An old man, a young girl, and their Brother

Heinz Otto Bleinagel was born into a north Prussian farm family in 1918. He shared hard physical labor with his father, mother, four brothers, and three sisters. He was hard of hearing in one ear. He didn't like corn because pigs ate it. He was a Lutheran.

Near the end of World War II, Heinz fought for Germany on the eastern front. Russians took him prisoner. When the war ended, the Russians told him and the other prisoners to walk over a hill, toward freedom. When the prisoners started moving in that direction, the Russians started shooting at them. Heinz escaped and walked all the way home, from western Russia to northern Germany.

While Heinz was escaping and then walking, his brother Oscar was in Milwaukee, wondering if he was still alive. He sent money for Heinz's passage to America. When Heinz got home, he left again, for good, for a new home in Wisconsin.

In Milwaukee, Heinz met Betty. Betty was a Catholic. They got engaged, and Heinz found himself taken into a room with Betty's aunt, a nun. Heinz told Sister, "I'm staying Lutheran, and that's that." They emerged, and the aunt told her brother, John, Betty's father, "He's okay." John then approved of Heinz and Betty's marriage.

Heinz and Betty's first child was Linda. Two sisters, Lee Ann and Lori, later joined the family. On Sundays after church, the Bleinagels would get together with Oscar and his family, eat ham and hard rolls, and play Sheep's Head for hours.

Heinz worked in manufacturing, worked with his hands. In his spare time, he smoked a pipe and carved animals and people out of wood in his basement shop that was filled with tools. He liked to fish and play more Sheep's Head with friends and relatives, including his grandson Jon, at Carl Schurz Park on Moose Lake. He had a sense of humor and enjoyed telling stories. His bright blue eyes would twinkle and his hands would gesture.

Heinz rarely talked about the war.

On Sunday, March 2, Heinz passed away.

Many, many years after Heinz was born, a little girl named Jordyn was born in the north central United States. She spent a lot of time in farm country.  She rode her bike while she wore her favorite skirts, and she giggled with delight. She loved her dog and kitties, her big sister and little brother, her mom and dad and grandpas and grandmas. She loved many people in her life, and they loved her. She was a Lutheran.

Jordyn was diagnosed with cancer when she was seven months old. She fought it for six years.

On Thursday, March 20, Jordyn passed away.

Heinz was our grandpa, grandpa-in-law, and great-grandpa. Jordyn was our neighbor, the great-granddaughter of friends.

In these days of ever more deliberate rhetorical choices to downplay death, Heinz was just another old man whose time had finally come. He nearly made it to his ninety-sixth birthday. The last few months--okay, years and even decades--were hard. But still, he'd had a long life. Okay, maybe that long life wasn't totally great and wonderful, but what more could anyone ask for?

In these days of ever more impressive efforts to show sick kids how special they are, Jordyn was just another young girl who tragically suffered. She didn't even make it to her eighth birthday. The last few weeks--okay, months and years--were hard. But still, people sure made great efforts to show how much they cared for her. Okay, maybe those efforts weren't as impressive as they could have been, but what more could anyone ask for?

My rhetorical questions are glib, even snide. They certainly belittle the very real pain Heinz's and Jordyn's relatives and friends felt, still feel, and will continue to feel. They especially undercut the lives, the precious lives, of Heinz and Jordyn. What little we remember about Heinz and what little we remember about Jordyn is nowhere near to what God the Father, who designed and created every hair on their heads, remembers about them.

The truth is, no matter how long human lives might last, no matter how much effort loved ones can love, the only end any of us really want for Heinz and Jordyn and ourselves is that there isn't one. No, we don't want them to suffer, and we certainly don't want to suffer in this life that is full of it. But death is no rosy, easy substitute for the slow debilitating decay of a body long used or for the terrible marks of cancer treatments on a young one. No, death merely reiterates to us how wrong it is to say goodbye to a grandfather or father, to a sister or daughter or great-granddaughter. Death is not natural. Returning to dust is not natural. Twinkling eyes and giggling laughter in dear ones that suddenly and forever end is not natural. Mortality in life made immortal is not natural. It is horrifically wrong, terrifyingly real, and hopelessly inevitable.

Heinz did things in his life that he wasn't proud of. I'd venture a guess that he regretted some of the choices he made up until his last breath. And Jordyn, sweet girl that she was, broke commandments. They both did. We all do. They just suffered the ultimate bodily consequences of sin before we did.

