Category Archives: Life’s disappointments

Lost and Found

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Today’s beach trip revealed a surprise, literally. When Birgitta and I came over the dune ready to enjoy a hazy but lovely afternoon together, we saw that someone had dug a giant hole in the sand. And sitting in the middle of it was the previously-buried blue kayak that I watched sink below the sand many months ago. (1/25/11 – “Hidden Away”)

During winter storms the beach’s configuration had changed, and the shallow covering of sand I remembered had grown a foot deep. Seeing that this “lost” boat had been found was very satisfying. The fact that someone was actually hunting for it meant even more.

All of us feel lost once in a while, and when we do, we ache to be found. I remember feeling lost at 13, that awkward age between childhood and adolescence when kids struggle to find their place.

My parents viewed me as a child, but my changing body (pimples and other surprises) told me otherwise. Having moved to a new neighborhood, I’d lost my old friendships and felt like a bottom-feeder at school. My older sister was a beauty, my younger brother a prince, and I longed for a label, too.

Everything came to a head one Sunday morning at Moody Church. I’d asked a Sunday school pal to come home with me for lunch, but she couldn’t, and I took it personally. I started to cry on the church steps, and when Mom arrived she said, “What’s the matter?”

Feeling like I couldn’t possibly summarize my many woes in one sentence I said, “Nobody loves me.”

Now that I’ve mothered seven children through being 13, I see how that conversation was doomed. What statement could possibly have offered the comfort I needed at that moment?

“Oh honey, that’s not true.” Mom said. “Your father and I love you, and so does…” (glancing around) “…so does Caroline!”

Caroline was my brother’s pal, 4 years younger than me, just a little kid. Mom’s “comfort” only deepened my conviction that no one loved me, and my life was without purpose. I felt lost and ached to be found.

God is in that exact business, finding the lost and lavishing his love on them. And he even goes one step further, allowing us to find him, not only when we seek him but even when we don’t. His desire is that none of us feel lost but instead all of us know the delight of being found.

I’ve learned since my crisis on the church steps that most 13 year olds feel as I did, and it quickly passes.

As for this afternoon’s newly visible kayak, if it could talk it would say, “I was lost but now am found!”

“I revealed myself to those who did not ask for me; I was found by those who did not seek me. To a nation that did not call on my name, I said, ‘Here am I, here am I’.” (Isaiah 65:1-2)

Tantalizing Fantasizing

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Every widow friend of mine has wished her husband could come back, if only for a few minutes. We’ve all fantasized about how we would greet them, what we’d say, how we’d show love. Such a scenario is as captivating as a first date, and although we all know it can’t be, thinking about it is delicious.

This morning I was pondering the biblical Lazarus, a friend Jesus often stayed with between destinations. He enjoyed time with this pal and his two sisters, probably relaxing around a lamp-lit wooden table, telling of his travels. These four singles were close in heart and surely had fun together, too. Scripture twice says Jesus loved them.

When Lazarus got sick, the grieving sisters did what came naturally: they got word to Jesus. But Lazarus died before he could get there.

When Jesus finally came, Mary, Martha and a crowd of mourners had been grieving for four days. No doubt the sisters were thinking, “Oh, how we want our brother back, even for just a few minutes. He left so quickly we couldn’t even get Jesus here in time. If only we could talk with him again, hold onto him, somehow prevent his death.”

When Jesus arrived, Martha raced out to meet him with the same wish my widow friends and I have. “Jesus, you can do whatever you want! You could bring him back!” Although I haven’t met Martha, I know what she was thinking: “If you bring him back, you can heal him, and then he won’t have to die!”

But Jesus responded conservatively, reminding Martha that Lazarus would rise eventually. That wasn’t good enough for her, though. I picture her tugging on his arm, bouncing up and down saying, “Yes, yes, I know, but you know what I mean!”

Jesus calmly asked if she truly believed he was the way to heaven, and she says, “Yes, of course! I believe you! But…”

Racing back to the house, she grabs Mary and excitedly says, “Jesus is here! Hurry up!”  And it’s Mary’s turn to rush out. While weeping, she voices the same longing as Martha but in a different way. “You could have prevented this! And you should have!”

Amazingly, Jesus gave the sisters what they wanted: their brother back.

What was life like for these siblings after that? Martha and Mary probably didn’t take their eyes off Lazarus, couldn’t stop asking questions. Most likely they touched him, took his hand, hugged him, told him they loved him, until he had to say, “Ok, girls. Enough already!”

I’ll bet they loved their brother with a nearly perfect love after having lost him, then gotten him back. How blessed they were with that rare opportunity to love flawlessly the second time around. And that’s what my widow friends and I long for, too, though we know it won’t happen for us.

But if wives could just get that second-chance love figured out the first time around, marriages could be radical examples of what God originally had in mind for husbands and wives.

Jesus called in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” (John 11:43)

The Rat Race

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When Nate came out of law school in 1972, he was hired by the trust department of American National Bank in Chicago’s Loop. I was glad to be moving back to the Chicago area, and he was thankful to be starting his career in a big city.

I remember the day we bought his first briefcase, a plain black leather model with expandable pockets and niches for pens.  We waited while the shopkeeper embossed Nate’s initials near the handle, and from there we went and picked out a new suit.

After he began working, I loved walking from our second-floor apartment to meet him at the train each evening. Picking him out from a sea of suit-clad, briefcase-carrying commuters never failed to make my heart flutter. “Oh, there’s mine!”

He loved going to work and made friendships during those first years that were still current when he died 37 years later. But as the decades passed, Nate began to label his work routine a “rat race.” Career goals, once met, had been withdrawn, and his enthusiasm had waned.

Work was a means to an end, and he lived to come home. The luster had gone from boarding the commuter train and parading across the Loop with others running the same race. Yet he never wavered in his commitment to go. Even after the tumultuous collapse of his real estate company, he didn’t stay home even one day but rented a single-room office downtown, arranged for a phone, packed his briefcase and went to work.

When we moved to Michigan, his commute time doubled. But ever an advocate of riding trains, he daily boarded the South Shore Line for a journey from Michigan to the Loop. Amazingly, he didn’t mind, despite low energy and serious back pain. He took the 6:20 AM train to work the day we received his cancer diagnosis, and the next morning, against all logic, he climbed on the train again.

Jesus never experienced the pressure of a fast-paced commute with masses of people, but he definitely knew stress. His response was to decompress with the Father, separating himself from others and pulling close to his Sustainer. Amazingly, that same stress-reducer is available to us today with the identical benefit. Jesus successfully dealt with the burdens of his life by sharing them with God, and we can do the same. The invitation still stands. If we choose to go-it-alone, we step away from our most valuable resource.

Today I traced Nate’s commuter footsteps back into the rat race, riding the South Shore train to the Loop. Realizing the enormity of his commitment to continue commuting and working, I was emotionally moved while bumping along the rails.

What I did today took effort (finding the schedule, watching the clock, driving 19 miles to the station, waiting for a parking spot, hassling with the ticket machine), but he did this daily. I was making the journey for recreational reasons, but he did it to meet the demands of a pressure-cooker job.

My admiration for Nate’s willingness to run the rat race for his family knows no bounds. And it’s nice to know he has finally decompressed 100%.

“Jesus went out to a mountainside to pray, and spent the night praying to God.” (Luke 6:12)