Elk Envy

I will try to be brief. But this story—or “God stamp” actually—was a long time in the making.

It started shortly after Dana and I began the fight against her recurrent breast cancer which was diagnosed in August 2006. The story became an official “God stamp” just this past fall, six years later.  (For backstory on "God stamps," you may want to click to this post, or search for "deer" or "rainbow" on this blog.)

In the second year of battling recurrence, it became clear that this round of breast cancer was not going away easily, if at all. As we settled into the slog, Dana began reading a book by John Eldredge with her good friend Kay. Eldredge is a writer, teacher, counselor who touches a great deal on what some might call the “chick-if-i-cation” of the church—asking men, who are of the hunter/gatherer nature, to share emotions and sing, etc., things guys are not inclined to do, unless they are talking about football or cheering with 50,000 other fans.

In this particular book (I am still searching for the exact book, Eldredge, a prolific writer, has written many) Eldredge told a story about taking his son elk hunting. In recounting the story, he told of what a great father/son bonding time he had envisioned for this particular experience. But as the hunting excursion wore on, they hadn’t seen one elk. So Eldridge began to pray. He prayed that they might run across an elk, justifying the request by reminding God of the terrific bonding experience it would be. And, lo and behold, near the end of the hunting day, an elk sauntered across their path. Boom. His son got his elk. Eldridge, then, went on to use that story as an illustration for prayer.

This caused Dana to respond in an email to Kay: Oh that’s just great. I am praying against cancer, in hopes of living, and I am getting nothing. He prays for an elk, in hopes to kill it, and God comes through for him.

To which Kay responded, in her usual poignant way: Dana, you have elk envy. Don’t have elk envy. Just because God answers prayer one way doesn’t mean He is going to answer your prayer the same way.

Which is true. Very true. Undeniably, biblically, and theologically true.

So, “no elk envy” became one of our bumper sticker phrases (Kay actually needle-pointed the phrase, and a facsimile of an elk, into a pillow case) throughout the cancer fight, and as best we could, we made it the framework for our praying.

In the fall of 2009 the battle took a hard turn. The cancer spread in a way that affected Dana’s cognitive and motor capabilities. So, not only did she transition into a bedridden condition, but in what was probably the cruelest turn in the fight, Dana lost her ability to communicate, or more specifically, to express. Her communication was simply “yes” or “no” responses to questions and occasionally she phrased a sentence or two.

Here’s why it was cruel. Our ability to communicate and express is what attracted us to each other in the first place, and it’s what eventually placed us into what we called “one of the top five loves of all time.” We loved making each other laugh. We loved sharing and processing together. Dana was invigorated by the art of writing and expressing. It was in the DNA of her personality. And now, as we were moving into the most challenging era of our marriage, we were doing it with one-word answers to life’s most difficult questions and high-stakes dilemmas.    

While we were in, what I’ve labeled, “hospice mode,” Dana and I would touch on the subject of heaven, but she was not comfortable in making that a topic of conversation. We had long said that if one of us got to heaven before the other, then heaven was not going to be all it was cracked up to be. And we’d both said, in our more expressive moments, that neither of us will give the other permission to “go.” We would both be hanging onto the leg of the other.

Knowing Dana was not comfortable with the subject of heaven, I concluded, whether rightly or wrongly, that talking about heaven might create more fear and anxiety than comfort and assurance—pulling together info from our conversations from our expressive days and mixing that with Dana’s one-word answers to my questions about the subject. Yet, here we are, approaching our ultimate goodbye and Dana’s big hello, with scant ability to communicate.

And so, you plow through on your own, navigating the high-wire balancing act that care-giving forces upon you: protection vs. reality; the presence of hospice and palliative care vs. the appearance of throwing in the towel; the desire, and need, to enter into end of life conversation vs. creating fear.

It’s an impossible balance, and you do the best you can.

During hospice mode those were the tensions occupying my mind which was in a constant state of whirring and spinning, like the whirring and spinning you hear in your computer from time to time. Only my whirring and spinning never wound down. There was no CTL+ALT+DEL keyboard sequence.

That November our friends Randy and Kay came to visit from Montana. Yes, the Kay with whom Dana shared the John Eldredge book, which by now had been two years prior. Dana knew they were coming. As soon as they walked through the door, before anything else was said, Dana piped up, “No elk envy.”