This week we remember Jesus, who rode on a beast of burden to His death. Who sacrificed Himself and feeds His own body and blood to our failing flesh. Who drowns us so that we will breathe in perfect bodies, forever.

Who took our putrid, stinking mortality and gave us His perfect, spotless, immortal righteousness instead.

Who remembers Heinz and Jordyn and all His saints even now.

Who made the hopelessly inevitable impossibly hopeful.

But I'm getting a little ahead of myself.

For now, I remember these words from a Holy Week hymn:

What Thou, my Lord, hast suffered 

Was all for sinners' gain;

Mine, mine was the transgression,

But Thine the deadly pain.

Lo, here I fall, my Savior! 

'Tis I deserve Thy place;

Look on me with Thy favor,

And grant to me Thy grace.

~O Sacred Head, Now Wounded, v.2

Far as the curse is found

Every year on Christmas Eve night, our church's Sunday School presents a pageant. The pageant includes lessons and carols, with some shepherds' robes, microphone feedback, candlelight, and the usual-yet-unexpected poignancy whenever children are involved in public confessions of faith. This year, the Sunday School teachers did an exceptional job preparing our youngsters to read and sing of Christ's coming. And despite a last-minute rash of kids getting the flu and a snowy, blowy Eve, Our Saviour's Sunday School did a wonderful job. Here they are right before the service.

Our small group is blessed to include Ali, a lovely, energetic girl who is developmentally disabled. She cannot walk without help and she cannot speak with words that we understand. But she smiles often, participates vigorously, and shows us how God makes beauty out of brokenness.

Ali's mother is one of our Sunday School teachers, and one of the ways Ali participated in the pageant was to light candles during one of the readings. Her mother helped her walk up to the Advent wreath. Then, she carefully wrapped Ali's fingers around the acolyte's brass lighter and lifted the flickering end bravely toward the candles. It took some doing, for it was difficult for Ali and her mother to get the lighter wick lined up just so against each candle wick. But as we watched Ali's rapt face glow in the soft light she lit and listened to the Old Testament prophecies and New Testament narratives of Christ's coming, we saw exactly why Christ came: to give light to darkness and to give hope to the weak. Later, while Pastor read of joyful noises and praise for God's good gifts, Ali lifted her voice to share her excitement. Her timing was perfect. She literally made a joyful noise as we heard about all of creation rejoicing in God's greatest gift.

One of my favorite Christmastime readings is Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. In the story, Bob Cratchit tells his wife about taking their son, the saintly Tiny Tim, to church. "He told me, coming home," Bob says, "that he hoped the people saw him in the church, because he was a cripple, and it might be pleasant to them to remember upon Christmas Day, who made lame beggars walk, and blind men see." 

Parents of disabled children, including Ali's mom and dad, will tell you that their children are not perfect. They know, just as parents of able-bodied children know, that despite glimpses of sweet innocence and selflessness, children act in savage, selfish, sinful ways, ways that belie their angelic appearances. That's one reason why Lutherans baptize babies--we know our months-, days-, or even hours-old children have been infected with the sin of Adam. Their behavior shows this, but their bodies show it, too. Children scrape knees, break limbs, get infections, battle cancer. Some of the scars heal, but none of them disappear forever. And even the most saintly kid can't fix himself. Tiny Tim recognized this. Even at young ages, we see our children marked for death.

Papa and I witnessed this firsthand in our own home this week. Superman developed a low-grade fever a few days after Christmas. I kept him home, snuggled him, gave him lots of 7-Up and regular doses of bubble-gum Tylenol. But he still felt badly, and his body suddenly reacted to its illness by triggering a seizure. We took him to the Emergency Room within ten minutes of his seizure, and he revived, especially when the nurses prepared his hand for an IV. (Oh, the great patience of pediatric nurses!) He spent the night at Sanford Children's in Sioux Falls, at what we call the Castle (it looks like the Cinderella castle at Disney World). And we were relieved when his temperature disappeared after a night and the doctors concluded that Superman is one of about five percent of kids who experience febrile seizures, or seizures causes by a fever. He might have another one, but he might not. It's most likely that he will grow out of them. And we are very thankful that he is well now, asking for candy at every meal, and asking us, "Do you remember when I got to spend the night at the children's doctor?" Yes, Superman. We remember. And we always will.

In a feeling-apple-eatin'-good moment.

Few things are as terrifying to parents, I think, than when their children become physically unresponsive. Right after his seizure, Papa scooped up Superman and held him like a baby. Our son was helpless, and so were we. All we could physically do was to rock him and place him in the care of people who know how little bodies work and what they need. The experience with Superman was a mighty, visceral shock to remember that our son is not ours, that we did not make him, and that we cannot keep him well, or even keep him at all. His days on this earth are numbered. And this knowledge can cripple us with fear and anger.

