“You’re pregnant.”
No words more profoundly shape a woman’s future than these.
But at forty six, that new mama, she’d mistaken pregnancy for menopause and maybe another gallstone.
The doctor’s diagnosis, it felt surreal, like a dream.
Flatly, the doctor continued, “It’ll be retarded,” followed by silence.
Maybe it was actually a nightmare.
She glanced over at her newlywed husband, reading his expression as the physician suggested an abortion on the east side of the state. Seven years before Roe v Wade, disposing of products of conception was more inconvenient. “Absolutely not,” that new daddy rebuffed protectively.
When you’ve spent five years fighting for your life in a tuberculosis sanitorium, you cherish each breath God gifts you with and you wouldn’t dare take that away from anyone else. No matter what.
Everybody has defining moments, the ones that give shape to the rest of your story, the ones that take you down a path who’s steps can’t be retraced.
That daddy, he pointed his compass north and grabbed hold of his long history of fresh new mercies and projected them forward with hope and bathed them in prayer.
And waited.
Then one balmy August morning in 1966, that baby introduced herself to the world, a perfectly healthy 8 pound girl whose only blemish was a big strawberry birthmark on the back of her head.
“Congratulations,” the same doc extended a hand to that new daddy in the waiting room.
There were no apologies or accusations between them, just gratitude intermingled with sheer delight.
Friends and family came to celebrate asking, “What are you going to name her?”
And the Daddy, the words rolled off his tongue like a blessing.
“Her name is Hope Jewel because we hoped for her and she’s a jewel.”
That’s how my story began. I came onto the scene a miracle, right down to my very DNA. A surprise to my parents, maybe, but not to the God who knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I’ll admit, I didn’t appreciate my name when I was a girl. I wished people called me Kimberly or Kathy or Lisa, so I’d feel more popular, but I coasted through childhood using a nickname, saving my real identity for the monumental leap into adulthood when I traded my pink bedroom for a college dormitory.
And with time, my name, it grew on me.
You see, names give definition to our lives and personalize our story.
I slept upstairs all by myself when I was a little girl.
“Lay by me, mom. I’m scared,” I’d plead after bedtime family prayer. And she would. She’d sing me to sleep repeating a handful of her favorite tunes, indelibly tattooing their lyrics into my soul. One of them went like this:
The amazing mystery of our identity and value as unique persons is not just that God formed us according to His distinct design, He also chose us by adoption. He calls me daughter, giving me a double guarantee that I am His. And as my Creator and Father, his formative influence on my identity shapes my value fundamentally and His appraisal deems me a precious, intricately chiseled, treasured, priceless jewel.
Names inspire us to be what we’re called.
I have a hefty Spotify playlist entitled Hope. I listen to it loudly and often because I need a constant perspective alignment from the moment my alarm rings to the final twitch before sleep prevails. Being melancholy, every chapter of my story has a bittersweet element and this particular chapter is being written around a storyline featuring parental aching. Left to myself, I could easily be swallowed up by despair but Hope anchors me when the wind is wild and I’m tossed around like a dingy in a gale. And every fresh new morning, regardless of how stiff my fingers feel or that chronic ache in my back and my heart, I tell myself my name and it helps me scan the horizon beyond the storm for the rainbow of fresh, new mercies and the everyday graces too.
My name not only informs today’s gifts, it assures me of future mercies.
And I sing along with my Bluetooth speaker,
I have this hope
In the depth of my soul.
In the flood or the fire
You’re with me and You won’t let go.
So, whatever happens I will not be afraid.
Cause You are closer than this breath that I take.
You calm the storm when I hear You call my name.
And I believe that one day I’ll see Your face.
I have this hope.
(Tenth Avenue North, I Have This Hope)
And as I sing I’m reminded that someday I’ll trade in my non-descript image of God’s reflection in my hazy mirror for a face to face gaze at the One who gave me something to hope for.
Names connect us to others, to family and to culture.
My little girls, they poured over our dogeared, marked up paperback entitled 2000 Best Baby Names. They’d underline and circle their favorites selecting something personal to initiate every new stuffed animal or dollyhouse figure into our family. Some names we get to choose and others we don’t. Our four year old didn’t understand this yet when her baby sister was born. A friend phoned to congratulate us and big sister announced authoritatively, “Her first name is Starla. Her middle name is Rose but we haven’t decided on her last name yet.”
That name on the mailbox, it’s about more than delivering letters and bills, it tells what family we’re connected to. It indicates the ethnicity that shapes our values and traditions. My given family name is Dutch, which is a synonym for frugality. And frugality isn’t the only badge of honor the Dutch adorn themselves in. They’re respected for their integrity, faith, family loyalty and work ethic. “You’re a Vander Meiden,” my dad reminded me proudly and often, like I’d been inducted into some sort of elite club and I better act like it. Digging deeper for the message embedded in those words, my dad was communicating, “You’re not just your own person. You’re in our family. You’re my daughter. You’re one of us. Forever. No matter what. And don’t you forget it.”
Names can hurt and names can heal.
