31 Days in which I Am Saved by Beauty – Day 6

October 7, 2012 By
We went to a wedding today.
Being there required driving a long way,
climbing a mountain,
arriving in time to rest a bit
before the ceremony started,
being told the room would not be ready for at least 90 minutes,
sitting in the lobby with all our bags and hangers,
and then making a wonderful discovery:

We had been upgraded to a suite. 

With TWO balconies.
And this is what we saw when we stood out there:
You know, we could have just stayed in our room
and enjoyed the view. 

But we didn’t.
We got dressed,
we went to the lovely service.
And then, while everyone else
ate appetizers and had a few drinks on the lawn,
in the freezing* cold,
we invited Dick’s 90-year-old cousin
and the pastor’s wife to come back to 
our suite 
and rest a bit before dinner. 

I uploaded pictures I’d taken
and listened in
as Dick brought out some old photos
and diaries he had brought,
in hopes that this very cousin would be here.
Can I just tell you how fun it was
to listen to them talk?
She is sharp as a tack,
has great vision,
and was able to identify a lot of mystery faces
in our old photos.
She thoroughly enjoyed the diary excerpts,
adding her own memories into the mix.
Harriet is very short,
very talkative,
and one of the kindest people I’ve ever met in my life.
I don’t imagine that very many people in her life have
ever told her she is beautiful.
But I’m here to tell you,
she was beautiful to us tonight.
She carries around with her
history.
Our history.
And stories of faith and commitment,
a vibrant testimony of God’s goodness over time. 

I think maybe I want to be her when I grow up.

Only trouble is,
I’ll have to figure out a way to shrink
about a foot!

*Please bear in mind that I am a native Californian who has NEVER lived in a true winter climate. I’m guessing it was in the low 60’s. And in evening wear, without a wrap, that is freezing to us. Sorry. I know how wimpy that is. Nevertheless, it is fact, hard fact.

Filed Under: 31 Day Blogging Challenge, Blogging, family, Marriage, memoir

The Long Unraveling: A Deeper Family

October 4, 2012 By
My husband as a newborn with his beautiful mother.

Today is my day to post over at A Deeper Family.
It is such a privilege to write in this space,
where honesty is encouraged,
and going deeper is invited.

The tension in the car is thick enough to choke on. My husband begins his litany of things-wrong-with-the-world, something he’s been doing with alarming frequency of late. It makes me tired. Long, loud sighs begin to whoosh from deep inside, as I sit next to him, at my perch behind the steering wheel. Finally, I decide to face into it more directly and ask, with the tiniest hint of superiority, “Can you tell me one thing you’re grateful for right now? Just one? All this negativity is exhausting.”
Silence.
We pull into the underground parking at the health facility where his mother now lives. She is 96-years-old, very frail, fading away like a mirage on a desert highway.
And this is the truth of it: we are waiting for her to die. There it is, in the harsh light of day, like brown, barren sticks in wintertime – we are waiting for her to die.
Perhaps that explains the litany, the sighs.
Twice each week, we make the 20-minute drive across town to sit with her at lunch, watching her not eat. Some days, we rouse her from a deep, gasping sleep. Some days, she is already awake. Always, we get the walker from across the room, remind her how to stand up, gently comb her hair and very slowly walk with her down the hall to the dining room. . . 


Filed Under: A Deeper Family, Aging, death, family, Marriage, memoir, personal journey

To the Penny…

September 27, 2012 By

Circle round, friends. I have a sweet story to tell.
And that open chest, filled with dress-up clothes 
is what inspires its telling this night.
It’s a bit circuitous, but truly rich with 
wonder and grace
and it happened at –
well, what can I say?
It happened at exactly the right time. 

I had been at my job as Associate Pastor for about eight months, 
when I overheard an off-hand remark
made by our Senior Pastor,
 a man I greatly admired and
was delighted to be working with in my first-ever
paid ministry position.
And this is what he said:
“Well, all the stats tell you that you’ll know a new
hire is a good hire if you can see that
they have ‘raised’ their own salary
and it shows up in the general budget funds
by the end of their first year.”

Gasp.

Earn my own salary? 
Have it show up in the budget?
By doing what, exactly?
I was scrambling to learn who people were,
how they worked together – or didn’t work together.
I was preaching a few times,
teaching a few times,
making lots of house and hospital calls,
planning small groups,
meeting with individuals and couples for counseling.
How was any of that
going to raise money for the budget? 

And then . . .

One afternoon, a favorite client of my husband’s,
a truly beautiful, older woman who was
self-confident, gregarious and very out-spoken 
called him up and said:
“What’s this I hear about you making a move to Santa Barbara? 
You know I’ve just moved up here, too, don’t you?
Tell me all about this please!! 
Why are you here?“

So he told her.
“Well, you see, it’s like this…
my wife is a pastor.”
“She is what? A pastor, did you say?
Does she preach?”
“Sometimes,” Dick said.
“She’s an associate and she’s part-time, so
it’s just a few times a year.”
“Well!” She bellowed. “I want to know the next time
she’s up in the pulpit, because I’m coming myself
to check her out.”

And come, she did.
All 5 feet 10 inches of Pasadena socialite that she was,
garbed in a bright chartreuse wool cape,
straight from the runways of Milan.
She had been active in an Episcopal parish
in Pasadena but hadn’t yet found a church home 
in this new community.
When she came to hear me preach, 
she walked into the back door of the gymnasium 
we were using as a worship center, 
looked at the beautiful wooden cross 
we had mounted on the long wall 
(between the basketball hoops), 
genuflected, crossed herself, and sat down in the back row. 
Like any good Episcoplian would.
And she did that every single time she came.

That first time, she came up afterwards,
effusive in her praise, just delighted
that her financial advisor’s wife
was a preacher.
She introduced us to a few other people in her social circle,
and went out of her way to be kind and inclusive. 