Too often, I think the world manipulates the weakest among us. Many are manipulated because they are small or voiceless. Many are exploited as powerful political or religious examples that we thoughtlessly or knowingly parade in a voyeuristic show of pity to achieve other ends--our own selfish ends. But Christ came as a weak Babe precisely to show us that He loves each little one unto death. Because that's where Ali and Sam and every child, from the red-faced newborn to strongest Olympian to the frailest centenarian, is headed. And the Child gifted with myrrh, the embalming spice and funeral incense, reached for Death and struck it away, for us, forever.

On Christmas Day, we sing joy. We sing, "Joy to the world, the Lord is come." But even more, we sing healing. "He comes to make His blessings flow/ far as the curse is found." In the Christmas season, and for the rest of this year and every year, we need joy. But we also need to know that His blessings flow even into the very crevices of our sinful lives, into every dark and putrid corner, into every broken heart and annihilated hope that we suffer due to our terrible physical and emotional and spiritual frailty and that of those we love. We need to know that He, the mightiest and the greatest, made Himself the smallest and weakest and most nothing of men to save us, the ones who so desperately need Him. As this Christmas season closes, I pray you know and remember that He comes to defeat every curse that haunts and plagues you. He comes as the lowliest to lift you lowly ones up, to hold you like babies, to heal your brokenness. And he comes still to make His blessings flow.

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 Marriage: Why 'Clarity and Mindfulness' Is Not Enough

So I just watched "The 20-Something Marriage Divide" on WSJ.com. The brief summary of the interview was this: "Kay Hymowitz of the Manhattan Institute asserts that women in their 20s should seek stability in marriage before childbirth. WSJ's Wendy Bounds asks why." (You can watch the entire video here.)

The fascinating study "Knot Yet: The Benefits and Costs of Delayed Marriage in America" that Hymowitz and three others co-authored came upon a startling, problematic pattern: while fewer teens are bearing children out of wedlock (a good thing), more twenty-something women are bearing children out of wedlock. And many of these women lack a college education and thus the opportunities to pursue middle- or higher-income positions. The typical pattern, as Hymowitz puts it, is that these women have a child, usually while they're cohabiting with the father, two years prior to the parents' marriage (if that even happens). Two-fifths of these relationships end in the first five years of the child's life. Then the parents typically move on to other relationships, involving the child in the myriad confusion of step-parents and step-relatives, including half-siblings, sinking the already low-income child into a hard-to-escape life of upheaval and usually poverty. Hymowitz explains that long, long, long studies of children's social, emotional, and educational development have shown that children benefit from stability, namely the stability of one father and one mother who are married to each other.

Bounds pounces on Hymowitz with series of anecdotal comment-leading-questions, from the extreme conclusion "So you're saying women should get married young and have children young, even if they don't really know the man they're marrying?" to the weirdly defensive "I have many twenty-something friends who have no desire to be married" (I'm paraphrasing quotes here). And Hymowitz has to respond with comments like, "No one would want women to get married just for the sake of getting married" and "Well, eighty percent of twenty-something women we interviewed said they'd like to be married someday." Bounds throws in a few comments about how families now are varied and ultimately makes a common, relativistic statement about American families, insinuating that no one can judge any non-one married father and mother family as problematic in any way. Hymowitz didn't get to respond to Bounds' last comment.

While all of this speaks indirectly to the topics so prevalent at the moment (SCOTUS, anyone?), I was first riveted by how intent Bounds seemed upon criticizing the Knot Yet conclusions. She didn't realize that so many of her anecdotal comments inherently excluded the very population that the study authors noticed, namely, the non-college-educated "Middle America" woman.  Bounds' responses weren't unique, I don't think; she seemed to be saying what any successful, educated, urban American woman would have said in response to Hymowitz's comments. I sensed that Bounds chafed at the criticism inherent in the study's conclusions, mostly because they showed how when people choose to have sex out of wedlock and a child results, the child inevitably suffers from the parents' choices. Even though the study stayed pretty far away from criticizing well-educated, middle- to upper-income women and parents--even going so far as to saying the later marriage age for college grads has helped women--the sting hits close. No woman wants to think that her choices, particularly her sexual choices, can be negative in any way. Even if the consequences of her choices, like children, are hypothetical. She knows, deep down, that children are a natural result of sex, and any criticism of her non-marital coitus is ultimately a judgment on her.

