Having seen plenty of movies, I was expecting drama or at least a nice piece of paper. But this was just a torn scrap with a few words jotted down. He was matter-of-fact in his note to my friend, saying that his girls needed money, as did his ex-wife; that he couldn’t take it anymore; that his neighbor had a key. Desperation and depression, fueled by a chemical imbalance after years of drug abuse, resulted in his final act of an overdose.
Life ring on the dunes in Alnmouth, Northumberland. Credit: Dan Brady, flickr
Except that my friend received his letter in the afternoon, not the evening, as she was unexpectedly off from work. She grabbed a friend and went to his flat, broke down the door, and found him drugged but living. She wondered if he’d be angry to be found alive. He wasn’t; in fact, he later thanked her for caring. He said he had written to her because he didn’t want his body to be found after a week, covered in flies.
This was the same friend who a couple of months earlier had been told by an acquaintance, a doctor, to “get that mark on your face checked out.” He was the second medical friend who noticed it, which propelled her into actually making an appointment with her GP instead of delaying or brushing off the advice. She found out that she had pre-cancerous cells and underwent treatment. A few weeks later she heard that this young doctor had died on a hiking adventure after falling into a ravine. His potentially life-saving advice to her turned out to be one of his final acts of service on this earth.
Two men I’ve never met, and yet they made a profound impact on me. Why? Because I can easily get caught up in projects or tasks, and thus startling stories such as these remind me to value what really is important. For instance, just this morning I woke up early. Finally admitting I wasn’t going to fall back to sleep, I gave in and went into my study to write. But PyelotBoy also woke early and joined me, eager just to sit and spend some time together. I battled internally but stayed with him on the couch, reminding myself to enjoy these sweet moments together.
I wish I could say it was a grand success of communion with one whom I love, but throughout our half-hour together I kept thinking of the tasks I could and should be accomplishing. But although I didn’t succeed in shutting down the distracting thoughts, at least I stayed rooted to the couch, sitting with my son and chatting together. I didn’t shoo him away or give him some early iPad time to compensate for me wanting to get on with my next thing. Small victories, yes, but worth celebrating.
Life. It’s worth living. Who is sitting on your couch today whom you can be present to and enjoy?
A couple of weeks ago I posted about my family’s near accident, giving thanks that they walked away unscathed. The post has been in the back of my mind as I think about mothers losing children through car accidents or disease; about sisters living life without their brothers; about families disrupted from a cycle of seemingly neverending surgeries. Just last night I heard about a friend who seems to be following Job’s journey rather too closely lately. Battles at his church left him bruised but not broken; disease left him scarred but not out for the count; now there’s another ghastly wrinkle I don’t even want to hint at it. Why, God?
It just doesn’t seem fair. Sometimes we witness what appears to be a miracle of saving grace, but at other times the split second matters and life changes in an instant, ushering in tears, anguish, questions, and pain. Does God intervene in the one instant yet hold back his hand at the other? If we say that he’s involved in those miracles, does that mean he’s also involved in the accidents and disease and personal losses?
I saw a friend over the summer whose sibling died a few months ago, in the prime of her life. When I questioned him whether he asks the “why” questions, he said he didn’t. He believes in the fall of the world, and so why are we surprised when bad stuff happens? The world is not as God made it; sin entered in and so people die and governments are corrupt and people fail each other and lie, cheat, and steal.
I believe that, but if it was my sister dying, I’m guessing I would ask why. Yet I think of another friend whose spouse and child died in the space of a decade, and who faced/faces physical challenges with another child. When talking about her journey and God, she said, “Where else do I have to go but to him?”
That comment made me stop and ponder.
One who thought about the why’s and why nots died a decade ago, Rob Lacey. I still miss him. I called him my “dream author,” for he delivered great content on time that sold. And he was just such fun to work with (on The Word on the Street and The Liberator). We talked about his next book as “the health story.” But we didn’t know then that his wife Sandra and friend Steve would be writing it after he went to perform in glory.
Rob with his lovely colleague Elin Kelly, signing books at Spring Harvest, 2004
Rob’s poem “Why Me?” comes on page 196 of their book, People Like Us, and I include it here with Sandra Harnisch-Lacey’s gracious permission. He wrote it after he had an all-clear of no cancer in October 2002. (None of us knew that the cancer would come back three years later.)
Why Me?
Thanks, Emmanuel. Thank God with us. I’m well!
But why me? Not him? Why me? Not them?