I am not sure there has ever been a better placed, better prepared phrase in all of history. If you’ve ever read John Steinbeck’s East of Eden, it was a “timshel” moment. For in that phrase, Dana told all of us that she knew the seriousness of the situation. And perhaps most importantly, she told us all, especially me, that she was okay with that.

In that phrase she showed humor, expression, connection. I laughed. I cried. But mostly, I sighed heavily—a deep-body sigh. It’s not that it made anything easier, but I was able to feel, ever so slightly, that we were in this thing together. It was a boost I needed as we navigated the final days, which, it turned out, would be just around the corner from Randy and Kay’s visit.

But here is where the story takes a turn toward God-stamp status. Last November, Randy took their 12-year old son Ben elk hunting for the first time on the ranch where they live in Montana. I know. Elk hunting. Father and son. It was the first season that Ben was age eligible to hunt elk. They saw a few elk throughout the day but never had a clear shot. Then, by late afternoon they tried one more area. Three elk finally walked out into the open. Ben set up and took one shot. Boom. Ben got his elk. Randy would later note, being a fittingly proud dad, it was a “perfect lung shot.”

And we all knew this was more than Ben’s first elk.

It was a near-perfect repeat of the scenario that generated our prayer chant “no elk envy”—a father-son elk hunting excursion. Extraordinarily, Ben saw and killed an elk at pretty much the earliest possible moment—the first shot he took on the first day he hunted of the first year he was eligible to hunt.

I don’t know if there’s much theological backing for this (and it’s not the first time I’ve pushed through the limits of theology in this whole journey), but I have taken this as a divine imprimatur—a God stamp—on a couple levels: number one, that yes, indeed, Dana’s declaration of “no elk envy” on Randy and Kay’s visit stands as a window into her thinking that she knew how bad things were, and she was okay with that. Secondly, and more importantly, our prayers are to have the flavor of “no elk envy.”

That’s huge. And it goes against our nature.

Just because God does not move or answer prayers the way we want or hope or expect doesn’t mean that God is any less good than when He does answer prayers the way we want or hope or expect. This, though, is a tough nut to crack. Just look at the prayer request lists of any church. First, our requests take on the flavor of a Christmas list, stating things that we want. Then, when things do turn out the way we want, we heap on the praise (“God is good!” we will say). When they don’t, the flavor is a little different (“Keep praying!” we will say).

Why is this? Do we oversell how God will intervene in our lives thus creating an expectation God never expected us to have? The only fail-safe promise we have from God is that He will be with us. But, because of expectations we’ve created, we’ve worked ourselves into a corner where God’s presence doesn’t really matter—we would rather have our way than His presence.

When I look at how Jesus taught us to pray (Matthew 6 and Luke 11), I can only find two personal items we can expect from God based on our requests: 1.) our daily sustenance; 2.) to be lead away from temptation.

So how is it that we are brazenly disappointed when things don’t go our way? Maybe it’s because we see in the gospels people asking for healing and Jesus heals them, so we think we should get the same treatment. But isn’t this classic “elk envy”? To quote our friend Kay: Just because Jesus answered one prayer one way doesn’t mean He will answer our prayers the same way.

Curiously, when I started writing this blog post—a post on the subject of our desires versus God’s ways—while in California with Jessica and her family, I received news that my mom was rushed to the hospital with chest pains—a first for her. Of course, I prayed like crazy for my own desires and wishes—that everything would be okay—and gave a patronizing nod to “God’s ways.”

Nice test, God.

Isn’t that just like Him? I knew that writing about prayer was likely to bring on a test, but I didn’t think it would come so quickly. For the record, mom did not appear to have a heart attack (God is good!) and will undergo some follow up tests this week (Please keep praying!).

The timing of Mom’s hospital run feels like a gentle nudge from God that says: Make sure you’re not giving the impression to not pray like crazy for desires and wishes (especially since we see a fair amount of Scripture telling us to do just that). I guess though, that the point where we get off track is the expectation we place on the results. Scripture does tell us to bring our desires and requests to God, but the healthy attitude seems to ask that we not base our opinion of God on how He honors our desires and requests. If things do not go as we hoped, we will naturally be mad, sad, hurt, disappointed and myriad other emotions. I think this is healthy. Where it gets less healthy, or even unhealthy, is when these emotions morph into mindsets of bitterness or skepticism or into a thinking that God is not on our side, which, candidly, is what Dana and I were thinking throughout much of the recurrence battle. By reminding ourselves of “no elk envy” we stayed out of a dangerous hole.

