The apparition in the stormy night, when I’m rowing hard with all my might, and terror rises like waves that threaten to overwhelm my inadequate boat —
Oh, Lord Jesus! Teach me that the thing that scares me most is truly nothing to fear.
Because it’s YOU! Walking on the terrible waters of my life, bringing Hope and Calm and Salvation.
And when you are with me, this boat cannot sink.
And (whether it feels like it or not) all will be good.
Filed under Uncategorized
My Daddy’s study. Spiral notebooks of my Daddy’s careful sermon notes, reference books, history books, family pictures, boxes and boxes of correspondence, endless files of minutes from various local church and school committees as well as incredible amounts of detailed secretary’s notes that he took from conference committees through the 70’s and 80’s and beyond. There were school yearbooks, conference reports, even private files that held the responses of church members dealing with church problems before Daniel and I were back from Ohio. (I refused to read them, but rather discarded with abandonment and even a sense of having no right to know any of it when I would discover such incriminating evidence. Did he have to keep this??? Was this something that would ever be necessary for posterity???)
When we left for Claytor Lake State Park in Virginia one Thursday afternoon in September, I was to the point of not wanting to go. I was bone weary and soul depleted. There had been incredible amounts of canning, bean picking, laundry, sorting, bill paying, estate work, State reports for OGN and Cecilia to get into the proper persons, and the ordinary household chores that needed doing. I had been determined that I was going to get it all done before we left, and I fell far short of my goal. My sister in law, Rose, had done a lion’s share of the physical work at Mama’s house that week, but I felt the pull of all the essence of my parent’s home and their very lives being drained away by the decisions I was making concerning their “stuff” and nothing felt “right.” It may be possible to read every card ever written to Mark Yoder over the course of his life, (including his teen years) but is that the proper use of time? Do I take a year of my life to organize all the papers, all the files, all the notes, all the sermons, all the tax returns, all the medical and financial records just so they are organized? And then what? Who wants them? I would like to know what is in all those pages and pages of information, but then what? My siblings and I conferred (as well as the in-laws) and they all said the same thing: Unless something is legally important, or specific to your particular family, Don’t Save It! (With the exception of Daddy’s sermon notes — those are in high demand among the grandsons.)
And so, I would run a perfunctory eye over files, riffle through committee notes, check the correspondence for personal letters from or to family members (and that alone was voluminous!) and then turn my head and put them in the large dumpster. Over and over again my siblings would reassure me, “Mary Ann, we just can’t save everything!” And they were right, of course, but it was still one of the hardest things I have ever done.
Late that Wednesday afternoon, I left My Sweet Mama’s house barely able to hold back the tears until I was in my car and out of the driveway. Much of my time that afternoon had been spent going through cards, letters, birth announcements, engagement announcements and wedding invitations that had been sent to my grandparents, Michael and Alma Wert, from Daddy and Mama and my siblings and their families. The years that were marked in that brown manila envelope were full and exciting and so far gone. I had read a letter that I had written to my grandparents while I awaited the birth of our third child, telling about five year old Christina and two year old Deborah and the excitement I felt over the new baby coming. I held the birth announcement for that baby, and thought about Raphael, now older than I was when I wrote that letter. I drove along the familiar road through the small town of Greenwood and tried to see through the tears. I rounded the corner at 16 and 36 and came down the road towards Milford. The brick church by the side of the road with the familiar cemetery was on the right and there were no cars in the parking lot. I pulled my van up beside the steps going into the graveyard and stopped.
I had not been to Mama’s grave since the day we buried her except for the day we buried Uncle Eli. In the days following Daddy’s death, I had stopped often, sometimes going in the dark, sometimes in the rain, usually in the winter cold, but always feeling such a need to somehow be where we had laid his mortal remains to rest. I knew he wasn’t there, but the part of my Daddy that I could see and touch and talk to was down there — somewhere, and I felt like I could talk to him there. And I would! I always ended up with my heart turned toward my Heavenly Father and there was where I found comfort. However, I always felt better after being there. With Mama, it’s been different. To think of her body being there — and knowing how she always wanted to be carefully dressed and combed and smelling good and attractive, and knowing how she hated being alone and cold — well, that has been a huge hurdle for me. It’s just been easier not to go. But on this day, I needed to be there, the place where we had laid her to rest, and I needed to tell her my heart, and to sob out the grief and heart pain and indecision and questioning that was eating away at my resolve to be strong and upbeat and cheerful. I traced her name against the hard stone, and thought about her life and the last weeks that took her away from us. Even as I acknowledged that the Mama we knew had been starting to slip away, it was still this horrible, empty place in that house that was always so cheery and welcoming, and this horrible empty place in my heart where this woman, who gave me life so often gave me comfort or encouragement or just plain took my part — whether I was justified in “my part.” Or not.
