Not long ago at a local church in our city, many people participated in something during the morning worship service called Cardboard Testimonies. I didn’t see it, but heard from friends who did that it was very moving, even though the participants didn’t utter a word.
On Sunday, September 6th, our church will be presenting Cardboard Testimonies. My husband, daughter and I will all hold cards as a witness to what God has done (and is doing) in our lives.
I found a few videos online of other churches who have done something similar, and this one I’m posting is my favorite. Michael and I have watched it again and again, and cried each time. I hope you will watch it and share it with someone who needs to see that God can put broken lives back together. The end of the video is amazing.
I could hold up at least half a dozen cardboard signs of my own. I’m so thankful that God can take any broken person or broken situation, and rebuild the ruins of their lives. He has done it for me, yes, and is still doing it.
He can do it for you. Be encouraged. There is nothing God cannot do.
On a frigid fall night in 1984, I was playing tag in the house with my three young daughters. Daddy was on his way home from a fishing trip. Sharon was seven, Carolyn was five, and Sara was two and a half years old. Soon I sat on the couch to rest and watch them chase each other and giggle. Within seconds our fun turned to near-tragedy when my youngest daughter Sara slipped on the carpet as she rounded a corner, and came crashing down on the edge of the coffee table with nothing to cushion the blow but her front teeth. Blood poured from her mouth and she screamed for me. I quickly looked in her mouth and her four upper front teeth were gone. In just a few seconds her upper lip began to swell.
I clawed the carpet in hopes of finding the teeth, but to no avail. I grabbed a kitchen towel with ice to apply to her mouth, directed my other two daughters to keep the doors locked and to tell Daddy what had happened, and then I rushed out into the cold Minnesota night to drive Sara to the emergency room a few blocks away.
Inside the hospital Sara was calmer and the bleeding had stopped, but I was heartbroken over her missing teeth. I thought, she is only two! Will other children make fun of her as she grows up without her front teeth? I mentally kicked myself for allowing the girls to run in the house.
After checking in and giving our insurance information, I was told that all the doctors were occupied, so we were encouraged to go to the waiting area where several people were seated. It was a busy night in the ER. I stood against a wall and held Sara on one hip, and she laid her head on my shoulder while we waited.
By then I was composed enough to finally notice what surely everyone else had observed by now. In my panic and haste to locate Sara’s missing teeth and transport her quickly to the hospital, I never thought about my own appearance. Now, in the emergency room of our local hospital, I looked down at myself and blanched.
Not only was I barefoot and without a coat on a very chilly night, but I was dressed in an old, thin, torn nightgown, with nothing on underneath. Being of the buxom variety of female, I realized with a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach that anyone who had seen me that night had caught an eyeful. I had run out of my house carrying Sara to the car, parked down the street from the ER, and run to the entrance. I had spoken to two receptionists and now I was standing inappropriately dressed in front of several strangers, not to mention that I would soon have to see a physician about my daughter’s missing teeth.
I made a lightning-fast decision right then in the ER waiting area. My daughter was most important. Her health came before my vanity. I would lift my chin, focus on why we were there, and pretend that I was fully dressed. I would not even apologize to the doctor for the way I was (or was not) attired. I would be the Empress in her new clothes and I would not concern myself with what the peasants were thinking.
Thankfully, Sara’s suffering was short and her little teeth were not gone forever. They had been shoved up into her gums, but in time all four of them re-emerged, strong and undamaged.
Today she is a lovely 27-year old with perfectly straight teeth and a captivating smile…
…and the bottom drawer of my dresser is crammed with ankle-length, thick flannel nightgowns.
A little over four years ago my dear husband Michael was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease. He was only 56 years old, and we certainly did not see that one coming. Our family doctor thought he saw a slight stiffness in Michael’s walk and a lack of facial expression, and referred him to a neurologist. Of course we were stunned when the Stage 2 diagnosis came, and we wondered how this would change his life, and our life together as a couple. Indeed, it has changed almost everything in our married life.
Michael doesn’t have tremors like the majority of Parkinson’s patients, but he has the other classic symptoms: severe joint stiffness, tiny handwriting, an occasional shuffling gait, a blank look on his face, debilitating exhaustion, and a loss of volume in his voice. Everything he does and says is slow and deliberate, and he looks like a man living tentatively.
One of the most difficult things for me personally has been the loss of conversation between us. He can barely raise his voice above a whisper sometimes, and then only for three or four words. I spend a lot of time saying, “What? Pardon? Can you try to say it louder?”, and he gets as frustrated as I do. There’s a lot of silence now. But we have a wonderful love between us. Our marriage has been a gift from God, and even though our aging years are apparently not going to be filled with the familiar, companionable verbal sharing I had pictured, we have touch, we have the knowing way we connect with our eyes, we have humor, we have our 28-year history, and we have Jesus.
