Love One Another

Such anger and anxiety in our nation right now.  We feel out of control, and it’s showing. We and our fellow citizens are marching and wearing masks, clamoring and cowering, rioting, and reconciling – desperately trying to find solutions to heartbreaking issues.

But what if the answers we seek aren’t as complicated as the questions? 

Illness and injustice are as old as humankind.  Jesus himself was an innocent man who was tormented, tortured, and ultimately executed. Yet right before his crucifixion, he gave us the answer to navigating all the complexities and conflicts of the world in one new command.

Love one another.

No one’s saying loving other humans is natural.  Even Jesus didn’t say it was easy. But he did say it was possible and that it would change everything.

Here’s the thing: You can’t love people in groups, and you can’t love them from afar. Love is personal.  Love gets right up next to others, close enough to see the whites of their eyes and hear the beats of their hearts.

Imago Dei, image of God

The implications of these two Latin words alone should stop us in our tracks whenever we try to put someone in a box or see them as anything other than God’s masterpiece.

Every human being has our own beautiful, broken stories and unique lenses through which we see the world.

We come in all colors, shapes, and sizes. We are products of our cultures and our families and are molded by our experiences and temperaments.

But our differences, which were imagined by God after all, should be celebrated, not despised. And maybe we aren’t as different as we think.

We all crave connection and community. We all know the delight of a joyful heart and the crushing of a broken heart. Our blood looks the same. So do our tears. We were created by love, to love.

Imago Dei

Our faith in a God who treasures each of his children and calls us to stand against injustice in all its insidious forms compels us to value all humans, no matter how broken or beaten down.

We simply start with compassion and let love lead where it will.

Grieving Graduation

My son was supposed to graduate from high school today.

Micah's the baby, the one the doctors said I had practically no chance of raising to adulthood. Coronavirus canceled the ceremony, but it can't cancel my joy.

As I sit in my favorite chair early this morning, listening to the silence and talking with God while Micah sleeps, I can't help but reflect on how different this day could have been.

We won't experience the pomp and circumstance every graduation ceremony promises. We won't cheer through teary eyes as our youngest struts across the stage when they announce his name. We won't eat finger sandwiches and marble cake with our extended family afterward.

These are real losses that we will grieve. But they pale in comparison to the dreams I felt forced to bury years ago.

I was diagnosed when Micah was a baby, wiggly and wide-eyed, just starting to smile and coo. After the doctor delivered my death sentence, I had to accept that I would probably never know Micah, the young man. Micah, the baby and if I were lucky, Micah, the boy, would be the best I could hope for.

I soaked up every minute with him after my diagnosis - inhaling his after-bath baby scent, stroking his soft tiny forehead whenever he ate, singing lullabies to him before bedtime, running my fingers through those silky blonde curls while he drifted off to sleep, tears falling off my face onto his.

To cope with the mental anguish the prognosis evoked, I prayed. A lot. And I set goals – little goals and big goals. Looking forward, even just to the end of that day, somehow helped me focus on living instead of the fear of dying.

One of the first big goals I set for myself was to live long enough to take Micah to his first day of kindergarten in the little brick school two blocks from our house, the same school his sisters attended.

That goal kept me moving forward even in the darkest days.

Time did what time does, and that wiggly baby grew into a busy toddler, then a precocious preschooler, right before my eyes.

And I thanked God every day for the pure pleasure of being a mom – to him and his brother and sisters. It wasn't perfect. Life never is. I still occasionally hid from the kids' noise and chaos in the laundry room or cried tears of frustration over the piles of laundry and dishes.

And being sick often meant my body couldn't keep up with my heart. When exhaustion won, I watched my kids play from a lawn chair on the sidelines when I longed to be in the game. We had cereal for dinner far too often. But I was alive and with them, and somehow, that's all that mattered in those moments.

Alive. With them.

God gives us the gift of life for the express purpose of living. But He also allows us to choose how we use our lives. The one caveat is that life on earth is a one-shot deal.

No do-overs. No money-back guarantees. And no control over many of our circumstances. Just a choice to enjoy the people and the days God gives us.

Like your youngest child's graduation day, for instance. I dreamed of this day and begged God to let me live long enough to see it. Then due to conditions none of us could have foreseen, it turned out to be just another ordinary day.

No pomp and circumstance, no cap and gown, no seat in the arena, no marble cake. Just me in my favorite chair, reveling in the silence while that bouncing baby boy turned fine young man sleeps deeply down the hall.

Sounds perfect to me..

A Lesson on Dying Young

Today is the 23rd anniversary of my dad’s death.

He was 44, the first in our big family to die young. He had always been healthy and fit, but he needed to get a mole on his arm checked. He didn’t, and he died a year later, leaving us all stunned and heartbroken.

After my appointment, I somehow mustered the courage to call my mom and tell her about my grim prognosis, just five years after my dad’s death. God help me break this news to her. She had already endured so much, losing her husband in the prime of life.

My lead fingers stoically punched the numbers. She answered on the first ring, waiting anxiously for the report she knew would be coming. I took a deep breath and stumbled and stammered, trying to put a positive spin on the Tuesday morning death sentence. But Mom wasn’t fooled. She knew the lingo – the euphemisms for no hope and imminent demise – all too well by now.

So, despite my best efforts to convince her, or maybe myself, that everything would be fine—just fine, my tough-minded, fiercely independent mother wailed – right there on the phone, exactly like a woman whose child is dying.

Dad died young, but at least in marriage, the odds of who dies first are indisputable – 50/50. But a child dying before a parent; that’s not natural. It’s not fair.

Dying young shouldn’t run in families, like freckled noses or cleft chins.

But life hands you what it will, and God allows what He will. And there you are, with a broken heart, a broken body, five children and a sobbing mother, just trying to think one rational thought about how even one tiny good thing is going to come out of this big, broken mess.

And then you finally hang up the phone and make spaghetti for dinner and bathe the baby and help with homework, almost like you’re living instead of dying.

You quickly learn that time has a nasty habit of marching relentlessly forward, impervious to a Tuesday morning death sentence or a sobbing mother, and everyday life, with fists raised vying for attention, demands that you participate.

The dirty little secret is that dishes still need to be washed, bills still need to be paid, and mouths still need to be fed.

So, really it comes down to a choice to be made, albeit a decision you shouldn’t have to make so young. This choice is a cruel taskmaster who makes you march forward too and refuses to allow you to stay stuck in the in-between where you aren’t living, but you aren’t dead.

And cruel though it be, this question demands an answer from all of us who are still here, breathing in and out:

Will I live while I’m alive, or will I exist while I’m dying?

My dad faced death with courage and faith. He was totally at peace, trusting that even from this tragedy, God was able to bring beauty from ashes and life from death. Even in the depths of my grief, I knew that I wanted to die like that, radiating love and exuding a calm confidence that this isn’t the end, but only a transition to a beautiful beginning.

So, I knew how I wanted to die. But the burning question was … How do I want to live?