Our culture is idiotic when it comes to children. We hold up children as possessions, thinking we can trash them when they don't fit our lives or that we can manufacture them the way we manufacture toothbrushes when we want them. And any reminders that children result from a very basic, yet very mysterious biological union apart from our controlled circumstances--from faulty contraception to even perfectly-executed but failed fertility treatments--just remind us all the more powerfully that children are a gift. But we don't want to believe that. We want to believe that we can decide and choose in what instances children can be borne and raised, and then we believe that we can decide and choose that whatever instances in which children result we can deem good and successful (and immune from criticism). We have distanced sex and marriage so far from childbearing that we honestly get really confused and riled up when real people connect the three. And it's particularly difficult when the real people are children, stuck in real, chaotic, hybrid family situations. We typically ignore marriage altogether in those situations. Even Hymowitz, specifically studying marriage, could only retreat to a hollow definition of how a young woman should approach marriage if she's "serious" about having children: she should use "clarity and mindfulness" when considering and entering into marriage and think of her future child's best interests first. And who knows what a young man should be thinking.

And isn't that the problem? People cohabit for many reasons, and I'd venture a guess that precious few of them have "seriousness about my future child" or "my future child's best interest" as one or either of them, let alone words like "clarity and mindfulness" as they apply to potential children. People want sex. They want lower rent or mortgages. They want companionship without legal hurdles. They want to do what they want to do without getting "serious," which is a lazy way of saying they want to have a relationship their way, without sacrifice. Of course children in these situations would get the raw end; they're unwelcome, uninvited intruders to inherently selfish lifestyles. Parenting and sacrifice go hand in hand, and if parents of a child have never committed to sacrifice to, for, and with each other in the life-long bond of marriage, itself an institution about sacrifice and submission, their child will certainly be the one that does the sacrificing--socially, emotionally, educationally, you name it.

Where does a child fit in this picture?

The original descriptor of the interview, "20-somethings should seek stability in marriage before childbirth," only begs the question "why?" when we think marriage is ultimately and only about two people. Otherwise, the study's conclusion seem so obvious as to be ridiculous: one plus one equals three, not two. Even most of the conversations about same-sex marriage seem to miss this point. People get that marriage is important, perhaps even sacred (whatever that means to you). People even get that marriage as an ideal concept is a relationship to be desired, notwithstanding Bounds' friends. But marriage is about two people, a man and a woman, bonded together in the only relationship known in human history to be the most consistent, healthy way for children to live. Once people pretend that marriage is wholly separated from childbearing (and homosexual couples by default contend this), child-rearing, and child-maturing (even adult children of recently married septuagenarian parents are affected, after all), then of course marriage can mean whatever two emotional people want to make it. 

Any close reading of my comments here obviously indicts heterosexual couples who are married but who adopt the me-centered view of marriage. Even a couple biologically designed to enter into marriage can and--news flash!--does mess it up. So where does that leave us?  

Marriage requires philia and eros. Even more, it requires agape, the kind of love that foregoes self and unconditionally forgives. Of all groups, Christians best understand marriage because we see and confess how Christ loved us first. By recognizing our sin and our need for forgiveness, and by repenting and receiving Christ's forgiveness, we can connect Christ's love for His church to marriage. He loves us and forgives us, and then we can love and forgive each other, particularly our spouse and any children we receive. Vague, even well-intentioned clarity and mindfulness about marriage, and pragmatic choices and emotional decisions, aren't enough to make or define or sustain marriage. Sacrifice and forgiveness between husband and wife, and Christ received by both over and over and over again, are.  

Remembering Elwood

In honor of Veteran's Day today, here's a little thing I wrote in September 2007, about an experience Papa and I had before the premier of Ken Burns' documentary The War.

***

We drove down to Luverne in the late afternoon to meet up with dear friends and their four children. When we arrived, the kids were checking out the vintage cars parked in front of the courthouse, where locals were scheduled to speak before a parade to the Palace Theater where the showing would be. Their youngest wondered how the convertible owners could get the hoods on fast enough should rain appear, as the gears were manual. The sky overhead misted with gray clouds and threatened to test his theory.

We went to dinner at the Pizza Ranch two doors down from the newly renovated Palace. Our meal was a quiet, happy time—our friends asked their kids to eat salad along with their pizza, a teenage waiter brought us fried chicken since the buffet was out, we laughed and caught up on news since the last time we had visited—until the evening news, broadcast on a largely ignored big screen in the middle of the restaurant, turned to a segment on Ken Burns’ visit to Luverne and the film’s premiere. All of a sudden the conversations stilled and everyone turned to watch. But it was only a moment, and the sound was low, and we soon resumed our conversations and our laughter.