It’s not ’cos I memorised the whole of Job.
O wore an anointed prayer shawl.
Or a special hospital robe.
It’s not ’cos we cried ‘Mercy’! a million times.
It’s not ’cos I wrote a hundred prayers with rhymes.
It’s not ’cos my wife deserves me.
Puts the sign ‘reserved’ on me.
It’s not ’cos my son needs me.
Twin tower workers were parents too.
It’s not ’cos we’ve hung on.
It’s just that God pulled us through.
So is it ‘because I’m worth it’?
Well, I am, I’m worth everything to God.
But so was Jacqueline du Pré,
So was Eva Cassidy.
So why? And when?
Was it already planned right back then?
Or did God shuffle and shift?
And watch all our prayers lift up past his eyes?
And did he hear our cries?
And did they all add up to Abraham- or Moses-size?
When they dared to do diplomacy with God?
Did we, together, negotiate with God?
We’ll never see the subplots,
The alternative scenes,
Until we get to heaven, read the script
And work out what it means.
There’s no recipe for what God gives free.
There’s no ace to play for grace.
It’s not that I toughed it out with cameras up my nether regions,
Tubes pushed through my back,
Needles in my failing veins,
Platinum pumped through every track.
It’s none of that.
It’s not that I kept a certain attitude,
When interviewed.
I’m no more clued than you.
I could’ve interceded for the lion with my name on it,
Been compliant with my giant.
I could’ve driven into Jerusalem on a clapped-out Robin Reliant.
And still, it might have been,
That I would die.
And we might have no idea why.
Would that have been God’s will?
Or is it God’s plan never to fill an empty grave?
Or does He save each one of us?
So how come some still die?
And why this?
Why that?
And with answers so shy
What’s the point in asking ‘why’?
So I won’t try to work out why.
I won’t sweat to work it through.
For now, Rob, just face it,
God’s mercy is focused down on you.
So leave your questions lying there
You might pick them up again.
Leave your lopsided, left heavy, rational, rigorous brain
Just give God his fame.
The always different, ever the same.
Live up your voice and yell…
Thank Emmanuel, thank God with us. I’m well.
Rob Lacey, October 2002
With Rob, I’ll put the “why’s” aside and focus on God’s great mercy, which he pours out on our lives, day by day. Sometimes he allows bad stuff to happen, but he never stops loving us or rooting for us.
With Rob, I’ll give God his fame, the One who is always different but ever the same.
Yesterday my husband and kids were meeting me at my parents’ home for dinner. They arrived in a jumble, the story spilling out of my children in fragments before Nicholas was able to park the car and come into the house:
PyelotSon: “An idiot/jerk almost hit us!” he said with a nervous giggle. (Sidenote: Yes, he’s picked up those derogatory terms from a couple of my times at the wheel.)
CutiePyeGirl: “We almost crashed!”
The chatter continued, and it took us some unraveling to figure out the chain of events when Nicholas walked in a moment later, shaking with adrenaline. He filled in the details in rapid succession: They were driving along the straight stretch before turning into my parents’ driveway when an oncoming car drifted into their lane. Nicholas honked (UK: hooted) the horn and the probable-young-person-who-was-texting reacted quickly, because he or she drove around my family – he/she moved onto the sidewalk/grass on the passenger’s side of my family’s borrowed van – to avert a head-on collision.
In this instance, we were saved. We were mercifully and miraculously saved from what could have been a life-taking or life-altering crash. I have my family intact, and the thought has kept me from sleeping as I recount the what-if’s, thinking about hospitals or funeral homes and write-offs of borrowed vehicles.
But we aren’t always kept from harm in this fallen world, for every day some form of sin, disease, or injustice seeps into our lives. I don’t know why God cushioned my family yesterday when other families lose sons and daughters, wives and husbands, mothers and fathers to accidents or cancer or abuse. But I’m grateful. I give thanks, mindful of the fragility of life, when a second can change everything.
Today I return thanks to God for saving me and mine. I want to be like the leper who returned to thank Jesus for healing him. The gift of the present moment feels all the more precious, the morning after the night before that didn’t change our lives forever.
“There’s a new company that’s selling books on the Internet. It’s one to watch,” said the man who would become the Motley Fool.
The year was 1993, and I was sitting in his living room, having enjoyed a bountiful feast made by his wife, with whom I was working on a project on the Classics. Being in my twenties and not thinking I should actually invest any of the disposable income that I had (which was more than I realized, of course), I let the advice roll by. Yep, you can guess the name of that company.