I finally pulled myself away. There was so much yet to do. The tears ran on and on down my face as I headed my mini-van out onto Shawnee Road and headed towards Shady Acres. The sun was heading down the sky behind me and I felt keenly the weight of sorrow and grief and loss that seemed to be embodied in the discarding of the things that were important to the lives of my Precious Daddy and Sweet Mama.
The weeks have passed. Almost six to be honest. I haven’t been back to my Mama’s house since that day. It’s hard to go without one of my sisters with me and they have both had incredibly unpredictable weeks this last while. And on days when it may have suited them, it didn’t suit me. But this excuse has come to an end with the return of my brother, Nel and his good wife, Rose, for a few days. Tomorrow, it looks like we go back to the fray. And I will be glad to be there with good support and diversion and helping hands.
But I also dread it. I keep thinking about that house — particularly that spot where her chair sat so that she could keep an eye on everything, and be a part of everything that went on in her big room that was so full of light. Her bird that she loved, and that she pampered and talked to, is now here at Shady Acres in the care of Deborah. I come down in the mornings sometimes and take off the polyester wrapping cloth of pale blues and white that Mama always used. He looks up at me and chirps his questioning noise.
“Good morning, Pretty Bird,” I often say to him as he hops about in the cage she bought for him. And then I often find myself saying, “Oh, Pretty Bird! Do you miss her, too? Do you miss her as much as I do?” He’s just a bird, but his morning songs comfort me as I remember that last day, as she was sinking fast, how he burst into song on that long afternoon and sang and sang. He — here at our house. She — there in the sunny corner room at the Country Rest Home. He doesn’t often sing in the afternoon, and Middle Daughter, noting the song, told me later that she felt certain that Grandma was about to head on HOME.
HOME. That’s where she is. She is safe. She is happy. She is with Jesus. She is warm and comfortable and healthy. She is where there is no night. She is not lonely. She has no need to cry. She is never afraid. She has no more pain. She isn’t being bossed around. She is beautiful. She is alive.
The thing I miss most, of course, is the conversations I had with Mama. Last week, I wrote a note to her, briefly touching on a number of subjects — things that I would develop into a longer conversation if she were here to participate. This is what it said:
Ah, Mama. I wish I could talk to you today! The leaves are falling without changing much color this year, and the beans got froze out early. I saw a robin and his mate at the outdoor bird watering station in the cold. Doesn’t he know its time to fly south? The hummingbirds are gone. Aunt Gladys has two new great grandbabies, and they are both Naomi’s sons’ children, born less than forty hours apart. The church building is coming along. This morning, Daniel talked to the person who called 911 for us. That was so interesting. It seems impossible that a year ago, we were waiting for word of Frieda’s homegoing — and now you are there with her. We couldn’t know how soon you would leave us, it’s true, but I’m so glad we didn’t. I don’t know if I could have borne that. Rachel finally found a job, and will be moving to Washington, D.C. next month. She placed third in the Pennsylvania Society of Clinical Social Work’s annual awards for Clinical Excellence. Our chickens are almost ready for market and we want to go to Ohio and see Raph and Gina and the boys. We still aren’t finished cleaning out your house. It’s mostly done, but I think I’m allergic to something in that house. Everytime I go in, my eyes water and my nose runs . . .
So much to tell you, Mama. And no more time.
The thing is, as I looked over this note, I realized something. I was wrong about something. That business about the leaves falling without changing colors. That’s how it looked about ten days ago. The leaves were falling off our trees and they were brown and green and nothing else. But something happened on the way from then to now. I’ve had the chance over the last three days to observe a number of woodlands and ponds and lakes — and the leaves are more beautiful than I have ever seen. it has to be the prettiest display that Delaware has had for — well, maybe forever! And I cannot get this off my mind. I was so wrong about the leaves. Maybe, just maybe I am wrong about this, too. Maybe this grief that right now looks so dark and colorless and even “terminal” is going to surprise me someday with its color and life and beauty.
Maybe. And not just “maybe.”
I have to believe that the word is more like “Probably.”
And for that hope, my heart gives grateful praise.
Filed under Dealing with Grief, Family, Family living, Grief, Heaven
Last weekend, we had sausage gravy at our annual church campout. And this is the recipe I used. It is one that I’ve tweaked over the years until it is exactly how we like it. The thing is, it is so easy, it’s almost crazy! Even the most inexperienced cook can do this, and everyone will think you’ve worked hard and are some sort of cooking genius. That’s fine. Let them think it. And gain confidence to try some harder things. A good cook learns by doing and by trying and failing and then trying again. It helps if you have hungry subjects that will eat all your mistakes. If there is anything I would like to inspire young women to do, it’s to try to cook even when you think you can’t. When I was a very young wife and Momma, I heard, “If you do something badly long enough, you will get good at it!” That advice helped me over many a disappointment in cooking, sewing, canning, gardening and even things like changing worn electrical cords on small appliances. (There actually was a time when I wasn’t too bad at wallpapering — but that was really something I decided that I didn’t want to get better at. I might have had to take it up full time! So I stopped allowing myself to get roped into helping!) Anyhow, I have cooked long enough that I’m comfortable with the things I make. However, I would like to stress that I am NOT at all blessed with the ability to throw things together. I am very much a “recipe follower.” And when I find a recipe that my family likes or I enjoy, I am not about to “throw a teaspoon of vanilla in and see if that’s better.” Nope. If it ain’t written down, I’m not going to put extra anything in it. So. Here is the Sausage Gravy recipe that I call, “Mary Ann’s Easy Sausage Gravy.”