 

The rain came during dinner—we watched it evolve from glistening sheets to half-hearted pitter-patter—and by the time we emerged, mints in mouth, the sun was trying to break through the still ubiquitous clouds. We walked back to the courthouse to find the presentation had been cancelled (and the cars with their hoods up), and we returned to the Palace, fearful the “red carpet” processional would be cancelled too. That would be our big moment, the chance to see Ken Burns for a fleeting moment. The kids and I strategized as to how to get Mr. Burns’ autograph for my long-distant sister—perhaps the youngest daughter could trip in front of him and after he asked what he could do—because he would be unfailingly polite—she would smile winsomely and whip out the little pad and pen.We giggled at our plans.

Some great kids and I, excitedly waiting.

 People milled here and there, as forties era music played over loudspeakers. Most were dressed casually; the American Legion members who had the honor of holding the flags at the entrance of the theater tried to figure out what order to be in as onlookers tried to figure out the best place to stand. I saw a man with a World War II veteran hat on, standing nearby. 

I love meeting veterans, especially ones who've lived long and seen much, whose young adult-hoods were consumed by sacrifices I, now a young adult, can't even begin to comprehend. So I approached the man with the hat and thanked him for his service. He smiled and said, “Thank you for thanking me.” I said something, protesting politely, about he was the one who should be thanked, and his face grew serious and he looked me close, and said, “Young lady, there’s only one thing you should remember. Four hundred and seven thousand boys just like me went to war, and they never came home. It is because of what they gave that we can live the way we do.” His eyes were misty.

The man told me his name—Elwood, from Chandler, Minnesota. He served as a junior officer in the Navy —“not anything real important”—in the south Pacific, and he served on a ship for over 700 consecutive days. No leave. “It was one month shy of two years,” he said. His daughter came up and he showed me her shirt—on the front was his name and a picture of his 21-year-old self in Navy whites. On the back was the ship on which he sailed and the places he landed, the last being Okinawa. Reverently, he told me how they landed there on Easter morning, 1945.

He spoke of how little young people know about the war and about the world generally. Not disparagingly, but sadly. “They must learn about what happened,” he said. Not to honor him, but to remember and understand the sacrifice of all the young men who never came home.

One of many memorials we saw.

What a terrible burden it is, to live proud of the service you gave, and every once in a while to be honored for that service, but to know that you are honored because you lived, and loved and worked, and so many others—your friends, your neighbors, your cousins and brothers—never left the far-away places of war. They never reaped earthly joys of cherishing wife and children, friends and neighbors. They never experienced the daily, simple toil of farming on land long held by kinsmen, of growing old and going out for cups of coffee to commiserate about the price of soybeans. They never came home.

As I listened to Elwood, I blinked to stop my sudden tears and my eyes caught the top of the Hotel Manitou, one built by dedicated hands early in the twentieth century. I thought, “We live such comfortable, leisurely lives, without even thinking of it.” Standing on a dusky street, smelling the wet pavement, watching the excitement of people who have lived comfortably because of others' service—these are priceless times of privilege that we take for granted. Elwood's story reminded me, shocked me really, of the quotidian things that those boys that never came home relinquished freely. Their sacrifice is both awesome and terrible. 

And their sacrifice enables us, the living, to laugh over pizza, to debate over rainy weather predictions, to gather together for civic events with loved ones. Ironically, their awful sacrifice often means we forget them as we move along, ahead. We even forget the ones who did come home, like Elwood. But we shouldn't, and we can't. It is because of what our veterans gave that we can live the way we do. And the living veterans deserve our honor and our thanks, just as we remember their brothers buried far away, for what they have given us.

***

We ended up seeing the premiere and Ken Burns, which was a great experience. But I am more grateful that I met Elwood that day, who reminded me then, and today, to whom I and my children, and all Americans, owe immeasurable thanks.

Visible and Invisible Glory

Tonight, after a lovely catch-up chat with Papa on our lovely front porch as we gazed at a lovely sunset, I offhandedly mentioned that I'd like my bike tires inflated. Short back story: Papa gave me my bike on our anniversary six years ago. He took me to church and said there was a surprise for me in the quilting room (a big storage space), and when I looked, there was a bike! It was one of the sweetest and most delightful surprises he's pulled off (the Nook might just beat the bike, though). We enjoyed riding it before the kids were born, and I've managed to ride it a little between pregnancies, but it's been a long time since I've hoisted my wobbly self onto the seat. I've been excited to take a spin this summer.