“Whenever you’re up there,” she said, 
“I’m gonna be down here.” 

And she was.

She called the church office, and got the schedule.
And just about every time I preached for the next 10 years,
she was there, sitting in the back row. 

But here’s the strange and wonderful part.
Are you ready?
That first Christmas, 
on the first anniversary of my very first day of work,
she called her investor guy – that would be my husband – 
and said something like this, entirely of her own volition:
“You know, I would really like my annual gift this year to
go to that Covenant Church where your wife works.
That’s a great group of people over there
and I’d like to support what they’re doing.”

Can you guess what happened?
Her gift, 
to the penny, 
was the exact amount of  my salary –
for the entire year.
And for every year that she lived after that.
Can you imagine how encouraging this was
to a very wet-behind-the-ears,
brand-spankin’ new pastor? 
To this day, I give thanks to God for this
gift of love and grace in my life.
First of all,
for this delightful, loving and faithful woman.
And then for her serendipitous generosity.
Her gift came at exactly the right time,
and was exactly the right amount.

And I had forgotten this lovely truth until one night
last month when we entertained several small girls.
They opened the dress-up chest,
and floating out of it came some of this 
loving friend’s beautiful clothes. 

When she died, I had also become acquainted
with one of her sons – had married him and his wife,
in fact. And one day, as we were driving back to 
Santa Barbara from a time away, my phone rang.
He said, “Mom’s in the hospital, and it doesn’t look good
at all. But don’t come – because I know she would not
want you to see her looking like this.”
Gently, I assured him that I would be there,
and we headed straight to the hospital before going home.
That time of prayer and anointing and farewell
was one of the most beautiful experiences of my pastoral life.
And the two sons who were with her were
more grateful than they knew to have
the prayers of the church prayed over their mom as she died.

After her service,
the son and his new wife brought over a truckload 
of her clothing and costume jewelry,
donating it to a rummage sale we were having
to raise funds for student ministries.
I bought some of her beautiful and brightly-colored clothes,
including that chartreuse cape,
and put them lovingly in the dress-up box for my grand-girls –
who were yet to be born at the time!

Because, somehow, 
I just knew they would love them. 
And every time, they wrap themselves in
one of her diaphanous gowns,
I smile.
Both of our girls are going to be quite tall, you see.
Both of them are blessed with dramatic,
confident personalities.
And one day soon,
I’ll tell them about my friend,
the one who blew through my life
like a gift on the Wind of God
and graced me with her love.

OF COURSE, I’m joining this one with Jennifer Lee’s God-Incidences meme,
and also with Ann, Duane and Emily – whose amazing book releases TODAY.
If you love someone with an eating disorder, this book is one you should have on your shelf – it is terrific. “Chasing Silhouettes,” by Emily Wierenga
 

 




Filed Under: community, family, God's gifts, Marriage, memoir, personal journey, Santa Barbara, Wonderings in the Word

An African Journey: Post Five – The Very Best Part

September 13, 2012 By
There we were, minding our own business,
getting to know this new country,
these new friends,
this new work . . .
and then the world shifted.
Well, maybe not the entire world,
just our tiny corner of it.
And it took a while to sink in, too.
On the 4th of June, 1967, 
I wrote to my mom and dad and said this:
“I have been feeling lousy the last 2-3 weeks.
Attacks of nausea at odd times, extreme sleepiness
and a late period. I am going to see the doctor next week
to find out what the trouble is. Will let you know the results.” 

What can I say?
I was young and . . . naive? 
Let’s just say it . . . 
I was plain old stupid about the process of reproduction.
Yes, thank you very much, I did know how it happened.
I just didn’t have a clue what happened when it happened.
So . . . stupid?
Yeah, that about covers it.
My mother just laughed hysterically when she read that letter,  
and her diagnosis arrived about the same time the doctor’s did:
you are two months pregnant.
About four months along, sipping a Coke on the Garden Route in South Africa.
My husband’s parents and younger sister came to visit us and took us on a wonderful three week trip to game parks and other beautiful places south of our home. I will write another journal entry about our travels to other parts of Africa while we lived in Zambia.
About 6 months along in these two faded black & white photos.
So. We were pregnant.
DEEP breath.
And so, the thinking and the wondering and the planning
and the gathering began.
My doctor was an American,
a member of the denomination with which we served,
and his work and his hospital were 40 miles away,
over a very, VERY bumpy dirt road, out in the bush.
I saw him three times during my pregnancy.
My everything- you-wanted-to-know-about pregnancy reading was limited, 
to say the least.
A friend who was a nurse had an old ob-gyn textbook,
filled with pictures and descriptions of 
all that can go wrong in pregnancy and delivery.
Lovely.
Fortunately, there were women living in our 
neighborhood who had borne babies before.
In fact, over the next four months,
four other women announced that they, too, were pregnant.
It was an epidemic!
Those of us who were newbies learned from the old hands,
and somehow, we muddled through.
Our baby was due on January 9, 1968,
and I worked as a teacher through the end of the term in
mid-December, grateful for papers to grade,
students to love and exams to prepare.
We found treasures to be repaired and painted,
I created curtains out of fabric bought in our town,
friends sent me maternity clothes and baby clothes
from home, carefully folded into 9×12 envelopes.
Over the next few months,
the reality began to sink in:
we were going to be parents.
Yikes.
January 9th came and went.
January 19th came and went.
My 23rd birthday on January 23rd came and went.
I lay on the bed, weeping, convinced that I would have this oversized basketball in my body for the rest of my life.
At about 6:30 in the morning on Sunday, January 28th,
I woke up with a strong back ache.
I went into our bathroom/laundry room and
sat on the edge of the tub, folding clean towels.
I remember being overwhelmed with
the realization that my life was going to change
forever
by the end of that day.