Mary Ann’s Quick Sausage Gravy
Brown two pounds Bob Evan’s regular sausage in a large skillet (preferably non-stick) until brown. If you continually stir the sausage you can do it over high heat.
Over medium heat, stir in one cup all purpose flour until the sausage pieces are thoroughly coated.
Add two quarts milk to the skillet.
Add 1 & 1/2 teaspoons salt and 1/4 teaspoon (preferably white) pepper.
Heat and stir until mixture comes to a boil. (This also can be done on high heat if you continually stir the gravy.) Allow to cook gently (while your stir) until thickened.
Serve over hot biscuits. (And no, I don’t have a biscuit recipe. I always use biscuits from a can that goes pop!)
Filed under Uncategorized
I came to this past weekend and our annual church retreat with a sense of restlessness and even heaviness. I have always loved our church retreat weekends. And I was looking forward to this time together. But I just felt grumpy and irritable . . . and sad.
The books tell us all about the seasons of grief. And sometimes the thing that is the most noteworthy to me is how unpredictable it is. There are stages, and I am so aware of this. But experience has also proven that the stages of grief get all mixed up, and they may have a predictable pattern, but more often than not, there is a stage that pops up all out of the order in which it was supposed to appear.
And this past weekend, with its full moon and its busy-ness and the whole thing of a completely different venue for our church retreat, made my emotions and my heart feel so unfamiliar and wretched. I was happy to help with things for retreat, and made sausage gravy and tea, took snacks and diversions, lent frying pans and drink dispensers and wasn’t at all resentful of any of that, but there was this unruly, childish inclination towards irritability that colored and clouded my enjoyment of the time together. Things really were done decently and in order, but nothing felt quite right.
“I just need an attitude adjustment,” I told Nettie, on our way home on Saturday night. She thought that she was somehow responsible for the fact that I left early and was lamenting her life and needs and supposed impositions and pretty much everything in general. “It has nothing to do with you, Nettie-girl. I just wanted to come home. I’m tired and sad and irritable and nobody can do anything to please me.”
“Oh,” she said in the darkness beside me. And lapsed into silence.
“I miss my Mama,” I said then. And started to cry. I thought about how My Sweet Mama never liked going to picnics and church retreat and anything that was less than convenient when it came to eating and socializing. She tried to overcome that, but it was rare for her to spend much time at church retreat on a good weekend, much less when she wasn’t feeling well. But I could call her and tell her all about everything. What we ate, who did what, what the activities were, who was there, who helped with the cooking, how the serving went, whether there were many leftovers, who did the work, who cleaned up, and always, all about the children and little ones and what they did for fun and mischief and amusement. But on this weekend, there was no outlet for my observations, no one to comfort me in my sadness, no one to validate my feelings, (whether legitimate or not). Mama was in Heaven.
Heaven. I’ve thought more about that place in these last three months than probably ever before. I thought about it a lot after Daddy died, and felt a sense of wonderment and curiosity about this uncharted territory. But Daddy always pretty much could take care of himself, and I had no doubts that he took Heaven in stride and went about with his insatiable curiosity, discovering all sorts of things, filling in the spaces of all his questions, and meeting new people. Yes, I didn’t think too much about how Daddy was doing in Heaven. But I did wonder about the place that we call “Heaven.”
“We say we know where Dad is,” said my brother, Clint, one day. “We say he is in Heaven, and I believe he is. But where is Heaven? We can’t really say where Heaven is. So in some respect, since we don’t know where Heaven is, we don’t really know where Dad is.” That was an interesting observation to me, and I chalked it up to another one of the mysteries of the life beyond the here and now. It wasn’t troubling nor did it cause disbelief. It just was.
But since Mama died, I keep coming back to this thing of Heaven, and wondering what it is like. Wondering, more specifically, what it is like for Mama. I know she is healthy and whole and beautiful and happy. I know she is with the LORD and Daddy. I don’t think she misses us, and I know she doesn’t want to come back. But does she ever think of us? Does she talk about us to the ones already there? Do we even figure into the equation of LIFE in that place. And why does that even concern me? Why does my heart lurch at the thought of her being so alive and happy and present with the LORD that life here is forgotten, swallowed up in victory? Am I this selfish? Or am I wondering about how the things I give my life to will matter when I leave it all behind? Or is this just yet another stage of the grief that dogs my days?
