Story of a Hymn

Posted in music, words by

George Matheson went irreversibly blind when he was 20. His fiancee said she could not see herself be the wife of a blind man. So she broke their engagement shortly before their wedding date. From that point, his younger sister helped care for him and George went on to become a pastor and seminary lecturer.

Twenty years later, his sister was to be married and would leave him.  On the eve of her wedding while he was alone and his family was celebrating in another house, these lines came to him.  He said the words came quickly, as if inspired. They reveal a broken, weary man’s agony. The only thing in his heart that was larger than his pain was his deep, sure faith in God and His promises; He was confident that things wouldn’t always be the way they were now.

Mim, this post is for you. Sorry you had to wait this long for it…

 

1. O Love that wilt not let me go, (there once had been a love that did let him go)

I rest my weary soul in Thee;

I give Thee back the life I owe,

That in Thine ocean depths its flow

May richer, fuller be. (he knew God would value his contribution; he believed he had something to offer)

 

2. O Light that foll’west all my way,

I yield my flick’ring torch to Thee; (a reference to his blindness)

My heart restores its borrowed ray,

That in Thy sunshine’s blaze its day

May brighter, fairer be. (again, he had something to give God—a humble, faithful act of offering)

 

3. O Joy that seekest me through pain,

I cannot close my heart to Thee; (it is easier to close your heart in the presence of pain)

I trace the rainbow thru the rain, (in his blindness, he couldn’t see it, except through his fingers and then only in faith)

And feel the promise is not vain,

That morn shall tearless be. (his faith knew his what his sight couldn’t: that sunshine comes after rain)

 

4. O Cross that liftest up my head,

I dare not ask to fly from Thee; (the human response to pain is to fly from it)

I lay in dust life’s glory dead,

And from the ground there blossoms red

Life that shall endless be. (his faith knew there would be color someday)

 
Lyrics: George Matheson
Music: Albert Lister Peace, arr. by David Phelps

Redemption Keeps Its Own Calendar

Posted in life, music, Poland by

Some years ago, my pastor and his wife would frequently invite a depressed, lonely lady to their house. Her husband was an alcoholic and life was dark and difficult on every level for her. They would sit at the kitchen table and listen to her talk, and tell her about life in Jesus, and then they’d sing “God Will Take Care of You.” She’d  cry, and they’d cry with her. It was her song, the one she always asked for.

Now she’s my friend, my Polish mom, and more importantly, God’s child. We laugh and cry together a lot, but mostly laugh because her joy and peace is so effervescent.

This morning in church our pastor’s family was gone. One of the ladies in church, Maria, couldn’t come to church because of her high-risk pregnancy but was listening to the service via Skype. Maria’s husband Nate led songs and asked for suggestions from the (small) group. My Polish mom said she wants us to sing “God Will Take Care of You” especially for Nate and Maria.

As we sang of course I cried, because I saw it had gone full circle. What she had been given years ago, she is able to give to someone else now.

When I talked with her later about it, she said she doesn’t remember the words our pastor said in her visits to their kitchen, but she remembers their warmth and what they sang.

Tribute to Grampa

Posted in Family, life, travel by

This is what I wrote on the plane coming over, and read at the funeral yesterday:

My first memory of Grampa was a scary one. I was three and outside the house on Williams Street. My parents and strangers were around me on the sidewalk and this tall black-bearded man crouched down and spread out his arms to me. Everyone around me was laughing and telling me to go to him. “Go–it’s Grampa!” But I was scared and refused. It was the thick black hair that did it.

Now I know the occasion was that the family was home for furlough and we were visiting from VA. In a day or two, I saw that Grampa was actually a nice man but I was stubborn and refused to let him hold me.

After that initial scare, Grampa became a normal part of my life in our visits to IN. He was always jolly and his gruff voice belied his soft heart. I loved watching how he treasured Gramma Mabel, and later, Gramma Barbara. He’d always give Gramma a kiss when he came home, and hold her hand when they walked together. Even though I was a child, it felt significant to me that a man his age was so openly affectionate.

I remember at Susan and Delbert’s wedding, he read Proverbs 31 and I Corinthians 13, and the way he read made it sound like poetry, and I dreamed he’d do the same at my wedding. I remember several times when he read poetry to the family. What impressed me most was how he’d unashamedly choke up at some particularly meaning words.

Now when I write and wrestle with words to make them do what I want them to, I sometimes wonder if one reason words affect me so deeply is because he valued words. Maybe it’s in our genes. After all, family lore is proud of his winning the county spelling bee in grade school in KS.