I was, however, still stupid.
I stood in the middle of the lawn at about 9:30 a.m.,
watching my stomach ripple under my dress,
begging my cross-the-street neighbor 
(who was pregnant with #4) 
to tell me if this could possibly be labor.
She just looked at me and said,
“Diana, get yourself into the car and drive to Macha.”
So that is exactly what we did.
If you ever find yourself wondering how you might speed things along in early labor, I have a suggestion for you.
Find yourself a very bumpy dirt road and drive on it for about an hour.
I guarantee that things will pick up nicely.
We arrived at the hospital about 10:30 in the morning, went to a very nice room with a bath and my husband proceeded to talk to me about our travel plans for the summer, 
when our term of service would be ending.
I think I may have thrown the notebook in his face, 
but I can’t be certain. 
It’s all a bit of a blur.
At about 11:45, they wheeled me into the delivery room. 
Only, it wasn’t really a delivery delivery room,
it was a surgical suite.
The doctor was a thoracic surgeon and he did a whole lot of chest surgery out there in the bush.
They didn’t have a delivery table as such, 
just a surgical table,
and that sucker was hard.
His favorite nurse, who happened to be his wife,
gave me a small mask to put over my face with each
pain, a gas called Trilene.
I had no other medication.
At 12:12, just after noon on a glorious sunny summer day,
Lisa Ruth Trautwein entered the world,
a thick head of dark hair and a great set of lungs
announcing her presence.
And I distinctly remember sitting up on the table and
shouting, “This is fabulous! I want ten of these!”
As I said, stupid.
Sigh.
Winnie Worman, the doctor’s wife and an excellent nurse, holding our 1 day old daughter.
I stayed at the Mission until Thursday, eating in their home. Dick spent the first night with us both and then returned to school on Monday morning to greet his students.
The doctor himself (Robert Worman) with our beautiful girl.
With Winnie and Lisa, outside my room. The government asked them to add 5 private rooms and I got to be in one of them. The entire birthing experience cost us about eight dollars.
We had a rocky first night.
Because my husband was with me, the nursing staff left the three of us alone that night. I very quickly learned how much I did not know about mothering, 
and, once again, how much I did not know about being a woman who carries babies and gives birth.
My baby cried non-stop. Nothing would soothe her.
 And I was more than a little bit weak and wobbly from very normal blood loss that scared and surprised me.
Because, as I’ve said . . . I was terribly uninformed . . . 
Yup . . . stupid.
By 6:00 the next morning, 
I greeted the nurse on duty like a super-hero of some sort. She took one look at our girl and said, 
“Oh, this one loves to suck. I can see it. Try this pacifier.”
Glory be! It worked. From there on, it got easier.
In the picture above, Lisa is about 22 hours old.
I’d been up, showered, shampooed, curlered and combed out, (there were no portable hair dryers in the entire country of Zambia!) and in this picture, I am figuring out how to bathe an 8 1/2 pound human person.
Fortunately, she loved it. . . and so did I.
We brought her home and introduced her to our room and to the space that would eventually be her room.
Dick and I were both ecstatic, overwhelmed with gratitude,
sometimes anxious, but basically simply delighted
to be living with this entrancing creature.
She was, of course, the most precocious child in the history of humankind, smiling at 10 days, laughing big at two months, growing blond hair with dark tips.
Our African students adored her. I think she was the only newborn baby they had ever seen who had longish, straight hair, 
and they loved to touch her, to hold her, to stroke her head.
A Zambian friend loaned me her baby carrier and I used it as a pattern to make this one for Lisa and me.
There were no Ergo carriers in the 60’s.
In fact, American and European parents 
knew nothing about carrying babies on their bodies.
I learned about it from my African friends 
and I used this sling all the time.
From the time of Lisa’s birth until the time we left five and a half months later, I was called Bina Lisa by my African colleagues, most of whose first names I never really knew, as they were always called Bina —- (insert the name of their first-born child). I have been unable to find even one picture of Lisa with our African principal and his wife or with the students who earned pocket money by helping me with my ironing twice a week. (Remember ironing??) They are among a small set of pictures that we haven’t been able to locate as we’ve been scanning old memories into our computer.  But I have strong and happy memories of their warm acceptance of our baby and of the gigantic leap of respect our becoming parents engendered in the attitude of our students toward us.
This was Lisa’s favorite position, hanging upside down, sucking vigorously on that pacifier.
All five new babies near the end of our time in Zambia. 
Lisa was the only girl.
Our next door neighbors, Rosemary and Harry King, holding Lisa at a staff gathering. Harry took the black and white photos you see in this and other of these African Journey posts.

The Kings were from Virginia. Millie and Dave Dyck, our neighbors on the other side – and the parents of Michael, born 2 weeks after Lisa and pictured above and below, were from Canada. He went on to become the head of the Mission Board of the Mennonite Brethren Church in that country.
Michael must have been teasing Lisa to make her pout like that. 
Mom and babe on Easter Sunday, 1968. Is she not the cutest thing ever?? 
(Until her sister and brother were born, of course. To say nothing of all the grandkids…)
We did take a trip on the way home.
But by the time we actually left in June, that trip
had been shortened considerably.
We spent one week in Kenya, visiting some friends who were teaching there, then about 10 days in Switzerland (pictured above) and Germany, visiting my cousin and some friends from UCLA.
We were so smitten with our girl that we wanted to get her back to the arms of our loving families just as quickly as we could. And she was a great traveler, too . . . until our very last flight. From Copenhagen to Seattle, she cried almost the entire way, then settled down as we made the last leg into LAX. 
That little one was just plain done with airplanes.

We were greeted at the airport by grandparents, a great grandmother and a small horde of aunts, uncles and a smattering of cousins. 
It was a deliriously happy time and
I think we brought home the very best souvenir imaginable, don’t you? 

