Category: Holidays and Celebrations

Road tripping it over foothills, skirting the Appalachian mountains, this Daddy’s Day weekend, the vistas all blue-gray sky sandwiched on top of wavy, emerald tree lines dappled in sunlight.
My Spotify playlist lands on a song called “Hills and Valleys” by ironic coincidence and he’s singing,

On the mountains, I will bow my life to the one who set me there,
In the valley, I will lift my eyes to the one who sees me there,
When I’m standing on the mountain aft, didn’t get there on my own,
When I’m walking through the valley end, no I am not alone!
You’re God of the hills and valleys,
Hills and Valleys,
God of the hills and valleys,
And I am not alone!

And I’m picturing it out the passenger side window.

Later, as the landscape flattens approaching the Atlantic shore, I find myself scrolling through my Facebook feed to abate boredom.
Everybody’s posting pictures and sentimental messages to their dads.
And I can’t help but think about mine.
He’s six foot under the shade of a towering pine, the sound of the Lake ricocheting off the trees.
Well, at least his body is.
And I’m reflecting on his life tethered to mine even though he’s not here anymore.
And I wish I got a do-over.
And I wonder why I was such a brat sometimes.
And I  now appreciate that:

My dad possessed a more mature understanding of love than I did.
And my dad had more wisdom about life than I gave him credit for.

I’d call it an uncanny gift. My dad disarmed people with his love. He could actually tell people that if they didn’t repent and ask Jesus to forgive them, they’d spend eternity in hell and they wouldn’t get offended. He’d meet people in the grocery store, or old friends at the bank. At family reunions and company picnics, nothing could distract him from interweaving the gospel into any conversation because real love isn’t avoiding topics just because they are sensitive and it doesn’t flinch at potential conflict or confrontation. It doesn’t pretend everything is OK when it’s not. When you’re driving your life into a train, real love throws out the railroad crossing arm and sends out an unrelenting alarm for anyone who has ears to hear. At least, that’s what my dad believed.

And my dad, he wasn’t selective about who he loved. He loved everybody…
That school full of Hispanic immigrants, legal or not, and their down and out families where he cleaned toilets and mopped floors,
The sad looking at-risk youth hanging out where they didn’t belong inviting trouble,
The butcher at the corner market and the auto repair guy who fixed his car,
The people in the pews around him and the ones who hadn’t warmed a seat in church for decades,
And, oh my gosh, how he loved his family, the whole broken bunch of us…

My dad was a softy but when the fine line of respect got crossed, especially if someone was messing with any of his girls, well, it wasn’t pretty.
Like the time I spent a week at church camp. My parents came to retrieve me at the final program. I’d met a friendly but older guy there. He’d taken an interest in me and since I didn’t have brothers and was painfully naïve, I trusted him. At the program, he reached over and squeezed my thigh several times and my dad blew a fuse!
Not publicly, but when we got home, he forbade me from any future contact explaining that any guy who treats my body casually, who touches me without restraint doesn’t belong within a 10 foot pole of my person and shouldn’t get even a tiny slice of my heart or affection.
I didn’t get it.  I thought he was totally over-reacting and I let him know it. But a long time later, life experience proved him right. I learned that boys do exploit girls for a cheap thrill. Sometimes it’s physical and other times it’s emotional.  Usually, both kinds of manipulation feed off each other like a voraciously hungry monster and my dad knew it and tried to protect me.

A parent doesn’t stop wanting to protect their kids even after they grow up. I wish I had comprehended that when I was 30 and he was still warning me about dangerous intersections and driving precautions. Instead, I rolled my eyes and felt justified doing it, telling myself I deserved to be frustrated because he wasn’t trusting me, while totally missing the heart behind his words,  “You’re precious to me. I worry about you. I don’t want anything to happen to you.” Now I know that’s what he was really saying.

That man I called Dad, he taught me to take my first steps and a little more than two decades later, he escorted me down the aisle. And a decade after that, he walked me through a cross country move.
And he didn’t guilt trip me for leaving he and mom when they needed me most.
And he didn’t complain that I was taking all those grandbabies a thousand miles away.

Instead, he hugged tight and long, right there in the driveway and whispered, “I’ll miss you’s,” as the tears welled up in his eyes. And I could see them leaking down his face out my rearview mirror as I drove away because sometimes a parent can’t hold back the Niagara Falls of pain they feel when there’s distance put between them and their children.
And he called me every day afterwards for almost 3 years. The phone rang and we all raced to answer it.  “How ‘ya doin’ today?”  He always asked, like an invitation to read him the most current chapter in our story. And no hurry. He wasn’t going anywhere..
I don’t remember how often I reciprocated the question, but I know it wasn’t enough.

