Amy Boucher Pye

Tag: family

Forgiveness Fridays: When actions speak louder than words by Carol Bostock

We might hear of some grand acts of forgiveness – parents forgiving their child’s murderer, for instance – and think that our small acts don’t measure up. But daily life seems to be filled with the small stuff. Can we extend forgiveness in the daily, and if so, how? I love Carol Bostock’s story for all of its rootedness in the ordinary – even to the level of the sticky, congealed chocolate.

It was the day after my mother’s funeral. We had buried her in a woodland burial site after three traumatic months in intensive care following a failed liver transplant. It was very small group at the burial site and I had led the service.

A number of family members were staying in my father’s house for another couple of days. Everyone was tired, emotionally worn out, stressed, not quite knowing what a future without my mother looked like – what it would mean for my father, what it would mean for us all.

It was after lunch and my father had gone to lie down. We were all in that strange state of being in someone’s else’s home, not liking just to sit about talking and laughing as if it were ‘life as normal’ but looking for things to do that felt vaguely useful or helpful.

I can truthfully say that I no longer remember the start of the argument, what was said by whom. But suddenly, another family member and I were having a row. Tempers flared very suddenly. Flash points were hit. Harsh and unkind words were said. We both stalked off, seething.

I didn’t even have a place to go to and be mad. It was not my house and there were people, it seemed, in every room. Angry and frustrated I went into the garage. I kicked a box, very hard twice, replayed the row in my head over and over, thought of all the cutting, clever things I wished I had said. I was too full of anger and resentment to see how badly I had behaved.

Then, sudden and unexpected, came that unmistakeable heavy presence of the Lord.

“So now I suppose You want me to forgive him,” I said ungraciously and kicked the box again, even harder.

Very, very clearly, He answered. “Actually, I want you to clean out his car,” He said.

I stood for ten minutes or so in the dim garage, struggling. Then I went and got cloths, water, vacuum cleaner, cleaning products, polish, and a rubbish sack and set to. He owned a number of pets, all of which seemed to have shed hair and fur liberally over the car. A packet of chocolate somethings had melted into a gooey, congealed mess in one of the side pockets. The boot compartment was full of mud. It took me the best part of three hours to clean.

I don’t think I ever formally said to the Lord, “I forgive him and please will you forgive me”; neither did I ever formally ask the family member to forgive me. But I know that on that Saturday afternoon I was forgiven by Jesus for my wrong heart attitude, and I think that at that time and in that place for my family member, actions spoke louder than any words could have done.

♥♥♥

But when he was still a great way off, his father saw him and had compassion, and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him. Luke 15:20

When the Prodigal went home to his Father’s house, he never got the chance to say all of his carefully preplanned apology because the Father ran, fell on his neck and kissed him. The Father just wanted to get to the hugging and the kissing…

♥♥♥

Working full time at Beauty From Ashes, a Christian inner healing ministry, as a Prayer Minister, Conference Speaker and Retreat Leader, Carol Bostock is walking an unknown path since her husband of 38 years is in the last stages of cancer. Read more at Setting Up Signposts and receive updates at their Facebook page. You can also find out more about Beauty from Ashes, and contact Carol at carol@beautyfromashes.co.uk.

July 14, 2017
Strengthening our Vision: How my son’s eye challenges made us stronger

The sticker is actually a bit creepy considering that the clown’s eyes are crossed out.

A simple sticker, but when I saw it, the memories came rushing back. I had unearthed from the loft (US: attic) a bunch of mailing envelopes to send out my book in, which CutiePyeGirl found intriguing. In the midst of them she found this little sticker and presented it to me with a flourish. When I saw it, there in my mind’s eye was PyelotBoy, three and four years old, walking out of the Royal Free Hospital, having survived another eye appointment. Our consultant was amazing, but the drops hurt him, and my heart always tugged at those meetings about his eyes.

PyelotBoy has faced some physical challenges, including his eyesight. One of my dear friends – who herself had a squint (US: lazy eye) and two surgeries in her childhood to correct it – reluctantly approached me when PyelotBoy was about two years old, asking when we were going to get his squint looked at. She didn’t want to interfere, but she knew more than we did that it needed attending to. I had noticed it, of course, but just thought it was an eye that sometimes turned in, an affliction that appears in both my maternal and paternal families. I’m so grateful for her gentle question, however, as we got an appointment right away and found out that his squint very much needed attending to. The weak eye, if not strengthened, would lose its ability to see. (Spiritual application alert!) He would also eventually need surgery to move the muscles around in both eyes to straighten them out and have them working right.