 Becoming a mother changed me in ways that are profound, 
in ways that I cannot articulate.
Carrying, birthing, nursing and tending three small persons is soul work, 
down deep living-life work, sometimes terrifying, always gratifying heart-work.
Meeting Lisa was my introduction to that work
and that meeting took place a long way 
from the only home I had known to that point.
There is a very real sense, however, that birthing her in that wonderful place cemented in my spirit, 
my heart, 
even in my body, 
this truth:
home is not a geographical place 
so much as it is an emotional space,
a spiritual point of connection and commitment.
All of her life, Lisa has been able to say,
“I was born in Africa.”
And we have been able to say,
“Africa was our home.”
And those two things go together.

I will happily join this long story with Jennifer and Duane:
 
And one week later, this will be my first entry in the Parent’Hood synchro blog, joining through Joy Bennett’s blog:



Filed Under: An African Journal, An African Journey, community, family, God's gifts, Home, Marriage, memoir, ministry, personal journey, Photo Essay, Travel, women, Wonderings in the World

Things Change. . . A Mixed Media Post

August 31, 2012 By
Life has gotten interesting of late. And I haven’t had as much opportunity to join with Lisa-Jo as I’d like. But when I saw this week’s prompt, I went to my draft pile and pulled this one up. I started to write it a week ago, to note what feels like a great, big, massive change in our lives – our youngest grandchild will no longer require our weekly care.
Gasp. She begins pre-school next week. How can this be??
So, you’ll see where I began the timed part of this post – and I surprised myself with where I went from there. Isn’t that always the way with 5 Minute Friday?? 
(Pictures added both before and after the 5 minutes!)
Five Minute Friday

Lilly – one-hour old
About 10 months old.
Feeding the bluejays with Poppy.
Tough girl pose – 15 months.
Playing doctor, 18 months.
Sweetness at 22 months.
Just a little uncertainty, also 22 months.
A series of wild-hair shots. Oh, my – yes. About 2 years old.
At her 2nd birthday party.
Under some semblance of control with Aunt Lisa, just past her 2nd birthday.
Lilly at 2 years, 6 months – how can it be?
A little dress-up play, three weeks ago.
Perhaps a cell phone would have been simpler for this little jaunt??
Every Wednesday since June of 2010,
she has come to our house to play.
And eat.
And sleep.
She was four months old when we began,
and I was just weeks out of the hospital,
and more tired than I knew.
So when nap time came,
I would put her down on the bed next to me.
I’d run the TV softly to create a little white noise,
 and sit next to her while she slept,
my computer on my lap.
During those first months,
I would do email,
research for teaching or preaching,
and wonder what the looming world
of retirement would be like.
Since the end of that year,
I’ve used Lilly’s nap time to
read blogs,
check Facebook,
think about posts,
write posts,
and watch her while she sleeps.

START:
Two days ago marked the end of an era for us,
an end to babies.
First there were our own three,
each of them remarkable,
unique,
full of fun and curiosity and determination.
Then those three grew up,
met some pretty amazing partners,
and started having babies of their own.
Three boys from daughter number one –
one, two, three.
Three boys from daughter number two – 
one, two, three.
Loud, rough-and tumble,
some more than others –
wonderful promise of sturdy men to come.
Then, just one month after that last boy,
our boy and his wife had a GIRL.
Glory be.
And nearly four years and one miscarriage later,
another girl.
And now, they tell me, they are done.
Their family is complete.
So.
Will I live to see great-grandbabies?
It’s within the realm of possibility –
our eldest is 21.
But I’m not sure it’s within the realm
of probability.

Everyone waits theses days.
We married young,
had kids while we were kids.
Not so much anymore.
There is education to be gotten,
jobs to be found,
houses to be bought,
lives to be lived.
And that’s all wonderful. . .
but . . .
I wouldn’t change a thing about our journey.
I loved growing up TOGETHER,
hanging on by a shoestring,
having babies before we had the money for them,
and loving every (well, almost every!) minute of it.
So,
change comes.
And we?
We roll with it,
or
it rolls right over us.

STOP.

Maybe I won’t miss this mess every week  . . .

. . . and maybe I won’t miss this weekly menagerie as I tried to get a very sleep-resistant girl to acquiesce . . .

But this?

(at 15 months old)

And this? (last week)

And yes, THIS (two days ago) I will most definitely miss.
She now covers almost the entire bed . . .

. . . and sometimes adjusts herself to make contact, her head on my leg as I type.
Sigh.

Filed Under: 5 Minute Friday, family, memoir, parenting, personal journey, Photo Essay

Our Bending-Low Jesus

August 20, 2012 By
“Our Bending-Low Jesus”
I used this phrase at a friend’s blog today
and somehow it bloomed up in my mind
and came out my mouth 
during my evening walk tonight.
I so easily forget how powerful our story is,
how remarkable.
Maybe it’s the reflection I’ve been doing 
on the Cosmic Christ
the past few months,
 courtesy of my Catholic brothers and sisters.
Maybe it’s the contrast of that image – 
the one I can hardly grasp,
the one that speaks of grandeur,
and Beyond-my-ken,
and Ground-of-Being hugeness –
the contrast of all that
with the picture we have of Jesus
in the pages of the gospel.

Jesus, who bows down in the dirt
and writes grace with his fingertips.
Jesus, who spits on that dirt
and packs it into blind eyes.
Jesus, who gets hungry,
and impatient with the ravages of sin,
and wonders if his friends will ever get it.
Jesus.
Who bends low for us.

