting stress. ah, ha! She’s found a way to jump from towel to towel without the anxiety. According to an interview she did for Christianity Today, she simply sits and listens. Jesus, she says, is calling. He wants to talk to us.

“Walk by faith, not by sight,” He says. “I am with you, watching over you. Turn your thoughts to me, don’t jump ahead. Rest in Me today. Trust Me absolutely. You can only find me in the present.”

What if I quit looking for God in the past, the hot lava of rolling toward me with pending doom? What if I stop searching for safe landing up ahead? Can I really trust Him for the future, without looking where to jump in get myself another five months of financial survival? 

What if I simply look for Him where I am today? Will I find Jesus here?

There is no end to the anxiety for "women of certain age" find themselves constantly looking for full time work paying a livable wage. Help me to relax, and just take one step at a time instead of leaping forward in panic.

#5 - The Gift of Tears

Thou tellest my wanderings, put thou my tears in Thy bottle; are they not in Thy Book? (Psalm  56:8)

Years ago, my son Phil broke his wrist. He was about ten or eleven, and after enduring eight hours in ER, his pinched face whitened at the slightest touch to his casted arm. "Do you need to cry?" I asked while trying to settle him in for the night and get his arm  elevated. 

"Tears are actually a gift from God," I explained, telling him that tears contain proteins that release pain-numbing endorphins. He looked at me gratefully and a long breath escaped, full of tears. 

Recently a friend received bad news. She, too, was reticent to cry. Perhaps my son thought tears "unmanly." But my friend felt that her tears expressed a lack of faith, a failure to "praise God in all things." Yet did not King David weep?

For 3,000 years people have actually been catching tears in small containers called tear bottles or lachrymatory. In these little vials, heart-broken people stored their tears of grief and pain, mourning, loneliness, and loss. Ancient Romans put their tear catchers into burial tombs to show love and respect. Victorian England used tear catchers at funerals. American history references Civil War women catching tears and saving them in tear catchers for when their husbands, fathers, or sons returned. Today funeral homes have begun selling these reminders of antiquity as symbols for universal grief and pain. 

Ancient Stone Tear Catchers

When King David wept, he referenced these tear catchers. "Thou tellest my wandering, put thou my tears in Thy bottle," he wrote in Psalm 56:8, adding, "Are they not in Thy book?" implying that God keeps track of our pain and suffering, that He remembers and records our sadness. 

Years ago my son needed to cry to take advantage of the pain-numbing properties God gives us through our tears. Today, my friend needs to cry as well. Her tears are a gift. They hold healing properties--and God collects them, putting each one into His tear catcher,  writing them all down in His book.

O God, Thank You for the precious gift of tears, and that You catch and record each one.

#4 - Walking On Water

Peter got out of the boat and walked on the water to Jesus. But when he saw the wind, he was afraid and, beginning to sink, cried out, “Lord, save me!” Immediately Jesus reached out his hand and caught him.  —Matthew 14:29b-31a (NIV)

When you're unemployed, selling your house, and are in your sixties, it’s easy to panic. I sometimes feel like Peter, winds of uncertainty blowing me forward in faith, only to panic when I discover myself walking on water. Down I go in a sea of fear.

I raised three children on my own primarily as a writer, and this is the problem. I show no consistency in the real world, my resume--legal secretary, bank teller, graphic designer, university composition instructor, receptionist, art director, editor—is way too old and way too varied. Applications inevitably require a high school graduation date and my 1970 answer in doesn’t help in 2014. I'm always looking for work, always looking for a place to live, always scrambling for money to pay the bills.

“I don’t know how you do it,” my sister said this morning. I’m currently staying at her house while we take turns looking after our mother who suffers dementia. For a week now, while our brother (Mum’s primary caretaker) is taking a much-needed break, we’ve been alternating overnight's at Mum’s, juggling the days and, of course, inevitably losing track of our “stuff.”

“I forgot my hair dryer.”

“I need to go home and get my make up."

“I can’t find my phone.”

“Did you see if I brought over my jacket?”

“I don’t know how you do this,” Tresa repeated today over coffee, very aware of my world, that I’m constantly on the move, trading one place for another, with no permanent place to stay, consequently misplacing things and always backtracking.

Truth to tell, I don’t either, and it’s why I can panic.

What about Peter? He walked on water. He did the impossible. But then he saw the waves and went under. “Save me!” he cried.

