I am very conscious that God has protected me numerous times throughout the years. Today is my birthday, so the fact that I have lived this long seems to be an appropriate topic for rumination.
Some of the protection has been physical. I did not manage to die of measles at age seven, hard though I tried, and an attempted abduction during my freshman year at college did not succeed. And I really did take candy from a stranger in a car when I was about six. Nothing came of it, and I'm not sure I ever did tell my parents.
Two instances involved cars. While driving back home to Columbus from my hometown one night, I found myself surrounded by semi-trucks. They hemmed me about before, behind, and beside for about an hour. I eventually pulled off the highway and stopped, went to turn off my car lights, and discovered they had never been turned on. God bless those truckers, who guided a young woman through the dark.
The other automotive adventure was on a day when I was driving the other direction--from Columbus towards my hometown--and I was suddenly in a fog bank. I couldn't see a thing, so I went to slow down and pull over until it should pass. My car had other ideas, and instead of slowing it sped up and shot right through the fog and came out the other end. There was no visibility whatever and it was a terrifying few minutes, but it was out of my hands. I've always wondered what was getting ready to slam into my car from behind had I slowed down as planned.
I guess I should also include the two or three times that the master cylinder went out and my cars lost their brakes, and yet I was not in an accident. Well, not much of one. One of those times I did rear-end the person ahead of me at the stop light, but there had been a very heavy snow the night before, and all I did was knock some of the frozen muck off her bumper. I was less than three blocks from the repair garage when the brakes deserted me that time, so I just coasted on in and walked to work.
Some of the protection has been spiritual. It was all the rage, when I was in high school, to play "Stiff as a board, light as a feather" at slumber parties. And it featured at the one slumber party that I was allowed to attend. One by one the girls went into a trance, and the rest of us chanted the name of the game and lifted them up into the air with only two fingers from each of us underneath them. When it finally came to my turn, I just couldn't go into a trance. I started the countdown from one hundred as the others had, got all the way down to one, and started counting up again. The other girls gave up on me at that point. I've always been amazed that I was unable to participate in this, in retrospect, occultic activity.
I'm aware that there are several more examples, but those are the ones that spring to mind right now. But the burning question has always been: Why? Why me? I'm not complaining, heaven knows, but I'm curious anyway. Bad things happen to good people on an hourly basis, and I'm not necessarily even all that good. Why have God's hands been keeping me from peril for all of my life? I have no good answer for this. I'm nobody important, and I don't do anything of import either. I'm not even a particularly good example of a Christian, although I do try. Maybe I've been preserved from harm for the sake of my family, or maybe, and this is my favorite theory, because it just gives God pleasure to rescue me again and again, to see if I'll notice. Like a little game, just between us. "I see what you did there, God!".
I'll never know, in this life, why I have been so very protected. All I can do is be grateful every single day that it is true, and that I have another day during which to notice His kindness and grace, and let him know that I appreciate it. Thank you, God, for looking after me. Keep my eyes open to Your grace.
Love, Spud.
Sunday, August 18, 2019
Wednesday, August 7, 2019
Ambivalence
Once upon a time, there was a girl named Nellie. She grew up and married a farmer named Ben. I have seen a photograph of her, and she looked a lot like me, with the same facial shape, curling brown (no longer!) hair and a lack of height. I love that photo--Nellie is standing with her feet planted firmly on the ground, and the reins to a large horse in one hand and her small daughter (my grandmother) in the other. She looks strong and capable.
Great-grandmother Nellie outlived her husband, and then went to keep house for her daughter and her grandchildren. My mother was among those grandchildren, and learned everything she knew about cooking and cleaning and managing a household from Nellie. This is because my grandmother Keitha was a working mother. Whether or not she needed to be a working mother was a subject for debate, but the fact of the matter is that Grandma really liked to have a paying job, and had one paying job or another for most of her life. I have no idea what my grandfather thought of this--he never said, at least not in my hearing.
But I do know what my mother thought of it, and it wasn't favorable. Mom thought that her mother should stay at home and BE a mother to her children. She loved Great-grandma Nellie but wanted her own mother to be at home. Well, Grandma Keitha would have been miserable at home.