My mother is with us for a few days.
And as I walk in the evenings,
I beg forgiveness for the many ways
I miss the mark when I am with her.
Impatience simmers,
sharpness surfaces,
tension rises until the air is heavy with it,
stagnant and fetid.
I am exhausted in ways I can’t even describe – 
weary with worry, I suppose. 
I give her the thrice-a-day medicines,
I make sure she eats and drinks,
I do her small amount of laundry.
Yet so often,
my spirit is twisted,
almost angry about what’s happening to her.
And I do not want to be angry.
She likes to walk out to our side yard,
to the spot where 
I watch from a polite distance,
as the grass is bumpy and she is unsteady.
She bends low, holding her knees,
speaking with words I cannot hear,
touching the metal angel I have placed there,
to mark the spot.
That simple movement is one of the
most achingly sad things I have ever watched.
Mothers should not have to bury their children.
Yet so many do.
So many do.

Mine did. 

Really, Lord?
So much loss!
Her husband, 
her grandson-in-law,
her vision,
her son,
and now . . . 
her mind, too?
How long, O Lord?
How long?
How much, O Lord?
How much? 

There are no answers to these cries,
none that suffice.

Except for this one:

Our bending-low Jesus.
And so I spread all the ugliness out there on the driveway
as I walk in circles in the deepening dusk.
I rue the words just behind my teeth,
the ones that don’t come out,
but want to.
I offer them up, 
I beg for grace and then,
I see him.
Bending down in the dirt, 
he writes my name,
with the words 
forgiven,
forgotten.
And I am bent low.
Pictures:
1. The Risen Christ, on the wall of the chapel 
at the Monastery of the Risen Christ,
San Luis Obispo, CA
2. The angel which marks my brother’s burial site.
3. A station of the cross in the chapel at the Mission Renewal Center,
Santa Barbara CA

Offering this at Michelle’s place, Jen’s Sisterhood and Ann’s gratitude link-up. 
I may not count like she does, but I am deeply grateful nonetheless.
Filed Under: family, memoir, personal journey, Sunday Reflections, The Journey with Mom, worship

An African Journey – Post Two: A Letter to My Younger Self…

August 16, 2012 By

 Standing next to an ant hill somewhere in central Africa, approximately 1966.

Dearest girl,


That’s what you are, you know. You don’t realize that, but I do. Looking back across these years, I see you. I see how very young you are. Twenty-one, newly married, recent college graduate, thrilled to be living your life, to be planning a cross-continental move, to be moving on, moving out, moving away. 

You’re a little bit full of yourself and your university education, especially those three courses in African studies you took that last semester, in preparation for moving across the sea. Three college level courses does not an expert make – believe me, it just does not. But then, you learned that within the first six weeks of moving there, didn’t you? Yes, you learned it the hard way. I guess that’s how all good learning comes, sweetheart. It has to hurt a little to be real.

I look at these old pictures and I know you’re a bit nervous about all that’s happened to you in the last few months. I see a smidgen of uncertainty, a frisson of anxiety. But mostly what I see when I look at your face is this wonderful truth: you are just plain gob-smacked with the freedom you’ve found in being married. 

You and he are on your own – and that feels grand, doesn’t it? You can go anywhere, do anything, be anyone. Of course, there are limits to that, aren’t there? Limits of morality and common decency, which you both hold in high regard. But more than that, there are limits of believing and belonging, limits that you share, that you value, that you try to live. 

Following in the footsteps of the Rabbi from Nazareth has always been part of who you are, for as long as you can remember. Suffering growing pains as a 4-year-old, you told  your Mama one night, “That ol’ Jesus is down in my leg tonight and he’s hurtin’ me!” And you believed that with your whole, small heart. Jesus was there, living your life with  you. 

And walking down that center aisle of the old brownstone church in downtown Los Angeles, late on a Sunday evening the year you turned 11 – saying ‘yes’ to Jesus in front of your community of faith – that was important, significant. And you felt it deep down inside you as you drove home in the backseat of your parents’ car, staring at the street lights. You were filled with wonder that night – and so many nights since. 

Your heart was true that 21st year, this much I know. But I also know that your heart and your mind had a lot of traveling to do in order to communicate well. And then there was the matter of getting what you knew and what you felt to travel down your limbs to your hands and feet. Living what you knew, what you believed, what you began to allow yourself to feel with the truer pieces of yourself – that took years and years, and still isn’t done. No, not done yet.

Our once-a-week dinner with the students at Choma Secondary School.

But here’s what I want to tell you, oh, brave younger self. Here’s how I want to encourage you. You will break out of the mold as you get older and wiser. And you will make a lot of mistakes in that process. But you will also learn and stretch and grow and change and enlarge your heart and your mind and your spirit . . . and it will be wonderful. Difficult, painful, anxiety-filled, marked by loss, watered by tears and tears and tears . . . but wonderful.

You will push three living beings out into the world and love them fiercely. Those three will form you in ways you cannot even begin to imagine now, but count on it – their mark on you will be indelible. 

And while you’re at home, raising them and learning more about that Rabbi you love, you will begin the hard work of questioning much of what you were taught about who you are as a daughter of God, a sister to Jesus. And you will find answers from good people, from faithful people, people who’ve walked the road ahead of you. Some of them will be contemporaries; many will be much older saints, long gone to be with Jesus. 

If you could see me across these years, you might be surprised, maybe even shocked. Life has this way of getting both more complicated and more simple as time passes. Layer upon layer of love and responsibility get added as your family and friendships grow. But at the same time, much that is extraneous and unnecessary gets stripped away, leaving the bare bones beauty of truth, faith, hope, peace, love. 

You cannot see what’s ahead – neither the joy nor the heartbreak. And you can’t really see what’s behind you at this point, either. That takes time and work and self-care and you’re nowhere near that at age 21. You’re too busy living your life to look at it carefully. Give it a little time, however. You’ll start looking. And what you’ll find will surprise you, bring you to tears, fill you with thanksgiving and make you wonder about a lot of things. 

It will take time and scrutiny to understand the impact of an alcoholic grandfather on your mother and her parenting of you. It will take time and patience to look at the steely-eyed pressure your grandmother put on your father and how his reaction to that made a difference in you and your own family circle growing up. These things take time, they take maturity. But you’ll get there. You’ll always be getting there, honey. Count on it. 