Then one day, the phone didn’t ring. And I stood by his hospital bed instead, the shell of his person lifelessly still except for the chest compressions regulated by a ventilator. And I read to him from his brown, weatherworn Bible and sang the hymns he loved best while the nurse turned the machine to the “Off” position and he exchanged the old rugged cross for a crown.

And here I am a dozen years later, on Father’s Day weekend, still navigating the loss.
The absence.
And the deafening silence.

And that guy in the driver’s seat whose profile I’m glancing over at now, the dad whose driven our posse of girls, about a million miles through all the hills and valleys of life, he knows a lot more than his kids give him credit for too. And he loves a lot deeper than they comprehend.

I can’t thank my dad today for his love, protection, wisdom and pursuit, but that guy my girls call Daddy, to him, I just wanna say,
I’m grateful.

“It doesn’t matter if you can sing on pitch– really,” I tell moms at Kindermusik class. “To your child, your voice is best.”

That’s me, the Kindermusik teacher, talking. I’m also a mom of four Kindermusik alumni. My youngest daughter, Starla, is seven years old and tonight my heart swelled when she reminded me how true my words to younger moms really are.

Starla shares a room with her older sister. Their typical bedtime routine starts with cuddling up in a twin bed, talking, giggling and telling each other stories before drifting off to the land of Nod. Lately, between laughter and dreamland, Starla has a meltdown. It lasts about 10 minutes and the tears flow uninhibited. Anything can trigger it–thoughts of a grandparent who passed away, a recollection of an unkind word spoken to her earlier in the day, anticipating her older sister’s departure to college…I tell her that tears are a gift from God–they release the sadness inside us so it doesn’t get stuck there and make us sick. Musing further over this dilemma as a mom will do, I had a moment of inspiration. Remembering an old CD of children’s lullabies that went inactive in recent years, I located it in the back corner of the closet next to the dust bunnies and excitedly informed Starla that we would listen to it every night for the next week. “Perhaps it will help sleep to come more gently,” I consoled. With a promise to come back for kisses and prayers a few minutes later, I turned it on tonight, as the kids crawled into bed. Returning, to deliver on my word, I heard Starla tell her sister, “I like this CD but I like it better when mommy sings to me.”

Now it was my turn to be reduced to tears. I laid down beside my “baby” and sang with the CD until her breathing became heavy, methodical and I could feel her muscles twitching. Her hand went limp in mine. I kissed it and whispered “I love you. Goodnight.”

(Mom’s Voice Is Best  republished from Kindermusik by Soundsteps Blog on 23 Apr, 2012
This post brought to you by Miss Hope; singing, still.)

It’s creepy. I don’t keep a calendar listing a lifetime of October surprises but my body knows and it tells me as reliably as receiving an iphone reminder. My cortisol levels shoot through the roof and muscles tighten in hyperalert. There’s pressure where the cardiac sphincter is supposed to keep the food down. And sometimes my heart dances all syncopated.
It remembers all the October days that etched deep on my story and digs them up from the subconscious like skeletons in my closet.
I don’t intentionally dwell on this stuff. It’s more like a vampire bites, saps my lifeblood and leaves me emotionally anemic.
Almost every date has it’s own story. And by the end of the month, that ugly red devil with a pitchfork has poked me tender.

If you live up North, the world goes glorious in October, shouting the praises of God in reds and yellows and oranges. Nature’s brilliant color magnifies the contrast with the darkness linked to it’s popular holiday.
I’ve got my own personal dichotomy going too and I feel the polarity in my story.

It was in October that God gave me two of my babies. Welcomed into this world to Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus like princesses crowned in autumn’s gold, they nursed at my breast and contoured warm into the crook of my arm. These are my fall glory days remembered.

But much of the month connects me to broken stories. Some that exposed my brokenness and others that exposed me to the brokenness of the world.

It was 1982, and I was sixteen on a gray afternoon, chilly, an omen of winter approaching. I stood in the cemetery. My band stand partner’s seat had been empty all week and the missing girl lie in a box being lowered six feet under ground.
I wanted it to be a nightmare or an apparition, like I’d experienced in spook houses, where the gruesome turned out to be just cold spaghetti or red paint. But this was real.
Statistics say that every suicide affects approximately 200 lives. On that afternoon, I was one of them.