I last saw Grampa this past February. It had been four years since I’d last seen him. I think I’d taken him for granted and thought he’d always be the strong, stalwart man I knew. But when I first saw him in February, I wanted to weep for the stooped, halting body that trapped his expansive mind. The Parkinson’s made his speech slow and slurred. He told me the words don’t come like they used to. He knows them but they don’t come out. “Is that frustrating?” I asked.

He shrugged. “It would be if I’d let it.”

To this emotional, impulsive girl, those were wise words to digest.

I was in Rome when Grampa died. I had one day there instead of the long weekend I’d planned. In the scrambled plans, buying new tickets, and foreign, unfriendly airport agents, all clouded with this abrupt loss, I tried hard to stay calm and remember what he said: “It’s frustrating if you let it be.”

Leaving Rome, the plane took off over the coastline and I saw the smooth, deep curve of the gulf that forms the sole of Italy’s boot. It was thrilling to see, and I knew that some of my itchy feet comes from Grampa who also loved the far horizon. I know I’m shaped by his love for new places that took him from KS to IN to Central America where he became Papi Juan to dozens of children and adults. I saw how happily and easily he entered that world as often and as long as he could.

Now the tables are turned. All his children and grandchildren have pushed away from their geographical roots for Kingdom work for some part of their lives. The two grandchildren who aren’t here today are in Poland and Thailand. Grampa gave to us a love of learning, expanding, exploring. He was always asking questions, reading, and quick to learn. He even learned from Gramma how to sing better. It was easy to see that his life motivation was to serve and be useful because He loved Jesus simply and completely, and cherished the gift of salvation. It wasn’t so much what he said. It was the shape of his life.

Now it’s me who comes back home from living in another country and the small children are shy and don’t know me anymore. It’s bittersweet. Mostly, it’s sweet because of the enormous legacy we have of a bearded man whose heart was big and his arms stretched wide.

 

Scattered

Posted in Family, life, travel by

I lost my heart to Italy. I’m completely smitten.

Finally I’ve found a place where it’s ok to have a raised voice in normal conversation. Where I found a market and bought the best pesto I ever had, plus real ciabatta and vine-ripened tomatoes and the lemons and oranges still had their leaves attached. Where the espresso and cappuccino is first-rate and the gelato is beyond words.

Thursday night I went to Rome with a friend and her son, with plans to spend four days there. Yesterday was a fantastic day of getting our bearings and relaxing and being charmed by the way the Italians enjoy life. We did a bus tour then sat at the Spanish Steps and the Trevi Fountain and soaked up the sun and atmosphere. The crowds–I never saw so many people– were happy and not too obnoxious.

All I could think to say was “It’s really real.” The ruins, the faded walls of the houses, with geraniums and greenery on the balconies. They’re real. The cafes where four men at a table all talk at one time. I saw/heard them. It’s not just in stories and pictures. It’s real. The smiling clerks who never hurry. The lack of a personal bubble of any size. It’s how they live. The crazy driving and the crazier pedestrians and the parking that’s so tight you can’t walk between the cars. It’s a mad, happy chaos that could become addictive.

All the pomp of the pope and his attachments are pretty much lost on me. It made me sad to hear that the Vatican is considered the heart of Christianity because I know what Jesus would say about the wealth and power it wields. But I had my heart set on seeing the Sistine Chapel, and paid a deposit yesterday to join a tour this morn.

Then in the evening my sister called while we were meandering toward a park. It’s my grandpa. A brain hemorrhage. He’s got only several hours.  Later the text: he died during the night.

Today I spent all day alone, travelling back from Rome to Warsaw. The map worked and I could walk to the right street for the bus. (You have no idea how huge this is to me.) I had an espresso in a simple cafe and read Psalm 90 in a piazza while waiting for the airport bus. I cried and read by turns during the hours but I cried when Wizz Air said they’d charge 10 euro for the cabin baggage, but the agent said it no, they charge 20. And then no, it’s 30 because the airport gets a commission. It felt like extortion and deceit to me, and my tolerance was in short supply.

But finally I’m home and  doing laundry and packing to leave for Indiana with my sister in the morning. I’m glad and sad to go. The week will have tears and laughter. There will be grandma and parents and aunts and uncles in grief, babies to cuddle, stories to re-tell and reasons to laugh. I want to celebrate my grandpa whose itchy feet I inherited. Whose solidity and faithfulness gave us a legacy that I don’t even realize fully.

I guess it figures that tonight I feel completely scattered.

Fight with Light

Posted in books, life by

One strength of novels is that we recognize ourselves in the characters. We see how they fight their Appolyons and win or lose, how they make decisions with good or bad results, how they aspire or despair.