So when my mother became a mother, she stopped working for pay and stayed at home with her children, as she thought was right and proper and the best thing to do. Unfortunately, my mother also really loved working, and once we children emerged from toddlerhood she didn't really know what do to with us. We had become uninteresting. So she was miserable too, as her mother would have been.
This came out in all sorts of ways, including the fact that I was never really "mothered". There were plenty of repercussions of this later in my life, especially when I left home for college and discovered just how little I knew about life, being a socialized person, and even about basic manners and hygiene. She didn't like to be touched, and once we were past early childhood had never touched us without anger, so I was a little stunted and starved.
With two daughters in college, Mom had to (!) go back to work, so our much-younger brother had a very different upbringing from mine, and didn't experience the same unhappy atmosphere. I think it also helped that he was a boy, and so Dad took a lot of responsibility for his parenting.
So after all those long boring years of wearing a cotton house-dress and slippers, which got replaced every couple of years when they wore out, Mom had to wear suits and heels (oh she did love those high heels!) and make-up as though every day was Sunday. She had income of her own and that was the end of the years of scarcity of funds, and there were fewer people at home on which to spend it anyway. Mom was happy.
Of the two of us, my older sister was the one who learned to cook family dinners and do all the house-running activities. She went as far in the 4-H sewing projects as you could go, eventually tailoring her own suit. I was as entrenched as possible in school in music and theater and dancing, which left precious little time to learn all the domestic arts. My still-single sister and I were as different from each other as we could be.
Eventually, I married and had two children of my own, but I could not stay home with them as money was extremely tight. Even with my income, every month came down to the penny, and we did not waste any of it. There were no dinners out, cable television, new cars. For several years, most of the kids' clothing was second-hand. Everything had to last as long as possible. Finances got better by the time both kids were in school full time. So when it might have been possible for me to stay home with the kids at last, there was no longer a need for it.
To be honest, I'm not sure I would have been a happy stay-at-home mother either. I always thrived in the work environment, and on days off I was stymied by the need to play with my kids. I still don't really know how to play, but fortunately they both loved to be read to (a thing I never experienced myself once I could read) so I had that activity with them, and I made it a policy that my lap was always open. I have never turned down a cuddle, even now that they are both adults.
The whole reason to get into all this is to explain the ambivalent relationship I had with my mother. Stu and I moved into a two-story house twenty-some years ago, and when my parents came to see it I was happy to see that they were pleased with it. Until my mother hissed at me how it was unfair that I had the husband and house and children, as it was my sister who deserved it.
That shocked me, and devastated me, and it was many years before I was able to put the pieces together and figure out where that angry remark had come from. It wasn't until I finally understood my mom's relationship with *her* mother and grandmother that I was able to forgive her and let go of the hurt.
It took sitting down with a large pile of seemingly unrelated facts to start to understand my mother, and once I put them all together and realized what her outlook and experiences had been, I came to peace with so much more than anyone knows. I did love my mother, and I wish I could have known her as a friend before motherhood happened to her. I hear she was a sparkling person with her own forays into community theater, who loved to go to the movies and dancing. I remember her becoming so alive the year that Dad was in an officer training course, and she was suddenly part of the Officer's Wives Club. When it ended, she deflated again.
Mom wasn't a terrible person, she was just not suited for the role that life handed her. Bless my husband, who insisted on showing her love in ways she probably secretly yearned for but didn't know how to ask for. I tried to make her last years happy, on the times we visited, and by talking every Saturday night on the phone. The last time I saw her, she confided that she was certain she would not live out the year, and she was correct. Nothing made me happier afterwards than the realization that I had made her laugh a couple of times during that last meeting, a difficult accomplishment during her intermittent dementia.
It was a gift from God that I was able to understand and forgive, and show her the approval that she had rarely shown me. Only having known the love and approval of God made me capable of examining my past and letting God blow the chaff away. I hope I get to see Mom in heaven, so we can start over and do it better next time. And I hope that my own kids will be willing to forgive any damage I have inadvertently afflicted on their own sweet selves. Family is a gift, and God is good.
