Monthly Archives: October 2023

I turned seventy last week. Seventy! Really???

Really.

It was such a happy day, full of friends and family and texts and phone calls and mini celebrations and all sorts of good things.

It was a happy week leading up to it

Last Sunday evening, my brother, Nel and his lovely wife, Rose came with their friends, Patty and Martin to spend the night on their way home from vacation and later in the evening, my “almost a twin cousin” Gloria came as well. That day, (the eighth) Gloria turned 70, and she came straight to our house from biking 70 MILES to celebrate her birthday. That girl has a totally different thing going on than most 70 year old women! “It really wasn’t all that much,” she said to our exclamations. “It was almost all down hill!” Yeah, right. I know about “down hill!”

Anyhow, Gloria came because there are five granddaughters of David and Savilla (Bender) Yoder that turned 70 in less than 10 months, and we took the occasion to get away together for a little bit. Judi Morgan, Shirley Miller, Karen Miller, Gloria Diener and Mary Ann Yutzy. As a group, we could make a formidable foe if we really wanted to do anything but we just wanted to be together and catch up on each other’s lives It was a marvelous time. We laughed and cried and sang and laughed and cried and sang some more. We ate some wondrously good seafood in various forms, according to our individual tastes, and walked briefly on the beach.

Gloria, Shirley, Me, Judi and Karen

We went home to our various places with memories that will last as long as we have our right minds. (Which, unfortunately, I know may not be that long!) Shirley and Gloria to Virginia, Karen to Indiana and Judi and I back to Delaware. We got home on Wednesday afternoon and the days clicked by. We had small group here on Wednesday night, and then Thursday, more friends came. Jim and Ruthi Gochnauer, from New York C,ity came for the Region 1 MDS meeting that was held here in Greenwood last weekend. Jim and Ruthi are old friends, but we rarely get to see them. They visited us in 2019, and, unlike this weekend, got a picture of them then when we took a trip to Tangier Island.

Jim and Ruthi Gochnauer

The weekend slipped by before we knew it, and Sunday settled in with a surprise donut celebration at church, provided by daughters Christina and Deborah, in honor of my birthday, and the whole church sang the traditional birthday song for me.

“A happy birthday to you, a happy birthday to you
Every day of the year, may you feel Jesus near
A happy birthday to you, a happy birthday to you
May God bless you the whole year through”

This song has been sung for birthdays at our church ever since I can remember. When I was a little girl, we would give a dime for every year that we were old, and the accumulative moneys from all the church birthdays for the year would go to a special project. Somewhere along the line, that song was chosen to sing while participants paraded to the front to put their dimes in a designated container. Years ago, as I recall, it was a glass jar with a screw on top with a slot in it. Children could put their dimes in one at a time, revealing their ages. And then we were given a birthday pencil. Older people had the privilege of the top being taken off so that the right amount of dimes could just be added. I remember a year when a particularly opinionated older person went to put in their dimes, and the superintendent wanted to know how old they were and feigned being unable to open the lid. He was quickly brought into submission and the lid came off and the sum total of dimes clinked to the bottom and that was that. As the years have passed, the dimes have given way to quarters (inflation hits the birthday bank, too) and those of us that are older tend to write a check or give bills. We usually give a check, but Daniel forgot the checkbook and so he said I should just give cash. He rounded the donation up to a twenty dollar bill which he had in his billfold, and so I went on record this year as being 80 years old! But that’s okay. It all goes to a good cause.

The week since then has been quite an incredible week. It’s been heavy with extended family things; sickness, grandchildren heartache, Guatemalan family crisis and things that weigh heavy on this 70 year old heart. I find myself lying awake in the night hours, singing to myself and praying, and trying to solve all the problems of all these people that I love.

You know what? I can’t.

But I can lay them down, and I’ve found again that there is a place for the burdens that are too heavy for me. It’s the foot of the Cross. “Surely He hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows . . . “

This I believe, and my heart gives grateful praise.

It was Saturday evening, and Certain Man and I were having dinner at Bird-in-Hand Restaurant, waiting for the musical, The Home Game, to begin.  We had bought the meal+performance ticket that came with the unlimited food/salad bar, and I was on my first trip to the Salad station.  It had been a lovely day, and we had made memories, gotten really tired, and I was looking forward to a peaceful evening.  But far off, somewhere in the restaurant, a child was crying.  The child wasn’t throwing a tantrum but was fretfully and insistently crying.