Like Eve in the garden, Satan whispers cunningly as a serpent distorting our true identity as sons and daughters of God. And before we are old enough to understand it, shame bores super highways into our souls. Sometimes we hear it in the cruel name calling of people who label us small in an attempt to enlarge themselves, or the insensitive tags slapped on us based on achievement or looks or money or beliefs. Over time we’re convinced that we’re inferior goods and our real names are replaced with aliases like Unlovable, Failure and Reject. Then God comes to us tenderly, quietly through his Word and his Spirit exposing the deception, reminding us that he’s inscribed our names in his Book of Life penned with His blood and sealed with the emblem of the cross and the words Unconditionally Loved and Accepted.
The best gifts aren’t necessarily the ones wrapped in shiny paper with a bow on top.
My dad, he gifted me with a name.
And a good name is better than great riches. (Prov. 22)
That internal compass, the one that informed his decision about an abortion, he passed it on through naming.
My name, it anchors my identity to the eternal pointing my own compass true North.
How I ache to put my arms around his back and feel his scruffy whiskers along the side of my face and tell him, “Thank you, thank you, dad, for my name”.
There’s a lone daffodil in the wild part of my garden today. It’s the first bloom of spring and it whispers Hope.
It was kind of fun at first, nursing my loves with chicken soup and experimenting with homeopathic remedies until it took me down too. Then I began to wonder if my back ached from the flu or too much alone time with my mattress. The dog sniffed out the dirty Kleenexes lying around and gobbled them up like fine European chocolate. We all rode it out teeth chattering under a mound of blankets but it went on and on like 20th century minimalist music. To entertain ourselves, we watched internet episodes of Fixer Upper on HGTV because we can’t even escape home renovations when we’re sick.
Dad spent years in the tuberculosis sanitorium coughing his guts out—literally. Drenched in his own sweat, cut open from neck to navel, lung packed, wondering about a cure. It was in the supine, he met God and the two became friends. It was the supine that postured him for a lifelong rhythm of prayer. And a long life it was, thanks be to God and Arythromycin.
Mom lived like the Energizer bunny until God laid her low in that last decade of life. A massive stroke set the wheels in motion. She lost her mobility, then her mental clarity. Productivity vanished and she became utterly dependent on others even to bring the spoon to the mouth. She spent years in the supine, looking up at ceiling tile from the prison of old age.
That brings us to today. We’re on the cusp of a great adventure. Our Texas house has a For Sale sign out front and I’m going shopping for a new one in Michigan next week.
I hope that they will see me embracing the mysteries in each new day, trusting the sovereign, loving hand of my Father who knows my story beginning to end and everything in between.
I walked in the back door and found her sobbing. Tears streaming down my Little’s face, I approached her magnetized by her pain and wanting to fix it with a hug.
Like my Little, at some point we all walk wounded, aching and bleeding.
That injury we cleaned and sanitized, it’s actually a life lesson.
At mile marker 50, I’m starting to resemble the Velveteen Rabbit, worn thin, stained and lumpy. My girls are growing up. The oldest just transitioned from college to career. The second has launched into higher education. The third navigates the social and academic jungle called high school and the baby skirts the edges of childhood with adolescence nipping at her heels.
I explained, “Christmas is the most important holiday in American culture.” It’s lights and trees and decorations, cookies and candy, parties and programs, stockings and presents. It’s family and friends hopping planes and driving white knuckled road trips on icy winter nights to be together around a warm and inviting living room fire. And you’re sure to see a white bearded Grandpa in a red velvet suit holding crying babies on his pudgy lap while mother’s snap photos for Facebook. We call him Santa Claus and legend goes that he flies around in a sleigh on Christmas Eve dropping presents down chimneys for good little boys and girls. People greet one another saying, “Merry Christmas” and everybody listens to music that tells the story of all we love and believe about this holiday.
Heaven knows you need Comfort tonight.
You see, the real Christmas story starts back more than two millennium ago when after 400 years of God’s silence to His prophets, He speaks and the sound of His voice is the whimper of a newborn baby that He names “Immanuel” which means God With Us.
A few weeks ago we decorated your first Christmas tree together. The twinkling multicolored lights sparkle as brightly as the potential for your future and there are countless reasons to celebrate, to anticipate and to hope this Christmas season. But the best reason of all is Jesus, Immanuel, God With Us.
So, this Thanksgiving, I’m taking a new look at all of His fresh mercies, confirmations of His faithfulness, evidence of His love.
The seasons are changing.
A couple dozen teenagers dropped their shoes by my front door, devoured five large pizzas, a pan of brownies and 3 dozen cookies in about three seconds before gathering around the TV to watch the presidential debate. For some of them, it’s their first opportunity to cast a vote and they’re trying to choose responsibly. I scanned the crowd, pondering each teenage boy seated around our family room. I’m convinced they are good men in the making but growing up is an art, not a science and each of these guys are on a serious learning curve.
The bottom line is that I’m not 13 anymore. The sign across my chest at 50 reads “SCHREWD”. These past 37 years, I’ve done some living and learning myself, and I think this country needs something more than an overgrown, unrestrained teenage boy functioning as Commander in Chief and living in our White House, or for that matter, a woman married to one.
50+ Musings 