August Boatwright is a character who shows me what a wise mentor is like. She’s the kind of person I’d like to be: diligent, forward-thinking, patient.

More often, though, I see myself in May, August’s sister. She’s a sensitive woman, happy and delighting in simple things–until she hears or sees something that’s sad or broken, and then she starts humming “Oh Suzanna” as if her life depends on it. (No, I don’t do that.)  What endeared me to her was when she put socks on the cold feet of the old-fashioned bathtub because she worried about anything that is distressed.

May’s sensitivity was tragic when she eventually killed herself. And no, I don’t see myself doing that. But some days it feels that the aches of the world are going to crush  me. Anything can set it off: a broken flower, a staggering drunk, a mother shouting at her son in the parking lot, a friend’s mother filing for divorce, an old man rifling through a dumpster. This morning it was a traumatizing picture I hadn’t chosen to see on a headline connected to the Gosnell trial. I want to vomit. I want to find a dark closet and curl into a ball and not come out until the sun shines again. It’s too big for me.  I don’t have the emotional elastic for it. I have to run away.

May’s sisters, August and June, helped her by devising a plan patterned after the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem. When May felt one of her spells coming on, she’d keep humming “Oh Susanna,” grab a scrap of paper, and write the trouble on it. They would lead her out to the stone wall behind their house, and she’d wedge the paper between the rocks and leave it there. Periodically, May would haul up more rocks from the river to use as she needed them, and the wall kept growing even after ten years, sporting little bits of paper sticking out all over.

I think writing helps process things and get it out of our system. More than that, I’m learning that I when I have no answers and am whimpering, overwhelmed in the blackness, I can only fight with light. Light is the only antidote to the dark that smothers me.

Like May, I tend to absorb the pain I see around me and carry it with me. But Jesus did that already–carried on His shoulders the cares and aches and intolerable agony of every life. What He wants me to do, I think, is invite Him, the Light of the world, into every terrible, twisted darkness that threatens me and those I love.

Curling into a ball or shouting in rage at the wrongness–neither is redemptive or finally helpful. Today I choose to fight with light, not denying the dark of midnight, but resting all the weight of my heavy heart on the sureness that morning will come and the darkness will run away.

The sun will come.

Meanwhile, singing and writing help.

Shari’s Giveaway

Posted in My Book, recommendations by

Hey! If you want another chance at winning a copy of  my book, breeze on over to Shari’s blog.

While you’re there, have a look around. My sister commented to me once: “Do you read Shari’s blog? She writes every day but she’s never boring!”

It’s true. She’s a brilliant writer, and I’m proud to know the lady behind the blog.

Hurry over there asap.

Perspective

Posted in life, teaching English by

Good artists, I’m told, know what  perspective is. I don’t know much about horizons and lines doing the right things on a page, even though I had my first acrylics painting lesson recently and found it completely exhilarating. But back to perspective: I know that everyone needs it, more than only graphic artists.

Last week one day, spring finally, finally arriving, I happily wore my new shoes that Michelle had talked me into buying. It was liberation to put away the winter boots and wear something light. As I walked down the sidewalk, I noticed a woman scowling at my shoes. My cute, brown shoes didn’t deserve a look like that. In a flash, I decided that she was narrowing her eyes at them because she was jealous, not because she thought they were ugly or unseasonable. Perspective.

The next day a mother interrupted my English lesson by knocking and handing a huge orange to us, her two children and me. A single orange, in the middle of doing a worksheet.   I found a knife to peel it, and the children and I ate the segments, dripping and squirting, between questions about spring. I remembered the stories of women who got one orange for Christmas when they were girls in communist Poland. They savored just the fragrance for several days before peeling it.

Perspective. Contrast. Color.

An artist needs an accurate way of seeing things. Not only for a project on a canvas, but for the whole of life.

I’m learning, slowly. That crooked lines and dark colors aren’t the whole picture. That the person next to me sees something differently from me because of where she’s standing, not because her eyes don’t work.  That failure and coloring outside the lines is not fatal but a sign of life.

Book Giveaway Celebration

Posted in life, My Book, singleness by

I love celebrations! The times we remember, laugh, reminisce , dream. I love the tactile reminders of what was and is, the closure and the looking ahead. I don’t do well with stiff formalities because they usually make me want to laugh or do something distracting, but something deep inside feels satisfied when a milestone or important event is acknowledged sufficiently.

So I want to celebrate that now it’s five years that my book is out in the big, wide, beautiful world.