An older gentleman was filling his plate beside me.  I was building my salad and said, just to make conversation, “That child is rather unhappy!”

I was totally unprepared for his reaction.  “I hate kids!” he said vehemently.  “That kid needs someone to smash it over the face.  That’s the trouble with kids these days.  Doesn’t the Bible say, ‘Spare the rod and spoil the child’?”

My mind went scrambling.  He had caught me flatfooted.  “No,” I said, rather tentatively, “I’m pretty sure it doesn’t!”

“Well, that’s what it means,” he said pointedly.  He went on about modern day discipline and how terrible kids are these days.  “I wouldn’t ever been allowed to act like that!  Would you?”

That was a whole different story, one I didn’t want to get in to.  The truth was, I probably wouldn’t have been allowed to act like that, but the truth also was, I don’t remember our parents ever taking us to a restaurant to eat.  When we traveled (which was seldom) we packed lunches or waited until we got where we were going. But here was this irate person wanting an answer.

I said something to the effect that I would not have been allowed to act like that, but though I believe in discipline, there are better ways of dealing with children than “smashing them across the mouth,” and I fled to my seat, far more troubled by the exchange I had with him than I was over the (still wailing) child.

Sometimes I wonder at the coincidences of my life.  We had been seated for maybe half an hour when the table behind me was vacated, and a new set of diners came in.  It was a grandmother, her daughter, a boy that looked like he was maybe 14 and two younger boys.  The tirade started before they ever got settled.

“No!  Get out of there!  The two of you may not sit together!  All you will do is fight!” The tone was raucous, and the words penetrated my heart.  The daughter, evidently the mother of the younger two boys, obviously had one that she was fed up with.  She was constantly fussing at him.  Then there was this bit of a scuffle and suddenly I heard him quietly sobbing.

“Stop it!” She said harshly.

“But it hurts,” he said while crying softly.

“I said to stop it!” she again spoke in an unkind tone.

“But my arm really hurts!” he sobbed, still quietly.

“If you don’t stop, I’m going to do it harder,” she said, and the child fell silent.

I know that I do not know what happened.  I know that this child may have been getting on her last nerve all day.  Maybe she wasn’t feeling good (She didn’t look amiss, but still!)  I know that I’m getting to be an old softie about so many things.  But can’t we discipline our children without anger?  Without “smashing?”  I will always believe that there is a time and a place for discipline, but it needs to be done in love, and it shouldn’t be done with harsh words in a public place.  And yet, my heart aches for parents who have so little to guide them and so much criticism and are floundering in the “dos and don’ts” of our world’s current opinions.

My heart aches even more for the children who seem to be growing up without a healthy balance of discipline.  The thing is, our children are going to need it to make it in this world.  There has to be discipline and instruction and example and, above all, LOVE.  My Daddy had a saying, “It’s never wrong to be kind.”  I wonder why so many parents divorce kindness and firmness.  The two are not incompatible, and a child that knows they are loved is going to respond better to correction.  I didn’t get it right all the time.  Believe me, I didn’t.  And hindsight is better than . . .well, you know!  But I tried! I loved our children intensely.  And I’ve asked for forgiveness where I failed.  I wish I had spanked less, and I wish I had understood better.  In spite of my failures, and even our disagreements about child discipline today, our adult offspringin’s haven’t disowned us and seem to love us.

And I can honestly say that the five of them grew to responsible adulthood without ever, not even once, being “smashed across the face” by either of their parents.  Which is definitely more of a tribute to Grace given by our Heavenly Father than it is to our parenting or (Sorry, Yutzy Five) their behavior.  Which brings me back again to something that we found integral in raising children that’s missing in so many families today.  The understanding that there is a God who deeply loves them as well as us, gave His Son for our salvation, forgives and redeems, but also has a standard for behavior that cannot be ignored.  (I’m not talking about childishness, here.  We often expect our children to behave like born again adults when they are children and they are going to act like children. That’s an unrealistic expectation and it will discourage).

Parenting is hard work.  It’s sacred.  It’s scary.  It’s impacting.  There are no hard and fast, sure-fire rules.  But we cannot give up.  There’s too much at stake. So make it a point to know your children. Hug those little ones, pray for your children and grandchildren, and go easy on judging.  Encourage if you can, and if there is a child whose crying/behavior is irritating you, extend grace to the parents as well as the child.

And no smashing!  Face or otherwise!