Love, Spud.
Great-grandmother Nellie outlived her husband, and then went to keep house for her daughter and her grandchildren. My mother was among those grandchildren, and learned everything she knew about cooking and cleaning and managing a household from Nellie. This is because my grandmother Keitha was a working mother. Whether or not she needed to be a working mother was a subject for debate, but the fact of the matter is that Grandma really liked to have a paying job, and had one paying job or another for most of her life. I have no idea what my grandfather thought of this--he never said, at least not in my hearing.
But I do know what my mother thought of it, and it wasn't favorable. Mom thought that her mother should stay at home and BE a mother to her children. She loved Great-grandma Nellie but wanted her own mother to be at home. Well, Grandma Keitha would have been miserable at home.
So when my mother became a mother, she stopped working for pay and stayed at home with her children, as she thought was right and proper and the best thing to do. Unfortunately, my mother also really loved working, and once we children emerged from toddlerhood she didn't really know what do to with us. We had become uninteresting. So she was miserable too, as her mother would have been.
This came out in all sorts of ways, including the fact that I was never really "mothered". There were plenty of repercussions of this later in my life, especially when I left home for college and discovered just how little I knew about life, being a socialized person, and even about basic manners and hygiene. She didn't like to be touched, and once we were past early childhood had never touched us without anger, so I was a little stunted and starved.
With two daughters in college, Mom had to (!) go back to work, so our much-younger brother had a very different upbringing from mine, and didn't experience the same unhappy atmosphere. I think it also helped that he was a boy, and so Dad took a lot of responsibility for his parenting.
So after all those long boring years of wearing a cotton house-dress and slippers, which got replaced every couple of years when they wore out, Mom had to wear suits and heels (oh she did love those high heels!) and make-up as though every day was Sunday. She had income of her own and that was the end of the years of scarcity of funds, and there were fewer people at home on which to spend it anyway. Mom was happy.
Of the two of us, my older sister was the one who learned to cook family dinners and do all the house-running activities. She went as far in the 4-H sewing projects as you could go, eventually tailoring her own suit. I was as entrenched as possible in school in music and theater and dancing, which left precious little time to learn all the domestic arts. My still-single sister and I were as different from each other as we could be.
Eventually, I married and had two children of my own, but I could not stay home with them as money was extremely tight. Even with my income, every month came down to the penny, and we did not waste any of it. There were no dinners out, cable television, new cars. For several years, most of the kids' clothing was second-hand. Everything had to last as long as possible. Finances got better by the time both kids were in school full time. So when it might have been possible for me to stay home with the kids at last, there was no longer a need for it.
To be honest, I'm not sure I would have been a happy stay-at-home mother either. I always thrived in the work environment, and on days off I was stymied by the need to play with my kids. I still don't really know how to play, but fortunately they both loved to be read to (a thing I never experienced myself once I could read) so I had that activity with them, and I made it a policy that my lap was always open. I have never turned down a cuddle, even now that they are both adults.
The whole reason to get into all this is to explain the ambivalent relationship I had with my mother. Stu and I moved into a two-story house twenty-some years ago, and when my parents came to see it I was happy to see that they were pleased with it. Until my mother hissed at me how it was unfair that I had the husband and house and children, as it was my sister who deserved it.
That shocked me, and devastated me, and it was many years before I was able to put the pieces together and figure out where that angry remark had come from. It wasn't until I finally understood my mom's relationship with *her* mother and grandmother that I was able to forgive her and let go of the hurt.
It took sitting down with a large pile of seemingly unrelated facts to start to understand my mother, and once I put them all together and realized what her outlook and experiences had been, I came to peace with so much more than anyone knows. I did love my mother, and I wish I could have known her as a friend before motherhood happened to her. I hear she was a sparkling person with her own forays into community theater, who loved to go to the movies and dancing. I remember her becoming so alive the year that Dad was in an officer training course, and she was suddenly part of the Officer's Wives Club. When it ended, she deflated again.