I came down to the kitchen on Sunday morning. The weariness that pulled me back on my heels was that of a heavy heart and not enough sleep, coupled with the morning things pressing in. Checking in on my ladies, I realized that Nettie had a potty accident in the night. She had stripped herself of her soiled nightie and piled it and her protective bed pad into an odiferous mound on the floor of her bedroom. She had soiled the sheet under the pad (how did she do that?) and had opted to put on a clean nightie and to wrap herself up in a blanket and finish the night on her chair rather than get back into bed. She must have moved stealthily in the night because I hadn’t heard her on the monitor. She was full of apologies and very embarrassed and sad. My heart ached for my Nettie-Girl. Life was hard enough to cope with at this particular juncture of the Moon and Earth and she already was struggling mightily with feeling like she was a burden. I looked at the disarray in the bedroom, and struggled with the whole thing of readjusting morning plans to allow for the catastrophe at hand, getting to church retreat in time for breakfast, and the contradiction of just wanting to sit down and do nothing.
Somewhere in the middle of the whole mess, the thoughts about Heaven came crowding in. I had this sudden urge to know what Heaven is like. I was pretty sure that it held very little of the present dilemma, but there was this deep, deep yearning for something explicitly definitive and descriptive. I wanted to find Certain Man and crawl in close to his heart and whisper, “Tell me what you think Heaven is like. What will we do? How will we be?” But he came in late from morning chores with almost no time to spare to get to retreat on time, and the words wouldn’t come. I finished the tea for the noon meal, and he hurriedly loaded it and prepared to leave. When he hugged me, his eyes clouded over and he asked, “Are you okay?”
It was the perfect chance, but the words stuck in my throat. I finally said, “I’m just so grumpy and sad. I’m really missing my Mama. It doesn’t make any sense. Mama didn’t even like retreat. Why does this retreat make me miss her so much?”
He was understanding, and he didn’t dismiss my feelings, but we both knew he needed to get ice down to retreat for breakfast, and he was running late. He sympathetically said, “Well, Hon, that’s just the way things are sometimes.” And he was off to breakfast with the rest of our church family.
I decided to just get to the lodge in time for the morning service and the noon meal, and I methodically organized the morning, changed the bed, put the linens in to soak, gave Cecilia her shower and dressed her, checked and counted the day’s meds and fed breakfast. Automatic things while my heart was turning over and over again the restless longing for another place beyond this terrestrial plane.
And then, curling around the edges of my brain swelled an old, old song that My Sweet Mama sang when I was a little girl. It embodied the longing, gave words to the ache, and gave substance to Hope. I began to sing the song as I remembered her singing it.
Sing me a song of Heaven, Beautiful homeland of peace.
Glorious place of beauty, there all my trials shall cease.
Sing me a song of Heaven. Beautiful Eden Land.
Dear ones are waiting for me, there on that Golden Strand.
Land where no tears are flowing, Land where no sorrows come.
Sing me a song of that beautiful land, my home, sweet home.
The music comforted me, even more than the words. I could hear My Sweet Mama’s voice singing from somewhere in my memory, and I thought some more about Heaven. One thing I so often get caught up on is that we’ve said so many things about Heaven that we don’t really have scripture to back up. What we do have from scripture leaves lots of room for the imagination, to be sure, but the Bible says that we cannot imagine what God has in store for us. Over these last months, I’ve clung to what the Bible says about Heaven and I’ve come to realize that it isn’t so much what is there that I long for as much as I long for what isn’t. No more parting. No more pain. No more death. No more sin, sadness and the brokenness that sin brings. No more war. No more bad attitudes. No more restless selfishness. No more grief.
But there is one thing that it says will be there: Singing. Praise. Mama is singing. How I longed to hear that voice again! It had been a long time since she did any singing here on earth, and I could imagine that it is one of the things about Heaven that she enjoys. And so it was, on this Sunday morning in late September, when it felt like I had to hear something from Over There, that My Sweet Mama sang to me a Song of Heaven. She started to sing it decades ago, but it only really got to my heart after she was There. And just when I needed it most.
Yes, Mama. I hear you. Sing it! And if you should be listening, I’m singing it, too.
Sing me a song of Heaven, when life shall come to a close.
There in the arms of Jesus, my spirit shall find repose.
Sing me a song of Heaven. Beautiful Eden Land.
Dear ones are waiting for me, there on that Golden Strand.
Land where no tears are flowing, Land where no sorrows come.
Sing me a song of that beautiful land, my home, sweet home.
-Haldor Lillanas
She was lithe and young and beautiful. Her long navy dress with its spaghetti straps looked out of place at the minimal services roadside rest area. Her hair was flawlessly casual, and she washed perfect hands under the free standing sink beside mine. I halted in my handwashing, my hands suddenly still under my own stream of water.
“Wow,” I said softy. “You are all dressed up!”
She laughed. “Oh. Well. Thank-you!”
