Love in Black and White Part 2

Posted on by

Yesterday I shared half of a tribute Nelson’s cousin Andrew sent to Nelson through his wife Kim’s writing abilities. Here’s the rest:

Ann Sophie laughed and agreed that her husband was pretty special. Somehow, though, it was a pretty quick jump to things we didn’t think they could do. I was imitating Andrew looking for the hamper as our husbands were coming closer with the rest of the firewood.

Our voices dropped to a whisper as I leaned closer to Ann Sophie. “Do you think Nelson could hem a curtain?”

Hearing his name, Nelson’s head popped up, and he looked over at us. Ann Sophie just scrunched her nose a little, shook her head slightly, and softly said, “Details.” We both laughed.

When we first heard of Nelson’s diagnosis, Andrew’s immediate reaction was that he wanted to go to Minnesota to see him. Then he considered that although that’s what he wanted, it might not be what Nelson wanted. It’s difficult to have company when you are tired and sick, especially from people who admire you and can’t imagine you weak or caving to pain.

Andrew, Kim and Kids (2019)

My dad once told me he imagines we all have this invisible jar of marbles that we get when we are born. Every person has their own number of marbles, and only God knows how many each person gets. When you do something with risk and reward, you take a marble out.

Get on a plane, take out a marble. Go for a swim, take out a marble.  Red meat three nights in a row, lick your fingers and take that marble out. We imagined a fishbowl of marbles dwindling down, the older a person gets, or the more daring a life they lived. He said one day you’d wake up and only have one marble left.

I think about my own jar of marbles and the decisions about where I put them and those of the people that I love. I imagine Nelson’s—a faithful servant to the Lord who has not wavered in faith when the doctors said, “Hey, we think your jar is looking a little low.”

He knows that we serve the Master of details, the giver of marbles and that the end is not the bottom of the jar, because there is abundance on the other side.

We are praying for Nelson to get a refill of marbles so that he can one day learn to hem a curtain and show his dear cousin Andrew what a hamper looks like. But we say this prayer with the same courage and faith that Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego had when they were thrown into the fire and said, “The God we serve can save us, and even if he does not save us, we will still worship him.”

“Surely God is my salvation; I will trust and not be afraid. The Lord, the Lord himself is my strength and my defense; he has become my salvation.” (Isaiah 12:2)

Love in Black and White

Posted on by

This weekend Nelson’s cousin Luke invited us to come to his home for the weekend. As we drove the 80 miles there, Nelson asked me to read aloud an email we’d received yesterday. It was written by Kim, who is married to Luke’s brother Andrew…another cousin of Nelson.

Kim said she was representing Andrew with her words, since he couldn’t put his feelings for Nelson into writing. The result is a tribute to the friendship these two cousins have. It’s love in black and white. Nelson and Ann Sophie had read Kim’s email earlier in the day, but as we drove along the highway, Nelson asked me to read it again, out loud. “It was just so good,” he said.

So here it is, written by Andrew’s wife Kim:

I don’t really know Nelson, but I know Nelson-stories and know that if you don’t have a Nelson story, you probably want one. I have had the split-spray from Andrew’s laugh hit me in the face as he recalls the time he and Nelson got stopped by the police late one night in Hawaii.

I have seen cousins cuddled in their beds listening to Luke tell a “Nel and Dod tale,” and I’ve heard Nelson himself recount memories that make you wish they were yours. Like all good story owners, he is easy to listen to.

Andrew loves Nelson. Many times he has told me (sometimes even with a little excitement) that if things ever go south, Nelson is the one he wants to be with. He tells me Nelson has street smarts, common sense, rationality, capability, and then he says, jokingly, “You know, like me.”

This was intriguing to me. Andrew is the most capable person I know. In my eyes he can do anything. I remember once when we were newly married, I tried to hem a pair of curtains that did indeed go south. Andrew replaced the fabric and hemmed them himself. Is he really telling me there is an Andrew 2.0, or did I marry Nelson 2.0?

Once I sized Nelson up at the beach. Andrew and I were getting ready for a bonfire, and Nelson and Ann Sophie were with us. Usually when I get to the beach with company, we grab our chairs and take a seat. Andrew then hauls the wood down, digs the pit, gathers brush, and starts the fire.

This time, as Andrew was bringing the wood down, Nelson immediately began to dig the pit. Once he finished that, he went and hunted sticks for kindling. Then he went back and helped Andrew carry more wood. He didn’t sit down once. Like Andrew, he was a doer.

While he was doing all this, I was telling Ann Sophie, “Listen. If the world ends, Andrew already told me he’s going to find Nelson and the two of them are going to save the world.” I told her that any time I compliment Andrew, he replies, “But have you met Nelson?”

(….conclusion tomorrow)

“Iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another.” (Proverbs 27:17)

From Nelson: My Five Daily Goals

Posted on by

Every day I try to meet five goals by the end of that day. These aren’t goals for healthy people as much as for someone like me who feels his life is on hold. If I have lots of time without something productive to accomplish, my mind quickly drifts to the worst case scenario.

Having these goals, then, is a way for me to live within my new reality but It’s dangerous to drift through each day thinking there’s not much I can do to change things and that everything is out from under my control. But setting these five goals has helped me see that such defeatist thinking is wrong. There are lots of things I can do. I even met these goals while in the hospital last week.

Here they are:

  1. I will complete a spiritual discipline twice each day, whether by myself or with someone else.

This might be our daily Bible reading as a couple that we do first thing every morning. It might be a prayer time, whether alone or with others. It could be journaling with an eye toward laying the words out before God.

This morning, for example, when my thoughts were straying in the wrong direction, I decided to write a gratitude inventory. It got the praises going inside of me and set a good tone for the day. It helped me look at the glass half full instead of half empty.

  1. I will perform an act of physical exercise twice each day.

This used to mean swimming a mile in the open ocean, jogging several miles, or working hard on a physically challenging project. Now it means a slow walk around the block or accompanying Ann Sophie on a short shopping trip.

Running or swimming is out of the question for me now, because I don’t have enough breath. But even in the hospital, I could gently walk down the hall and back.

  1. I will accomplish something every day toward my effort of waiting.

Living with lung cancer includes lots of waiting—waiting for appointments, test results, prescriptions, doctor-opinions, changes in medication. I’m also waiting to see what future, if any, I will have. At the moment, my life is in limbo. It could go either way. And so I try to accomplish something positive while I wait.

I think of it as doing the possible so God can do the impossible. For example, I can eat a healthy meal, rest intentionally, take my pills on time, attend an appointment.

  1. I will work to complete a physical task that will carry with it a feeling of accomplishment.

This might be doing the dishes, tidying a messy table, organizing a file, getting an oil change on the car. It’s something that can be checked off a to-do list in one shot, start to finish, something I’ve been wanting to do.

  1. I will intentionally do something with my family members and enjoy them in the process.

So much of what God wants us to do in life has to do with people. To miss that by plowing through a day while gritting my teeth just to make it is tragic. None of us know how much time we have with any one person. We need to appreciate people while we have them.

Our days in this apartment include lots of examples of this. We do almost everything together, like eating three meals together, listening to sermons together, attending medical appointments together, praying together, and sharing time with little Will. We wouldn’t have to do it like that, but we’re choosing to.

If I succeed in meeting these five goals each day, I can go to sleep at night knowing I’ve done what I can do, and the rest is up to God.

“Take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ.” (2 Corinthians 10:5)