Mom wasn't a terrible person, she was just not suited for the role that life handed her. Bless my husband, who insisted on showing her love in ways she probably secretly yearned for but didn't know how to ask for. I tried to make her last years happy, on the times we visited, and by talking every Saturday night on the phone. The last time I saw her, she confided that she was certain she would not live out the year, and she was correct. Nothing made me happier afterwards than the realization that I had made her laugh a couple of times during that last meeting, a difficult accomplishment during her intermittent dementia.
It was a gift from God that I was able to understand and forgive, and show her the approval that she had rarely shown me. Only having known the love and approval of God made me capable of examining my past and letting God blow the chaff away. I hope I get to see Mom in heaven, so we can start over and do it better next time. And I hope that my own kids will be willing to forgive any damage I have inadvertently afflicted on their own sweet selves. Family is a gift, and God is good.
Love, Spud.
Monday, August 5, 2019
Ode to my daughter
Remember her? You can read all about my child in the post from August of 2009. She's no longer that teenage girl-child, but a professional woman in a house a few miles away. In some ways life has changed, but in other ways it is just the same. She is still entrancing, and one of the most fun people I know.
But where she always had to have red shoes growing up, now they are gold. And she used to come to visit me at the library where I worked, but in recent years I paid a visit to the library where she worked instead. I've now retired, and she is starting out with a real live master's degree to make her undoubtedly unique mark on the world.
I once heard an illustration of a duck in the water--it looks serene and calm gliding through the water, but underneath it's paddling like mad. That has always been true of me and I have a suspicion that it's true of her too. Unfortunately, that's the way life often is. May she experience extended periods of real calm, as unlikely as it is.
I have been honored beyond measure that she often reaches out to me for conversation, consolation, confession, recipes, and shared delights. She is a woman of faith, and really tries to live a life according to it. She is an artist, a writer, a rescuer of cats, and an adventurous woman with so many friends. Rosie, I am prouder of you than you will ever know. Long way you wave.
Love, Spud
But where she always had to have red shoes growing up, now they are gold. And she used to come to visit me at the library where I worked, but in recent years I paid a visit to the library where she worked instead. I've now retired, and she is starting out with a real live master's degree to make her undoubtedly unique mark on the world.
I once heard an illustration of a duck in the water--it looks serene and calm gliding through the water, but underneath it's paddling like mad. That has always been true of me and I have a suspicion that it's true of her too. Unfortunately, that's the way life often is. May she experience extended periods of real calm, as unlikely as it is.
I have been honored beyond measure that she often reaches out to me for conversation, consolation, confession, recipes, and shared delights. She is a woman of faith, and really tries to live a life according to it. She is an artist, a writer, a rescuer of cats, and an adventurous woman with so many friends. Rosie, I am prouder of you than you will ever know. Long way you wave.
Love, Spud
Sunday, August 4, 2019
Beginnings
In other words, how I came to be. The truth is, I was a result of a failure of communication between my parents. Without going into uncomfortable detail, my mother took an action that made my father think that Mom was already expecting, so he ceased the use of preventive measures. My mother observed the lack of preventive measures and assumed that Dad had decided it was time for another baby. But did they discuss this with each other? No, they did not! Therefore, here I am. A happy accident, so to speak.
Dad told me years later that he regarded me as someone whom God decided just needed to be. I've no objection to this, and try to avoid letting it give me the Big Head.
On the night I was born, Mom woke Dad and informed him that it was time to go fetch the car out of the garage and bring it around to the front for the trip to the hospital. By the time he got himself clothed and the car fetched, it was too late. So he ran to wake up the lady next door who had already had five of her own, thinking that she'd know what to do. Well, that was a mixed success. This was in the days of Twilight Sleep birthing, and women didn't have to experience the nitty gritty of actually being aware of what was happening to them as they gave birth. Chris did successfully deliver me, but was so repulsed by the experience that she never had another one.