What would you tell your 20-year-old self, if you’re in your forties or higher? I posed the question on my Facebook wall yesterday, and got a mixture of funny and poignant responses.
Stripes on top and on the bottom?
Chose your life partner carefully
One of my friends wrote, “Don’t marry that guy. God gave you good instincts for a reason” and my heart went out to her. In my twenties I was saved from such a union, which surely would have ended in divorce – as much as I would strive to avoid divorce. I knew deep down that things weren’t right with us, but it took strong advice from my parents and my work colleagues for me to end the engagement. It seems once a couple is engaged, they are swept along in a current of planning and living, perhaps, on a realm of unreality. Well-meaning acquaintances ask, “When’s the wedding?” The woman in particular looks into tulle, beads, canapés, and flowers. That’s why my husband and I, when we help couples who are preparing to marry, counsel them to do the hard work of marriage preparation before the engagement. Then ending the relationship, if it isn’t right, isn’t such a public announcement. And the couple isn’t distracted by wedding planning.
I remember so clearly the advice given to me by one of my colleagues when I was engaged to the wrong man. He held his hands out, palms facing each other and about six inches apart. “Two people are like this,” he said. “When they marry, just by the sheer force of becoming married, they become like this,” he said, moving his hands about 12 inches apart. I was beginning to see that marriage wasn’t going to solve the core issues that my fiancé and I had, but would only exacerbate them. It took me several more months, but finally I ended the engagement. And several years later (thank you God) met the right guy.
God will redeem your brokenness
Another friend wrote, “Sometimes the hardest adjustments you will have to make will be the ones that end up giving you the most compassion for others – so try not to resent them so much. ” Again, wonderful advice. I’ve seen this so often in my life, how the things that feel so hard and excruciating and painful can be used by God in surprising ways.
Kara’s cabin. Epic.
Not to say that I welcomed, for instance, my close friend dying in a car crash when we were 19. But now I can see how all these years later, that core group of high-school friends has remained much closer than we probably would have had Sue not died. We go on trips together and those who live in the Twin Cities in Minnesota see each other regularly. Of course we’re not perfect and sometimes we have hurts to forgive and feelings to mend. But I would be a much poorer person without them in my life.
My parents just recounted how the day after their 50th wedding anniversary, they were called to comfort a grieving mother who had just lost her 20-year-old son to suicide. She said, “I wish I would have had parents like you growing up!” Their compassion has blossomed and multiplied over the years of challenges they faced (as I wrote in my blog). God redeems.
You are not fat!
One of my Facebook friends said this, and I totally agree. Ah, to have been able to love my body in my twenties and earlier, when I may not have been stick thin like some of my friends but wasn’t nearly the size I thought in my head. And to have that wonderful skin – now I would tell my 20-year-old self for sure to slather on the sunscreen and ban baby oil while tanning. Or better yet, stay out of the sun all together!
Yes, it’s Pac-Man, and yes, it was the 80s. See advice, “Don’t take yourself so seriously.”
The deeper issue is accepting how we’ve been made – our body shape, size, and features. I’m not sure if my positive reinforcement of my daughter’s beautiful body can speak over the din of society and her peers as she grows up (she’s six), but I’m going to try. We are beautifully and wonderfully made, something I think about when I read Melanie Reid’s moving Spinal Column, in which she tells about her life following breaking her neck and back when she fell from a horse. My thighs might be bigger than I would like, but they are strong and I can run and jump and walk. As Liz Curtis Higgs said when I heard her speak last week, we should wake up each morning and to the mirror say, “Ta-da!” For we are created in God’s image and are therefore gorgeous.
You can do it!
What else would I tell my younger self? A few random remarks:
Don’t take yourself so seriously.
Your worth is not allied to what you accomplish.
Write! You can do it!
Your sister will become one of your closest friends.
Would you please stop fretting over guys?
Lose the shoulder pads. It’s really not a good look for you.
Adventures await.
So what would you tell your 20-year-old self? Here’s a selection from my friends:
What are you so afraid of? Don’t be. What are you so proud of? Don’t be.
God wants you to rest, shrug off your mistakes, forgive yourself, and laugh a lot.
Don’t worry so much about the future or about what others think of you. Listen to God. The only thing certain is that things will not turn out how you expect!
You are not really busy until you have kids. So enjoy your adulthood pre-kids and do lots of late-night activities and fun travel.