I maintain that the best authors don’t write because they have all the answers but because they’re the ones who are brave enough to wrestle with questions that might not have tidy answers. I have experience as a single, but I don’t do it perfectly, so the book isn’t about pat answers. My vision as I wrote was to give ladies a picture of what kind of life God is inviting them to even if theirs doesn’t have the color and shape of their expectations. I saw girls become desperate or depressed when they didn’t get boyfriends by age 26, and it grieved  me because I knew that desperation or depression was never what God designed them for.

What IS our design and purpose? That’s what I explore in the book.

I’m still exploring the question. I’ve slid into the same kind of depression/desperation/despair that I’ve seen in others. During the past five years, there were times when my closest friends told me maybe it’s time for me to read my book again. ugh. (I haven’t met any author who wants to go back to read their book. Never.) There were dark, dark nights. Even dark months, when I felt only questions and emptiness and heavy sighs. That was real, but so is the bright sunshine, the wide vistas, the incredible care of the wild, unpredictable, endlessly-loving Almighty.

So I’m still learning. Still reaching forward and messing up and living as falteringly and certainly as one does when she knows where and who Life is.

I’ve loved the interaction with readers, the feedback (mostly positive, thank God), the questions it sparked off, and most of all, the embarking on a  journey of wonder and knowing we are never, ever alone. Now I want to celebrate the amazing five years behind us.

I want to do a DOUBLE book giveaway to FIVE people–one for you and one for you to give away.  In comments here or by Facebook message or email, tell me why you want need a copy of the book, and who you’d give a copy to. The giveaway is open from April 5-10. I want to give the book to the desperate, depressed girls I wrote it for. Will you help me get it to them? Let’s go!

Self-Check

Posted in life by

I think that I already live pretty simply. But the truth is that I live in luxury. I’m not sure what to do about it, but I do know that it means saying NO to things I could do or get. Often–every day and probably many times a day. It also means finding beauty and pleasure in things that are already around me.

Some of the costliest places of sacrifice for me has been living far away from most of my friends and relatives. My friends do amazing things like get married and have babies or suffer funerals and tragedies and I’m a million miles away. The loneliness and distance is something that never lessens even though it’s been like this for 17 years. Another sacrifice has been living in a country where I can’t speak the language well enough to communicate easily.  It’s hard, hard, hard for me, the girl whose biggest problem used to be having too many words.

Serving people cuts across the grain of my soul because I think people should spend their days thinking about how they could make my life better. I’m a princess after all. Ugh. When I see how ugly that stance is, it helps me rearrange my focus and CHOOSE to serve.

Simplifying, sacrificing, and serving are all part of the shape of Jesus’ life and what it means to be part of His Kingdom. The beauty of it is that His invitation to join Him is not about making us squirm or feel as miserable as possible. It’s part of selling everything just to buy the pearl that we treasure.

What do you love the most?  That’s where your treasure is.

A Treasure Worth Serving

Posted in life by

Serve.

In away, serve encapsulates simplify and sacrifice. This is about living with an outward view. Which calls for radically reorganizing the contours of our hearts because we are born looking inwardly and serving ourselves.  Which is what the Gospel is all about—getting new hearts and looking at our world in a different way than is natural.

There are so many ways and places to serve that it sometimes feels overwhelming. I could stay in Poland and love people who don’t know Jesus and need Him so desperately. As an English teacher, I could do the same thing anywhere in the world. I hear my cousin’s Liberia stories and I just got done reading Kisses from Katie and I know that if I’d go to Africa (or India)  (or Cambodia) and touch those children’s hair and feel their tears on my cheeks, something would break deep inside me and I could never be the same again.

We all applaud serving sick children in far-away places, and pouring out our lives on behalf of poor people in other countries. It all sounds exciting and exotic and news-worthy.

But sometimes the most important thing we can do is serve the person beside us. The brother who’s always asking favors from you. Or the neighbor who irritates you every morning.  It’s all very easy to talk about serving someone in the Far East. It feels a little different when you realize you don’t have to step outside your living room to serve.

Last January I had the huge honor of visiting at Sharon Mennonite Bible Institute the same night they were having their term banquet. Instead of asking parents and friends to come pamper them for an evening of finery, they invited neighbors up and down the roads around the school. The students cooked the food and served and played music and sang for and visited with the guests. I happened to be a guest of the administrator’s wife, so I got in on it too. I was eating delicious food in a beautifully decorated gym and the pianist was playing “Shine Jesus Shine” and I wanted to melt into a puddle of tears. Vibrant, gifted young people were working and smiling and serving their world and it was so beautiful and right it made me cry.

Yesterday: Sacrifice

Tomorrow: Self-Check