Category Archives: God’s plans for us

A Healthy, Happy Husband

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As we’ve moved through our last vacation day at Afterglow, I’ve missed my husband. When our family used to travel from home in years past, Nate wasn’t just my spouse. He was my same-age buddy, a pal, someone I could talk to and share with, knowing he’d see things from my same-age perspective.

Today for example, our last chance to pursue Northwoods activities, my vote was to travel 20 minutes into Upper Michigan to revisit the spectacular Bond Falls, but with the complication of baby naps and the guys wanting to fish, there were no takers. But if Nate had been here, he’d have gone with me.

This week of family time has brought several unexpected jolts related to the problem of not having Nate with me as a vacationing peer. Last night as we finished a late dinner, I watched and listened to our adult kids talking, laughing, moving in and out of topics, and suddenly I felt like a fifth wheel. It was a quick flash of, “I’m the odd-man-out here.”

I know the kids weren’t thinking like that, but as I looked around the table, my mental status made a major shift from co-parent to single mom, something that hadn’t occurred to me yet. And it felt awkward. Although the label “single mom” is accurate, it doesn’t dictate I’m now a fifth wheel around my children.

I miss my partner a great deal, especially at our shared vacation place. But would I have wanted him here this past week with piercing back pain, struggling to maintain his composure with crying babies and crazy schedules?

Would Nate have been able to cope with sleeping in a set of bunk beds as I have this week? Would he have been ok with the two young families using the two bigger bedrooms?

Would I have been glad he was with us if he’d had the cancer death sentence hanging over his head and ours?

“No” to all of the above.

The Nate I’ve been missing was the one who stacked all our vacation debris on a makeshift trailer and towed it behind a station wagon for 350 miles each summer. I missed the guy who taught the kids to bait a hook, cast a line, reel in a fish and fry it in a pound of butter. I longed for the man who’d been happy to ride double on a horse with a toddler, triple on a motorcycle with two pre-schoolers and who’d run off the high dive like he was a kid himself.

But that man, that pal, that father… can’t be here.

The bottom line, as always, is that our family scenario worked out this way because God orchestrated it as such. But I trusted him back when Nate was healthy and happy at Afterglow, and I’m trusting him now.

After all, Nate is, indeed, healthy and happy again. He’s just not at Afterglow Lake.

“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, which is good and pleasing and perfect.” (Romans 12:2)

Is it an oxymoron?

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Becoming a parent is to sign on for 20 years of intense, fatiguing work that ages a couple before their time. Why then do people say that having children “keeps you young?”

During these days at Afterglow, I’m observing this parental oxymoron up close, young parents in the throes of exhaustion while simultaneously gaining energy from their lively offspring. Children bring sparkle to life. God certainly knew what he was doing when he made babies so adorable. Dog-tired parents staggering toward the crib for the fifth time in one night melt when they see their little one, even when viewed through the fog of fatigue.

Watching all this baby-action at Afterglow, such a familiar location, brings back floods of happy memories of past vacations here when our children were young. They grew from babyhood to adulthood during our 25 years of visits to the Wisconsin Northwoods, and the photo albums bulge with proof of those joyful days together.

Last night as the 15 of us were finishing up a dinner of pork chops, baked potatoes, veggies, brownies and ice cream, Linnea disappeared and returned carrying a big gift-wrapped package, tied with a glittered bow. Skylar zeroed in on it right away. “Grandma Midgee! Open that blue present right now!”

She helped me unwrap one of the most precious gifts I’ve ever received, a scrapbook-sized, hard-bound book all about Nate. Beginning months ago, Linnea had gathered photos and texts from each of her siblings, including our daughter-and-son-in-law. Many of the pictures had been taken through our years at Afterglow, and the theme of the album was Nate’s love for his family.

I studied it carefully a second time after everyone was asleep, savoring the beauty of our family past and letting tears of gratitude come as I read again what each one had to say about their father and father-in-law. When I put my head on the pillow later, the thought resounded, “I have much to be thankful for with no cause for complaint.”

God wants us to have gratitude in all situations, throughout every day, and that’s all-inclusive. It includes the day we learn of cancer, the moment a husband/father dies, the hour of his funeral, the weeks of sadness that follow, and every circumstance we might encounter through the years. In recent months I’ve learned we can even be thankful while weeping. On its surface, this seems to be an oxymoron, but following these biblical instructions turns out to be the path of healing.

Although some things are harder than others to thank God for, I know one that’s always easy: my children/children-in-law. I’ve got the best kids in the world, despite every parent saying the same thing. Last night that truth was underscored when they presented me with their beautiful album.

Of course none of us will ever forget Nate, but now we have the treasure of this custom-made book chronicling his life in both words and photos to keep it all fresh… another reason for me to be grateful during this season of healing.

“Make thankfulness your sacrifice to God.” (Psalm 50:14a)

Preparation Day

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Yesterday was Labor Day, but today felt more like it as we labored to pack for a family vacation. Although I’ve put more than 16,000 miles on my Highlander in seven months, there’s been no restful retreat. Beginning tomorrow, however, we’ll start an official pleasure trip to the Wisconsin Northwoods, a week together after the most strenuous year of our lives.

Our destination is nearly 500 miles from the Michigan cottage, so perseverance will be tomorrow’s byword. We’ll be heading for Afterglow Lake Resort in Phelps, Wisconsin, a destination dear to all of us. Nate chose it 33 years ago when Nelson was four, Lars two and Linnea a newborn. We’d never been so far north and were astonished by the striking beauty of aspen forests full of wild blueberries and quiet lakes reflecting clean skies.

We loved our week “up north” so much, we returned for 25 summers in a row. Unlike the unpredictable waters of Lake Michigan, Afterglow never varied with its still surface, absent of motorboats and their noise. The lake was always stocked with fish, and each cabin came with a rowboat for young fishermen to try their luck. Nate taught all our kids to fish at Afterglow, spending as many hours in a boat with them as on terra firma.

The freedom that was afforded children at Afterglow was a big draw, since they could roam endless acreage in safety. We required life jackets until age 12, after which we knew they’d survive if they capsized a canoe, slipped off a Sunfish or fell from a boat.

Five of our grown children will be on this trip, each one keen to revisit Afterglow. Lars mentioned that he and Nelson used to hide trinkets in the woods before we left each year, eagerly running back to check for them the next summer. They’ll be checking again this year, although nine harsh, northern winters will have worked to dislodge whatever they last hid.

As we leave, all of us are hoping to meet with the fun of yesteryear, but we know we’re taking a chance. Without Nate leading our pack, we may be in for some tear-filled surprises. But I firmly believe it was God’s idea in the first place that we return to Afterglow. Last Christmas, with Nate’s November death still so fresh and painful, I didn’t have the heart for Christmas shopping. Our spirits were flagging, and the only thing any of us wanted for Christmas was to have Nate back.

So I cried out to the Lord and asked him what to do. The idea for coupons under the Christmas tree promising a week at Afterglow Lake in 2010 was God’s answer. (See “Lowering Expectations” Dec. 26, 2009) The kids had been thrilled at the time, and we all looked forward to that distant day, hoping we’d be well on the way to healing by then.

And here we are, departing in the morning. Healing has been checkered at best, and none of us is sure how this will work. Our expectation isn’t to cling to the past or reestablish Nate’s tradition without Nate. We’re just trying to put a period at the end of a long, happy vacation story.

Or… because we’ll have the effervescent Skylar along with us, instead of a period, it might just be an exclamation point!

“Then Jesus said, ‘Let’s go off by ourselves to a quiet place and rest awhile’.” (Mark 6:31)