That same night, the phone rang and my Dad began to weep, his body shuddering. A joy ride through Amish country turned tragic when my relatives careened through a stop sign only to be broadsided by a semi and neither of them ever woke up to enjoy another autumn morning this side of heaven.

Other years there’s been black ice and ambulances, possessed ladders and constricted blood vessels and all of them hissed the snake’s lie, “It tastes good. It will make you wise,” but led to death.

And then, there are October stories of broken bodies, psyches and hearts that brushed up close against mine. Meningitis, pneumonia, cancer. Last year one kid wore a hospital bracelet, poked and prodded with needles and tubes and tests and machines, heaving violently all the vibrant life chucked clean out of her fragile body.
And at the same time another nursed a gaping chest wound and the relational schrapnel left everyone involved wearing bandaids.

Today, while I’m taxiing and baking and cleaning and schooling, I’m facing off a monster, the one who lives under my bed. He’s picking a fight and it’s a real cosmic battle.

For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.
Ephesians 6:12

I know this routine. I’ve been here before. Many times.
I’ve fought both darkness and Light.
Taken issue with God about my story, wrestled to write one I liked better. But in the end, like Jacob I’m left with a limp.

And this day, I’m calling in the troops, the army of heaven to duke it out in the hidden places on my behalf.
I’m leaning hard on the Holy Spirit, my Comforter, who understands my groanings even when I can’t make sense of them myself.

And I’m retelling myself the truest story all.
The one about my Father
Who made me.
Who is familiar with my fragility.
Who designed the intricate interweaving of body and spirit.
And His Son Jesus, who took the ultimate hit for the team and claimed victory for my soul.

We all have stories.
Mine aren’t particularly unique, they’re just mine.
In your story, there are monsters too. And dates. And your body speaks a language all it’s own.

And if we really learn to be people watchers, it’s not hard to see all the limps, evidence of battle scars. Everywhere.

Maybe I’ll never understand this side of heaven how brokenness kisses God’s sovereignty but He claims that He delights to make the weak strong and to steady the gait of the ones who reach out dependently for His help. So I extend my hand to take the offer of His as we journey together to finish out the remaining hours of this October,
And next October,
And all of the Octobers God gifts me with.
The leaves crunch under my feet, evidence of His faithfulness in every season, proof of His mercies, fresh and new each morning.

All the greatest holidays have a prequel.
Mine was written in the sky last night. A cloudless expanse as black as midnight, like the puppy Brian and I walked next to, and stars more numerous than the birthday candles I’m qualified to blow out this year. There I was, a speck of sand in the sea of humanity and God gave me a personal lightshow, evidence of common grace and personal love.

My birthday list always looks the same. I write the number 1 in large print and circle it for emphasis. Next come the words, “Trip to Lake Michigan to watch the sunset.” It’s a rich family tradition, walking in the sand, waves lapping at our toes methodically, the sun kissing the past goodbye but teasing a fresh hello if we wait for it and lean in the direction it promises to rise.

I turned 50 today.
And started fresh with new adventures, mercies to set a trajectory for the next decade, inviting me into its mystery. Instead of trekking out to the beach, I went to a wedding.
Actually, I hosted a wedding, a sweet, simple ceremony, right here in our living room. My guy solemnized the event with a translator standing beside him. There were vows, a blessing, and signatures sealing the deal in the eyes of the State. Then there was kissing, so much kissing. But not between the bride and the groom. Instead, the small group of witnesses swapped cheeks, three pecks a person according to Middle East custom.
In God’s sovereignty, our lives intersected with these Kurdish friends last year when they relocated here from Syria. On my 49^th birthday, our friendship was merely a sprouting seedling but over time and shared experiences, it’s blossomed because we’ve embraced the beauty in our similarities and differences. We have eaten Kurdish food and taken dancing lessons. They’ve shared our holiday celebrations, gone fruit picking and learned to play Uno from us.

Tonight, we donned our party wear for the wedding reception and danced the night away. Literally. A menagerie of people from all over God’s great big world, immigrants needing a fresh start who found it here and lily skinned Americans who welcomed them to our community and into our hearts. I couldn’t understand a word of the music blaring over the speakers, but I grabbed the pinky of the person on either side of me and let my feet do the talking, stopping only for an occasional rest and one more bite of baklava.

For me, birthdays are fodder for reflection. My thoughts amble to deep introspective places. This year, there’s less musing about the past and more wondering at the next chapter.