I finished washing my hands and went around the corner to the side power blow dryer and held my wet hands under its blast. I watched as the skin on my hands rippled and moved under the powerful stream of air, and the skin looked old and droopy — like my Grandma Yoder’s did when I was a little girl, and I watched her peeling peaches or washing dishes or braiding rugs. The similitude startled me and I felt a sudden sense of strangeness with the hands that have been mine all my life. I finished the drying and went back out into the sunlight where Certain Man was waiting on me. He was in his usual good humor, and he smiled when I walked over to him. The smiley crinkles that I love so much ran along those perfect eyes and deepened as I came towards him.
“Are you ready to go?” He asked in his pleasant voice.
“Sure am!” I replied in an effort to keep my voice light, happy. I couldn’t voice the unrest I was feeling, how old and clumsy and worn out and uninteresting I felt. We both got back into the mini-van and headed on down Interstate 81 towards Delaware and Home.
It had been such a restful weekend for me. We had been planning this Yoder campout for almost a year, and it had been on a whim that I had signed up last November. I had thought that maybe even My Sweet Mama would feel good enough to go along, and I had rented a cabin that would hold six people as soon as it became available. But instead of planning and packing for Mama’s comfort, I had spent the week (before we went to the campout) helping my sister in law, Rose, clean out some cupboards in Mama’s house, and we (mostly Rose) had even made great progress in the room that I had dreaded the most — My Daddy’s study. It was a satisfying week, we accomplished a LOT, but there is still a long way to go, and the reminders of the passing of time and my own mortality were rife in the boxes and files and notes of a lifetime. Where did the years go? How did I get to be almost sixty-two? Am I really ten years older than Grandma Wert was when I was born? I mean, she was old! Am I really only two years younger than Grandma Yoder was when I was born? She was ancient!
I felt the years in the pages of the memories that I packaged and brought home to peruse. I felt the years in my bones as I realized that there were a whole lot of things that weren’t going to get done. I felt the years in these replaced knees as Rose crawled around on the floor, getting into places that were just not accessible to me. I felt the years in the weariness that came from activity that, even ten years ago, would have been remedied by a good night’s rest. And it was with a sense of how mortal we all really are that I packed for the weekend away with my cousins, and knew that we would have even fewer faces than we had only a year ago.
The weekend was wonderful. My cousins are mostly older than me, and I looked at the beloved faces and saw the tears and heard the laughter and felt the joy of belonging to a family who knows they aren’t perfect, but still enjoy the heritage and the memories of being a part of Dave and Savilla Yoder’s expansive family. Most of the weekend, there was only one of the older generation there. Uncle Paul came early and stayed to the end. On Sunday, Uncle Jesse and Aunt Gladys and Aunt Miriam put in brief appearances, and there was a smattering of the next generation, but mostly it was the cousins and their spouses, sitting around, talking and remembering. The thing is, from the youngest of the grandchildren to the oldest, there is only 24 years. When you consider that there were sixty-one of us, that’s pretty impressive! Over the years, we’ve lost some — Rhoda Arlene and Steve (Uncle Monroe and Aunt Naomi) Robert and Joseph (Uncle Jesse and Aunt Gladys) and Eugene (Aunt Miriam and Uncle Elmer) but there were 35 of us born in the 50’s. (15 in the 40’s and 11 in the 60’s.) So what that means is that, as cousins, most of us are growing old around the same time. This weekend, along with the memories and songs and eating and tears and laughter, there was talk of retirement and pensions and aches and pains. There were assistive aids and talk of surgeries. We really are getting older. But in that company, with the people I’ve known and loved from my youth, I didn’t feel old. I just felt typical and familiar and ordinary and comfortable.
But now, at this roadside rest, face to face with this adult and vibrant youth, my age and mortality were sitting uncomfortably in the pit of my stomach. “You don’t mind getting older,” I told myself, chiding the wistful longing for the vitality and opportunity that suddenly seemed long gone. “You have always embraced the passing years, relishing maturity and wisdom and experience and the stages of life as they come and go. What is going on here?” I shook back the tears in the seat beside Certain Man and redirected my attention to the book on tape that we were listening to. The stories of James Herriott filled the car and we went on down the road.
I stole a look at the profile of this man that I love most. His observant eyes were on the road, his strong hands on the steering wheel. I saw his muscular arms, tanned dark from his many hours outside on our farm. His hair is silver, his beard white. The glasses have been a constant since before I knew him, but I never think of him looking old. His face is unwrinkled except for those smiley crinkles, cheekbones still that defined, chiseled look above the beard that he has had without reprieve for forty years. I think about the life that we have had together for over forty two years and everything seems so timeless — yet brief. I think about our children, scattered and making their own lives and I think about My Sweet Mama, now home to Heaven, and how very short everything about this life really is.
