Marriage — Page 5

An African Journey: Post Five – The Very Best Part

September 13, 2012 By Diana

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

What Love Looks Like in the Long Haul: a Tribute Post

August 9, 2012 By Diana

This was a story I entered for one of Joe Bunting’s invitations. The theme was ‘love story,’ and this was the one I chose to write about. Most of the entrants write fiction – I do not. However, I will not vouch for accuracy of details and ‘facts’ in this account, which happened over 20 years ago. I will vouch for the truth of emotions, observances, character and commitment which this story so beautifully illustrates.

Lucille is 95 now, twice-widowed and I took this photo about four months ago.

Mentor, friend, 3rd mom in my life, Lucille Peterson Johnston, a woman of valor.

I knocked hesitantly, not wanting to wake anyone who might be sleeping. The morning was bright and warm, typical for southern California in late May. But this was the home of a very sick man and I wondered how far inside the threshold that warmth might carry.

He’d been sick before, this dear old man. Kidney cancer that was controlled and managed for over a decade. But now? Now, there was nothing more to be done and he had come home to die. No one knew how long his journey might take, nor what the detours along the way might look like. They simply told his wife, “Take him home. Love him as you have for the past fifty years. We’ll give you meds to keep him comfortable and a standing order for nursing help if you need it.”

And so she had. She’d brought him home. Home, where their own bed waited, good mattresses held by an antique wooden frame, layered with quilts from the old country. Sweden was where their family hailed from, the cold Scandinavian northlands. Hard to imagine such a place cradling these warm and loving people, but here they were. Proud, hard-working, hospitable, dedicated to God and family, surrounded by pieces of their long story together.

I entered slowly, aware that such times fairly shine with the luminous glow of a thin place, a liminal spot, a wrinkle in time between this world and the next. She led me to the bedroom, talking to him as she walked. “Harold? See who’s come to see you today? It’s our friend, Diana. Isn’t that nice?”

He was in a fetal position, small beneath the covers, this formerly husky man, who loved his wife’s cooking and carried the evidence with pride. His eyes blinked briefly, a smile just creasing one corner of his rugged face. No words to offer, but I hadn’t expected any. A smile would suffice, more than suffice.

His wife kept up a gentle patter, describing what I was wearing, asking me how my family was, how I was enjoying my new job on the pastoral staff of the church we all attended. Always careful to include him in the conversation, she was cheerful and genuine, without a hint of self-pity or condescension. They were best friends, these two. Had been for a very long time. They’d raised three fine children together; ran a popular shoe store in the community long past the age of retirement; volunteered in community and church leadership, working long hours for no reason other than the joy of serving.

She had more energy than anyone I had ever known, planning events for women and families, on her feet cooking for hours at a stretch, an expert on anything related to food, needlepoint, child-rearing, entertaining, small dogs, church governance, the encouragement of others. She had seen something in me and called it out, giving me responsibilities long before I thought I was ready for them. We worked side-by-side, she gently teaching, I absorbing, stretching to meet her confidence. I learned by watching and I learned by doing. And my admiration ran deep and true.

Truth was, I missed her. Both of them were fixtures in our congregation. In their retirement, they had assumed many of the everyday duties of tending a large, aging facility. They cleaned and sorted, set up tables and chairs, kept tabs on the use of our large, beautifully planned community kitchen, a creation of her design. Sometimes, he came across as a little bit cranky, particular, over-anxious. But I knew better. I saw the softness underneath the sometimes gruff exterior, the deep commitment to things of the Spirit manifested through his commitment to the gathered body in our corner of Pasadena. “You know,” he’d say to me. “You look a little like our daughter. And our daughter looks a little like my wife. You could be our daughter, you know.” And sometimes I felt like a daughter.

They were everywhere at church, all the time, moving quietly in the background, checking to be sure things were as they should be, that people were welcomed and comfortable. Newcomers might not always know their names, but they surely knew their faces. And those of us who’d been around awhile? We knew them like we knew our own family members. Because that’s who they were.

I will never forget what she said to me that particular day I went to visit. My friend had been sick for about six months at that point, and his wife was with him every day, all day. I found it hard to imagine how she was managing, how she was embracing this life, the one with such small parameters. She who had been the center of a very busy hive was now in the backwater, tending to the needs of a single dying man.

