C’mon and dance with me!

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Nate and I didn’t know how to dance. The first reason was that he struggled to find any sense of rhythm or beat. When he was in the Army, I remember attending a parade demonstration at Fort Knox, Kentucky. Hundreds of uniformed soldiers passed in front of us, marching in perfect step to the leader’s cadence…. except one. Despite all those soldiers wearing identical clothes, I found Nate immediately.

The second reason we were dance-ignorant was that I was raised to believe dancing was wrong. I had to sign a statement when I became a 16 year old member of my church, promising not to dance (among other things). Later when I chose a conservative Christian college, I signed a similar pledge.

Throughout my childhood, I wasn’t allowed to attend dance classes or school dances, nor could I listen to dance music. It mystified me, since Mom was adventuresome and loved music herself.

Then one day, while I was jumping around to “oldies” music at home, the real truth came out. Mom was watching me cavort to the beat and said, “It’s too bad we don’t believe in dancing. You’d be good at it.”

I realized then that all the no-dancing rules were just that: written rules she was trying to obey on the outside while on the inside she’d been dancing all those years. Though the policy didn’t change, figuring that out made me feel a lot better.

The bottom line was that neither Nate nor I ever learned to dance, not even after we decided it wasn’t really wrong. But we did learn to fake it enough to shuffle around a wedding reception dance floor, at least on the slower tunes.

All of us can get caught up in the letter of a law and then miss the spirit of it. That’s  a serious offense, as Jesus pointed out to the biblical Pharisees. Their 600 rigid religious laws had strayed far from what God had intended when he gave the 10 commandments. So Jesus straightened it out with 2 new commands that swept away all the pharisaical add-ons. “Love God, and love others.”

Those aren’t always easy to do, but they’re easy to understand. And if we put all our actions through that grid, the result will be lives lived in the gracious spirit of the law.

These days I still don’t know how to dance, but a year ago, my cousin Calvin and I decided to try our luck at jitterbugging. Jumping around a wedding reception dance floor in no particular pattern might not have been real dancing, but for the two of us non-dancers, it turned out to be an awful lot of fun.

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself. All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” (Matthew 22:37-40)

Sense or Non-sense?

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Nate's album of carsBlogging yesterday about Nate’s photo album full of car pictures got me thinking. In every family a car purchase is a big deal. Sometimes the biggest deal isn’t a fancy new car but a “junker,” significant because it’s someone’s first car, bought with their own money as a teenager. Other times the big deal is a first new-not-used car, or someone’s first sports car.

As I thumbed through the album pages yesterday, my vote for biggest-deal cars went to the ones that had been in accidents. Though cars were damaged, drivers and passengers weren’t.

Nelson was safe.Like the time Nelson was driving on a country road as a college senior, studying a map. When he looked up, it was too late to avoid hitting a phone truck parked half-on and half-off the road. The car was totaled, but the driver’s seat and driver were intact.

Or the time Hans fell asleep behind the wheel driving home for a family reunion, rolling his car 3 times before landing upsidedown. A totaled car but not a scratch on Hans.

Or a potentially fatal accident when a car turned in front of Linnea, causing her to crash head-on into a concrete bridge support.

Birgitta was safe.Or the time Birgitta’s hood flew up against her windshield, blinding her view at 70 mph. It could have been fatal, but she was unharmed.

Or Klaus, unable to stop when a lady turned in front of him, crashing into her. Another totaled vehicle.

Or the time Lars was driving and his wheel dipped into a ditch, coming to an abrupt stop on a concrete pipe in the ground. The rounded imprint of his head and his passenger’s (Nelson) remained in the shattered windshield.

It’s those pictures that mean the most, difficult as it is to look at them. None of us can prepare for accidents which are, by definition, unexpected. But can we be ready in the sense of knowing what we’ll do in the aftermath?

Any one of our family accidents could have turned out differently, and there’s no guarantee they won’t in the future. I lost a close cousin to a car crash when she was 17 and a precious niece at 23. The question is, how do we cope with such seemingly random, unfair tragedies?

News reports are full of them every day, and none of us are exempt from accidents and the damage and loss they cause. (Ecclesiastes 9:12) When they happen, the first thing we want to do is make sense of the circumstances, and  that’s often impossible. But there is one rational thing we can do, and that’s run to God. He calms and comforts whether things make sense or not. Maybe especially when they don’t.

So as I closed the album, hoping no further accidents will ever occur, if they do, I know exactly what to do.

Ugh“I take limitations in stride, and with good cheer, these limitations that cut me down to size—abuse, accidents, opposition, bad breaks. I just let Christ take over! And so the weaker I get, the stronger I become.” (2 Corinthians 12:10, The Message)

Saved

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Car albumThis afternoon Emerald directed my attention to a family scrapbook I hadn’t viewed in a while, a photo album with the title “Memory Lane.” Her baby abilities have been on the increase lately, and her “sticky fingers” are grabbing with greater efficiency. This scrapbook, stored on a bottom shelf, was her newest conquest.

After she’d perused C.S.Lewis and “The Problem of Pain,” she ooched left, swiveled, and grabbed “Memory Lane,” ripping out the inscription page and the first page of photos before anyone noticed. Normally this wouldn’t bother me, since many of my possessions have been similarly “loved” by grandchild-hands. But this album was a gift to Nate from me, and I wanted to keep it nice.

The bigger car, 1971Over 30 years of time, I’d collected pictures of all the cars we’d ever owned as a couple, along with a few my parents had owned. There’s Nate’s first car, my first car, and every car after that, including the multiple “low budget” cars of 7 driving children. The album has 71 vehicles pictured…. so far.

As I secretly tucked away photos over the years, I always knew they would one day be a special surprise for Nate. But it was tricky deciding when to give the scrapbook, since additional cars were always being added. Then finally I couldn’t wait any longer to see his reaction and decided to give it on his birthday in August, 2009. It must have been God prompting me, because that was his last birthday.

Last birthdayAlthough he didn’t feel good that evening, he loved his gift and praised me for the effort behind it. The very next week we learned (after a physical exam) that something was “off” in his blood numbers, and further tests were ordered. Within a month of that birthday party, we’d heard the words “terminal pancreatic cancer,” and 2½ months after he turned 64, he was gone.

Today when the album suffered at Emerald’s hands, it went against me. Something about keeping that scrapbook in good shape seemed to help keep my connection with Nate in good shape.

Inscription pageNot that a simple photo album can bridge the massive gap between earth and heaven. But just seeing my written greeting to him on the front page remains a link between the two of us, at least for me (though surely no longer for him).  We are approaching the 4 year mark from his death, and with time I find it more and more difficult to stay connected to him.

I believe God gently supplies potent reminders of our relationships with loved ones who’ve passed away (like the car album’s appearance today) as instruments of healing. People who’ve experienced loss want to reaffirm (again and again) that their bond with that person is still strong. Gifts from the past, both given and received, help do that.

And so, when Louisa saw the damage to Nate’s scrapbook, she quickly devised a solution, removing some of the photos, gluing them elsewhere, trimming the inscription page, pasting it over something else, and voila! The revised scrapbook is almost as good as new.

And as of today, it’s found a new home on a very high shelf.

“The Lord your God is with you wherever you go.” (Joshua 1:9)