Because that’s what this life is about. Truly, it is. We’re here to become human, to become the person we were designed and created to be – in a word, to look more and more like Jesus. And back then, you only had glimpses of all that, which was exactly how it should have been. Now, at this end of these years, I can say with gratitude that goes deep as the Marianas Trench – it’s all grace. Because it is, dear one. It is.

Love you – more and more,

Your older, wiser, creakier Self

Waiting for the bride at my nephew’s wedding, April 2012

Delighted to be re-joining Bonnie over at Faith Barista, whose prompt this week was a letter to our younger self. I’ll also check in with Emily at Canvas Child.

Filed Under: An African Journal, An African Journey, family, God's gifts, memoir, personal journey, Wonderings in the World

What Does It Mean to Be Blessed? Reflections on a Life

August 7, 2012 By

My mother-in-law, Kathryn Trautwein, with my mother, Ruth Gold. Picture taken at Easter 3 years ago. Today they are 96 and 91 years old. 

She was sleeping today.
She sleeps a lot.
When she’s awake, she is often unhappy,
confused, disoriented.
But once in a while, when I stare into her hazel eyes,
I see her in there.
I see the Mama I’ve known for nearly 50 years,
the woman who bore my husband,
who welcomed me into her family,
who blessed my children with her loving care.

I see brief glimpses of the 
quiet feistiness that empowered her
to stand against the strict requirements of her
family’s faith.
She kept her hair short.
It was easier, she liked it and she didn’t 
want to deal with the prayer coverings 
that all the women in her family wore. 
She shared their faith – she lived that faith
every single day of her long life.
But she did not share their restrictive way of
expressing that faith.
So she went her own way,
without angry words,
without an ‘I’m-right-you’re-wrong’ attitude,
without open rebellion.
She simply made quiet, thoughtful shifts on the inside
that began to show on the outside.

She took me clothes shopping before we left for Africa, 
so many years ago. 
We were going there to live and work for two years,  
teaching school in a small Zambian town. 
She very carefully and gently advised me on 
skirt length, sleeve length, 
the best kind of shoes (closed toes), 
the simplest kinds of fabrics.
She knew.

She knew that I would feel woefully out of place
 and would wonder why on earth 
I had come to serve with people 
who looked and lived so dramatically differently 
from anyone  I had ever before encountered 
in my Christian life. 

She did not advise me to change who I was – 
she was far too wise for that.
But she did advise me to be more aware,
to honor those with different lifestyle values
while still being true to my own.

Mama was not one to offer advice very often,
preferring to keep most of her opinions to herself.
But she found us our first house to buy.
And she outright put her foot down when we got ready to
move from that house to another, 
 one where the entire backyard was a swimming pool.
She never learned to swim, you see.
And we had two toddler girls and a baby on the way.
No way, José. No way.

Even when we moved here to Santa Barbara,
our kids all grown and married,
she carefully let us know that she preferred  
one house we were looking at over another.
Always subtle, gentle, non-intrusive.
But there was steel there.
The good kind of steel.
The kind that holds things together.
The kind that adds form and shape to life.
The kind that stands firm when the ground shakes,
or the wind blows,
or the fires rage.

She is 96 now and suffers from dementia.
She’s fallen twice in the last four days,
her speech is suddenly very slurred,
her appetite way down.
Maybe the end is beginning.
I don’t know.
I just know that today,
as I stood in front of her recliner chair,
watching her sleep and dream,
I thanked God for her.
I prayed the blessing of Aaron over her.
And I wept at the memory of her laughter,
her generosity,
her kindness,
her lifelong faithfulness.

You ask me what it means to be blessed?
I’ll tell you this:
to be blessed is to have a second mother
who loves you no matter what;
who doesn’t always understand you, 
but who always, ALWAYS supports you;
who lives Jesus day in and day out,
mentors younger women,
leads Bible studies,
keeps your little kids at a moment’s notice,
adores her children and their children, 
understands why her husband reacts to life the way he does
and loves him like crazy anyhow.

This is blessing to me today.

This woman of God,
this mother to my husband.
This woman who came to tea one day long ago,
driving 40 miles across town, 
sitting in the living room of the house where
I lived while attending UCLA,
and letting me know that if I was serious
about her boy, then I was welcome to his whole family.
And I was.
Other than the family I was born to,
this has been the greatest of God’s gifts to me.
I am blessed.
And I am grateful.

Joining with Em’s synchro-blog today. You can find other entries here:
http://www.emilywierenga.com/2012/08/what-it-means-to-be-blessed-synchroblog.html
Also with Ann and her gratitude linky:

and with Jen and the sisterhood.





Filed Under: family, Family Portraits, God's gifts, personal journey

The Gift of a Good Dad

June 15, 2012 By


We were late for dinner and I was struggling to finish getting dressed to join my husband, his parents and his sister who were traveling with us, each of them now patiently waiting for me to put myself together. I took a deep breath, and quickly pulled out a beautiful crystal borealis necklace, one of my favorite pieces of jewelry during those late years of the 1960’s. As I attempted to join the clasp behind my neck, the thread snapped, sending the beads rolling like wild things, straggling into every corner of our hotel room.

And I burst into tears.

I was about four months pregnant at the time. And I was 14,000 miles away from our home in California and about 1500 miles away from the temporary home my new husband and I had created at Choma Secondary School in Zambia. There are all kinds of understandable, even semi-rational reasons for this sudden outburst.

But the real reason for those sobs was this one: those beads were a 20th birthday gift from my dad, the last gift he gave me as a single woman, as the daughter of his house. 

I loved those beads because they were beautiful. But most of all, I loved them because Daddy gave them to me.

