Category Archives: Disease and dying

The Bookends of Life

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Today Birgitta and I talked about the unpredictability of a baby’s arrival and the resulting stress of not being able to plan ahead. Will labor begin this afternoon? Tomorrow? A week from now? Which calendar events will we have to cancel because we’re on our way to the hospital?

Of course those of us not anticipating a labor and delivery know similar frustrations. Although Birgitta’s situation is blatantly unpredictable, the rest of us don’t really have things under control, either. But it’s easy to fool ourselves into thinking we do. Ha ha to that.

Any single day has a thousand elements that can “wiggle” and force us from planned agendas. A potent example occurred last weekend through a phone call from a young man close to our family. Earlier that day his mother had died in her apartment as the result of a fire. This news sent him into a flurry of schedule-shuffling and has rearranged his priorities every hour since then.

Any one of us can be on top of the world one minute and in turmoil the next. All it takes is a tiny text, a quick phone call, or a brief email. Confusion and commotion could be around the next corner for any of us, and that even includes the baby that’s about to join our family.

Birgitta’s little girl will shortly be thrown into stressful turmoil of her own, just by being born. We know many of the ways her day of birth is going to be a tough one, but she has no idea. For the moment she’s resting peacefully, unencumbered by expectations or anxiety, blissfully unaware of what’s just ahead. But as labor begins and then progresses, she’ll undergo circumstances quite different from the agenda she’s followed for 9 months without interruption.

A familiar Scripture says, “We brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out.” (1 Timothy 6:7) We generally think that refers to physical nakedness, but it could also mean a baby arrives without bringing a care or concern, no preconceptions, misconceptions, or expectations. But can we apply that in reverse at the end of our lives when we “take nothing out?”

Actually we can. When we die, as our friend’s mother did, we don’t take our worries or health problems with us, our pain, or any other negative, including relationship struggles. So the idea “you can’t take it with you” turns out to be something good.

Can we learn anything from the truth that our lives are bookended by “nothing-in, nothing-out?” Maybe wisdom in this is to hold our plans lightly and refuse to stress when disturbing texts, calls, and emails derail us. Maybe we should trust God to use every derailment (and our responses to them) toward readying us for eternity.

And that’s the one exception to the “nothing-out” rule. Preparation for eternity? It turns out we can take that with us.

“Even the best years are filled with pain and trouble; soon they disappear, and we fly away.” (Psalm 90:10)

Try to bloom.

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Spring, not autumn, is the season for fresh flowers, and we love gathering crocus, lily of the valley, and jonquils into our homes. Fall, on the other hand, is about readying our gardens for winter. Though colored leaves can be striking, fresh flowers are hard to come by…

…unless you live in my neighborhood.

As Jack and I strolled around the block last week, we found a spring-like surprise: brand new blossoms in dramatic purple, pushing up from a tangle of ivy roots and stems. Looking more like Easter than Columbus Day, they made me stop to oooh and ahhh, and I’ve been thinking about them ever since.

All of us have heard the expression, “Bloom where you’re planted,” which is exactly what these flowers are doing. Though that quote isn’t from Scripture, its principle is. No matter what snarling circumstances surround us, God wants each of us to accept our lot in life, or, put more eloquently, to embrace his will.

What if he decides that an extreme hardship is what we need to turn our attention to him? Wouldn’t that “misfortune,” then, be in our best interest? That kind of logic makes us squirm. “It’s not fair!” we say.

All of us want to live on Easy Street. Something deep inside says we deserve that. So why doesn’t God make it happen? If he can do anything, then why doesn’t he choose to make us happy?

  • Because each difficulty coaxes us closer to him.
  • Because we can demonstrate his sustenance through troubles.
  • Because by cheerfully enduring, we can bank rewards for later.
  • Because flexing our perseverance-muscles makes us stronger for next time.
  • Because living above circumstances is the high-road way to live.
  • Because God has told us, “In this, you can please me.”

In other words, the Lord assigns certain hardships to each of us and is keenly interested in how we’ll handle them. When we bloom in the middle of those messes, whether it’s poverty, terminal illness, financial stress, or something else, the beauty and perfume of the resulting flowers can impact many, much like the purple “Resurrection Lily” (or “Surprise Lily”) impacted me. When we’re joyful through suffering, it surprises people.

But there’s a catch. We can’t do it on our own. Cheerfully accepting a “fate” that seems unfair makes our mental scales-of-justice tip. More natural is to run from it, fight it, or try to escape it altogether. From where God sits, however, those reactions go down as losses.

So, to encourage us to bloom against all odds exactly where he plants us, the Lord has told us that one day every believer will indeed have an address on Easy Street. And I’ll bet the blossoms in those yards are going to be out of this world.

“Let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you.” (Romans 12:2)

Wall Art

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Years ago a good friend was walking through our Illinois home after we’d completed some renovations and said, “Everything looks good, but the only art on your walls is pictures of your kids.”

I had to admit we’d probably overdone that. Every child was represented in every room, including bathrooms. I responded to him with humor, saying our children were our artwork, and Nate chimed in with a statement about how big the price tag was for such art.

But when we moved to Michigan, there were fewer rooms to decorate and far fewer walls. So I thought I’d show some restraint by not nailing up our children all over the place, deciding instead to give the seven of them one framed wall-picture apiece. Choosing the pictures was easy.

Because there will be no more photos taken with Nate, those we do have with him are precious, maybe even qualifying now as works of art. So I decided the seven kids’ pictures would all be father-and-child. The result is hanging in the hallway at the top of our steep, narrow stairway with a quote from the Bible’s love chapter written above them:

“Now abideth faith, hope, and love, but the greatest of these is love.” (1 Cor. 13:13)

Many times each day I walk past these seven hanging frames with their accompanying verses and sometimes stop to study them. I enjoy looking into Nate’s face and like the way he’s got his arms wrapped around each child in the pictures. It’s an effective way to re-appreciate everything he did for his family, and to be continuously thankful for him.

Linking it with a verse about love reminds me of Nate’s love for his children, which was unstoppable.  I hope none of them ever doubt that, since they know he would have done anything for them to make their lives better (and often did).

A piece of mental artwork my mind treasures is the love Nate demonstrated toward his children on the day he received his diagnosis of metastasized pancreatic cancer. As he and I drove home from the doctor’s appointment that day, his first priority was to personally tell each of his children of his illness, one-on-one.

This was no small task for a man who’d just been clobbered with a death sentence, but he did it. He had to press through his own emotional pain seven times on seven phone calls in order to be present with each one during that difficult moment when they received the bad news. He had his arms around them as best he could.

And that’s true love.

Maybe the key to the most valuable artwork for any wall is the combination of people-pictures and scriptural words. God’s one-on-one love for all people is unstoppable, and he wants to be present during every traumatic moment of our lives if we’ll let him, to wrap “the greatest of these” loving arms around us.

As for the walls in the heavenly home he’s preparing for those who love him? I’ll bet every wall will be covered with us.

“How amazing are your thoughts concerning me, God! How vast is the sum of them! Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand.” (Psalm 139:17-18)