So much for us as new parents to take in during those appointments. Our fantastic consultant we got originally through what was then called St Luke’s Hospital for the Clergy, an organization that provides healthcare for clergy and their families to which medical people (often Christians) donate their services. We didn’t need to be pushy advocates for PyelotBoy because Miss Davey went out of her way to give him the best treatment available. (And I learned throughout the years why she’s called “Miss” Davey – for me as an American I thought it odd, and would rather call her Dr Davey. But the Miss signifies that she’s a surgeon, so is actually a higher designation than Dr. Interesting!)

The things one finds squirreled away in the loft!

We had years of appointments and years of those stickers. Years of PyelotBoy reading first the charts of pictures of familiar objects (and yes, a teapot featured) and then letters when he had learned them. Years of PyelotBoy wearing a patch over his strong eye for hours in order to strengthen the weak eye. The enduring for him and us of his eye surgery, which Miss Davey performed so well – she even gave me a hug in the operating theatre after the anaethitist put him to sleep, for I promptly burst into tears at the sight.

So when I saw that sticker, so many memories came flooding back and I felt tender and grateful. Sad that PyelotBoy had to endure those trials, but proud of him for the way he met them, one by one, with courage. Like his eye, which was strengthened over the years, he’s stronger and more resilient in character.

How have you been strengthened through trials?

Note: Posted with PyelotBoy’s permission.

October 3, 2015
When life changes in a moment – or not

A second can change everything.

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.

August 9, 2013
A tribute to marriage

Today my parents celebrate their fiftieth wedding anniversary – five decades of loving each other and modeling that love to us in their quiet and understated way. I am so grateful for their commitment to each other and to us through the good and challenging times.

My mom and dad both grew up on farms in America’s Midwest, and both went to live in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis/St. Paul in the late fifties. My dad had left home when he was 17, for he wanted to be an artist. He worked hard to put himself through college, selling expensive cookware and sewing machines door to door and being a security guard during the night shift. My mom lived with a few other young women and was a good typist, so she got a job at Minnegasco (that sounds a funny name for a company now, doesn’t it?).

My dad became a different kind of artist, one who designed computer systems, than he might have thought as a child. Now that he has more time, he can pursue his visual art. Here’s a painting of my mother.

They met on a blind date that my dad’s friend Jerry arranged. At first my mom thought she had been paired with Jerry, but when my dad got into the back seat of the car with her she realized that he was her date. The evening must have gone well, for they went out for my dad’s birthday in October. After that my mom kept hoping he’d ask her out again so she could tell her work friends that she had a date for New Year’s Eve.

That first Christmas, my dad painted my mom a picture to give her as a present, and she gave him a sweater. How did she know his size? “I put my arms around him.”

They dated for three years before getting married, having such a long courtship because my dad had to do some national service, and wanted to get his degree and a job so that he could provide for his wife and any children they might have one day. Two years after they got married, they had my sister, then two years later me, then three years later my brother. Their family was complete.

But times haven’t always been easy for my parents, their love having to weather health-related storms. When my brother was three, he started to have seizures, which was terrifying for my parents to witness. Then he had such terrible stomach pains that he was operated on to see if he had an obstruction or cancer. He was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease, an inflammatory disease of the intestines, which is not common in children.

One of the favorite activities with Gramps is painting.

A grandma and granddaughter.

My brother was in the hospital for over a month, and although as a six-year-old I didn’t know it at the time, he was near death. He looked like a starving child from a developing nation, for his stomach was extended and he was so thin. But after our parish priest came to the hospital and prayed over him, he eventually got well.

But his seizures continued, and he was diagnosed with epilepsy. The seizures were the worst when he was a teenager, as his hormones were wreaking havoc on his body and his medication seemed to have no effect. My parents learned what it meant to be sleep-deprived as they cared for my brother during the night, taking shifts while trying to get enough sleep for the next day as my dad went off to work and my mom cared for us three kids.

Their faith sustained them. As my dad said, “Through these great challenges, our faith has kept us strong and in love in our marriage. We’ve been able to forgive each other and live one day at a time, when it would be easy to hide from life. Eventually we got to the place of not even worrying – we would think, ‘Have we done everything we can?’ If the answer was yes, then we would give it all to the Lord and not even worry.

“My favorite bit of poetry goes like this: ‘But every desire we have for God, and every prayer, is like the stroke of a carpenter’s plane, wearing down the boards of our wooden-hearted incredulity. And when the boards are quite thin, we will see that God has been there all along, waiting for us to break through.” (From That Man is You by Louis Evely, translated by Edmond Bonin, Paulist Press, 1964.)

Mom and Dad, I love you and celebrate your marriage.

June 22, 2013