Witchinson’s
One day as we were driving home from a neurologist’s assessment in Minneapolis, we were both reflecting on all we had learned. The speech therapist who worked with Michael showed him on a computer monitor how his voice wasn’t even coming close in decibel level to that of a typical speaking voice. She kindly but firmly said to him, “It’s your responsibility to raise your voice so that people can understand you.” So as I drove along on the interstate with traffic noise around us, I was having trouble hearing what Michael was saying. I had to keep my eyes on the road and couldn’t easily study his mouth as he spoke, and I kept saying, “What? Louder.” and finally I raised my voice and said, “The speech therapist just told you that you’re the one who has to make yourself heard! Talk louder!” I was crabby. He said, “Never mind,” which of course made me feel terrible. I apologized to him for being so witchy and intense. And then this is what I said, and we’ve used this terminology and laughed about it ever since: “Michael, you have Parkinson’s, and I have Witchinson’s.”
I couldn’t find the definition of the word Witchinson’s in Webster’s dictionary, but it’s listed in my own personal dictionary, and here’s what it says:
Witchinson’s- wi’ chun suns – noun - (orig. unkn.) 1a – a condition that causes impatience: restlessness or shortness of temper, especially under irritation, delay, or opposition. 2a – being concerned excessively with oneself: seeking or concentrating on one’s own advantage, pleasure, or well-being, with less regard for others.
Now that we’ve established the official definition of Witchinson’s, here’s the official portrait of what it looks like:
But God’s Word has a remedy for every malady – even Witchinson’s, because His Book is like no other.
For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. Hebrews 4:12
It’s the only book we’ll ever hold in our hands that’s living and active, and powerful enough for any mountain in our lives. Next time you have your Bible nearby, just take a long look at it. It may look much like any other book, but I believe if we could see it through God’s eyes, we would see the pages brilliantly lit and shimmering with power, and we could feel it vibrate with the very life of God. But He has told us to live by faith and not by sight, and we are to take Him at His Word, even when we don’t yet see all that He’s going to do. So my Bible does not shimmer and pulse, but if we could see it with spiritual eyes I believe we would hungrily pick it up and read many times a day.
So while my kind and humble husband is losing mobility and needs help with his shoelaces and with cutting food, I have gone through an inner battle with some disappointment. This last year has been full of unwelcome changes around every corner. As Michael’s abilities have lessened, it seems that my life has gotten smaller. I’ve had to let go of some activities that felt like they were life-giving to me, in order to keep up with the increasing demands of our work, and of my husband’s needs. And even if I don’t always show it on the outside, Witchinson’s rears its ugly head too often on the inside. With every impatient sigh or roll of my eyes, or wave of self pity that comes, I know that God can see my heart, and wants me to be different. More like Him. It isn’t that my heart doesn’t break for what my formerly active and strong husband is suffering. It’s just that in my own weariness, sometimes I’ve allowed self-pity and selfishness to govern my thoughts instead of the Word of God. And unfortunately, there have been times when I’ve been more businesslike with Michael than servant-hearted. There’s a lot to accomplish on any given day, and I can be brusque and task-oriented rather than gentle and people-focused. I’ll bet some of you reading this relate to what I’m sharing, even if your husband isn’t sick. Some of you are overwhelmed with your own struggles – challenging children, inattentive spouses, financial hardship, precarious health issues, loneliness, secret battles, or just plain tiredness. You know the feeling of starting each new day with firm resolve, and ending it with the confession of your failures.
Because I long to walk closely with the Lord and bring a smile to His face, I’m always crying out to Him about this issue, asking for His help and strength. I know He’s able to bring to completion the good work He has started in me, but I’m dismayed at how quickly my selfish nature surfaces. I can’t give an exact formula of how to slay the dragon of selfishness in our lives, but I can share how God is consistently moving in my heart and hope that someone will be encouraged.
Epiphany
A couple of months ago, as a group of us were driving to the Twin Cities to attend the CBS Leadership Conference, my dear and wise friend Sue R. and I were talking in the front seat. She shared with me about her father and the inevitable changes that aging has brought to his life, how he doesn’t talk as much as he used to, or have as much energy. She quoted something she had read that made her think of her dad, and it was something like this: “Just his presence was enough now. He had passed on his strength and character to the next generation.” Just his presence was enough.
And with those words, I sensed the Lord begin to speak to my heart about Michael. Just his presence is enough. And it was as if a few scales fell from my darkened eyes. For months I’d been thinking, “Is this how my life is going to turn out? No meaningful conversation? No more adventurous travel? Just me taking care of the multitudes and no one taking care of me?” Oh, that dragon creeps in and turns our thoughts to ourselves and what we think we deserve, and how sorry our lives are, doesn’t he? That real dragon, the enemy of our souls, is always lying in wait, always crouching at the door, sniffing for an opportunity to assist us in getting our eyes off of Jesus and onto ourselves.
