Fruitfulness, Round Four

Last week, post-yard-sale and some back labor excitement, Papa picked tomatoes from the garden. This is what the counter looked like after I'd cleaned half of the take from three five-gallon buckets.

As they say up here: Uff-da.

Suffice it to say, we've had a bumper garden harvest this year. Since early August, I've been freezing green beans, sweet corn (not from our garden but from three different church members--sweet corn had a good year here, too), preparing eggplant and squash and cucumbers, and this month we've been tackling the pepper and tomato haul. Yes, it's been a lot of work. We're also very thankful the garden has borne such bounty, especially considering the late spring and the fact that we were gone for four weeks after Papa planted. So Nancy, if you're reading this and still at all concerned that your watering efforts in July went to waste, please, PLEASE fret no more. God used your efforts to great success. In fact, our tomato load last week was the fourth round of our tomato haul. The first resulted in twelve pints of hot salsa and seven quarts of tomatoes in their own juice. The second begat twelve pints of mild salsa and multiple quarts of peeled, frozen tomatoes. The third produced over twelve gallons of frozen tomatoes (see how my energy with each round diminished?). The fourth round, by sheer size alone, demanded extra effort.

So last week when I decided to make tomato sauce with all two-thirds of Papa's latest picking, I had a lot of time to think about garden harvests and familial blessings. Sitting in the kitchen, destemming and slicing up countless tomatoes for what turned out to be over ten quarts of sauce (which, if you've done this before, means roughly sixty pounds of tomatoes were involved), and wincing every time Baby decided to make his presence known (the guy's running out of room!), I pondered the mysteries of fruitfulness.

Papa's planted a garden every summer we've been here, and we've had some good years. He's rotated placement, Miracle-Gro-ed, swapped out different varieties of produce, tried different spacing. He's tried onions and radishes with little success. This year, he tweaked again, but not enough to account for the haul. Our backyard neighbors planted a few tomato plants scarcely twenty feet from our garden and didn't get a single tomato for their work. Yet we planted and basically left the little green squirts alone and now find ourselves inundated.

It's not fair, in the whole scheme of things. I'm ten months pregnant. Why all this work at this particular time? But what a silly response. I could dwell on the effort such bounty requires to preserve and sustain, but that seems beyond ungrateful. It doesn't even make sense. Gardens by their very nature are supposed to produce. And when they do, we give thanks. On the flip side, our bounty seems unfair to all the gardeners who spend this month wondering what went wrong. It would seem judicious if everyone got at least a little something for all of their gardening efforts, but sometimes it just doesn't happen. Sometimes the rabbits and birds wreak havoc. Sometimes the weather soaks or scorches. Sometimes seeds and seedlings just don't take due to soil or weeds or for causes we can never determine. Experts have spent and still spend countless hours attempting to explain why things grow and why they don't. But even finding reasons why things don't grow can't suddenly make them grow. Even having all kinds of scientific answers as to how and why life can happen can't actually create and sustain life itself.

Gardens are one thing; families and children quite another. I think of my friends and others whose arms and hearts ache with emptiness, from children desired and children taken to Jesus. Like agricultural scientists and researchers and farmers, doctors and specialists can only explain so much. This is not to diminish their God-given expertise and aid in any way. It is only to say that they are not God, and they cannot act as Life-creater. Sometimes we fool ourselves into thinking they can be, that technology or drugs or some combination of scientific theory and practice in the hands of certain people can do what only God can do. But we also see too much suffering and tragedy to believe such a lie. Seemingly healthy children die young. Healthy women are infertile. And children who should not statistically survive do. My sister and I are such exceptions. We were born over thirty years ago at  twenty-eight weeks gestation. We were given less than a ten percent chance of survival at birth, but we both did. And only God knows why. We can speculate, of course. But the truth is that we don't know. And we can only trust that God's ways are best, even when we don't know His reasons for life or for death, for fruitfulness or for barrenness.

Such may sound glib or callous, an easy write-off for unanswerable burdens that provides no comfort. Instead, it is a life-saving trust in a sea of loss and suffering. We pray a meal prayer sometimes that begins with verses from Psalm 145: The eyes of all look to You, O Lord, and You give them their food in due season. You open Your hand; You satisfy the desire of every living thing (14-15). We give thanks for the nutrients God provides us for our bodies. We acknowledge that only He can give us what we need, when we need it, be it food or health or children or any number of gifts. And ultimately, whether we like it or not, we bow to the inevitable scarcity or abundance that He provides, as He sees fit. We don't like this, because it means our efforts mean, well, nothing in the face of whether God withholds or blesses.

