Yearly Archives: 2011

Growth Spurt

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All of us grandmas love our grands. They bring fresh energy into our aging worlds and insist on hope for the future. They also let us squeeze their beautiful baby flesh.

My five grands, age 2 and under, live many miles from me, and while we’re apart they’re growing and changing. This week I received a packet of new pictures from my daughter-in-law, Katy, sent from their home in England.

As I studied each photo, my heart ached to be with these little people. I hardly recognized Thomas and Evelyn, nearly 6 months older than when I saw them last. When you’re only 1 year old, half a year causes dramatic change.

Last night I watched a several-minute video on Facebook of my 2 Florida babies playing in the tub. Listening to Skylar sing “Old McDonald” as she poured water, oblivious to being videoed, made me want to log onto www.cheaptickets.com

If these 5 would stay the same as when I left them last, our separations wouldn’t be so bad. But they continually change in appearance and grow in skills, no matter how badly I want them to stop. Nicholas and Micah have quintupled their vocabulary, and I’ve not been there to talk with them. That hurts! The only way to cope with this disturbing phenomenon is to keep in touch as best we can and schedule times of togetherness.

From the perspective of my 5 grands, I’m not changing much. I probably seem exactly the same to them, each time we’re together, but the truth is I’m changing, too. Steadily and surely I’m accumulating more wrinkles, gaining in forgetfulness and losing in strength. As much as I’d like to halt those changes, I can’t.

So my babies are changing, I’m changing, and then there is Nate.

From an earthly perspective, he’ll be forever 64. In his absence I’ve turned 65 and soon will hit 66. Although we were always 10 days apart in age, today we’ve grown 528 days apart. He’ll stay put, and I’ll keep counting. He’ll never have gray hair or get senile. His life as Nathan Nyman is frozen in time the way I wish my grandchildren would freeze between visits and my aging would come to a screeching halt.

Of course the reality of Nate’s agelessness is that he’s actually changed more dramatically than me or any of my 5 grands. He’s brand new, glorified, radically different. If I could get a glimpse of him, I’d probably gasp in wonder. It’s encouraging to know God has promised that all of us will one day be changed in the same ways Nate has been. The clock will stop, and we’ll be glad.

But there’s a catch: we have to wait until God schedules the change, because even www.cheaptickets.com can’t make it happen.

”In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye… we shall be changed.” (1 Corinthians 15:52)

Can we understand?

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Nate and I sat in front of a panel of doctors at a Chicago hospital and heard the words “terminal cancer,” but didn’t take it in.

That’s probably a typical response to a deadly diagnosis. It’s an acquaintance none of us want to make, so our minds rebuff it. Days later, the words and their meaning sink in, and because there’s no other choice, we accept our challenge and try our best. But while we’re suffering, our questions pile up. God answers some, but for the most part, he doesn’t give us a satisfying understanding.

A parallel situation occurs as we parent our children. We try to be mini-versions of God, raising them with what wisdom we have, trying to imitate the way he wisely raises us. Part of that is taking kids to the doctor for regular well-care. When we hold them down for a vaccination, we allow such “abuse” for only one reason: it brings benefit to them. But can they understand that? Of course not.

They cry and kick, trying to get away, but we force the issue, knowing the importance of protecting them from deadly diseases. We have valid reasons, but they don’t understand them. Children live in the “now” which during a vaccination hurts a great deal.

As adults we ought not to live in the “now”, but we often do. Harsh circumstances come and we demand that God explain himself. “How could you? Don’t you love us? Why didn’t you stop this?” As the diagnosis comes, the accident happens, the heartbreak occurs, we cry and kick to get away, because we can’t understand the reasons for it.

But God definitely has his reasons. He could explain himself, but just like a parent in the pediatrician’s office, if he did, we wouldn’t hear him. I’ve actually tried explaining the needles to my children as they’ve seen them coming: “It’ll feel bad now, but later you won’t get the measles!” Not one of them accepted my reasons for their agony. They just screamed louder, drowning out my explanation.

If God sat us down and shared his reasons for letting cancer or any other tragedy come to us, just like a child in the doctor’s office, his explanation would go unheard. It wouldn’t lessen the misery of the moment, so it wouldn’t satisfy us. We’d just drown it out with our objections.

And so he doesn’t explain, at least not while we’re in crisis mode. Later, usually much later, he offers bits of his reasoning. Then, depending on our response, he might offer more. One truth ribboned throughout Scripture is that if we take one step toward him, he takes one-thousand toward us.

Like Moses in front of the burning bush that wasn’t consumed, when he turned toward it looking for an answer to what he couldn’t understand, then God spoke to him.

It’s difficult to find peace within pain. But God’s message to us is, “Look at me, and you’ll hear from me.”

“When the Lord saw that [Moses] turned aside to look, God called to him from the midst of the bush.” (Exodus 3:4)

The Nose Knows

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God was generous to give us five senses. If one malfunctions, the other four can pick up the slack. I no longer have a sense of smell after receiving “the atomic bomb of antibiotics” during a hospital stay in 2005. (“Scent or smell?” Jan. 9, 2010) But I don’t view this as a handicap. On some occasions it’s actually a benefit. I can change a baby’s diaper without gagging and am not bothered by ammonia-based cleaning products. But what about missing smells meant to hint at danger?

Last week I got a “taste” of that. While our hardwood floors were being refinished, Birgitta and I had been staying in a house without an internet signal. We decided to head home for a quick in-and-out to get on line. She sat on the front steps with her laptop, and I went inside to a tiny area on the tile floor where an old tabletop computer was still attached to the cable.

Nested amidst stacked furniture, bins of books, a piano, fridge and stove, I booted up and began checking email. The wood floors six feet away were still tacky with that morning’s sealant application, but of course I couldn’t smell it.

In a few minutes my eyes began to sting, but I figured a short night’s sleep was the reason. Rapid blinking helped, and I forgot about it until a strange ache behind my eyes got my attention. “I’ll use my Visine when I get back in the car,” I thought. Then the headache began, mild at first but eventually pounding, and I thought I might have felt a chest pain.

An hour had gone by when Birgitta walked in with her closed laptop, ready to leave. “Oh Mom, it reeks in here!” she said. “How can you stand it?”

“I can’t smell anything,” I said.

“I’m gonna wait outside,” she said. “My eyes are stinging.” And that’s when I realized my nose had missed something important.

Scripture includes a wonderful parallel to my lack of olfactory common sense. God tells us the world is full of opportunities to make wise or foolish choices. Many of them don’t “smell bad” in the beginning, but in time they lead to a poisonous stench. Lowering our guard against sins that seem to smell good at the moment will lead us into a noxious wasteland of ruined relationships and rotted dreams.

Although I can’t smell polyurethane, I know it’s important to keep my spiritual sense of smell sensitive so it can recognize deadly behavioral odors. Thankfully that sense doesn’t depend on olfactory nerves and can’t be damaged if only I’m willing to be careful of what I will and won’t “smell”. But if I sniff around where I ought not to be, before long my nose won’t know what it knows.

If that happens, I hope God gives me spiritually-stinging eyes to let me know I should take my nose and go!

“The idols of the nations… have noses but cannot smell. And those who make idols are just like them, as are all who trust in them.” (Psalm 135:15, 17, 18)

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