Then, the whole theme of the conference we attended was about being a servant leader, and how our lives are truly found when we give them up for His sake and for His purposes. One of the scripture passages mentioned repeatedly by the different speakers was Philippians 2:3-8:
Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others. Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made Himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to death, even death on a cross!
This is absolutely impossible to do without God. It’s absolutely impossible to even want to do without God. But with God, all things are possible. As I pondered my struggles of the last year, I could see that most of them were rooted in pride and selfishness.
I’ve read these verses from Philippians countless times. But at the CBS retreat God quickened them to me and I knew He was asking me to take them to heart, and begin to serve my husband differently. He was asking this because He so dearly loves Michael, and He so dearly loves me. He only asks of us what will be best for us.
Michael’s presence is enough. His presence is a blessing, a gift to me from my heavenly Father. And as I sat there and drank in what the Lord was pressing on my heart, I knew that with God’s supernatural equipping, I could go home and begin to make my husband’s life heaven on earth.
Now I know there’s a limit to that. This earthly life isn’t heaven and it’s not meant to be mistaken for it – and Michael is accountable for his own choices. I can’t take away his Parkinson’s, but I can let him know every day that I consider his very presence enough, extravagant, even. He may not have many words for me anymore, but that doesn’t have to affect how I love and serve him. As I have asked God to give me creative ways to bless Michael in this new season of our marriage, He has been faithful to do it. We all need new and creative ways to walk out the lives we’ve been given. We can ask God. We can go to Him, humble ourselves, tell Him we’re willing to obey, and He will show us what to do.
Real Life
I couldn’t wait to get home from the conference to put into practice what I felt that the Lord had spoken to me. But I sort of didn’t want to tell Michael too much about it, because I knew I’d eventually fail. And I have failed. Miserably. Again and again. For me, slaying the dragon of selfishness is sometimes a minute-by-minute kind of effort. And many times the arrows I shoot fall to earth without even getting close to the target.
To keep it real, I’ll share a recent failure at making our home heaven on earth for my husband. He’s having a hard time turning over in bed these days, and not long ago I woke up as he was struggling to do just that. Edith the Schnauzer was curled up behind his knees, the covers were twisted around his legs, and I could hear him trying to do what you and I take for granted: turn over in bed and cover ourselves. So I sat up, moved chunky Edith away from him, gently positioned Michael on his side, and pulled first the sheet, then the blanket, then the warm comforter up over him so he would be nice and warm. I didn’t know he was half asleep. As I was making sure the covers were right up under his chin he mumbled (petulantly), “Stop it.” And I aimed some daggers from my eyes at him there in the dark and promptly said, “Fine. Do it yourself then.” So much for heaven on earth.
The next morning I apologized right away for my attitude, but he didn’t remember a thing. When I told him what had happened he laughed, and I was thankful for a new day, with new mercies, and a powerful and patient God who enables His weak and needy people to do the impossible by living on His love and strength.
But I’m finding that just making up my mind to do this isn’t what helps me do it. It’s going to God. It’s sitting with Him, searching His Word, and asking Him how He wants to bless Michael through me that day. I have failed way more often than I have succeeded, but on good days I cry out to my Savior in utter helplessness and trust that He will give light as the day progresses.
A couple of years ago I was standing at the kitchen sink as Michael was saying something to me, and as usual I had a hard time understanding him. After asking him to repeat himself numerous times, he finally spoke loudly enough to be heard. Irritated, I said, “Why don’t you speak that loud the first time? It can’t take more energy than repeating yourself five times!” Michael calmly looked into my eyes and said quietly, “Julie, the Lord is using me to refine you.” And as he walked away I stood at the sink and the tears fell, because I knew he spoke the truth.
I’m still disappointed that our lives aren’t turning out as we had dreamed. We had talked of traveling during our retirement years, of a cabin on a lake, of missions trips, and more. Sometimes the days seem horribly dark to me, with our choices getting more limited and our future so uncertain.
But I would rather have God in the dark, than to be in the dark without God. One day in His presence is better than a thousand elsewhere.
Gratitude as a Weapon
I have not slain the dragon of selfishness once and for all. It seems that it’s something I need to do again and again. Just this morning as I was waking up in the chill and dark of our bedroom, I thought I saw the thin, sulfurous streams of breath exhale upward from two ghastly nostrils. That dragon is waiting for me to whine and complain and sigh and despair each morning even before the sun comes up. But I have the quick and sure arrows of God’s truth in my quiver, if I will use them.