But we also know that His gifts are always good. His good gifts always satisfy our greatest need--that we need Him, that we are, in fact, completely helpless apart from Him. And He provides for us in multiple ways, too, just not always in the forms we desire or expect. Neighbors bring extra asparagus and apples (or get five-gallon buckets of tomatoes). Some years are corn-heavy and tomato-light. Some arms hold one child or two or many, biological or adopted, and others hold nieces or nephews or godchildren or congregational children. Regardless, we receive. And--this is a hard truth--if God ordains that we should bodily starve or bear the cross of barrenness or loss, we trust that His ways are not our ways, His care not ours. This is a terrible truth, but one on which our very lives depend. Abraham wielded a knife over his only son. Mary watched hers be pierced and nailed and suffocate and die. Both wept and ached and suffered. But none more so than He who made them to begin with, Who bore and bled and died and rose to give us life that would never end, that would never stop giving.

Our family waits and prays in these days for God to bless us with another child, who is our fourth living one. This baby has grown unseen and mostly unknown, though we cherish our time with his kicks and his hiccups, even his sunny-side up turn. God knows the days He has prepared for this little one, and we trust in His promises for us and for our child, that He will never leave us or foresake us, though we all will pass someday from this veil of tears. And so we give thanks for His mysterious bounty, in all of its forms. Bless us, O Lord, and these Your gifts, which we receive from Your bountiful goodness. Through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.

On Joplin and Holes

I'm currently sitting in my parents' loft condo in downtown Joplin, Missouri, listening to the quiet hum of the AC and watching the traffic lights change over empty streets down Fourth Street. Being here with the kids for the last almost-week has been lovely--great casual, hanging out time; lots of eating (particularly many variations of chocolate); walks with strollers; shopping for things that Grandma and Grandpa like to spoil their grandkids with (thank you, Thomas the Tank Engine and Co.).

This is the one time this year we--we meaning us Olsons minus Papa, unfortunately--could make it down here. And this is the one time this year I think we most needed to be here. Yes, there's a lot of big, happy family events coming up this summer, and it's nice to have no particular reason to get together. But this is also just a few weeks shy of the one year anniversary of the tornado that destroyed about one-third of Joplin.

On May 22, 2011, at 5:41 p.m., an E-5 tornado touched down here and blew a hole roughly six miles long and one mile wide out of a residential and commercial district. It's hard to articulate what this looked like; you can look on my parents' immediate experiences with this here and Papa's thoughts after visiting Joplin here.

One of the first days we were here, Mom and I and the kids went over to Cunningham Park. It includes a neat-o playground modeled after Joplin in its early years, a pond with a zillion tadpoles in it, a memorial to the volunteers who have helped after the tornado (a big ring with "the miracle of the human spirit" showcases that part), and a memorial to those who lost their lives in the tornado. It's poignant and special, and not just because of what's in the park itself. The park is also in the tornado zone, so surrounding it are streets, new construction, a lot of bare space, a few homes still not torn down after the storm, and no mature trees. About a quarter of a mile from the park sits the ravaged hulk of St. John's, the hospital that sustained a direct hit from the storm. Its glassless windows, with curtains still swaying in the breeze, look out to a gaping hole where thousands lived and worked. It's eerie and taxing to look around and see so much nothing, and to still see such a gaping wound such as St. John's, for even though people are slowly coming back to the zone to live and work--even a temporary hospital in trailers sits near the vacant building as a new hospital is completed a few miles away--no amount of time or replacement can bring back what was lost here.

One of the many things we've done in the last month or so since I've blogged was attend the annual Vine and Branches conference in Lakefield. This year, we heard from a panel of experts about what suffering means to God's people. Where is God in the midst of suffering? How do we deal with suffering as humans? As Christians? What should we say to those who are or have suffered? A few ideas that stood out for me dealt with how we help those who suffer. One way is not to say anything, because too often, we compound others' suffering by thoughtless, foolish comments, much like Job's "friends." Basically, people need to know that we're here for them, over and over again, in ways small and concrete, like in hugs and pies. They don't need to hear our stupid explanations of why particular tragedies happen--a pointless exercise known in theological circles as theodicy, or our attempts to explain how God and bad stuff exist together. They don't need to hear us tell them how to "get over" their suffering or how to speed grieving along. They don't need us to write off their experiences so we can get back to our fast, "normal" lives. They need our presence to reassure them that they are still here, and that God is still here, after the holes have left their vacant, terrible ruptures on their bodies, hearts, lives.

