My Mother's Day Story

Everyone has a story worth telling. Here is mine. If you know me, you have heard this story. I will never tire of telling it.

The first 8 years of my marriage I was engaged in career and church-planting in partnership with my husband. Starting a family was on the back burner.

But somewhere in that 8th year, the longing for children emerged. Why wasn't it happening?

Medical tests revealed no problems. As we consulted with physicians regarding our options, it became apparent that continuing on the path of medical intervention would require us to center our lives totally around the goal of having a baby. It would demand both our money and our time. It didn't feel right. We decided to stop medical procedures and just wait on God.

We prayed. We relinquished our desires to God. We hoped.

I made the personal decision during those years to live a fruitful life regardless of whether or not God chose to grant my request for a child. But emotions sometimes run counter to the decisions of the will. Before coming to a state of peace and restful acceptance, I would struggle through tears and entreaties. Scripture brought great hope, but the hope seemed to be dashed monthly. Then the emotional cycle would start over.

As time passed, my emotions stabilized and then I would think, "I have conquered this thing." But occasionally the wound would be reopened, like when I visited new mothers in the hospital, or when a circular would arrive in the mail advertising maternity clothes. Then the grief was fresh in me again.

This phase of life lasted about 7 years. Toward the end of that time, we decided to attend a seminar for people wishing to adopt children. As the date of the seminar neared, my husband uncharacteristically changed his mind about going. There was a pressing ministry concern that he felt took precedence. I was crushed and very, very angry.

The same week of the seminar, as I was delivering meals-on-wheels to an elderly client, the woman greeted me with excitement. "I had a dream about you last night!" she said eagerly, "I dreamed you were pregnant!" I was a little taken back by this. I barely knew this woman. She was foul-mouthed and had a cigarette hanging out of her mouth. Not anything like the Gabriel that presented Mary with her good news! But like Mary, I pondered these things in my heart.

Another out-of-the-ordinary event happened a little later. We hosted a small gathering of believers in our home to listen to a missions report from Bulgaria. Pretty routine stuff for a ministry couple. But my heart was pierced. As I viewed the pictures of sweet little Bulgarian children attentively listening to the gospel message, I knew I had to go. If I couldn't have my own children, I would go to these and share my love with them.

My husband was in absolute oneness with me on this.. He had the same strong urging to go. We immediately began preparing for our first mission trip: passports, applications, training, videos, etc.

And then the day came for the required medical exam and immunizations. As I answered the routine questions that were a part of the exam, it became apparent that my cycle was askew. Would it be OK if they did a pregnancy test? I explained that I had been infertile for 15 years, but if they needed to do a test, fine.

The test was positive. At the age of 36, after 15 years of marriage, I was going to have a baby.

I laughed all the way home from the clinic; but the minute I walked through my front door into my husband's arms I dissolved into tears. Could such a gift truly be ours? It seemed surreal.

Our God is a super-abundant God. He blessed us with four children in quick succession between the years of 1993 and 1999 .

"He settles the barren woman in her home
as a happy mother of children.
Praise the Lord." Psalm 113:9

Book Review: Brother Bosch, an Airman's Escape from Germany

 Photographic Print: Robert Hunt

"Brother Bosch", an Airman's Escape from Germany", was a free e-book I downloaded on a whim. My knowledge of WWI is shallow, so shallow in fact that I did not realize that the reference to "Bosch" in the title was a derogatory term used by the British to describe the Germans. "Bosch" or, alternately, "Boche", is a slang word from the French. Loosely translated it means "head" or "cabbage", and so came to be associated with the idea of pig-headedness or stubbornness. Thus, when the Brits desired to put the "kibosh" on the enemy, it meant they desired to stop or squelch them.

I love learning history via first-person accounts, and Gerald Featherstone Knight has an exciting story to tell. He is winsome in the telling, somehow managing to make the adventure a huge romp rather than a grim war story. By turns, he is both humble and proud. Humble, when recounting his own feats relating to his escape from a German prison camp, but proud when speaking of his English heritage. He has a very obvious sense of superiority over the Germans, often expressed humorously:

"..we reached Hanover and were marched off through some of the main streets to an unknown destination. The town is all right; it is the people that spoil it."


"The Germans put an illuminated Christmas tree in the dining hall, but unfortunately counteracted their display of good feeling by decorating the large portraits of the Kaiser and Hindenburg, who stared down at us from the walls and quite spoilt our already nasty food."

As you might ascertain from those quotes, the humour is typically British: subtle sarcasm that "jabs" the enemy. I am quite sure that Mr. Knight's humour just might have been his saving grace, being one of the weapons in his arsenal to keep despair at bay and ultimately deliver him mentally unscathed in spite of harrowing circumstances.