I can either be led stupidly into the dank and hideous lair of the dragon of selfishness, or I can stay and dwell in a spacious place, a light and wide open space of freedom and joy. (He brought me out into a spacious place; He rescued me because he delighted in me. — Psalm 18:19)
Today I choose the spacious place. I choose the life God has given me. I don’t have to fully understand His ways to trust Him. Today I plant my feet, reach back over my shoulder and take from my quiver the golden arrow called Thankful. I carefully place the arrow into position on the bowstring, close one eye to aim, draw it back in perfect form, pause, and let it zing, flying straight, far and true…into the heart of the dragon of selfishness.
You are on a beautiful beach. The sea is turquoise, the sky is filled with giant, slow-moving clouds, and the rhythmic sound of the gentle surf is like a balm to your harried soul. The sun warms your shoulders as you walk, and you breathe in the brisk, salty air. For as far as your eyes can see, you are the only person on this slab of earth, and you revel in the peace. No phone calls or text messages interrupt the solitude, no paperwork calls your name, and you do not have to dash madly to any appointments. For a brief period of time you have no obligations, and you relax.
After you walk alone for over a mile, you come across this note written in the sand: I LOVE YOU.
What would be your first thought upon seeing those words? Oh! I’m not alone after all. Someone was here before me. And you might hold your hand up over your eyes to scan the beach in all directions, to see if the person who wrote the words is very nearby. Whether or not you ever spot the person who wrote the message in the sand, you walk on, knowing someone was there first, and had something to say.
Not once would you ever surmise that the waves and the wind formed the letters I LOVE YOU in the sand. Never would you come to the conclusion that the message appeared there as a random, fluky occurrence. Those three words are too complex to just materialize as the result of a happy accident. You would naturally (and rightly) assume that the letters in the sand were formed by design, by a being with enough intelligence to scrape them into the wet sand, perhaps with a finger or a piece of driftwood.
When I consider the world around me, when I see people and animals and plant life, and the unfathomable hugeness of the cosmic spheres and the smallness and intricacy of DNA, I can’t bring myself to believe that something so complex just happened, as a result of a lucky chemical event millions of years ago. Just as those letters on the sand (simple as they are) betray their intelligent design, so does the rest of creation, which in comparison is so much more complex than I LOVE YOU written on the beach.
I am not smart enough to debate anyone on this. I just know that when I see the magnitude and detail of every single thing that exists, it speaks to me of a very powerful and a very intelligent and purposeful creator.
I’m a Christian, and someday on the blog I will share why I think Jesus is who He says He is, and why He is worth living and dying for.
But even if I weren’t a Christian, I think I would look at the universe and say, “Someone made all this.” It’s too vast, too involved, too detailed, too specialized, too miraculous, to not have been created. Even if I didn’t name the name of Jesus, I would still believe in some kind of a God. Just like the letters in the sand, it seems very reasonable to deduce that this isn’t all an accident.
And I might just remark to myself, “I’m not as alone as I thought I was…”
I just read a book I loved called Blue Like Jazz, by Donald Miller. It’s a series of topical essays by a very funny, candid Christian man whose political beliefs are not my own, but that doesn’t matter to me. I laughed out loud and cried a lot while reading this book, and one section moved me so profoundly I knew I wanted to share about it.
I was going to actually quote one paragraph from the book, and naturally give credit to Donald Miller, but when I emailed Thomas Nelson Publishers just to make sure I was doing it right, they promptly wrote back and said I couldn’t quote the paragraph at all. Even though it would have been a glowing blog post, I can’t quote it word for word. So that means I have to convey what the paragraph in the book said, using my own words to retell it, and, loquacious person that I am, it might not be as concise. But it’s worth the telling, I think.
Apparently a friend of Donald Miller’s, a man named Alan, decided to go around the country and interview the heads of big ministries, to find out why they were doing what they were doing, and what made their ministries so successful. This didn’t sound very interesting to the author of Blue Like Jazz until his friend started talking about the part where he sat down with Dr. Bill Bright, former head of Campus Crusade for Christ. Alan said that Dr. Bright met with him to answer questions, and always looked him in the eye when he responded. At the end of the interview, Alan concluded by asking him, “What does Jesus mean to you?” And he said that this large, powerful man who sat behind a large desk as the founding president of a huge and effective ministry, couldn’t answer at first. Dr. Bright’s eyes filled up with tears and he began to cry.
Donald Miller was deeply moved that someone would love Jesus so much, that just to hear the mention of His name would make him weep. He wondered if Dr. Bright was either a fruit nut or someone who knew Jesus so well that it was all he could do to keep it together when he thought of what Christ meant to him.
Donald Miller wrote that he would like to love Jesus like that too. He mused that knowing Jesus so intimately and loving Him so utterly might just be the key to something.