So I asked her. We knew each other well enough, we loved each other deeply enough. “How are you doing this, my friend? How do you stay sane? Don’t you miss your life, your projects, your contributions? How are you? How are YOU?”

She was relaxed, ready for my question. She looked at me deeply, and with no hesitation said, “Diana, this is a privilege. This is a joy. I cannot imagine doing anything other than this, just exactly this.”

And I knew it was true, true right down to the tips of her well-manicured toes. She was radiating peace and contentment.

“Isn’t it hard to watch him shrivel and disappear like this?”

“Yes, of course, it’s hard. But this is what happens to all of us, you know. We all die someday. And we’ve had 52 years together. Fifty-two years of love and story-telling and story-making. Who else could do what I can do now? This is the last, best gift I can give him. And I am happy to do it.”

He died six months later, on the eve of my first-ever sermon, an event which they had foreseen many years before. An event which they had prayed toward, and encouraged me to shoot for, walking by my side down the road through seminary and internship. So, early on that Sunday morning, those who had gathered round me to pray God’s blessing on our worship, told me very gently that Harold had gone home, with his family gathered round. Oddly encouraging to think that both of us were encircled by love as we each stepped out onto a new leg of the journey of life, the journey of death.

And I wept. I wept with the sorrow of good-bye. I wept with the power and beauty of true love. I wept with deep gratitude that my story was interwoven with theirs. I wept because these two friends had shown me what love looks like when it’s old and well-worn and bounded by vows kept, vows honored, vows lived. I wept because of how they had modeled for me, indeed our entire community of faith, what faithfulness looks like. I wept because of the goodness of God paradoxically and beautifully revealed in and through the harsh, sometimes starkly intimate details of a protracted and difficult dying. I wept because my friends were together to the end, and now they were both free.

Adding this to Ann’s Wednesday invitation, Em’s Thursday one (if it’s open) and Duane’s, too.

Filed Under: death, friendship. personal journey, Marriage, personal journey

Becoming Who We Are

June 8, 2012 By Diana

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

Redeeming the Time

May 30, 2012 By Diana

It was a Monday out of the routine.

No childcare responsibilities.

No church responsibilities.

No family responsibilities.

Don’t get me wrong – all of those are good things in our lives,

things we treasure and are grateful for.

But occasionally,

it’s a very good thing to have a day

to ourselves.

A day set aside for nothing other than dinking around.

It is my firm belief that there is not enough dinking

happening in this world.

There is far too much busyness,

too much obligation,

responsibility,

activity,

schedule.

Once in a while, it needs to stop.

All the noise, the inner grinding of gears,

the siren call of one more person to check in with.

The computer needs to be closed,

the phones need to be silenced,

the calendar squares need to be left blank.

Blank, I say.

Because when there is ‘free’ time,

that’s when the good stuff happens.

The really good stuff.

The this-is-me-at-the-heart-of-it-all stuff.

The let’s-do-something-spontaneous-

and-see-what-happens stuff.

The take-off-your-cloak-of-ought-and-

should-and-must-and-look-at-life-without-it stuff.

Our children gave their father a gift certificate for his birthday.

His birthday was at the end of March.

The end of March.

Each week when he dropped off Lilly at our house,

our son would ask,

“Have you used that certificate yet?”

Well, no.

We hadn’t.

It was overdue for redemption.

And so were we.

They gave it to him so that we could select some large pots for our living room,

pots to house the very large orchids

my husband has been tending for a number of years.

This is what they looked like this winter –

from just after Christmas until about a week ago:

They were stunning this year,

a daily reminder of the creative genius of our God.

And they are contained in some very ugly black plastic things.

So…some good-sized, good-looking pots.

And our kids knew just the place to look, too.

It’s in Carpinteria, up against the foothills,

about 10 minutes from our home.

So Monday was the day.

And what a day it was.

Seaside Gardens is simply amazing.

Nursery supplies displayed creatively,

covered areas for pots of all colors and shapes,

and behind and around it all?

Gardens – fully planted with trees, grasses, color –

representing a variety of different

landscapes.

