Category Archives: Remembering

What were the odds?

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Nate and I were born ten days apart but grew up not knowing each other, and our families didn’t meet until after we did. Our childhoods unfolded in similar ways, though, starting with wild tales told by our mothers of what it was like to labor and deliver in hospitals without air conditioning, in August. (My mother’s quote: “A trip to hell’s door.”)

This week, while looking through Nate’s old photographs, I came across a childhood parallel I’d never noticed before. I found a picture I knew I’d seen someplace else. Paging through one of Mom’s old albums, there it was. Her photo mirrors Nate’s.

The pictures were taken of each family vacationing in Silver Springs, Florida, about to take a ride on a glass-bottom boat, popular entertainment back then. They would view brightly colored fish, sunken ships and scuba divers who were busy finding treasure. In my picture, (the one on top) Dad and Mom with us kids sit in the first seats on the left side of the boat. In the other picture, Nate’s family also sits in the first seats on the left side of a boat.

So we had the same family vacation in what looks like the same old boat at the same attraction, some time in the 1950’s. Our fathers both succumbed to buying the photographs, which wasn’t typical for either of them, and both families managed to keep track of them for 50 years. What were the odds?

Mom used to tell of a similar coincidence from her past. When she was an infant, her mother would “air the baby” in a buggy each afternoon, believing children needed sunshine and fresh air. Because they lived in a Chicago neighborhood, an alley ran behind their house, across from which lived another family with children. The two families never met, but after Mom and Dad were married three decades later, the connection was made.

Dad was 13 years older than Mom so had clear memories of living in the house across the alley. He told us of seeing a woman (our grandmother) rolling her baby out into the yard each day to nap. That baby was Mom. Although her family moved away before the two could meet, once Mom and Dad compared childhood addresses and dates, they put it together. What were the odds?

I believe God puts unlikely circumstances like these together continually, around the world. He’s arranging happy “coincidences” by the millions, and is probably doing it just for his own pleasure. When he opens our eyes to “get” even one of these unlikely connections (like the glass-bottom boat or the baby carriage), we all get a big charge out of it. And as we move through the eons of life in glory with the Lord, I have no doubt he’ll reveal every instance of “chance” he orchestrated, and we will be in awe.

We’ll have plenty of “time” to listen to his cleverly executed arrangements and will be mouths-hanging-open-stunned by his ingenuity. Maybe he’ll even let us watch ourselves on a cosmic video of some sort.

But best of all, we’ll be shown it had nothing to do with chance. What were the odds?

100%

”Come and see what God has done, how awesome his works on man’s behalf!” (Psalm 66:5)

The Marrying Kind, Part V

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A year ago at this time, Nate and I knew nothing of the terminal cancer diagnosis that was about to crash into our lives. But he was experiencing serious back pain and was looking forward to “going under the knife” for a chance at reducing his agony.

Spring was difficult as he continued to work a full schedule, commuting to Chicago’s Loop daily from the suburbs. But when he arrived home at 7:00 pm, he was exhausted. The stresses of lawyering didn’t compare to the strain of fighting constant pain.

Nate became especially low during the weeks when I was packing up the house to move. I’d spend the short evening with him and then, after he was asleep, would head back to the basement crawl space.

As I dug into boxes of memorabilia, I came across reminders of past friendships and events. It occurred to me Nate might enjoy looking at some of the items if he couldn’t sleep during the night. Good memories might be a happy distraction from the pain that continually tormented him.

He always sat on one end of a short couch where the lamp shone well on his reading material and the table was just right to hold his coffee, Post-its, pen and phone. I decided to try my idea and put a letter from an old law school friend on the table. I knew he’d see it before the night had ended.

In the morning, the letter from his pal was lying on the kitchen counter with a Post-it note attached and a “remember when” statement. My plan had worked. For at least a few minutes during his painful night, he’d been lifted to a different time and place.

As I continued working in the basement, I’d set things aside to use in the middle-of-the-night “mail drop.” And every morning the item was in the kitchen with a note attached. Eventually he told me he looked forward to seeing what was on the table, thanking me for this nightly walk down Memory Lane.

And then I found the letter he’d written to my parents shortly after we were engaged. (The Marrying Kind, Part III) I set it on his table, and in the morning his attached Post-it had two lines of poetry on it:

“When all the world and love was young —

Come live with me and be my love.”

After 40 years of marriage, Nate had again declared his love for me. One of the lines in his letter had said: “Love for Margaret is a spiritual gift with which the Lord has blessed me.”

When I first read that, it sounded grandiose and exaggerated. But in thinking about love being the creation of God, Nate’s declaration was on target. Scripture says God himself is love and that true love always initiates with him.

I do know one thing beyond all doubt. Nate loved me unconditionally. His Post-it note, attached to the letter he wrote 40 years earlier, bookended a lifetime of love toward me that had not waned through all those years. Because I was not always loveable, and because Nate loved me anyway, there is no other explanation except to say, as he did, that love is a gift from God.

And I’m thankful Nate unwrapped it and shared it with me.

“Let us continue to love one another, for love comes from God.” (1 John 4:7a)

Perfection

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It’s hard to be perfect at anything. No matter how we try, our efforts are flawed. But when I was a kid, I got to be perfect at one thing: Sunday school attendance.

In the ‘40s and ‘50s, our church involvement went well beyond sitting through one hour-long worship service. Sunday school came before church, followed by a “fellowship time,” followed by “real” church. Since my family lived in the Chicago suburbs and Moody Church was in the city, we left home early and returned mid-afternoon, often heading back later for an evening worship service.

Nevertheless, many of us chased after perfect attendance. If we ventured out of town, a diligent search was made for an acceptable local church to attend. And it wasn’t good enough just to sit through a church service. In order to get attendance credit with our home church, we had to be present at a Sunday school hour, too. Then we proved that by bringing home a note from the vacation Sunday school, preferably written on their church letter-head.

If we successfully attended Sunday school for 52 weeks in a row, we received a gold and enamel brass bar attached to an attendance pin. Each new year came with a fresh chance to win another bar.

Although some Sunday school attendees continued to pursue perfect attendance even after high school, most of us figured going off to college closed the door to any additional bars, which is not to say we didn’t remain at least sporadically faithful anyway.

What made us want to attend Sunday school every single week of the year? In the beginning we were obedient little children just following orders, but that evolved into the fun of coming together with pals, which then grew into forming long-term friendships (and quite a few marriages).

As small fry we also loved the flannelgraph Bible stories and the teachers who taught them. During our teens we were coaxed to ponder life’s hardest questions and watched closely as our leaders lived out their faith in front of us. Many of us still point to these Sunday school teachers and youth pastors as important mentors in our lives. They encouraged us to “walk the high road” rather than take the easy route with instant gratification.

But the #1 motivation toward perfect Sunday school attendance was all about a person… actually three people. As we showed up week to week, we grew to know and love (1)  God our heavenly Father, (2) Jesus our personal Savior and the mysterious but powerful (3) Holy Spirit who, amazingly enough, was willing to live within us if we asked him. And because of these three, we learned that in God’s hands, even life’s negatives eventually yield blessings.

Whether or not we find perfection in any category on this earth, the Trinity has offered to provide eternal perfection to all who believe. And we don’t even have to attend Sunday school to get it.

“Let us think of ways to motivate one another to acts of love and good works. And let us not neglect our meeting together, as some people do, but encourage one another, especially now that the day of [Christ’s] return is drawing near.” (Hebrews 10:24-25)