Several months ago I received a disconcerting phone call. It was from the supervisor of one of the people we care for and have regular contact with, and she wanted me to know that T. had possibly been exposed to head lice. **Groan** Someone at T.’s work had lice, and that person’s coat had hung on the coat rack next to T.’s coat. So they just wanted us to know, so we could be aware. Because their coats had touched. Possibly.
Well, that was enough for me, and my mind went into overdrive. As soon as T. came home, I sat her down and started checking her hair and scalp. Mind you, I didn’t know what I was looking for exactly, but I thought if I looked closely enough I’d be able to see either A) little eggs, or B) a tiny live louse or two having a heyday. I didn’t find anything, but then again I wasn’t sure what to look for, so of course I went online and did some research. (A word of caution: if you like to sleep well at night, don’t go online and look at large magnified photographs of lice and their eggs.)
The more I looked, the more unnerved I became. We can’t get lice, not with all the people we have in our house! I checked everyone’s scalp and hair, looking for any sign of eggs. I checked pillows and blankets. I pored over hats and collars. Every little piece of dry skin, every flake of dandruff, each speck of lint on pillows I found, was scrutinized. Then I looked at more pictures online, but I still wasn’t certain I knew how to identify what I was looking for.
That evening, I started to itch. Badly. I scratched my head a little and tried to put thoughts of lice from my mind. That worked for seven minutes and then the itching grew in intensity and finally just became constant. I tried to look at my scalp by holding a hand mirror and standing close to another mirror, but I am “visually challenged” and couldn’t see anything but my own hair. By the time I went to bed I was certain that I, myself, had a massive and teeming lice infestation and soon the whole house would have to be tented and fumigated by a pest control agency. (As Dave Barry says, I am not making this up.) I was almost in tears. I had Michael look carefully to see what he could find, but he couldn’t see anything either. I slept fitfully that night and woke up just as itchy the next morning.
There were only three options, as I saw it. One was to panic and assume there were now billions of lice in every nook and cranny of our house, and head to the drug store to buy a case of nerve-toxic delousing liquid, and treat every person in our house immediately. Option Two was to try to use mind over matter, restrain myself from gouging and violently scraping my now-tender scalp, speak firmly and authoritatively to myself and say, “Julie, there are no lice here. Get a hold of yourself! T. doesn’t have lice, her coat doesn’t have lice, you don’t have lice, no one else in this house has lice, and you can relax now and move on.” Option Three was to call my friend Carey.
I remembered that a few years ago, Carey’s young son had gotten lice. They found out that he got them by putting on a hat that had just been on someone else’s head who had lice. Now, everyone knows that lice like to pay social calls to the nicest and cleanest of people. Having head lice doesn’t mean that someone hasn’t washed their hair, kept their house spic and span, or made personal hygiene a top priority. Usually a lice infestation means that a person was in the wrong place at the right time, as in the case of Carey’s son. To the person who has lice, this is small comfort.
Well, Carey did everything a good mother would do. She treated her son right away with the lice-and-nit-killing shampoo, and then compulsively went through his hair with a nit-comb sixteen times a day for the next three weeks. She checked her husband, her other children, and herself. She found a couple of nits in her own hair, so then treated herself. She didn’t rest until she was certain the last louse and/or nit was dead and gone from her home. It wasn’t a fun time, and I remember feeling so sorry for what Carey and her family were going through.
But now because of her experience, in my estimation Carey was a Certified Lice Expert. The next morning I called and told her about the phone call from T.’s supervisor. Carey patiently explained to me what I should be looking for, how the nits were not white and round, but were slightly elongated and like teeny, tiny beige grains of rice stuck to the hair follicles. I got off the phone and searched again, but every microscopic light-colored fleck in my house now looked like a louse egg to me. My head was so itchy and I was growing more miserable by the minute. I finally called Carey back and asked her in a voice of quiet desperation, “Carey, can I just come over and have you look at my head to see if I have lice?”
“Of course you can!” she soothed, so I grabbed the car keys, waved to Michael and headed out. In the time it took for me to drive to Carey’s house, she had gathered and set up all the essential tools for detecting whether or not I was a lousy friend, and was waiting for me at the front door when I arrived.
She had this huge magnifying glass with a bright light attached to it, she had a chair set up under the light, and she had the nit-comb in hand, which she had needed for her son years before. I sat down in the chair and braced myself. Carey was a Certified Lice Expert, and in a few minutes I would find out if The Bugs of Doom had taken up residence on my scalp, and therefore my pillows, car, carpets, beds, house, yard and neighborhood. Carey parted my hair and peered closely. She parted it again and again and examined every part of my scalp, methodically and gently. And may I add, compassionately, because she knew what kind of a dither I had worked myself into. At one point she said, “Oh, Julie, you’ve actually scratched some raw spots on your head.” I thought to myself, blood and scabs I can deal with; lice I cannot.