South African, Asian, native Californian,

succulent, Bioswale – all laid out for the walking,

for the looking,

for the re-charging,

for the dinking around.

And it was all free.

Yes, we found two matching pots,

in a soft green to sit quietly in our living room.

They’re lovely and we’re so glad to have them.

But, it was the walking,

and the looking.

The oohing and the ahing.

The did-you-see-this-one’s

and the what-the-heck-is-that-one’s

and the oh-my-such-glory one’s —

that’s where the redemption truly happened.

Each of us could feel it.

Each of us could hear it, too.

The soft sound of the soul, opening.

Opening to the beauty,

the orderly chaos,

the flamboyance,

the brilliance of living things.

Opening to the shared creativity

of a good God and a few greatly gifted human partners.

It was only a couple of hours,

but it was exactly what we needed.

A blue sky,

a warm sun,

a shared space.

We followed our time at the gardens with an early

dinner near the beach.

Sitting where the sun could warm our backs,

watching a few young ones playing in the outdoor sandbox,

eating fish tacos and sharing a milkshake.

Redeeming the time, indeed.

Joining with Michelle, Jen and the sisterhood, Ann, Laura and L.L tonight,

grateful for their invitation to nurture gratitude,

to have a playdate with God, to write about place,

to talk about Sunday blessings made real in the rest of the week.

Yeah, I think most of that is in here somewhere.

Filed Under: family, God's gifts, Marriage

Burnished Through the Years

March 30, 2012 By Diana

What can I say to help you see the man I know?

That he is funny and smart and loving?

Yes, that’s all true.

That he is opinionated and sometimes volatile, gestures wildly while watching sporting events and has been known to yell at the screen (and also at passing drivers when they cut him off)?

Yes, that’s all true, too.

But how do I find words to describe how tender he can be? How deeply he adores his children and grandchildren – and me, too?

How do I tell you how goofy he can be? Wearing silly hats and too-small-butterfly-wings just to make a 2-year-old giggle?

How can I describe his thoughtful wondering about the future, his careful allocation of resources so that we and our kids and our church and our missionary friends and the worthy people and projects that God sends our way can all be tended to, with love and care?

How can I possibly describe to you what a privilege it has been for me to mother his children, fold his laundry (most of the time!), admire his handiwork in the yard and at the kitchen sink and to see how kind he is, how very, very kind?

Is there any way to put into words how grateful I am to God for each and every day – even the horrible, terrible, very-bad ones – we’ve had together? Is there any way for me to describe to you the inexpressible joy it gives me to wish him a happy birthday this week? This marks number 49 that I’ve shared with him, 47 of those as his wife.

And this one?

Well, this one is number 70.

He has survived pleurisy, a kidney stone that had to be surgically removed, a major blood clot in his lung and prostate cancer. And he plays tennis – singles tennis! – once or twice a week with our son.

And there is no way that any one of you would ever guess his age without my putting it out here in black and white for you to marvel at.

No, there is just no way to tell you. There are no words.

Well.. maybe just one:

GIFT.

He is a gift to this world, a gift to our family and most especially a gift to me. Easily the best earthly one I’ve ever been given.

And I thank God for this gift every day that I breathe.
Joining Lisa-Jo for the first time in several weeks. (This daily devotional posting has been so much fun for me – but wow! It’s tough sledding trying to add anything to that.) This, however, was one I just could not pass up. Join the ever-increasing crew over there and check out what others are saying in 5 minutes flat. I will gladly admit that this one took a few extra minutes.

Filed Under: birthdays, family, God's gifts, Marriage

In Which I List the Ways That Pastoring is a Lot Like Mothering

February 6, 2012 By Diana

I didn’t ask to be a mom. I didn’t have to work too hard to become a mom, either – at least in the biological sense of that word.

Our first daughter arrived five days after my 23^rd birthday. I was 14,000 miles away from home and had no pre-natal care except the advice of experienced missionaries living nearby and the limited resources of a used gynecological textbook from some nursing curriculum somewhere. Yes, there was a doctor – and a good one – but he was stationed at a hospital 40 miles away, over a very corrugated dirt road; I saw him a total of three times before Lisa was born.