As humans, we shudder when we encounter real suffering that defies easy description: the abuse of children, the physical pain of terminal illness, the wreckage of one home next door to one unscathed. How can God possibly love us when He brings "all the evil" upon Job (42:11)--and, in truth, upon us? What kind of a God would spare one child only to take another? When we see real suffering, we look upon the darkest, most difficult realities of our existence, and we in turn question our existence: who am I? Who is God? Will I survive this? Which is really another way of saying How do I even exist in the midst of such overwhelming suffering that God--yes, even God who has created me--has heaped upon me?

And we have no concrete answer, but another hole--actually three.

As they were talking about these things, Jesus himself stood among them, and said to them, “Peace to you!” But they were startled and frightened and thought they saw a spirit. And he said to them, “Why are you troubled, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Touch me, and see. For a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. (Luke 24:36-40)

Why did Jesus show his disciples his hands and his feet? Why not His elbow? Why, for Pete's sake, wasn't seeing His face enough to convince them that He was who they thought He was? Because the disciples knew Jesus had been crucified, that He had died. They had to see the holes to know that He who lived was actually He who had died.

We live an uneasy peace most times in our lives, busy and distracted by the mundane so that we do not have to think every second of every day about the fate that awaits us, the death that constantly draws nearer. Tragedy and deep suffering, like what the people of Joplin and so many others bear, remind us of this in ways we do not like to contemplate. Job bore the weight of God's hand in his suffering--"Have mercy on me, have mercy on me, O you my friends, for the hand of God has touched me!" he wails, telling them about the terrible burden God brought upon him (for the Devil could do nothing to Job without God's involvement).
But we who have been drowned in baptismal waters in order to live do not have to fear the reminders or even the suffering itself. We see the holes, and we remember Who lives despite them, He who lives and who promises us life eternal after the holes, He who heals our holes with His own. 

I think on this, after another train has passed nearby, its long wail the only punctuation in an otherwise still night. More trials will come here to Joplin, because trials in this life await us all. But all the holes that we have and will have, bear and do bear, rest in Christ's holes, too. And in this we trust, and wait, and know we are not alone, and never will be.

Jobs and Labor

I've been dying to write a post with this title. It's stuffed with multiple meanings, which I'll get to, of course! But I just had to have my little post-title-party first. Thanks for your patience.

So right after our dear daughter C appeared last month, my husband's requested copy of Walter Issacson's new bio on Steve Jobs arrived at our local library. Being the good wife that I am, I immediately confiscated it for breastfeeding company. It might seem like weird reading for an immediately postpartum mama, but then again, practically all texts are, other than psalms of thanksgiving (in my humble opinion).

Here's what I learned from Issacson's portrait of Jobs:

1) Software is the stuff that goes INSIDE computers; hardware is the stuff on the OUTSIDE. (Try not to choke from laughing too hard, dear readers.)
2) The existential battle between closed and open theories of computer design is fascinating with all of its concomitant connections with art, business, and even religion.
3) Control freakiness can produce mixed-bag leadership that leads to freakishly successful products; it also can illuminate deeply rooted insecurity, resulting in constant, ongoing quests for perfection (physical and spiritual).

In sum: Steve Jobs was an extremely interesting, intimidating, often downright cruel man who knew how to win people brilliantly when he needed them and who did not know how to turn outside himself for any Truth.

All this is to say two things. First, I'd recommend the book -- it's a great insight into our culture, and particularly into the prevailing mindset of the Baby Boom generation, all loped around the person of Jobs (who, if you didn't already know, was raised a Lutheran. Once he hit teenage skepticism, he jettisoned whatever he'd learned about the church in favor of generally Buddhist mysticism, coupled with LSD usage.). Second, what I learned about Steve Jobs made me hope that I never, ever forget what laboring a child into the world is like.

Let me explain, with this caveat to women who haven't been through natural labor: I'm being honest here, which might otherwise just sound like I'm trying to scare you. I'm not. I believe in natural labor and hope all moms get the chance to experience it, if only for the great effects on your child (and because most natural labors mean Baby and Mom are blessedly healthy).

Just a little ways in--because we're both still smiling. Seven hours after this I was assuredly NOT smiling.

Anyway, unlike many mamas, I experienced a very smooth, relatively easy induced labor with P, our firstborn -- that's to say that he and I both experienced zero complications (other than he didn't have much amniotic fluid cushion, hence the induction) and, more significantly here, I generally felt that I was in control all the way through labor. I had one breakthrough moment of anguish, in which I thought, "I can't do this!" and the Holy Spirit instantly reminded me that I didn't have to. Jesus already completed all thing for me on the cross. And as glib as that sounds here, that gave me enough comfort to know that He would take care of me even all the way through labor and delivery, which He did.