After about twenty minutes of careful examination, Carey straightened up and announced that I did not have head lice. What relief! What a burden lifted! I could resume my life now, and I thanked Carey profusely for being the kind of friend who would drop everything to dig through a friend’s hair to hunt for blood-thirsty insects.
It took over a day for my nerve endings to get the message that it wasn’t necessary to itch anymore. Even though my mind was at ease, I found it interesting that it took some time for my body to follow. I checked everyone in our household again and never found anything, thank God. And I was amazed at the power of suggestion, how just a hint of the possibility of something brought real symptoms.
Carey and I have laughed about this little episode in our friendship, the memory of me sitting helpless in her living room while she hovered over me, digging through my hair. Even though it gives me the heebie-jeebies to think about it, I’m grateful for her. I know that she’s the kind of friend I can turn to when I’m really feelin’ lousy.
A few days after my scalp had quieted down and things were back to the blessed ordinary, I sent Carey this picture by email to express my appreciation for how she had ministered to me. Oh, we’ve gotten more than a few chuckles out of this photo! (That’s Carey on the left, and I’m the one with the white eye-shadow. I can’t remember who the other two are.)
I told her that it was a photo of the both of us, and I titled it “True Friendship.”
Growing up in Southern California always provided me with many opportunities to swim. Many of our neighbors had built-in swimming pools in their back yards, and of course we had hundreds of miles of Pacific coastline to choose from as well. Surrounded by so much water, my parents made sure I had swimming lessons at an early age. By the time I received my certificate of completion when I was five, I was hooked. Pretty much all I cared about for the next ten years was swimming. And books. Books and water competed for my affections, but water usually won out and it animated my young life. Until we moved to a house with a pool during my sixteenth year, I spent a lot of my childhood fervently hoping my friends with pools would take pity and invite me over to swim.
I also loved the beach. Sometimes my parents would take a drive to Huntington Beach and I could hardly wait to get my feet in the water. It didn’t matter if it was a 90 degree summer day or a 50 degree winter evening. As long as I can remember, I have been irresistibly drawn to water. I learned to body surf and enjoyed catching and riding the waves in to shore, but for some reason what I always wanted to do most was swim as far out into the ocean as I could.
My father would sit on the sand and watch me swim. I used to tell him, “Daddy, wave your hand up high when you think I’m out a mile!” I would swim way out past the breakers, and then stop to tread water and turn to see if Dad had his arm up. He never did, that first turn.
I would swim farther out, sometimes brushing my feet and legs against the rubbery, floating kelp beds as I kicked, and I always got the creeps thinking that those thick, slippery vines and leaves were trying to grab on to me and pull me down. Then I would turn and look toward the beach again and see that the form of my father had gotten a bit smaller, but he usually didn’t have his arm up the second time either.
So I’d put my face back in the cold water and swim so far out that the people on the beach looked like colorful dots. I could distinguish my father from others only because he was a large man and usually wore a white short-sleeved sport shirt and was sitting close to the water.
Many times I would stop to float so I could rest and catch my breath; swimming was hard work. Before I started out again, I would deeply breathe in and out, in and out, then fill my lungs with as much air as they could hold, and dive down, down, down as far as I could, trying to touch the bottom. I tried not to open my eyes as I always did in chlorine pools, because the salt water burned so intensely. When I swam out so far that I couldn’t touch the ocean bottom when I dove, I always knew I was pretty far out. I would tread water again and look back to the shore to find my father’s white shirt, and could just barely see his upraised arm waving back and forth at me. Then I would start swimming back to him.
Never once did the thought of an ominous dorsal fin gliding silently across the surface of the water enter our minds. This was before the movie Jaws came out and before the days when shark attacks became so commonly reported. You might ask, “What on earth was her father thinking, letting his little girl swim out so far into the ocean?”
And here’s my answer: I don’t know.
There is no way I would have allowed one of my children to do what I did. Had they tried, I would have been the first mom running into the water with her clothes on, yelling, ”Get back here! Don’t go so far out!” In those days fear didn’t seem to reign as it does now. Maybe there were just as many shark attacks and kidnappings imperiling our children, but we didn’t hear about them as much as we do today. Perhaps he wasn’t cautious enough, but my father was not afraid that I was going so far out of his reach that he couldn’t save me. And I certainly wasn’t afraid. I have never had an iota of fear when it comes to water.
I realize now that my father didn’t really let me swim an entire mile out to sea before he gave me the come-back signal. But at ten years old I didn’t know that. I don’t know why I wanted to swim out into the deep water. I just did.
Something has always drawn me to the deep things in life. I like movies and books that have hidden messages beneath the scenes or the words on the surface. I like deep conversation. I like in-depth Bible study. I like to try to figure out the meaning of things. I like deeper, darker colors. I like mystery.