This is what I remember: all of a sudden, I was pregnant – and then, all of a sudden…I was a mother.

There she was, in all her amazing perfection and beauty. I had no parenting guides, no clue where to begin, so I just…began. By the time babies #2 and #3 came along, I was once again living in the land of high-tech hospitals, bookshelves lined with how-to manuals and more people willing to tell me what to do than I could count. But I continued as I had begun: I muddled through.

I made a lot of mistakes. I blew it with dreadfully predictable regularity. I yelled too much, relied on television too much, fed them food with too much sugar too often, dragged them around in cars without seat belts, much less car seats. And somehow, by the grace of a faithful God, they all lived to tell about it. Not only that, but they flourished – my myriad mistakes and all.

Sometimes they hated me – I know this because they told me so, one with alarming frequency. And sometimes, in and around adoring them with every fiber of my being, I hated them, too. That was only when I was exhausted, exasperated, confused or frightened, of course, but between those four emotional coordinates, I’d say that was more often than I’d like to admit. And I don’t REALLY mean I hated them – it was actually more like I hated what happened to me when I was trying my darnedest to be a ‘good mother’ to them and it all fell apart in my face.

When my youngest was a senior in high school, I went back to school – to seminary, actually. And by the time I began working in my profession, all my kids were married and I was a grandmother, on my way to eight grandkids. And guess what? I discovered that all that muddling through I did as a stay-at-home mom? Well, it came in mighty handy when trying to pastor a congregation of 350 highly individual individuals.

“How is that true, Diana?” you might ask. “What possible parallels can there be between parenting and pastoring? “ “Ah,” I would say right back to you, “Let me count the ways!”

1. Authenticity

Now here’s a paradoxical/oxymoronic statement for you to chew on as we begin this counting thing: Even when I haven’t known who I was, I have still managed to be the real me. From the time they were itty-bitty babies, I have talked to my kids like I talk to my friends like I talk to the people I meet almost anywhere. God has been in the process of forming me/shaping me/changing me – sometimes with a great deal of reluctance on my part – for a very long time now. Since I was about 11 years old, in fact, and went forward at a revival meeting in my home church in downtown Los Angeles. I’ve gotten detoured, lost, overwhelmed, discouraged and embarrassed multiple times along the way. But I’ve always been who I was at any moment in history – not any more than I was, but not any less, either. And I’ve always talked about the processing going on as honestly and openly as possible. For as long as I have known them, I have loved to be around my kids, loved to talk to them, to show them what’s going on in the world around them, to invite discovery, to laugh and to cry when things were appropriately wonderful or terrible. And while I did all that, I pretty much let it all hang out – the flaws, the overwhelm, the not knowing. Also, the thirst for knowledge, the eye for detail, the quick sense of humor, the willingness to work hard. What they saw was what they got.

2. Encouragement

I never had the looks or the coordination for the job, but I coulda been a GREAT cheerleader. I believe in encouragement as a force for world peace, reconciliation between warring tribes, the solution to global warming. I cannot think of a single negative thing that comes from encouraging someone else on their journey of life. Not one. I was a huge fan of each of my children – still am, as a matter of fact. They are, without a doubt, the most brilliant, kind, compassionate, creative, loving human persons who have ever graced the planet. Well, other than Jesus himself, of course. And their children are following right along in their parents’ footsteps. I believed in my kids, even when I didn’t know if that was the smartest row to hoe or not. They were not perfect – but then, neither am I, neither is their dad. But those kids came dang close, I’ll tell you. And when they had a down day, I was there to tell them it would look better in the morning. And generally, it did. It really did. Encouragement is the name of the game. And I think the apostle Paul – and yes, Jesus himself – would agree with me on that one.

3. Nurturing

At the risk of sounding like a particularly sappy Hallmark card, this is what’s at the heart of mothering, is it not? Protecting those chicks, even when they’re bigger than you are. Providing a safe haven, a cozy nest. Paying enough attention to know when they need a ‘mental health’ day off from school but not so much attention that they feel suffocated. Packing lunches (or double-checking the cash reserves for the cafeteria); baking birthday cakes (or buying exactly the right kind at the corner bakery); knowing what they like and what they don’t like – for dinner, in their closet, coming out of your mouth; knowing who their friends are, praying for friends if they don’t have any (or if you think they need a little broader selection). Paying attention and being there – pretty much sums it up.