The sea of my own uncertainty is just as wild, the wind just as strong, the waves just as high. At times I go under when a tsunami overwhelms.

Tresa says, “I don’t know how you do it.”

I don't either. But I can cry, “Jesus, save me.”

           

Jesus, in my ongoing storm of uncertainty, thank you reaching out and catching me. Over and over, as long as the storm lasts.

#3 - Where is God for Mother's With Dementia?

Mum's Laundry
Port Coquitlam, BC, Canada, 1960

For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Psalm 118:24  (NIV)

Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s Disease, Lou Gehrig’s Disease… Such illnesses destroy the brain, stealing personality, beliefs, a lifetime effort at being kind and helping to make the world a better place. A sense of meaning and purpose disappears even as destructive emotions take over in many: anger, meanness, anxiety, irritability, violence. Study of Scripture and dedication to God are challenged and people are left as someone they never were.

My mother is such a victim.  She suffers dementia, and while she remains content for the most part, and grateful for everything being done on her behalf, I can see that her frustration is beginning to mount. On a simple level, she’s weary of always looking for her glasses, her book, the bathroom, the garbage. “It’s all I do anymore,” she says. But what upsets her more is that that she can’t find a way to be helpful, to be useful, “to pay my own way,” as she puts it. “I have no meaning anymore,” she told me last night. “No purpose. There’s nothing for me to do. I just take up space. I might as well be dead.”

I’ve never known my mother to be so depressed, certainly never this frustrated. If something stood in her way, she simply mowed it down—and never a look back. Not sure what to do to make her feel better, I gave her the task of folding laundry. The effort exhausted her; she finally gave up in defeat. I’ve never known her to do that either. This is a woman who once hand washed diapers for three babies! And so the disease progresses and she becomes a person she never was.

I have to ask—where is God for such a person? If folding laundry is a mystery, it’s only a matter of time before God ceases to make sense. And as her memory fades, so will God. What then?

I’m left with a mystery as befuddling as the laundry.

I’m also left with Psalm 118:24. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God.

And neither will Alzheimer’s. Or Parkinson’s, or Lou Gehrig’s Disease, or any other insidious disease.

Nothing will separate us from the love of God.

           

Dear Lord: Thank you for the assurance that, in the end, you love us still. 

#2 - One Day At A Time, Taking Care of Parents With Dimentia

This is the day the Lord has made;

Let us rejoice and be glad in it.

 --Psalm 118:24  (NIV)

Mum In The First Home Dad Built Us
Port Coquitlam, BC, Canada, 1962

My mother has dementia and does not want to go to a facility better able to take care of her. So far, we’ve been able to accommodate. My sister and brother have taken on the lion’s share and together have held down the fort for the last few years, enabling her to stay in the last home our father ever built—which provides Mum extra comfort. However, as the disease advances, we have to rethink the arrangement. She knows this and is filled with fear.  Her fear, coupled with the demands on me as I help out temporarily, leave me exhausted, concerned, and at times barely able to hang onto my own sanity as I get sucked into the vortex. I find myself walking away, escaping the circumstances, bowing my head and biting my lips—as if this might force words that could provide for her a measure of assurance.

This morning I woke with dread, the day weighing heavily before me. What new burden would I have to confront, what new confusion would my mother have to suffer? A Psalm came to mind—each day is new and made by God. In this, we can rejoice and be glad.

I found Mum in bed despondent, teary, so full of fear there’s no mitigation at hand. I’ve heard other people say to watch a parent slide into an unreachable place is gut wrenching. I more fully understand this; and unable to soothe her or even get her out of bed, I had to call on my sister.

Tresa’s a therapist and has been dealing with Mum a long time. She’s more practiced. She has better skills. And so I left the situation in her hands, went downstairs, and had myself a good cry. And I had to ask: How can I rejoice in such a day? Worse, How can I rejoice and be glad in the many to follow? Listening up the stairwell to Tresa as she repeatedly told Mum we care about her and that, no, she’s not a bother, I found myself grateful for such a sister. She got Mum out of bed, got her dressed, and calmed down.

I have to be honest. I don’t know about tomorrow and the days ahead. But this day, this particular day, I can rejoice and be glad. 

           

Dear Lord: Help me not look too far down the road, but to take each day as it comes and to find in each day the blessings You bring. And wherever it is Mum goes as she loses reality, speak the words we cannot so that she, too, can trust each day to You.