I tend to dream big. Why not? I don’t always get what I’m hoping for and I expect that on the front end, but if I suffocate desire, there’s little hope I’ll ever celebrate the dreams that might actually come true.

So in my story, the next decade includes exploring cathedrals in Europe with my big girl.
Helping another one build a tiny house for she and her puppy.
Sipping Frappuccinos all day long on some exotic beach with my princess who is a water magnet.
Admiring God’s creative design for animals in the African safari with my biggest little.

And with the guy who wears a gold ring on his left hand matching mine, I’d like to save our pennies for a 2 person jet ski and feel the rush and spray of the Great Lake on our faces as we ride into the sunset.
….And drive a 3- wheeled motorcycle along the Pacific coast through the towering redwoods of Yosemite and next to the pounding surf of the ocean.

My hopes are more closely tethered to reality. Our girls are growing up and mothering is morphing into something different creating new spaces in my life to direct my passions and service. I’d like to retool, to increase my knowledge and marry it to my giftings and experience in order to contribute to the Kingdom and society in meaningful, productive and profitable ways.
And who knows, maybe I’ll be loving on grandchildren before my fifties meld into sixties.

While dreams and goals may escape me as illusively as dandelion seeds, sprouting new hopes and dreams in unexpected places, reality is guaranteed.
And reality has it’s own gifts.
They aren’t all pretty packages—like achy joints and a thickening midline.
And honestly, a few of the gifts I wanted most, like relational reconstruction in broken places, I didn’t get.
But this is the story I am living in real and it’s a great story regardless.
It’s Kurdish dancing and a new puppy and my first iPhone.
And a Michigan address with a big bountiful garden.
It’s transitioning my second sweetheart into college and new friends funneling through my front door and at my dinner table.
And homeschooling my two littles.
It’s partnering with my husband as he runs this crazy professional race he’s running in order to secure place for his family.
And coming alongside our oldest as she launches into home and career.
It’s sponsoring refugees and shaping their formative experiences in my community.
And mentoring high school girls.
It’s investing my time, talent and treasure within my faith community.
And growing older with the friends, near and far, I love best.

Who would have guessed all the adventures God has in every season? Fresh, new mercies, each day, month and year. Decade after decade He continues to lengthen the story of his faithfulness written in my life, one chapter at a time. And, if today is a barometer for the future, I still have a lot to look forward to.

Epilogue:
Great stories often have an encore and my celebration didn’t end when the carriage became a pumpkin. I dragged my achy joints out of bed and into church the next morning, headache pulsing and tears swelling in my ducts.
Maybe an adrenalin crash. Maybe mixed emotions demanding expression.
I feasted on steak grilled to perfection eating with our “You Are Loved” birthday plate and a hand crafted “Happy Birthday” place card for lunch. All of my loves plus a bonus gathered around the table gifting me with words—affirming that my life touches theirs with sweetness and making space for a few of those tears, not to be explained, only experienced. Then, the buds who know almost all of my secrets, surprised me with dessert.
Hours around the kitchen table.
Easy conversation.
Bathing me in love.
What can I say but….Grateful.

They arrived in flip flops, about a hundred friends and our petite but precious extended family.
Summer flirted and we liked it.
It all felt so familiar, like the smell of home. Here we were again at the place where we’ve made the dearest memories over the past decade of summers.
Big sister graduated here too. Three years ago but it seemed like yesterday. And it felt like déjà vu except it was real. And beautiful.

The colored paper lanterns hanging from the tall pine trees swayed gently contributing to the festive vibe.
The sidewalk was grafittied with celebratory greetings in chalk.
Down the hall, images of Lily’s story hung with clothespins on twine.
People sat together munching on finger foods talking and laughing, the music of friendship.

Then we invited them to join us in recounting the faithfulness of God in Lily’s life.
And with the exchange of a well earned diploma and these words, one chapter of her story ended and another began.

Lily, like other young adults on the cusp of forever, you wonder what it looks like to embrace God’s calling on your life.
You’ve glimpsed yourself in the mirror and seen a young woman shaped by mission, deeply influenced by the story of Lillian Trasher, your heroine of the faith, who served God in Egypt for over 50 years as an angel of mercy to orphans, widows and the blind.
You’ve assessed your competencies in math and science and your fascination with cells and the human body.
You’ve reflected on your relational style, an excellent match for kinesthetic caregiving.
And you’ve decided that the next step in your journey is to pursue nursing.

Dan Allender answers the question “What is my calling?” with these words,
“It is to make known something about God that is bound to my unique face, name and story.”

