Yearly Archives: 2010

Mom never worried.

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My mother was a yes-mom who loved trying new things and taking risks. She especially loved children and thought every idea that came from the mind of a child was a good one. As a matter of fact, many of her adult ideas were childlike. For example, she used to have us collect rocks in a bucket then climb in the car. She’d drive us around Wilmette with the windows down telling us to throw rocks at stop signs to see if we could hit the middle and make a “ping”. To her it was good clean fun. Today she’d probably be behind bars. But being raised by a mom who never worried about the what-ifs made for a delightful childhood.

Actually, mom never worried about a thing. She used to tell us, “I have nothing to worry about; your father does enough for both of us.” That was accurate.

As we move farther into the new year, my mind wants to wander forward through the months, wondering what will happen. All of us look back to last year at this time when 2009 was stretched out in front of us and shake our heads remembering how little we knew. Here we are at another January, and after looking back, today we worry forward.

Worrying comes naturally to most of us. Last January we had no concerns about pancreatic cancer, yet it came. So our brains follow that with, “You’d better worry about that and lots of other things for this year,” as if fretting about the unknown could possibly help.

As Nate’s illness progressed, I worried about quite a few things. What if he fell again? What if he broke a bone and landed in the hospital? What if we couldn’t get him home again? What if I got the meds mixed up? What if he got out the front door and walked away without us knowing? What if he cried out in pain as he died or left us with an expression of agony on his face?

What if, what if, what if. Not one of these things happened. In essence, I worried for nothing. That’s one reason why worry isn’t good. A second and more important reason is that stressing about the future betrays a lack of trust in God to care for it. Scripture tells us worrying never helps a thing. (Luke 12:25) And more serious than that, it chokes out God’s efforts to guide us while we’re trying to be our own guides. (Matthew 13:22)

All of us have enough to do living one day at a time. We don’t need to mentally travel into the future putting down roots of worry there, wasting time and energy on unfruitful thinking while eroding our relationship with the Lord. He’s watching and making a continual assessment of what we need. Better than that, he’s the only one able to satisfy those needs.

I believe God is constantly preparing to take care of our basic needs ahead of our arrival to the future. We saw it happen again and again with Nate’s cancer and related needs, sometimes in dramatic ways. I’m ashamed to say I was often surprised when the needs were met, considering it a rare gift each time rather than the fulfillment of what God said he was going to do all along. Didn’t I believe him? Apparently not.

I hope to do better on that score in 2010, expecting my basic needs to be met through God’s provision, then responding with gratitude. That is precisely what Jesus was describing when he told us to “have the faith of a little child.” Children have faith that their parents will care for them and don’t wrestle with the what ifs. When parents do meet their needs, security and trust are built into their lives and they can transfer that kind of faith-in-parents to faith-in-God without too much trouble. We could take a lesson.

Maybe that’s what mom found so attractive in kids, their complete abandon of worry. As she spent more and more time with them, she became like them in that way. Once again, we could take a lesson.

There’s only one thing to be worried about: buckets of rocks in the back seat of a car.

“For all these things [food, clothing, shelter, goods, possessions] the nations of the world eagerly seek; but your Father knows that you need these things. [You won’t be] forgotten before God. Indeed, the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Do not fear; you are…  valuable.” (Luke 12:30, 6b-7)

Triumph in the End

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When I was a student at Wheaton College, President Edman had a favorite phrase with which he peppered his chapel messages and everyday conversation: “Not somehow, but triumphantly.”

As my family and I pace through these weeks without Nate, those words often come to my mind. I want to be about “getting through this” not just by the skin of my teeth but triumphantly. The opposite of that would be to get stuck where we are now, which would wear us out until eventually sadness would become the dictator of every day. For me, a triumph in this situation is not a fist-in-the-air-leaping kind of victory but a quiet confidence in God’s goodness. Some ask, “How in the world can God be good if he snatches a husband/father/grandfather without warning in only 42 days?”

I do hope the answer to that question will be evident in my life and in the lives of our kids.

At the end of this (and I do believe there will be an eventual end to our time of upset and mourning), I want to look back and say that although the cancer itself wasn’t good, God was. I want to testify, “What the Lord did in each of our lives turned out to be overwhelmingly positive,” with Nate at the head of that list.

I’m about to say something that might make people bristle. It may sound unrealistic and idealistic, but I believe it wholeheartedly. A year or so from now, if we stay close to God in prayer and hang on to the promises of Scripture, I believe each of us will be better off than we were before Nate died. To put it a different way, I think if we continue grieving while placing our trust in God, we will have experienced an increase in: hope for our futures, sympathy for the pain of others, gratitude for daily blessings and confidence that God’s way of doing things is always superior to ours…. increases in all of those. I don’t fully understand how this works, but because it’s in Scripture, I believe it.