In contrast, S was a roller-coaster ride: multiple trips to the hospital and midwife in the week prior to his delivery, lots of go-no-go, culminating in a 45-minute ride through dark, rain, and construction to the hospital, where S was born less than an hour later. I screamed in agony quite a bit during the last bit, and a nurse at some point leaned over and said, "Try to stop yelling. You're going to lose your voice." Which is an awesome thing to say to a woman who's nine centimeters dilated. The first concern she's going to have is the state of her vocal cords. But I digress. Anyway, that experience shook me, mainly because I realized that I couldn't control my reaction, I couldn't control the pain, and I couldn't control the fear that overtook me. This was very humbling.

And all this played into how I approached C's birth. Thank God in all of His mercy that He answered my prayer not to have a repeat wannabe-Nascar-race experience and we spent almost my entire labor and delivery in the comfort of the hospital--with our unbelievably wonderful midwife on call! These two facts sustained me heartily through the first hours of labor. (That and, erm, the humongous hamburger and french fries I inhaled five hours into labor.)

"Yeah... Room 0521 here. I'll take a hamburger--extra grease, please."

But the last two hours were, like with S, difficult. Labor is funny. No, not that kind of funny; funny in that it progresses, and you reach a point where you think, "Wow, that really hurt." And some small part of you is yelling, "You can't do this! You can't DOOOOOOOOOOO this!" But the voice is from far off, like through a tunnel; you visualize the bike riding up the hill or whatever and breathe and count through the contraction; the contraction ends, and you go from feeling like you've been kicked to feeling like a Rock Star. I made it through that contraction! Take that, Whoever It Is I'm Talking To In My Head. And then, the contractions get stronger and they get harder and the pain gets worse. Repeat cycle. Until you can't really think anymore, let alone congratulate yourself. The crux is whether you get to that point late enough in the game where you can see the finish line or you can't.

This is what I mean: I had the benefit during C's coming into the world of my terrific, terrific husband's presence and encouragement and Midwife's wonderfulness. But labor progressed the way it does, and for me that meant that for the last hour or so, I felt like I was running a marathon that would never end. Literally never end. Good thoughts would flit through: All pain is temporary! Remember what you get at the end! All pain is temporary! Remember what you get at the end! "When a woman is giving birth, she has sorrow because her hour has come, but when she has delivered the baby, she no longer remembers the anguish, for joy that a human being has been born into the world!" (John 16:21, exclamation point mine).

This was before the really, really hard part. This was the hard part that precedes it. Because otherwise I wouldn't have given Papa permission to take this picture.

But every time a good thought would appear, I would instantly reject it. I would deny it. Truly, I found myself thinking--no, actually praying--that God would end it. That He would actually cause a complication so I'd have to be surgically split open so it would all be over. That He would end my life so I didn't have to suffer anymore. And even as I prayed this, I was horrified--horrified that I actually desired my daughter to have a problem just so I could not be in pain, horrified that I wanted to die and I was asking God to grant my prayer.

This experience, more than anything else in my life thus far, showed me that I am dust, and to dust I shall return. My horrible thoughts during labor only proved what I supposedly already knew: that I'm a sinner. I AM sin. I'm sick all the way to the core. And though this is the truth, I trick myself every day into thinking that I basically have it together. With one thought I "know" my wretched sinfulness and with the next I'm congratulating myself on my supreme humility in acknowledging that sinfulness. In fact, that happened during my first labor. But with C, all I could see and feel was the black pit of suffering and my complete--absolutely complete--inability to handle it. I was at the bottom, and I could do nothing to save myself.

And, incredibly, Christ saved me--again. He bore with me just as He bore all of my sins on the cross. He felt every kick (for C kicked hard all the way through labor), winced at every beginning contraction, gasped and sputtered for air with every grunt and push. He placed Himself upon me, my husband, my midwife, and even beautiful C. And He still does. This is what I never want to forget, now that I'm way past those few--because they are actually few--moments. This is what Steve Jobs never acknowledged, at least in time for the book's publication: that our incarnate God died for us because we could never do what He required--perfection.

So Jesus did the job for me in labor. He does it every day, every minute, every second. Which is beyond great--because this life involves a lot more than labor.

And He gave us a daughter, too. Richness on top of pricelessness.

Giving Thanks for Life.

I've been struggling for a few weeks to deal with some thrice-removed stresses--that is, things that bother me that 97% of the time don't directly affect me or my family's daily life but which still matter to me because they deal with people that matter to me. I know worrying is wrong. Yet I've spent far too much time turning thoughts and comments and incidents over and over in my head, trying to understand them and, in a weirdly existential-cum-physical way, fix them by understanding them.

Then God smacked me with reality and perspective.