It’s an old, old story, and it’s been told to every generation from the beginning of time: Life just goes so swiftly. Time doesn’t stop for anyone. Before we know it, we will be — well, HERE! And it hasn’t taken but a blink of an eyelash to get here. And someday, down the corridors of time, but in that not too distant future, our grandchildren and great grandchildren may gather on a lovely September day and talk about the kind of people we were, the loves and misadventures of our lives, and the implications of the mistakes, the value of the successes and the memories they have of who we were and what we did and how we lived our lives and how we died.
And in all of these things, I pray that they laugh. I pray that they will forgive. I pray that the memories will be encouraging and that there will be understanding granted for our humanity. I pray that they will be able to say, as I did this weekend, that when there was nothing else for Grandma Yoder to do but to hold on through the hard times, that she did what needed doing because it was the right thing to do, and she was committed to doing the right thing.
But if they talk of nothing else, I pray that they will speak of the Faith that held me steady. That the One who died for me is a Redeemer, not only of broken lives, but of broken hearts, and bad situations and mistakes and follies and foibles of a woman whose humanity sometimes causes her to catch her breath with longing at that which is gone and can never be regained.
And I pray that they will think of me There!, in that land where we will be forever young, forever whole, forever healthy, and that they will know beyond all doubt that I am more alive at that moment than any of them are. And that there will not be a single thing There! that will cause me to turn a wistful glance towards a long ago past. It will be forgotten. And what I’ll have there will be far better than what I left behind.
Ah, my friends, my cousins, my siblings and most of all, that Man that I Love Most– hear this, once again one of my favorite quotes from the pen of Robert Browning:
“Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be, the last of life, for which the first was made. Our times are in his hand who saith, ‘A whole I planned, youth shows but half; Trust God: See all, nor be afraid!”
And so, for what has been, what is, and what is yet to come, my heart gives grateful, expectant praise.
Filed under Aging, Family living, My Life
We’ve started the new Sunday School year in our congregation. Even before Mama fell in May, I had planned to take the month of June off from teaching The Littles because of family vacation and a Yutzy reunion. With the passing of my Sweet Mama, it was easy to just let other people take care of things and to soak up time with my peers in an adult class of women. I needed them. I needed the time. And it was healing and good.
But I missed my littles.
We had many good times in the crowded room beside the kitchen at Grace Fellowship Church’s gathering place, where our church body has been meeting since the fire damaged out building on the corner of Carpenter Bridge and Canterbury Roads. This picture was take the night we got together to pack a goodie box for another child. It was only taken seven months ago (Actually seven months ago today!) but I cannot believe how much they have grown and matured in these short months. Katie is a self assured kindergartener, Judah is talking and paying much better attention and Charis is more aware of the needs of her classmates and is less jealous of her Grammy’s attention. All three are more participant.
The summer had passed so quickly, and I thought often and prayed that God would show me whether I should offer to teach the class for the year coming up. We have some talented young blood coming up in our church, and teaching is a blessing that is often overlooked in the maturation process. I know that not everyone is cut out to teach, but I also know that choosing to teach has been one of the ways that God has used in my life to encourage growth, personal study and reliance on HIM for wisdom and courage and strength and even results. The blessings that I have reaped have been beyond what I have deserved. And quite honestly, though I really wanted to teach this particular class again, I also didn’t want to step in and volunteer when God had laid it on someone else’s heart to teach the class. He may have had blessings abundant in store for someone else, I reasoned, and it would be wrong for me to grasp someone else’s opportunity. And so, even though I thought the end of summer was coming quickly, I decided to hold my peace and wait and see.
Then one of our superintendents, Davey Burkholder, approached me last Sunday and asked if I would be willing to teach that class of Littles. I was suddenly unsure of what I should do. I asked for some time to think about it. He said that was fine, and in the reorganization part of our Sunday Morning service, it was announced that they were looking for a teacher for the class and they asked for volunteers.
“Whew!” I thought. “That will be a defining event. If someone volunteers, I will know that it isn’t for me this year.”
But I kept mulling it over and over in my head. I asked Certain Man what he thought I should do. He didn’t know. And he didn’t feel strongly one way of the other from what he said. I asked Middle Daughter whether she had any advice for me.
“Well, Mom,” she said carefully, “I think that wanting to teach the class is a pretty good indicator of what you should do. It’s something you enjoy, and if you want to, then I think you should! I’m taking the year off from the young women’s class, and if you need me, I can help you out.” And that pretty much did it for me.
So I waited a few days, then called and got the curriculum and found myself back in one of my favorite spots yesterday morning. The lesson that we used on Sunday was one from the last quarter that hadn’t been used, and it was called “A song for walking outdoors.” One of the activities that I decided to do was to take the three on a walk outdoors looking for different things that they could pick up in nature to put in their ziploc plastic bags to take home with them. A flower, a leaf, a seed pod, bark from a peeling tree, a stone, berries. Grace Fellowship Church is located in an industrial park, and is surrounded mostly by concrete and asphalt, but there were stones, a few trees, lots of weeds, and a couple of patches of grass. Around a corner and past a chain link fence divider there were some landscaping bushes around another building that I hoped would provide some berries for variety.