Of course typing words on a keyboard is easy compared to living them. My resolve to live triumphantly melts when I see Nate’s cane standing in the corner or find one of his handkerchiefs static-clinging inside a pillow case in the linen closet. I can break down at seeing a New York Times or finding a stray Post-it note with his writing on it.

My widow warriors tell me the wound from losing Nate will heal but will leave an emotional scar. Scars change us to a certain extent but once healed, no longer hurt. That’s what I’m expecting. Eventually I’ll be able to see his cane or the New York Times with a flash of memory but not of pain.

So how to I handle Nate’s death “not somehow but triumphantly”? I think the answer lies in truly believing that God is doing his behind-the-scenes work in all of us right now and also in our being willing to wait patiently until it’s visible.

Dr. Edman also said, “Never doubt in the dark what God has taught you in the light.” Because the Lord has promised that Nate’s death will result in good (Romans 8:28), I want to run from doubting that it won’t. Even though tears still fall and the wound still hurts, I want to keep on believing the promise, because it was God who said it.

“Those who sow in tears shall reap with shouts of joy! He who goes out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing, shall come home with shouts of joy, bringing his sheaves with him.” (Psalm 126:5-6)

“My soul waits for the Lord more than they that watch for the morning: I say, more than they that watch for the morning.” (Psalm 130:6)

Bed Hopping

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This morning, the first of a new year, I started the day by changing my sheets. As I was pulling the old ones off, it occurred to me Nate’s side was unused and still had its neat laundry folds. I studied his side of the bed, pillow still freshly ironed, and all of a sudden I felt very alone. He is completely gone. Permanently. We will never sleep together again. I just didn’t know what to do next.

When Nate and I got married, like all young couples with togetherness on their minds, we couldn’t wait to sleep together. But we did wait. When we finally got married, Nate was a second year law student, and I taught school in a small town. Between us we didn’t have much, but one reason we took the third floor walk-up was its Murphy bed, the kind that folded down from an upright position behind a wide closet door.

This bed had metal bands instead of springs and a mattress flat enough to be a dog bed, but it meant we wouldn’t have to buy a bed. Never mind that it was only twin size. Our thought was, “The closer the better.” We envisioned ourselves cuddled up in the hammock-like middle, and it was a perfect picture.

A few months after we married, we found ourselves the recipients of some beautiful bedroom furniture sent by a college pal looking for a place to “store” it. It was made of Australian satinwood, each piece a work of art. We were grateful to move up in the bed-world to a full size bed and spent 36 years sleeping on it.

But as the decades rolled by, good sleep became more important yet more difficult to get. Our full size bed began to feel small, especially to me, since Nate got three-fourths and I got one-fourth. Then one day out of the blue he said, “How about we buy a bigger bed?”

Not wanting to split up the beautiful bedroom set we were still “storing”, I fought his suggestion until his habit of running his toes along the bottom of my feet started to get to me.

“A bit of love during the night,” he’d say.

“A bit of torture while I’m trying to sleep,” I’d say.

In the end, the satinwood bed was dismantled and put away. For our 60th birthdays which came together, we bought a king size bed. The morning after we spent our first night on it, Nate’s laughter woke me up. He was standing in the doorway with his coffee mug, getting a kick out of something.

“What?” I asked.

“You,” he said. “You’re so close to the edge, you look like you might fall off.”

It’s hard to break old habits. Eventually, though, I claimed my share of our glorious bed, and there was still room to spare. We agreed it was the best gift ever, and after that, sleeping was easy.

When we moved to the Michigan cottage, the tiny stairway with its low ceiling nearly eliminated our bed entirely but the movers finally made it work. Then when we learned about Nate’s cancer, we determined to stay in our beloved bed as long as possible. Stairs, however, quickly became a risk for him, and wisdom dictated bringing in a hospital bed on the main floor.

His last 17 nights he slept in that second choice bed, but as with each of his losses, Nate didn’t complain. He acknowledged the benefits of an undulating mattress to help his skin, rails to keep him secure and the absence of steps in his routine. He never once said, “I wish I was in our big bed upstairs.”

I wish I was as mature as he was in accepting what cannot be changed about life. He accepted the misery of his last weeks as what God had willed for him and never asked why. Although Nate sometimes fought the circumstances of his life, it’s interesting that when faced with the worst possible scenario, that of life and death, he surrendered. He’d met a challenge he couldn’t conquer, and he recognized it. I believe it goes against men to be dependent, but Nate accepted having to become more and more dependent on those around him. Ultimately he accepted dependence on God alone.

This morning I didn’t change the sheets after all. I just flipped them. Nate’s side is now on mine, and my side is on his.

”I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. My God will supply all your needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus.” (Phil. 4:13,19)