He did that every year. For each of the years I lived with my parents, I received a special birthday gift from my father, something that he picked out, just for me. And I always, always loved whatever it was. I remember a sweet, small figurine of a January birthday girl. I remember perfume, and dainty handkerchiefs and fancy writing paper. 

And I remember those beads.

But most of all, as this Father’s Day approaches – the 7th one I have lived without my dad here – I remember how much he loved me. The longer I live, the more hard stories I hear, the deeper my appreciation for that central truth, for that gift. 

Nearly 50 years after my birth, my dad wrote me a special letter. A good friend had organized what she called a “Clearness Committee,” a group gathered for the purpose of discerning God’s will for another. I had just finished four years in seminary and was seeking the Lord’s guidance about what might come next. 

Anita wrote to about 30 people who knew me well, asked them to write me a note of encouragement, noting the particular gifts of God they saw in me. That was a wonderful, humbling and deeply encouraging experience at a time in my life when I felt both exhausted and uncertain. One paragraph out of all those lovely letters stood out for me, a paragraph written by my dad:

“On the day you were born, I took one look at you and learned who God is. If God could give me something so wonderful, He could give me other things I needed in my life – self-confidence, for example, and the ability to face up to life’s challenges. He has used you in my life ever since.” 

When these words arrived in my mailbox, I was stunned. My father was a kind, good and gentle man, but he was not what might be called effusive. He was very quiet, seldom speaking. Yet whenever he did speak, everyone listened. He was extremely smart (he co-authored a statistics textbook – yikes!) Perhaps even more importantly, he was also wise. And quite funny, when he wanted to be! I always knew that he loved me deeply, but he seldom told me so with words. Certainly not with written words. So the typewritten note in the photo above is a treasured possession. I took it out today, just to read it one more time. 


There is also another letter in the photo, this one handwritten rather than typed, scribbled in haste in my dad’s inimitable quirky handwriting. After Dad died in 2005, his older sister gave it to me. My father had written it to her and my Uncle Bob about four days after I was born. 

I want to type it out here as a testimony to the amazing, strong-from-birth bond we enjoyed. I also want to remember, and to note in this public space, who Ben K. Gold was in 1945 – a guy too skinny to be accepted into any branch of the armed services, so he taught cadets at a military academy in San Diego. He brought my mom there after their wedding in 1941 and I was born four years later. This little epistle is dated 1/27/45 and it says a lot about my dad’s personality and the terror and the joy that surround the birth of a first-born child. It also speaks to how times have changed:

Dear kids:

I’ve been trying for 3 days to get to giving you the details but got so behind I just haven’t sat down except to write Mom once.

I was going to wire you but Mom suggested she do it and I let her as I had others to call and was having trouble getting the operator. 

I have just come from the P.O. with the bond you sent. I won’t try to tell you how we appreciate both the gift and the thought. It was certainly unexpected and a very thoughtful thing to do. 

I am still walking around in the clouds. Boy, there’s nothing like it. Well, I’ll try and give you an outline of last Tues:

9:00 AM     I start teaching Solid Geometry
9:20 AM     Capt. Parker (who lives upstairs) meets me at the classroom door and says, “You better go home. I think you’re going to be a father.” 
9:20:10       I get home.
9:21             I get my wind back and ask Ruth what happened.
9:25             I phone the Doc; he is out so I wait while the nurse gets him and phones back with the message, “Dr. Graham says for you to take her to the hospital.” 
9:45              I return home and we get ready.
10:00           We leave.
10:30            Arrive in hospital, pay bill & kill an hour while they get Ruth ready & put her in bed.
11:30             I find Ruth in bed. Now for the wait. No pains as yet. (The signal to go was a slight menstrual flow.) 
12:30             I go out for a sandwich. It certainly was uninteresting. 
2:30               Pains start slightly every 4 minutes. 
4:20               Pains getting slightly stronger.
6:00               I go out for a tasteless bite of dinner. 
7:00               Pains getting stronger.
7:30               Peraldehyde administered, Ruth in a semi-coma from now on. 
8:55               Nurse kicks me out & Ruth goes to delivery room. I go down hall to waiting room.
9:20               I hear a baby cry & get excited. I hear another & get scared. I hear a 3rd & get panicky. Finally I find out it’s feeding time & they woke up the whole floor. 
9:30                I start thinking unimaginable thoughts. Whew! 
9:39                Diana Ruth Gold arrives. 8 lb. 12 oz., 21 inches long.
10:00              I am informed I have a daughter & both are doing well. 
10:00:01        I practically pass out.
10:15               I see doctor & am assured everything is O.K. First look at Di.
10:20              I find out weight, etc.
10:25              Phone calls.
11:00              Leave hospital with a feeling impossible to describe. 

Well, that’s it, Bob. There’s nothing like it. 

Diana is without question the prettiest girl in the hospital and the smartest. She will be a mathematician. Look at her birthday 1/23/45. (Note the sequence). 

Ruth was in the middle of the dishes & I still haven’t had time to finish them. She is at the Mercy Hospital, Room 518. I think they will be home next Friday. 

I have seen Diana for a grand total of about 2 minutes, & for 1 3/4 minutes of that time she has been improving her lungs. She has a slight amount of brown hair, is fat faced & long legged. Ruth’s roommate thinks she looks like me so I’m happy. I can’t tell much yet but once I thought she looked a little like Mom, & again like a Hobson. I’m anxious to get her home & get acquainted. 

Well, I’ll sign off. As you can see, I am quite a doting papa. 

Thanks again for the bond & the card which is very cute. Too true though. 

Love,

Ben 


Thank you, Daddy, for your unconditional love for me for 60 years, for your faithfulness to Mom, for your commitment to our family, for your deep and searching faith, for modeling for me so beautifully the Father love of our God, for your encouragement of my journey all along the way. As you know, I never did become a mathematician! And now my hair is almost all white – just like yours. Today my granddaughter Gracie graduated from kindergarden – how I wish you could know her and her little sister! But then, I see a whole lot of you in their dad – so maybe…if they’re really blessed, they know you very well indeed. 