A dear, dear friend called last Wednesday. This friend and I have shared countless joys together--college achievements, engagements, marriages, the births of our children. One particularly poignant joy we have had is to share pregnancies--we've been pregnant at the same time with our kids. She just shared with me about a month ago that they were expecting again, so we'd be pregnant together again for the third time. We've joked that perhaps we'll actually hit the same due date someday.

My friend called to tell me that she and her husband lost their third child to miscarriage.

She told me she thought about waiting a day to tell me since we were planning a visit for Thursday. Our visit turned out to be vastly different than what both of us had anticipated--shared joy at being together, shared sorrow at the loss they suffer. And in the midst of our friends' incredible grief, they showed us how to give thanks for life.


Thursday night, my friend's husband led us in prayer. He began by reading Psalm 51. When he reached "in sin did my mother conceive me," his voice broke. Then he prayed with thanks for what God has given us and what He has taken away. And his simple petition reminded me that we are so thankful for all of life, from the long and full-lived to the short and not-yet-visibly lived. We do not see how God will use our friends' precious child's life to His glory. But He loves that child more than we can ever comprehend. And He loves our friends, and their broken spirits, more than we can ever comprehend.

My friend has been blessed with a vocation outside the home in which she serves others. And in the midst of her shock and wordless tears, she was able to see and articulate how God will use their loss for others' gain in her vocation--that she will now be able to better understand and empathize with women she sees and visits with who have also lost children to miscarriage. She essentially was giving thanks for her child's all-too-brief life, for that life will bless her with deeply insightful care for others that she otherwise wouldn't be able to provide.

God is mysterious. His ways are not our ways; His work in our broken world is hidden from us. And we can't even begin to understand or fix our brokenness. So the greatest mystery of all is that He gave His Son's life for ours so that none of us--our spouses, our children both born and unborn--would die. He has numbered the hairs of our heads and all of our days. He loves us with an everlasting love.

Have mercy on me, O God,
   according to your steadfast love;
according to your abundant mercy
   blot out my transgressions.
² Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity,
   and cleanse me from my sin!
 ³ For I know my transgressions,
   and my sin is ever before me.
⁴ Against you, you only, have I sinned
   and done what is evil in your sight,
so that you may be justified in your words
   and blameless in your judgment.
⁵ Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity,
   and in sin did my mother conceive me.
⁶ Behold, you delight in truth in the inward being,
   and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart.
 ⁷ Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean;
   wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.
⁸ Let me hear joy and gladness;
   let the bones that you have broken rejoice.
⁹ Hide your face from my sins,
   and blot out all my iniquities.
¹⁰ Create in me a clean heart, O God,
   and renew a right spirit within me.
¹¹ Cast me not away from your presence,
   and take not your Holy Spirit from me.
¹² Restore to me the joy of your salvation,
   and uphold me with a willing spirit.
 ¹³ Then I will teach transgressors your ways,
   and sinners will return to you.
¹⁴ Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O God,
   O God of my salvation,
   and my tongue will sing aloud of your righteousness.
¹⁵ O Lord, open my lips,
   and my mouth will declare your praise.
¹⁶ For you will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it;
   you will not be pleased with a burnt offering.
¹⁷ The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit;
   a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.
 ¹⁸ Do good to Zion in your good pleasure;
    build up the walls of Jerusalem;
¹⁹ then will you delight in right sacrifices,
   in burnt offerings and whole burnt offerings;
   then bulls will be offered on your altar.

                                                                        ~Psalm 51

Once In a Lifetime

Did you know that one-year lectionary folks are enjoying rare readings in these late Epiphany Sundays, due to this year's late-falling Easter? Thanks to Pr. Weedon for pointing out that these 5th Sunday after Epiphany readings won't come around again for another 27 years. Good thing they happened now, or Paul wouldn't have gotten so hooked on Jonah and the big fish. We've been reading it every night from his My First Bible.

And, being good Lutherans, we follow up Jonah's dark experience with the gospel reading from last Sunday of Jesus calming the storm. It's a good thing we get to hear the Good News every Sunday and not just once every three decades. That'd be downright depressing (to grossly understate it)!

Way to pull out a big save, Jesus!

Now about tomorrow: here's to hoping (and, okay, selfishly praying) that the Pack wins and makes it back to the Super Bowl ("Not the Toilet Bowl," says P, who's been well-trained in football as in Bible literacy) again during our short walks here below. But, hey, if they don't? Even Jonah got out of the belly of the fish eventually. There's always hope! :)



I'd post Lil Wayne's "Green N Yellow" remix to get you all hyped up, but it's not family-friendly, says Papa. Oh, wait. He just linked it in another post.