So tonight, your dad and I gift you with a first aid kit and bless you on your own unique journey of mercy. These tools of the trade represent more than their tangible application for acute care, they symbolize instruments to tend the deeper needs of hurting people.
And, truth is, we’re all hurting people.

Let’s consider a few items in the kit together:

The Kit comes with an Instruction book.
Know the book well enough that you don’t have to stop and search it every time something comes up. But never think of yourself as beyond instruction. Read the Bible often. And also learn to read the story that God is writing in your life; for that is instructive too.

Hand cleanser and gloves. These are for your own protection. But they assume that you are getting involved in the messiness of wounds. Caring involves wise risk taking.

Antiseptic ointment cleans wounds and kills germs to prevent infection. Applying salve requires a delicate balance of resolve and gentleness. Your patient may recoil or cry, “Ouch, that hurts!” And you will need to remember that stinging often precedes healing.

Care givers need Bandages of all shapes and sizes. As physical wounds are distinct and diverse, so are spiritual and emotional ones. Some are big; some are small. Some are in awkward places – private and deeply personal. Others need butterfly closures to minimize scarring. You’ll need God’s word, the Holy Spirit’s discernment, and a commitment to prayer to help you bandage those wounds, providing protection that promotes healing.

There is an appropriate role for pain relievers and we hope that you help relieve others’ pains. While pain meds may mask symptons, they are not cures. For the soul, “we want a cure, not a medication.” To hear the soul, we can’t just “numb the pain.” We need each other’s hurt and pain. “It’s not love any other way.”

Tissues. These are not in the kit, but you remember Louie’s illustration from Matthew 7:4 where Jesus talks about the log and the speck, and Louie illustrates with the chainsaw, sword and the tissue. Stock up on tissues, preferably the kind with lotion. To gift another with a most tender act of compassion is to not just to wipe away their tears that result from physical pain, but to share tissues and tears, for you to practice empathy by giving them a safe place to hurt, to expose the soul wounds that are oozing, to sit quietly with them in it and suffer too. And perhaps harder yet, is to learn to give yourself that same tenderness when your own contusions are seeping.

Over the course of a life, you just keep washing your hands and dirtying them up again with the next person God places on your path to serve. And therein, you become an extension of the hands of Christ to a wounded world full of broken, busted up people.

It’s not glam and ultimately you won’t be able to fix them or yourself. You’ll have to reconcile with that reality and content yourself with urgent care this side of heaven.

It’s not a winner’s story– this life in a fallen world.
When you love well and serve humbly, you’ll be broken too.
It will hurt.
And you will groan.
You will grapple with the mystery of this melancholy story you are living in.
You’ll wonder about the character of a God whose sovereignty allows so much chaos on a massive scale. You’ll get tired of looking at suffering and death, physically, emotionally and spiritually.
Satan will tempt you to despise your story and look for a prettier one, a cleaner one, a more Facebook worthy one. When he does, remember these words expressed as only Ann Voskamp can do.

“There’s a reason I am not writing the story of my life and God is. He knows how it all works out, where it all leads, what it all means. I don’t. So, I will let God blow His wind, His trials, oxygen for joy’s fire. I will leave the hand open and be. Be at peace. I will bend the knee and be small and let God give what God chooses to give because He only gives love. And, I will whisper a surprise thanks. This the fuel for joy’s flame.”

And there it is, the greatest tool you will ever add to your first aid kit.
It is gratitude.
It’s waking up every morning, no matter what your story was yesterday and reminding yourself of the truth.
This is the truth.

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; His mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness. (Lamentations 3:22-23)

And so you get out of bed anticipating his fresh mercies, abundant for each new day.
And as you count your blessings, day after day, year after year, you find yourself a long way down life’s road a lot sooner that you expected and looking back through the rear view mirror your story is broken beautiful, and you wouldn’t trade it for a photo edited version because the real one looks a bit like Jesus who bloodied himself up cleaning the lacerations on your infected heart with His nail scarred hands.
And you realize that it’s actually your scars that make you beautiful.
And that is the essence of joy and foundation for hope.

So, on this night, Lily, your father and I bless you with these words from Romans 15:13

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.

We prayed over Lily, then circled the room and took hands.
All of us.
A beautiful menagerie of people representing the creative color palette of God.
From Syria to Haiti and Ethiopia and China and Korea to Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Everybody with their own broken beautiful story connected to each other.
And God was right there in the middle of it.
Smiling.
So we sang a benediction acknowledging where all our stories ultimately start and end.
To the glory of God.
Great things He has done.