4. Listening

I’ve already mentioned that I spent a lot of time talking to my children when they were young. But I spent a lot, a lot, a LOT of time listening to them as they got bigger. Some of my kids were better talkers than others. The one who is male clammed up at about age 12 and I had to carefully figure out ways to continue the conversation. This is what I discovered: if we were in the car, where we did not have to make eye contact, my son would open up like he used to before the hormones began flooding his lanky frame. (In two years, he grew ten inches and gained about fifty pounds of big bones and solid muscle). Sometimes I didn’t like what I heard, but I kept on listening, trying not to react, cringe, frown or otherwise shut down the flow. Making space for the other person to talk, even if that talk is painful confession or emotional outburst, is really a requirement for any kind of meaningful human relationship, don’t you think?

5. Teaching

This might seem to be the facet of mothering with the most direct carry-over into the pastoral life, and in some ways that is definitely true. But maybe not in exactly the ways you might imagine. From the time my kids were about 18 months old, I invited them to make choices about their lives, starting with the small stuff. What would you like to wear today? I’d ask. And that made for some fascinating fashion statements at times. As they got bigger, I’d gently comment that maybe we could choose pants OR the skirt, or perhaps both of those busy prints might look more restful if they weren’t worn together. But initially, they wore what they wanted, even if people thought I’d pulled their outfits out of a dumpster somewhere. And I applied that principle across the board. The encyclopedia, the dictionary, the daily newspaper, the Bible – all of these became rich resources in my efforts to help them become their own persons, with their own ideas. If I knew something about a topic they were interested in, I talked about it or I showed them how to do it for themselves. They all got reasonably good at doing laundry, cooking a basic meal (although I was never a good cook and they are all far better at it than I ever was), doing basic household chores. They also learned how to read and to write critically and well, how to wrestle through hard ideas and issues and how to take care of one another. You know, the basics – the essential skills needed to live life in a sometimes crazy world.

6. Releasing

This was the hardest part of mothering for me, bar none: letting them go. And I had to begin doing that when my eldest was a lot younger than I wished. She got married when she was 19 and she basically shifted her primary focus to the man she married when she was just a slip of a girl at 16. The Lord and I wrestled hard about all of this for each of those three years and I continued to wrestle with it for a lot of years after she was married and gone. I had never asked to become a mother, but once I was one? It became my primary identity and mission in life. I loved every thing about it, even the hard and ugly stuff. But what I learned during those years of wrestling was this so-important truth: my children were not mine. They were entrusted to my care, they were among the greatest of God’s gifts to me, but they did not belong to me. They were their own unique selves, gifted and shaped not to become mini-me’s but to become Lisa, Joy and Eric. And for that to happen, I had to do a whole lot of work up front and then get my mucky hands off. I had to stand back and watch them move out into the world all on their own. They made mistakes, they fell down – hard, sometimes – but oh my, what magnificent people they are! Each one of them an individual of irreplaceable giftedness, heart and finely crafted personality.

I’m not sure if what I’ve written here exactly fits into the category of ‘practices of parenting.” Nevertheless, I am contributing them to Sarah Styles Bessey’s Blog Carnival of ideas and suggestions. She’s issued a wonderfully warm invitation and many of us are joining the party. Come on over to her place and check them all out. I will also add this one to the new meme forming to help cover the absence of Emily Wierenga for a while. I’ve done her “Imperfect Prose” for almost a year now and so enjoy the company of that place. But Emily’s life is over full just now, so Kim at “Journey to Epiphany” has stepped in with a temporary community gathering space called, “Painting Prose.” Thanks, Kim!

Filed Under: family, Marriage, memoir, personal journey

I Do: Long-Term Love

February 6, 2012 By Diana

He comes in regularly and stirs the fire.

And every single time,

I am struck with gratitude and wonder

that we chose each other so many years ago.

It’s such a simple thing, stirring those logs around,

just a few moments of time.

But I know this – it is an act of love, this fire-tending,

an act I deeply appreciate.