I was caught in a dish towel (I was not a large baby) and placed in a laundry basket to await the ambulance which was on its way. Dad always claimed that the ambulance staff initially picked up the wrong laundry basket, but I suspect that particular detail is apocryphal. Mom and I were hauled off the to the hospital, where I was deemed unsanitary, since I'd been born at home, and thus not allowed to stay in the nursery with the other babies. So Mom had to keep me with her, which I'm sure did not make her happy, but she was just accidentally ahead of her time.
An interesting side effect of emergency home birth is that nobody knows, really, what time I appeared. They were all busy, and nobody looked at a clock.
My younger brother and I got to musing a few years ago about the timing of my conception, but as regards the calendar. It would have been just about the time of the OSU/Michigan game, which is still a landmark occasion in our family every year. My brother posited that I was a celebration baby. Thanks to the modern miracle of the interwebs, I was able to find out the score for the year before I was born. Alas, I appear to have been a consolation prize.
Love, Spud
Friday, June 22, 2018
Temporary
Job 14:1-2. I’ve been thinking lately about how everything is temporary. I drive by a spot where a house used to be, and now all that’s left is the sidewalk going to where the front door was, and the driveway stopping where the garage was. Otherwise the entire lot is covered with grass. Neighbors and OSU chop down lovely big old trees and I mourn every time. I love a good tree, and they’re supposed to last for a very long time, but in reality they are only temporary.
People, shockingly, are temporary too. My parents, three of my pregnancies, an old boyfriend, my senior prom date, Mark, Chuck--all gone, and many more to follow. If I die first, then I can pretend that Stu will go on forever, and it’s unbearable to think that he might have the nerve to die before I do. Thinking about this, I felt like I was stuck in Ecclesiastes. It was depressing. Something deep inside me feels like this is just wrong.
Many times I am able to get through bad situations with a semblance of sanity because I put them in the perspective of time. You can do, or put up with, just about anything if you know it’s temporary. So temporary can be a good thing too.
Thinking about all the things that are temporary naturally led me to thoughts of things that are permanent. Funny, there isn’t nearly as much on that list. There are two passages that come to mind--I Peter 1:23-25 and 2 Corinthians 4:17-18.
Everything we see is temporary. Everything. Even Planet Earth. Things we can’t see are forever. If the eternal things are evil, that’s a situation totally devoid of hope, and a perfectly valid reason for panic and despair. But if the eternal things, like God, are good, that’s wonderful. Actually, wonderful is much too mild a word, isn’t it? To be honest, I can’t think of a word in English that stands up to the task of describing permanent total goodness.
Did you ever look up the word “forever” in a big concordance? It takes up about four columns, and a lot of that is from Psalms and Revelation. Some of the Forever verses are about evil beings being tormented forever. Many more of them are about Good--Jesus having glory and dominion forever, God living forever, the two of them reigning forever. Permanent Good. And us, and those fellow believers that we have lost, being found by God, and never again having to say of a bad situation, “I can endure this, it’s only temporary”.
Love, Spud
Friday, March 30, 2018
Happy Easter!
Disciples: "Jesus?!? We thought you were dead!
Jesus: "April Fools!"
There are only so many places I can tell that joke, but I love it anyway.
To be honest, I'm largely posting today so that Blogspot doesn't decide I've gone and died or something, and take my blog away. I know that it's been a long time. But I will retire in roughly a year, and I really hope to get back to writing on a more (wouldn't take much!) regular basis.
My goodness life has changed. Give me a year, and I'll tell you all about it.
Jesus: "April Fools!"
There are only so many places I can tell that joke, but I love it anyway.
To be honest, I'm largely posting today so that Blogspot doesn't decide I've gone and died or something, and take my blog away. I know that it's been a long time. But I will retire in roughly a year, and I really hope to get back to writing on a more (wouldn't take much!) regular basis.
My goodness life has changed. Give me a year, and I'll tell you all about it.