The author's prison camp escape required a long journey, mostly traveling by night and hiding in the daylight. He swam canals, took refuge in hay stacks, endured the elements, and suffered privation. Here he gives the recipe for eating the last of his rations:

"I sat down and dissolved my last Oxo cube in a mug of cold, greenish canal water. The meal is prepared as follows: First suck your middle finger until it tastes clean, then stir the Oxo until it is dissolved (this usually takes about half an hour). Before drinking the concoction it is necessary to remove any dead fishes that may be floating on the surface, and also make certain that none of the Oxo is wasted by remaining underneath the finger nails."

Ultimately, his surreptitious journey and its accompanying miseries ended when he crossed safely into Holland. In the final account, he gives a nod to God's role in his escape, but even God does not escape his humour:

"Of all my escapes this was the most inexplicable. To what was it due? Certainly not to my own initiative alone. Man's extremity is indeed God's opportunity. Supreme in the world of red tape, far above the ken of misguided mortals, lives an omnipotent being--the Censor. In imagination, he sits in a huge armchair, wreathed in tobacco smoke, casually sorting, from piles of manuscript, the sheep from the goats. The former are destined to be smothered in official stamps and coloured inks, while the latter are cast ignominiously into the gigantic waste-paper basket. Though this little sheep, in particular, may have a little of its wool shorn off, I trust that it may eventually avoid the rubbish heap."

I suspect the sensibilities of some modern readers might be offended by Knight's racial superiority, but if you can forgive that fault you are in for a interesting read. This is a short memoir, less than 100 pages. It is a human adventure story that merits the time it takes to read it.

Hum or Hurry?

I found myself happily humming aloud the other day as I ambled through the grocery store. It caught me by surprise. I rarely amble through any store, grocery or otherwise--seems I'm always in a rush. Did my laid-back attitude give rise to the music in my heart?

I love to sing and dance in the kitchen (much to the embarrassment of my teenagers).  I'm pretty sure God likes the music I belt out when I'm driving, and I've been known to whistle while I do housework.  But hum?  Not so often.

Humming triggers in me the memory of my Mother-in-law.  The first time I met her, she was humming as she peeled a sink full of potatoes.  She was leisurely carving potato-peel spirals with a sharp paring knife, humming away like crazy as she worked.

We exchanged some niceties, and I asked if I could help her. " Do you use a vegetable peeler or a paring knife?"

"A vegetable peeler, please."

She was the tortoise, I was the hare.  I can peel vegetables at lightning speed, owing to my year of college culinary experience. My pile of potato peels towered over her pretty spirals. Momentarily she stopped to ejaculate, "My!!"

But she was a rock.  My pace affected hers not one iota. She just kept right on leisurely carving pretty spirals and humming.

In retrospect, three elements of that encounter perfectly showcased her personality :  the potato salad--her signature dish, her slow and leisurely pace, and the happy humming which seemed as natural as breathing for her.

My grocery store humming was an epiphany of sorts:  I simply cannot hurry and hum at the same time.  From now on, I'd like to be mindful about leisurely ambling through the supermarket. Maybe I'll even hone the fine art of carving pretty potato-peel spirals with a sharp paring knife, because it would be a very nice thing if someday, I were to be remembered as the lady who hummed.

The Lost Stradivarius

This was the first book I read on my new e-reader, and the dictionary-at-my-fingertips feature was much used and appreciated. It is written in elegant Victorian -era English. The book is billed as a ghost story or a horror story, but I would categorize it more along the lines of a mystery. Victorian horror stories bear no resemblance to the modern horror genre !

An English gentleman finds a fine Stradivarius violin,  along with the diary of its former owner, hidden in a secret cupboard. He becomes obsessed with duplicating the music and lifestyle of the past owner, even to the point of being snagged into the Neo-Platonistic and pagan philosophies that he practiced. Sadly, this constituted the demise of the new owner, from which he never recovered. There was no "happily ever after" but yet there was a satisfying conclusion that drew meaning from sordid events.

This is a short book, with well drawn characters and a moral point. The point is that music has power over the human spirit, and as such can be an instrument to lead one into temptation.

I had never heard of this book or its author; I downloaded it as a freebie because I liked the evocative title. It was a little gem of a find and I have now scouted out 2 other titles by  this author that I plan to read.



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A Tale of Two Marriages: Part II

photo by andy.w2008

At first glance, Mary Todd and Abraham Lincoln seem ill-matched: she, the elegant daughter of wealth and society, and Abraham the homely son of a poor frontiersman.  But the two things they held in common were enough to cement their lives together in matrimony, namely a shared literary interest and an unabashed political ambition.

Mary enjoyed a truly classical education, some of it obtained surreptitiously when she sought out the tutorship of a man who was headmaster of a private boys' school. She mastered classical literature and languages while other girls her age were sewing a fine seam. All her life she remained an avid reader and lover of the arts.

Abraham, however, did not have opportunity to sit under learned scholars but his similar thirst for knowledge drove him to self-education.  Philosophy, Burns, poems of despair such as Holmes' "Last Leaf," and other classics all became fodder for his mind's ravenous appetite. He repeated things aloud to himself to fix them in his mind. He read to himself, to Mary Todd, and to his children. In the darkest days of the Civil War, when no man or woman could share his sorrow and perplexity, he drank deeply of Shakespeare's tragedies and the Bible, especially the book of Job.