Anyway, Papa had already done the hard work of digging my long-neglected bike out of the shed last week, and at my words, he jumped up and went straight to the garage. I told him (admittedly half-heartedly) that he didn't have to inflate them now, but he did. And then I looked at the gleaming blue cycle with its oh-so-kickable kickstand and said, "Weeeeell... maybe I'll just ride around the block." Papa waved goodbye.

My ride.

I was about one hundred meters down the sidewalk when I realized that the sunset was reaching my favorite point--just when it last descends behind the horizon. The hues softening the few puffy clouds told me this was a good one, and I started pedaling fast. I was chasing the sunset.

We live a few blocks east of our town's western edge, and I like to walk over sometimes and watch the sunset from a higher point in a residential area that abuts a view of rolling cornfields, farms, and a few copses of trees as far as the eye can see. It's a gorgeous view. However, I had to go farther tonight to see the huge, molten day-gone sun because a new grocery store is now built, set to open next week, past the last row of houses. (I'll definitely do a post on that; it's big news out here.) I hit gravel and veered around the dirt paths that are set to be paved soon until I got to the main road out of town; I could just see the big red ball over the tops of a few trees to the north. I've got to get behind the high school, I thought.

I pedaled furiously down the little slope to the entrance of the high school. The sign flashed the time, 9:03 p.m., as I passed. Not much time. I cut across the grass to get to the library parking lot that connected to the back lot of the school, my jaw hammering with the vibrations of the rough ground. It's been a long, long time since I rode a bike. As I turned past the last corner of the school, I could see the sun, shining with muted ferocity as it sank. In the quiet, I could hear birds nesting, crickets chirping, cicadas calling, even the constant, mechanical buzz of the wind turbine. The wind whispered in the corn. The sight was so beautiful, I couldn't breathe.

 I've felt overwhelmed lately by the lists--all the things I have to do, all the things I should do, all the things I'd like to do, and the very long lists of what I just never do. I'm slowly realizing--I'm a slow learner--that there's no way in God's creation that I can actually get done everything on every list. I go through phases where I convince myself that I'm doing pretty well, that I'm "accomplishing" a lot, whatever that means. And then, when life gets busy, the kids grow and have more needs, I start feeling the pressure, like a boat that's taking on too much water. It's only a matter of time before something gives, before I get swamped. It used to be that I felt like I could "catch up" in the summers--clean out the closets, feel like I could get a fresh start to each school year. That's getting much harder--impossible?--to do.

But in the twilight, watching the sunset, I remembered that all of this life is meaningless. We chase ourselves and our loved ones around and around and die a little more each day, over and over again. The sun sets only to rise, panting. My chest heaved and my quads trembled and my soul stilled as I watched this day die, and thought of this.

But the sunset was so beautiful. Regardless of how temporal this life is, God deigned to give me--give us--this peaceful, marvelous tapestry on one evening out of the thousands, millions He has made. What a generous Giver He is, that as we struggle and as we lie burdened (esp. RAE this night), He showers us with loveliness, even little, seemingly meaningless glory in the heavens as the day ends. This is our toil, and this is yet our song.

Reb. Mary wrote today about how it's not OK, but that's OK, of the subtle temptation to think that doing certain God-pleasing acts (A) leads to certain outcomes (B). In her eloquent post, she writes:

When B does not follow, the cry of a [sinner's] heart should not be (or should not primarily be) for the Better Life: “Why, Lord? What am I doing wrong? Show me how to make it work!” Plead rather for the Better Hope: “Please, Lord. With this gift of your very life’s blood, pour into me the strength to continue pouring myself out. Enlarge my heart, that the life-giving transfusion may not be wasted through selfishly narrowed arteries. Teach me to live daily the difference of that cleansing flood, the difference between hard and hopeless, invisible to all but the eyes of faith. God grant me eyes of faith!” 

I can't see what is before me or our family. Heck, I could barely see the gravel on the shoulder as I pedaled weakly back up the hill into town. I don't know how everything important will get done. I have lots of sweating, and pedaling, and suffering ahead. This is the reality of life. But Christ makes visible what is invisible; He gives what we, the most impoverished, would starve without. I don't have to chase the sunset. He's already given it to me, and given me all the days that are before me, and given me the eternal dawn that waits for me and all believers.

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.