I checked the time and then said, “Let’s go over there and see what we can find. There might be something different over there!” The three of them were delighted and we headed out across the asphalt patch that separated the us from the other building.
“We have rules,” said Katie confidentially. “We aren’t allowed to go anywhere on this pavement over here without a grown up.”
“That’s a good rule,” I told her. “You should never go anywhere without a grown up unless your Daddy and Mommy say it is okay. And this isn’t a good place for you to go unless there is a grown up with you.”
“Yup,” she said happily. “But you are a grown up!”
I laughed. “Yes,” I said, “I guess I am!”
“You are a very old grown up.” She said. (Emphasis Katie’s.)
And I laughed again.
Oh, my Katie-girl! If you only knew how it is. Just yesterday, my own girlies were five years old and learning family rules. The day before that, it was me. I only turned around twice before I got “very old.” But you and your brother and my granddaughter, all growing so fast, remind of once was and I feel the eternity of the spirit in these old bones. You cannot imagine how it is to feel five years old in your heart, but almost 62 in a body that will not run and jump and dance to the music of our incredible world. But I promise you this. There is coming a day when this body will dance to the music of Heaven. And my spirit, eternal and free, will be as young as yours.
And what is inconceivable to me now will be an actuality.
My heart sings grateful praise.
Filed under Grace Fellowship Church, Laws Mennonite Church, My Life, Praise
“Mare-Ann, I ‘on’t like ‘at soup. I ain’ gonna eat it.”
She sat at the table, looking at the homemade beef stew that I had put in front of her like she expected something to crawl out of it. I walked over to see what was wrong.
“Why not, Hettie?” I couldn’t see anything amiss.
She shrugged. “I ‘on’t like it.”
“Why don’t you like it? What’s wrong with it?”
“It ‘on’t taste good. I ‘on’t like it. I ain’ gonna eat it.”
“It hurts my feelings, Hettie, when I make good food for you and you say it isn’t good.”
She was unmoved. Her lips were in that familiar, straight. intractable line.
“You need to eat it. It’s good, Hettie!.” I looked at the soup to see if there were any mushrooms in it, but I hadn’t put any in it, knowing that she wouldn’t eat it if there were mushrooms. “Look, Hettie! It has our own beef, our own potatoes, our own carrots. It is good. You have to eat it.”
She set her jaw, stubborn, but didn’t say anything. I finished chopping BL’s identical supper into small pieces, and got her started eating, and continued working in the kitchen, keeping an eye on Hettie’s progress. She would occasionally pick up her spoon and stir it around, but not a single bite went to her mouth. She nursed a can of caffeine-free pepsi a little at a time, and when she thought I wasn’t looking she ate her banana. She burped loudly a time or two and watched with her owlish eyes while BL polished her plate off in her usual record time. Then, when she thought enough time had elapsed, and I wasn’t watching, she ate her Schwan’s chocolate chip cookie ice cream sandwich, and then continued to sit in her chair with that stubborn, determined air.
I pondered my options. I knew that if this came down to a confrontation, it wouldn’t end well. I was ashamed of how angry this whole thing made me. It wasn’t just this incident. It felt like a whole catalog of miniscule rebellions had been adding up over the last week. In addition to being angry, I was soul weary. A deep self-pity was washing over my heart as I realized that, once again, these two individuals that I care for are mostly incapable of understanding or even caring about what I was feeling or thinking or dealing with on any given day. Not that they couldn’t have learned, somewhere along the line, but temperaments as well as life experiences have left them feeling like they have to watch out for #1 at all costs.
And so, I rattled around my kitchen for a while and fought an inner war with myself. “It’s only a bowl of soup, Mary Ann. For pity sakes!” “But it’s the principle of the thing!” “Do you really want a fight on your hands? Is it worth it? You know she’ll be angry and psychotic for the rest of the night.” “I know, but –” And on and on and on. I finally decided that I was just going to go out of the house for a minute and find out what Daniel was doing. That way, she could leave the table, dump the soup in the trash, or do whatever, and I wouldn’t have to deal with it.
So I cheerfully said to her, “Hettie, I’m going to go out and see what Daniel’s doing. I’ll only be a minute.” And I forced myself to smile at her.
“Alright,” she said, without any enthusiasm.
I toyed with the idea of traipsing around on the deck to look in the kitchen window to see what she did when I left, but I decided that was a little overdone. I went on out, saw Daniel working himself silly in the hot evening sun, and then went back in. Hettie was gone. Her supper cleared away except for the white Corelle bowl, still filled with a thick beef stew, swimming with chunks of succulent beef. It sat, lonely and defiant at her place at the table. I sighed and scraped it into the compost bucket and cleared the rest of supper away.
We didn’t speak much the rest of the evening. Whenever I did talk to her, I acted as if nothing had happened, and she, though not overly friendly, did not mention the uneaten beef stew. The evening finished as usual, with bedtime juice and the usual routines. I nursed my hurt feelings, and wondered if this was one of those things that I was just overreacting about.