Happy Father’s Day. 

Joining this one with Emily, Ann, Jennifer and maybe with Duane, because I’m blessed that my dad showed me the unconditional love of a father, putting flesh on the promises of the gospel.

 


 


Filed Under: family, Family Portraits, God's gifts, memoir, personal journey, Writing

Becoming Who We Are

June 8, 2012 By
I want to tell  you a story today. It’s a good story – at least, I think it is. It’s a story about young love, and mature love. About fear and overcoming fear. About unlearning and re-learning. But mostly, it’s about grace, grace writ large, grace first, last and always. 

First-born children – yes, they were each first-born children. Raised in similar families, too. Conservative, loving, happy, Christian homes. With dads who went out to work and moms who stayed home to work. With church as a staple source of encouragement, fellowship and teaching, some of it in words, lots of it as subtext.
And they both learned the same things about love and life and marriage, and about the ‘right’ way to make choices and the ‘right’ way to live into those choices. So when they married – she a blushing bride of 20, midway through her senior year of college, he all of 23, finishing his MBA at a grad school across town – when they married, they knew what choices to make. 
They made them happily, heartily, easily. She even researched their wedding ceremony, hunting for just exactly the right one, one that would include the word ‘obey’ in her vows – because, after all, that’s what the Bible says, right?
They learned early to become a strong unit, connected to one another firmly as they discovered more about life and marriage while living far away from home for two years. And when they came back, they brought a tiny baby with them, the first of three…in four years.
 
And they knew what to do, you can be sure of that. He would go off to work every day; she would stay at home and take care of those babies. And that’s what they did.
It worked pretty well, too. 
Oh, there were those niggling thoughts for her: “Is this what life is really about? Is there more that I should be doing? Is it enough to be at home with my babies all day?” 
But most of the time, those thoughts would flit into her head and then move right on out again, replaced with her mother’s voice, “Yes, of course this is what you should be doing. This is what all good Christian women do – they stay at home, they keep a clean house, they cook nutritious meals, they keep their children safe. This is what life is about.” 
And she really did love those babies of theirs. Yes, she really did. She did her bit at the co-op nursery school; she started a women’s group at church as the kids got bigger; and she began to read a little about the changing views on the role of women in the church. 
 
And her heart was stirred.
She remembered that once-upon-a-time she had been a good student, that she loved learning, that she had some talent as a leader and a speaker and a writer. So she did a whole lot of reading. She went to a conference or two – after her children were in school all day, of course. And she prayed a lot and she talked with her husband a lot, and she wondered. “Maybe there IS more for me to do in this life. I wonder what that might be.”
It wasn’t easy getting there. She was so full of fear that she ignored what became an increasingly clear call from God to go to seminary. For five years she ignored it, convinced that if she did something so radically independent, her marriage would be over.
 
Sadly, she didn’t trust either her husband or her God enough to know that the journey she was on was a shared one, that her husband was beginning to re-think things, too. So they got a little professional help, to sort it out, to unlearn and to re-learn. And they made a great big leap. Yes, indeed.  A great big one.
 
She enrolled in seminary when their youngest ‘baby’ was a senior in high school – and she was 44 years old and only two years away from being a grandmother.
He said, “The time has come for my shirts to go to the laundry – no more ironing for you.” 
 
And then the doors of their hearts began to open wider and wider, allowing the fresh Wind of the Spirit to blow through, to change things, freshen things, renew things. While in seminary, she had a direct call to pastoral ministry. Nothing like that had happened to her before. Nothing. “What,” she wondered, “do I do with this?”   
 
She and her husband talked and they prayed and they wondered. One day, he said something amazing to her, something she could scarcely believe she was hearing:
 
“You know what, honey? For thirty years, you have supported me in everything I’ve done, both professionally and personally. You’ve raised these great kids, you’ve created a good home for all of us, you’ve been a rock and the center around which the rest of us have orbited. So you know what I think? I think it’s my turn, now. It’s my turn to support you. So wherever God calls you, we’ll go together, okay? We’ll go there together.”
 
And that’s exactly what they did. Three years out of seminary, they moved 125 miles from home so that she could take a pastoral position. That meant that he commuted that distance – every single week. EVERY.SINGLE.WEEK for ten years. 
 
Without one complaint.
 
Because that’s what partners do, isn’t it? They support one another. They take turns if they need to. They encourage the best use of the other’s gifts. They live the truth that each half of their union is a whole human being, created, called and gifted. They pool their resources, they look to God together, they seek the welfare, health and wholeness of one another and of their joint venture, too.  
 
It wasn’t easy – good things seldom are. And it was very good indeed. They rode the road together. Through the tears and the fears, the laughter and the struggle, they believed in one another and they believed in the God who made them, named them, created and gifted them and called  them to be exactly who they are. Exactly.
Joining this one with Rachel Held Evans’ synchroblog week, “One in Christ – A Week of Mutuality.” I decided to eschew the technical/biblical/rhetorical approach to this topic in favor of a very personal story. Because I do believe it is in sharing our stories with one another, that hearts are changed, lives are enriched, and God is honored. And besides, I’ve spent the last 30 years or so making the biblical and exegetical arguments and I am DONE with that part. Kudos to Rachel, however, for taking it on so beautifully this week.
And a peek at those babies all-growed-up with their own babies, many of whom are also all-growed-up. Sigh. The baby born in Africa is the woman on the far right. 
Our middle daughter is in the middle of the photo and our son is in front of me.
This is a photo of a photo taken by Rich Austin of Austin’s Photography in Arroyo Grande, CA, and I apologize for its blurriness.

 

Filed Under: family, Marriage, memoir, personal journey, RHE Synchroblog, women, Wonderings in the World, Writing
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