Category Archives: Remembering

Happy Birthday, Nate…

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Every year on your birthday I look forward to writing you, even though I know my letter can’t be delivered. In the back of my mind, though, there’s always the possibility that by God’s doing, you just might be able to read it.

Only 64In thinking back on this past year, I realize I haven’t had a single dream about you. I’ve talked with other widows who occasionally “meet” their men in dreams and cherish these encounters as if they were real events. I confess I too have put my head on the pillow hoping you might appear that night, but it hasn’t happened recently.

That’s ok, though, because the few times we’ve met in dreams ended with your contented departure and my fretful resistance to it. But if I could meet you for real, I’d ask about every detail of your life in Paradise. Scripture tells me you’re in the presence of Jesus, surely a rich place of worship and learning.

When Jesus was on earth, he taught crowds of people who often scratched their heads in confusion at what he said. But I’ll bet you understand him perfectly now. How glorious!

As far as your earthly family goes, last week I gained another birthday increase, once again celebrating without my birthday buddy. But I’m getting used to it, since you’ve been gone for nearly 4 years. I still don’t like it, but I no longer cry.

Our family continues to expand with the birth of grandson Andrew Kenneth last spring. With 4 children ages 4 and under, Katy and Hans sure do lead lively lives, but they’re well organized and tackle all of it together. You’d be proud of this son of yours, once so disorganized but now efficient and productive. I’ve just spent a week and a half with them, and it’s a good thing I took my vitamins before I got there!

When I write to you next summer, Linnea and Adam’s fourth baby (due in January) will have revealed his or her name, face, and personality. They’re hoping it will be another smooth home birth, and I’m hoping to be part of it! We’ll miss you in a special way as we rejoice over that new little life.

The rest of your family is thriving in multiple categories, although none of your kids or kids-in-law are free of challenges. Three are job-hunting, one is a full time university student, several are financially tight, one is about to launch a web site, and one has been offered a teaching position in missions.

Most importantly, each is steadily walking toward God. None of them have taken the giant leap you have, right into his presence, but none of them is standing still either. And it’s a daily encouragement that while you’re living face-to-face with Jesus and other believers in Paradise, Jesus is also living with us, through his Spirit.

Touching youI miss you every day, Nate, and am earnestly looking forward to the time when faith in Christ will become sight of him, because then we’ll all be together.

But for now, please remember how much I love you.

From the one you used to call “your Meg.”

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BaldyThis afternoon we celebrated my brother-in-law Bervin’s birthday with a lunchtime party. Between plates of pot roast and birthday cake, Klaus posed an interesting question to Bervin’s grandchildren Ruby (4) and Beck (6). They’d been focusing on Emerald, who is close-to-bald at 9 months, wondering when she would get a decent head of hair.

Klaus said, “Ruby, you were a bald baby like that, too. What’s your favorite memory from that time?”

Ruby looked at him with a blank stare and couldn’t respond. But when Birgitta said, “Probably that you didn’t have to comb your hair every day,” she smiled. “All I did was ride around in a car seat,” she said.

Beck and Ruby

Beck, answering the same question said, “I remember that I didn’t have to do anything.” Of course their answers were fabricated, since neither one of them could remember being a baby.

Most peoples’ earliest memories are from the time they were 2 or 3 years old, but God doesn’t let us remember all the way back to zero. Maybe he doesn’t want us recalling the misery of birth, and every woman who’s ever delivered a baby would call that wisdom.

Baby brain

More likely we can’t recollect babyhood because the memory parts of our brains aren’t fully developed then. Babies don’t have language, either, to describe their experiences. Nevertheless God endowed each one with a complicated brain, all set to go. On most days we take this incredible gift for granted.

What about the brain(s) of the Trinity? Since Jesus was fully human, surely he had a brain much like ours. But what about his divine brain?

Although we forget nearly everything that happens in our first two years and tend to forget even adult memories if we live long enough, God never forgets a thing. Putting him into a memory grid of forgetting and remembering, though, is humanizing the divine. He knows everything about everything, and we believe that. But then what are we to do with the Scripture that says he “forgets our sins” once they’re confessed?

He actually says it 3 times (in both Old and New Testaments). Does this simply mean he voluntarily decides not to remind us or nag us about our past sins after we’ve repented of them?

Maybe it’s something even better than that.

Maybe he literally wills himself to forgetfulness and “remembers our sins no more” (as the Bible says) to make our forgiveness absolutely thorough. And then if Satan should come before him to accuse us, he can honestly say, “No…. I don’t have any memory of Margaret committing that sin. She’s clean on that one” (because of Jesus).

This possibility gives me goose bumps and inspires me to keep short accounts with God. And maybe his forgetting our sins isn’t that much different than Ruby and Beck forgetting what it was like to be babies…

…none of them have any memory of it.

“I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more.” (Hebrews 8:12)

Dirty Feet

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This weekend while I was on duty with Emerald, she and Jack assisted me with some yard work. I can’t say who was the greatest helper, but both added a special something.

Yard work helpersJack stood guard (er… sat guard) and Emerald provided the sound track, giggling and squealing over her discoveries: shriveled leaves, broken twigs, acorns, garden rocks. We didn’t accomplish a whole lot but did enjoy a satisfying hour together.

I couldn’t help but notice the baby’s beautiful skin against the rough ground and especially her sweet little feet, so soft and (so far) of very little use. But what struck me most on our gardening day was that her feet got dirty for the very first time.

Dirty feet.Sitting in the ivy, swiveling this way and that, her feet repeatedly rubbed against the soil, getting filthy. Her toenails had never had dirt under them before, and both Birgitta and I have loved kissing those clean feet to get her giggling. After our yard work, her feet looked like the rest of ours, and it wasn’t a good look for her.

I looked at my own feet, knowing they don’t look really clean even after they’ve been washed. And then I thought of Jesus, who washed the dirty feet of his 12 main men, despite most of them being old, worn out feet, probably gnarly, stained, and ugly.

The reason he did it was twofold: (1) to demonstrate the importance of humility, hoping the men would one day follow his example with others; and (2) to let them know that humbling themselves would bring blessing back to them.

SNM128510It wasn’t easy for Jesus to do what he did with the disciples’ feet that night, especially with his thoughts so focused on the excruciating hours of torture immediately ahead. But this last lesson from Master to students was important enough that not even the closeness of the crucifixion could dissuade him, which is why it’s such an important lesson for the rest of us, too.

As I sat Emerald on the edge of the kitchen sink to wash her feet, God gave me a sweet thought: “Emerald could be literally painted in mud, and you wouldn’t love her any less, would you?”

Jesus washed 24 big, smelly feet (including those of his betrayer) with a humility that verified a love so great, it can’t be explained. Though I’ll never be able to love to that depth, I can stand in awe of his great love, and think about that night when the Master put himself beneath his servants to make an incredibly important point: to humble oneself is to show love.

Jesus said, “Very truly I tell you, no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them.” (John 13:16-17)

“In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us.” (1 John 4:10)