Morning dawned, and with it, no lessening of my angst. I try to keep mornings as happy as possible, with cheery greetings, silly songs and extra help for Hettie with dressing, breakfast and such. But this morning, there was not much cheeriness. Rather, there was a war going on in this carnal heart of mine.
“Maybe I should just turn the tables on her,” I reasoned in some of my lesser glorious moments. “I’ll put out her meds, but she can just get the rest of her breakfast by herself! She can get her own banana, fix her own tea, get her own ice water, and make her own oatmeal. And do without her strawberry yogurt. If she doesn’t like the food I fix for her, she’ll just have to find out how far she gets by herself!”
It’s not that she can’t fix her own breakfast, but over the years that she has been here with us, I have found that fixing her breakfast for her sets her into a better frame of mind, makes her feel loved and, as a result, makes it an easier start to the day. So I thought and pondered and practiced how I could say this in a way that would make her know exactly how wrong she had been, how she needed to suffer for what she had done, and learn her lesson from the (obvious) natural consequences of her behavior. I almost had it down pat when that little voice came into my thoughts that always discomfits my best laid words.
I started thinking about our Hettie girl. She isn’t a child. She’s 67 years old. Most of her life, all of her decisions have been made for her unless she provided enough disturbance to make things uncomfortable enough that someone would do things her way. And by the time she got anything accomplished that she wanted, it was so long getting it done that she felt like it was only done because people were aggravated (not because they loved her). Which, unfortunately, was probably true. She has endured hurtful words, physical abuse, social ostracism, and dealt with paranoia, pain and misunderstanding over and over again. In the years that she has lived with us, we’ve tried hard to make these years the best years of her life, and constantly reassure her that she is loved, that she is wanted, that she is NEEDED, that she is safe, and that she is a grown woman and that, as such, she has choices. There will always be things that she wants that she cannot have. She would like to live independently. She would like to not take her psych medicine. She would like to have massive amounts of money at her disposal to spend as she wants. She would like to live on Pepsi and chocolate and chips.
And while I do try to make sure that she eats properly, it really isn’t my right to tell her what she likes and what she doesn’t like. And if she really doesn’t like beef stew for some reason on a given night, how is that offense-worthy? And if a person with a history of diminished value on almost every aspect of her life can’t even decide that they don’t want supper on a given night, is that cause to treat her with decided coolness? Or to think of ways to “punish” her? Well, I wouldn’t go straight to “punish” but make the “natural consequences” more difficult for her?
I decided that I would fix part of her breakfast for her. She could get her own oatmeal, but I would do the rest. I still wasn’t feeling all that gracious, but I knew I had my own heart work to do, and I also knew that God has been so gracious to me when it comes to things like this that I was pretty sure it would right itself without any help on Hettie’s part. And she was more grudging that she had to fix her own oatmeal than she was grateful for what I had done. But I decided that was okay.
The next day, at Byler’s Store, I found some breakfast sandwiches that looked wonderful. She loves Jimmy Dean Sausage, egg and cheese croissants, and I thought these looked like they would be even better. I brought them home. I thought they were a little more work than Jimmy Dean, and they were on biscuits instead of croissants, but they really looked yummy. When she came out to eat breakfast the following morning, there was a napkin with a note on it, her tea and yogurt and banana and ice water — and the new breakfast sandwich standing ready.
She didn’t like it. It was “too dry” and the flavor wasn’t good. She coughed and snorted and carried on and sighed.
She was probably halfway through the sandwich when I started to cry. I stood at the counter putting out her meds with my face averted from her and cried hot, bitter, disappointed, sad, misunderstood tears. I really didn’t know why this all mattered so much to me. I knew that the tears weren’t just for that silly sandwich or even Hettie’s stubbornness and independent quirks, but I felt such a deep, deep sadness and a good dose of frustration and a (teeny bit!) mad. But Hettie never noticed, and it was time to get BL finished up and out the door. I got the tears dried, packed the lunch, got BL into her wheelchair and pretended that everything was fine with Hettie.
When everyone was out the door, I may have cried some more.
But then God (it’s always better for me when God interrupts my pity parties with a lesson from what’s troubling me) reminded me again of something that has nothing to do with how Hettie responds, but everything to do with how I respond to her. To her, yes, but also to a Heavenly Father who provides me with everything I need, gives me more than I need, and loves me with an everlasting love. And sometimes I sit at His table and refuse to eat. Or protest that what He has given isn’t good enough. That it doesn’t taste good. That it goes down dry. That it doesn’t satisfy me. And it doesn’t cross my mind to think about what He thinks of my evaluation of His provision.
“Oh, Lord Jesus. This hasn’t been about Our Girl Hettie at all, has it?
Create in me a clean heart, Oh God, and renew a right spirit within me . . .
And this humbled heart shall bring you grateful praise.”
Filed under disabilities, home living, mental illness
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