But for all that, I sometimes feel like I’m stuck in the shallows. Because to go deep with the Lord requires surrender. To fully experience the depths of His unfathomable riches, I know I have to give up control. I kinda sorta want to do that, at least that’s what my head tells me. Why would I hold anything back from my Heavenly Father who has proven Himself faithful to me again and again? I don’t have an answer to that. But I find myself still dallying around sometimes, sitting at the water’s edge and putting my feet in, splashing the water on my face, but not throwing caution to the wind and diving into the deep, where it’s way over my head. And I’m not sure why. I hate to admit it, but I think fear has something to do with it.
I’ve memorized these verses (with a friend) and as I meditate on them, I’m asking God to reveal more to me.
And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. Ephesians 3:17-19
I wonder how we can possibly have the power to grasp how wide and long and high and deep the love of Jesus is for us? Yet these verses say that with God’s enabling, it is possible.
Maybe I need to go back to my old childhood ways. I remember how exhilarating it was to run into the pounding Pacific surf and swim out past the huge waves to deep water. I think God is calling me deeper with Him, and I might be afraid to go.
There’s a passage from one of my favorite C.S. Lewis books, The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, that I draw comfort and courage from. The Pevensie children are in the home of Mr. and Mrs. Beaver, and they’re hearing about Aslan the Lion, King of Narnia, for the first time.
“Is he a man?” asked Lucy.
“Aslan a man!” said Mr. Beaver sternly. “Certainly not. I tell you he is the King of the wood and the son of the great Emperor-Beyond-the-Sea. Don’t you know who is the King of Beasts? Aslan is a lion - the Lion, the Great Lion.”
“Ooh!” said Susan. “I’d thought he was a man. Is he – quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion.”
“That you will, dearie, and no mistake,” said Mrs. Beaver, “if there’s anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they’re either braver than most or else just silly.”
“Then he isn’t safe?” said Lucy.
“Safe?” said Mr. Beaver. “Don’t you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.”
“I’m longing to see him,” said Peter, “even if I do feel frightened when it comes to the point.”
I think I can long to see something or Someone, yet still feel a bit frightened at the prospect. I’d like to swim out to the deep water of the ocean again. And each time I stand on the shore of Lake Superior and look wistfully to its horizon, I think the same thing – not “oh how beautiful, look how huge” like others might think at the same view, but I want to jump in and swim out far. It’s too cold and dangerous for that, but the longing is still there.
I sense the beckoning of the Lord to go deeper with Him too. I don’t know why, but I hang back on the shore. Maybe because all my old ways and selfishness won’t be safe if I do jump in over my head. Maybe I want the safe rather than the exhilarating these days. I honestly don’t know.
But I can still hear that call, and with His help I will jump in and swim out past the breakers. Out to the deep. Hopefully soon, because I live in a very dry and thirsty land.
August 15th will be the first anniversary of this little blog, and beginning next week I am going to take a short vacation (or holiday, as they say in the UK) from posting new entries. We have much to do in the next two weeks as we prepare for our bi-annual state licensing for our business.
However, I will be auto-posting some of the blog posts for which I’ve had the most feedback, and some of the ones that have been meaningful to me in some way, so there will still be something to read each day.
If you’ve read them before, I’ll see you back in a week or so, and if you haven’t read some of the upcoming auto-posts, I hope you enjoy them.
I have many new blog posts in the works and look forward to coming back soon. I appreciate your kind comments and the encouragement over the past year. As my daughter Carolyn recently said (and she’s an actress), “If no one was reading, you’d probably just keep a diary. An actor wouldn’t go out on the stage unless there was an audience.” I agree.
Tune in these next several days for the most-read and/or commented-on posts. Thanks again for reading…
When I was in elementary school, mini-bikes were the craze. I’m not sure mini-bikes even exist anymore, but most of them had simple welded frames, noisy Briggs and Stratton engines and fat little tires. I knew a couple of people who had them, and once I learned to ride one, that was it. I wanted a mini-bike. Our next door neighbor had a red mini-bike, and I used to watch him ride it up and down our quiet street, and I just yearned to have one of my own.
I asked my mom and dad if I could have my own mini-bike but they were hesitant to consent. Where would I ride a mini-bike? And why would I ride a mini-bike, seeing as I was ten years old and riding one on the street would have been illegal? They weren’t convinced I should have one, but I was.
Every month or so I would ask my dad, “Do you think I could get a mini-bike?” and he would respond with a hint of his old Missouri drawl, “Well now Julie, I don’t know.” Because that wasn’t a firm no, I didn’t give up. Dad even drove me to our local Sears store one afternoon to check out the three models they had on display. The cheapest one was $105.99, a lot of money in the late 1960s. I kept trying to think of ways to convince my folks I could handle the responsibility of a two-wheeled motorized vehicle while I was in the fifth grade, and tried to think of ways I could earn the money for one myself. My weekly allowance back then was $2.00, and what with going to the movies and buying Reese’s peanut butter cups, it would have taken me years to save up.