An act that is emblematic,

representing the story of who we are somehow.

Not all of who we are,

but kind of a meta-picture,

a summary statement.

Because the truth of our story is this:

we grew up together.

We were so young, you see.

When we met, I was seventeen, he was barely twenty.

When we married, I was the 20-year-old,

mid-way through my senior year at UCLA.

That summer, we moved to Zambia for two years,

traveling by freighter over a choppy Atlantic Ocean

for eighteen long days.

The sunsets were glorious;

the storms terrifying.

Not a bad description of the next 25 years or so, actually.

We had so much to learn – beginning with ourselves.

Raised in ‘traditional’ 1950’s Christian homes,

we had a whole lot of firmly held opinions

about what marriage and family should look like

and we did our darnedest to live up those.

I put together our wedding liturgy (I loved liturgy, even then),

and I searched for the old wording to be sure and include the word ‘obey’ in my vows. Those who know me at this end of the last 46 years

might be surprised by that small piece of trivia.

But they would probably not be terribly surprised to learn that it was my husband who first chafed at the thinking behind it,

that it was he who began to call out my gifts as a teacher and leader.

I was too frightened at the prospect of ‘messing up’ my marriage

to go there for a very long time.

Together, we’ve changed up the dance,

trading places – both literally and figuratively – as time and circumstance demanded.

We’ve hit a few rough patches along the way, that’s for sure.

We went to a counselor for a while at about year 25,

when I was in the midst of seminary and carrying a couple of part time jobs and we both felt confused and angry and badly disconnected.

The best thing that came of that experience? The last twenty years.

Somewhere during that time of counseling,

we looked at each other and said,

“We’ve got a good thing going here; let’s make it better.”

And, by God’s grace, we have.

We are very different people – different politics, different temperaments, different favorite-times-of-the-day, different tastes in television

(except for Downton Abbey!).

And guess what?

We are never bored.

Yes, we can get snarly sometimes.

We can get our feelings hurt and our feathers ruffled.

But we make each other laugh louder than anyone else we know.

We have spent so much time together that we seldom have to guess

what the other is thinking.

We each think the other is the finest person on the planet.

We adore our children and our grandchildren.

We are committed to faith and family above all else.

And most of the time,

we really, really like each other.

We’re even learning to do this thing called retirement,

which for a couple with very busy schedules

for very many years, was a somewhat daunting prospect.

While I was pastoring, my husband was commuting

for three-day stretches away from me every week while he continued to work in southern CA.

During those mid-week days, I grew to understand the deep dividends of solitude.

For the first time in my life, I was spending time alone –
and I was loving it.

How would we manage being together 24/7?

Well, one way is this:

in the evenings, he watches sports in the family room;

I write in the bedroom.

And during the winter months,

he builds me a lovely fire in our bedroom fireplace.

About every 90 minutes or so, I hear him coming down the hall,

to peek in and make sure

that fire is performing as a properly built fire should perform.

And that small act tells me what I most deeply need to know:

my husband values who I am and what I do.

In this quieter season of our life together,

it’s an echo of sorts,

an echo of what he said to me when it began to look like we’d be moving to Santa Barbara so that I could take a job.

“Honey, for the last 30 years, you’ve built your life around my career choices. You’ve supported me through all the twists and turns my professional life has taken. Now, it’s my turn to adjust, to let you flourish and grow and become more of who God designed you to be, just like you’ve always done for me.”

He values who I am.

He values what I do.

I value who he is.

I value what he does.

Even now, we want

to keep learning, keep growing,

keep leaning into Jesus and one another.

We want the fire to burn bright,

so we’ll keep tending,

keep stirring,

keep enjoying the light, the warmth, the beauty.

Even when he’s in one room,

and I’m in another.

This essay was written at the invitation of Jennifer Dukes Lee and The High Calling. I am joining the community writing project at THC by signing on with Jennifer’s weekly meme. Ann Voskamp is also encouraging essays about love this month, so I’ll put it there as well. And with all the sisters at Jen Ferguson’s place, the soli deo sisterhood. And, at the end of the week, with Bonnie’s discussion on Love Unwrapped.

Filed Under: family, Marriage, memoir, personal journey