The self education of this man produced something of a rarity: a political-poet.  His succinct, well chosen words were always penned to be spoken to an audience, and in some cases his words proved absolutely spell-binding.  Lincoln's "lost speech" was so profoundly moving that the journalists laid down their pens, listening as if entranced. 

If the literary magnet was what drew their minds together as one, it was the fire of political ambition in their bellies that cemented the relationship between Mary Todd and Abraham Lincoln.  Since Abraham was subject to bouts of "hypo", which today would probably be diagnosed as manic depression, Mary's ambition was strong enough to carry them both. Without her, he may not have been able to sustain the effort that was required to rise to the top of the political barrel.

Mary would pay dearly to promote her husband's political career.  In the early days of their marriage, she was home alone with two small children for extended periods of time as Lincoln rode the circuit as a lawyer.  When he did arrive home, her loneliness was sometimes painfully extended as she had to wait out Abraham's bouts of "hypo." 

"His friends were saying, 'Poor Abraham Lincoln, married to Mary Todd'...If they knew the full facts, if they had to live with him, might they not rather say, 'Poor Mary Todd, married to Abraham Lincoln'?"

The saving grace:  the ability to re-engage in companionship and camaraderie after such absences had ended.  Mary and Abraham seemed to be able to pick up where they had left off each time, to repair the disjointedness and to move forward.  

"Would you keep me company?" seems a simplistic remedy to marital loneliness and yet it is so effective.  Visits to country clients, shared visits to wounded soldiers, a carriage ride in the country---none of these moments shared between Mary and abraham seem significant in themselves. Each is a slender thread, but the accumulation of many threads creates a tightly woven bond of unity, one that can survive even a civil war.

Engraved on the wedding ring that Abraham slipped on Mary's finger were the words "Love is Eternal." Irving Stone chose those same three words as the title of his biographical novel of Mary's life. It is a sympathetic novel, one that elevates Mary above the usual caricature of an ego-centric, materialistic, shrew.  She was a complex woman, a woman who endured the tragedy of losing two sons and several brothers. She was not always able to bear her tragedy with grace, nonetheless she was a faithful spouse and I believe her love for Abraham Lincoln survived the fires of affliction.  Her story is poignant and instructive.

The Dying Christian to His Soul by Alexander Pope

From zaazaa777

Vital spark of heav’nly flame!
Quit, O quit this mortal frame:
Trembling, hoping, ling’ring, flying,
O the pain, the bliss of dying!
Cease, fond Nature, cease thy strife,
And let me languish into life.

Hark! they whisper; angels say,
Sister Spirit, come away!
What is this absorbs me quite?
Steals my senses, shuts my sight,
Drowns my spirits, draws my breath?
Tell me, my soul, can this be death?

The world recedes; it disappears!
Heav’n opens on my eyes! my ears
With sounds seraphic ring!
Lend, lend your wings! I mount! I fly!
O Grave! where is thy victory?
O Death! where is thy sting?

****************************************************************************
After laying a dear friend to rest yesterday, I found this poem to be a comfort. 
I'm reflecting this morning on the funeral and the importance it plays in our grieving. This funeral was held at our church rather than in a funeral home, something that is becoming increasingly rare. When I was a little girl, nearly all the funerals I remember were held in a church. What blessed me about yesterday's church funeral was the personal touches:  familiar hymns sung by familiar voices, home grown roses, a bountiful luncheon prepared by loving hands. I've often experienced a pang of regret for families who are making final arrangements for a loved one without ever having forged a place in a community of faith. It leaves a hollow spot to hire people to take care of the details.  A church family provides a huge network of support at life's extremity and I'm so grateful for the cords of love that bind us together.

My Antonia by Willa Cather

I read a slew of Willa Cather books when I first moved to Nebraska. (Cather is from Red Cloud). This is my favorite of them all, hands down.  The description of the mysterious dried mushrooms, the snowflakes falling from the sky like big feathers from a pillow, the farm plow silhouetted against the setting sun---Cather etches scenery into your mind's eye in an unforgettable way. The characters drawn from the fictional Black Hawk, Nebraska are complex and multi-faceted and if you've any past connection with rural America, they will without a doubt strike a resemblance to someone you know. Alas for the young or the city-dweller who may have no such example in the memory bank.

This is a character driven novel, centering on the Bohemian girl Antonia, who came with her family to Nebraska to homestead in the late 1800s.  Antonia typifies a nearly extinct class of immigrant women who bore the crushing weight of hard work, want, misunderstanding, and hardship that accompanied the immigrant/pioneer experience. The west was not civilized apart from the Antonias, whose inner vivacity could not be extinguished by the daily hard labor, or by poverty, loneliness, and death.  Willa Cather has gifted future generations by carving the likeness of such strong women in stone so that our heritage is not forgotten.


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