Sunday, January 20, 2013
A Sigh of Relief
There are days when I have doubts. I just do. I read widely, and sometimes I just get influenced by the opinions of those who don't believe in inerrancy or verbal plenary inspiration or the historicity of most of the Old Testament. Lately I've been reading a scholarly tome that insists that there is no evidence whatsoever for enslavement in Egypt or the exodus or even the twelve tribes of Israel, much less the glories of Solomon's reign. The authors did say at the outset of the book that if you read it, your faith will be tested, but what good is a faith that doesn't stand up to a little testing? And they're right, of course. But still.
And sometimes I read things by Bible experts whose words and lives I respect, but they seem to be blind in certain areas, and I wonder who is blinder, me or them? It has to be me, right? Because they do this for a living and have been interpreting the Bible for decades whereas I am a rank amateur.
And sometimes when I have been praying ardently for justice, or truth, or wisdom, and it just doesn't come, then doubt is right on my tail, because I know that these things are dear to the heart of God and surely if he was going to give us anything we ask for it would be justice and truth and wisdom. Right?
So the darkness of doubting begins, and my soul grieves, and I feel as though someone has pulled up my anchor and I might drift away.
But then a funny thing happens. I find myself telling God all about it. Wait! Why am I doing this? Don't I doubt that you exist?
And in my times of deepest pain and loss, when reason tells me that God is either not there or clearly not on my side, I find myself screaming and shouting and shaking my fist at him. Oh, I give him a good earful, that God who might not be real. But when the doubts pass and the painful situations pass, I come to my senses and realize that he was there all along, waiting patiently for me to get it out of my system and stop throwing my pitiful little tantrum.
Because that's the thing, isn't it? Even when I'm in doubt and pain, I must know deep down that he IS there to hear, or I wouldn't bother to scream at him. Ipso facto, and all that.
This morning's teaching was on the 14th chapter of the gospel of John. The teacher was discussing the Holy Spirit, and how he teaches us and reminds us all things. I suddenly got an image in my head that made me marvel and chuckle at the same time. People around my must think I'm loony--I often chuckle at the most inappropriate times when one thought leads to another and then where I end up delights and tickles me. That happened again this morning. I got a little picture in my brain of me wearing a leash, like a little dog, and the leash was the Holy Spirit. No matter where I wandered, where I tried to hide, how far I went in the wrong direction, that leash stayed attached. The other end of that leash was in the hand of God.
And he never let go.
Love, Spud
And sometimes I read things by Bible experts whose words and lives I respect, but they seem to be blind in certain areas, and I wonder who is blinder, me or them? It has to be me, right? Because they do this for a living and have been interpreting the Bible for decades whereas I am a rank amateur.
And sometimes when I have been praying ardently for justice, or truth, or wisdom, and it just doesn't come, then doubt is right on my tail, because I know that these things are dear to the heart of God and surely if he was going to give us anything we ask for it would be justice and truth and wisdom. Right?
So the darkness of doubting begins, and my soul grieves, and I feel as though someone has pulled up my anchor and I might drift away.
But then a funny thing happens. I find myself telling God all about it. Wait! Why am I doing this? Don't I doubt that you exist?
And in my times of deepest pain and loss, when reason tells me that God is either not there or clearly not on my side, I find myself screaming and shouting and shaking my fist at him. Oh, I give him a good earful, that God who might not be real. But when the doubts pass and the painful situations pass, I come to my senses and realize that he was there all along, waiting patiently for me to get it out of my system and stop throwing my pitiful little tantrum.
Because that's the thing, isn't it? Even when I'm in doubt and pain, I must know deep down that he IS there to hear, or I wouldn't bother to scream at him. Ipso facto, and all that.
This morning's teaching was on the 14th chapter of the gospel of John. The teacher was discussing the Holy Spirit, and how he teaches us and reminds us all things. I suddenly got an image in my head that made me marvel and chuckle at the same time. People around my must think I'm loony--I often chuckle at the most inappropriate times when one thought leads to another and then where I end up delights and tickles me. That happened again this morning. I got a little picture in my brain of me wearing a leash, like a little dog, and the leash was the Holy Spirit. No matter where I wandered, where I tried to hide, how far I went in the wrong direction, that leash stayed attached. The other end of that leash was in the hand of God.
And he never let go.
Love, Spud
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