Sometimes my parents wavered, because other kids in Southern California had mini-bikes. One summer day before my sixth grade year at Workman Avenue Elementary School began, I asked my dad about it again. “If I get straight A’s in school this year, then can I pleeeease have a mini-bike?” After a long pause, my dad said “All right.” Yippee! I had a goal now, and I could just hear that putt-putt motor that would be mine in ten months’ time.
I was a pretty good student but I think my dad was counting on the fact that I usually got one or two B’s along with mostly A’s. I usually got B’s in Handwriting and Science. He probably thought it was a safe bet that I would get at least one B on my report card during sixth grade, but I set my sights on that mini-bike and didn’t let the prize ever get far from my mind.
I had Miss Nancy Curry for a teacher that year, and I loved her. I remember that we studied South America, and that she said “Ven-zoo-AY-la” instead of “Ven-ezz-WAY-la.” I still don’t know which is correct, but it sure must have made an impression if I’m remembering the way my sixth grade teacher pronounced a South American country forty years ago.
Anyway, I put forth the effort, and in June I brought home the results – straight A’s. I’m sure my parents were thinking, “What in the world are we going to do now?”
For some reason my dad wasn’t johnny-on-the-spot about taking me mini-bike shopping. He’d say things like, “Well hold on now, I said we’d get you one and we will. Don’t pester me about it.” I hated it when my parents said things like that.
One afternoon I came home from swimming at my friend Tauni’s house, and my dad said, “We’ve got a surprise for you in the garage.” Of course my heart jumped and I thought it was my little red mini-bike, but when Dad opened the garage door, what was sitting there in all its Italian glory was one of these humdingers.
It was a used, pretty noisy 1960-something Vespa 150, and it was blue just like the scooter in the photo. The only way mine looked different from this one is that it didn’t have a spare tire.
My dad bought it from my oldest brother Larry, who had a Honda motorcycle and a Vespa so he and his wife could go riding together. Apparently the Vespa didn’t get used and my dad viewed it as a safer alternative for me. The Vespa’s engine was in the back and the chances for burning myself if I fell were much less than with a mini-bike.
It didn’t take me long to be thrilled and catch The Vespa Vision. All thoughts of red mini-bikes with chunky little tires flew out the window when I learned how to ride my 3-speed Vespa. I was eleven years old, and I mainly rode it up and down the street, up and down the street, up and down the street. Vrrrroooom, up to the Wepplo’s house. Turn around. Then vrrroooom, back down to the Pelcher’s house. Then turn around and do it all over again. Our neighbors were long-suffering people and never complained, but I’m sure they wanted to.
Once in a while I would pack a picnic lunch, put it in the fender compartment (on the other side of the back wheel) and a friend and I would ride one block to Covina High School, and ride around the track sixty or so times. We would even ride through the halls of the big school (in sunny SoCal there were no indoor halls like schools have in the Midwest), all around the baseball diamonds, and around the gym. We would stop to eat our lunch, then drive the one block home, feeling like we were the ultimate in sophisticated girl adventurers and we had traveled the world in Italian style. Except the truth was we were eleven years old with buck teeth, freckles and spindly legs.
I had my Vespa for a couple of years, and then I started getting interested in cars. My dad taught Driver’s Education in our school district and since he taught me to drive at a very young age, he used to let me back our car out of the driveway and then drive it back in, out of the driveway and drive back in, and you guessed it – soon I wanted a car. I saved up and bought my first car on my 16th birthday – you can see a photo of it and read more about it here.
Fast forward to 2009. I am 51 years old. I drive a non-descript gray van. I haven’t been on a two-wheeled conveyance of any kind in many years. But a few months ago I started thinking about my old blue Vespa. I see all the new kinds of motor scooters that people (women too) are riding, and it looks so fun. I asked my husband Michael what he thought about me buying myself a motor scooter and he said without missing a beat, “Go for it!”
Go for it? Are you saying that a woman with three adult daughters, seven grandchildren, and a bit of extra heft should really get a motor scooter to ride around town? I guess that’s what he’s saying.
Forgiveness is an act of faith. By forgiving another, I am trusting that God is a better justice-maker than I am. By forgiving, I release my own right to get even and leave all issues of fairness to God to work out. I leave in God’s hands the scales that must balance justice and mercy.
It was a used, pretty noisy 1960-something Vespa 150, and it was blue just like the scooter in the photo. The only way mine looked different from this one is that it didn’t have a spare tire.