From my perspective, the less God’s people freak out over things not going our way, the more we show an observing world that we trust God’s ways. The issue of suffering is a big sticking point for those who are testing the waters of Christianity but have yet to jump in. Our reaction to suffering, or more poignantly, our reaction to things not going our way, displays whether or not we believe what Scripture says about suffering, chiefly, that we will experience it. And it displays whether or not we believe, and even appreciate, God’s fail-safe promise that He will be with us in the suffering.

To train myself to think and pray this way, I may adopt a new phrase for the close of my prayers, “No elk envy.” It may not be as poetic as “Amen,” but it forces me to think “Your will be done” and actually mean it.

Thank you for observing this journey with me.

Barry

Follow-Up Note: My mom’s follow-up tests all went well and things seem to be okay with her heart. Also, I received a note from Randy and Kay saying that Ben’s first elk hunting excursion this season was unproductive, adding a little more credence to last season’s divinely-timed, God-stamped elk.

Bible Follow-Up: In taking the observations of this journey to a next level, I've created a bare-bones Bible experience to accompany this post. It's an opportunity to explore, and even evaluate, some of my biblical assertions. You can get it here. (By the way, we need a new word for "devotional" or "Bible study." Right now "experience" is all I got, but I know we can do better.)

Walking Wounded



"Fountain of Tears" in Granada, Spain

 

I have something strange going on.

This “something strange” has happened a few times recently, two instances I can remember with some detail.

It goes something like this: I’ll be clicking through my day, minding my own business, thinking my usual random thoughts (“Concrete was a great invention.”). I’ll be in a public place like a big box store and my path will cross, for a fleeting moment, with someone who has apparently spent his or her entire life overcoming a major physical challenge. They’re on their own at the moment in this busy arena, and seem to be doing fine.

It brings me to immediate tears.

The first instance that I noticed this becoming a trend was a few months ago while riding on an airport tram. I was probably doing some internal kvetching about airport life. I had noticed a man a little younger than I carrying an equal amount of travel bags—an over-stuffed roller bag and a heavy-laden back pack over a shoulder. (This probably sparked the random thought, “I wonder if the 50-pound baggage limit was set by the chiropractor lobby.”) The tram made a stop. The doors opened, my fellow traveler stood from his seat, gathered his bags, and with considerable effort, drug his barely functioning leg with his maximum-stuffed roller bag through the tram door onto his next destination. He exited as if he’d done it hundreds of times, maybe thousands.

 

I stayed on the tram, awaiting my next stop. With tears streaming down my cheeks.

The most recent instance of this “something strange” was at one of Jessica’s concerts in Miami, Fla. She was singing Maria in excerpts from "West Side Story" with the New World Symphony under the direction of Michael Tilson Thomas, a world-renown conductor who actually worked with Leonard Bernstein, composer of "West Side Story."

When I arrived at my row before the concert began I had to ask a patron seated on the end to stand in order for me to get to my seat. She was seated by herself and politely, even enthusiastically, obliged. Her movements were noticeably labored, but confident. I could sense she had a challenge of some sort. But it wasn’t until the end of the concert, when she applauded with her wrists, that I could see the extent of her challenge, perhaps a type of palsy.

Applauding. With her wrists. With a huge smile. And then, before the applause was over, she turned to walk with a limp up the aisle to exit, no doubt to beat the crowd—something she had done hundreds of times. Maybe thousands.

I kept clapping. With tears streaming down my cheeks.

At that moment my applause took on more meaning than celebration of the transcendent moments I had experienced through the music, but I began to feel myself as a cheerleader. First I was cheering how anyone, no matter their situation of life, can enjoy beautiful music. I was also cheering how my wife Jessica was able to, with her gifted voice, reach into the spirit of my applauding neighbor. And of course, I was cheering how my neighbor, despite her challenges, or maybe even because of her challenges, was able to enjoy beautiful music.

Later that day, after the concert, Jessica and I were walking down Lincoln Road, a famous pedestrian mall in South Beach. We happened upon my seat mate from the concert, sitting at an outdoor table enjoying a nice dish of frozen yogurt. I introduced myself by saying “I enjoyed listening to that beautiful concert with you!” After a couple of confused seconds she said, “You changed your clothes!” Which I had, going from diva-spouse afternoon concert attire to shorts and a t-shirt. And then she said, “That was so beautiful.” I introduced Jessica as one of the singers. Our friend asked “Which one?” to which we replied “Maria.” You could see gratitude come over our friend as she seemed privileged to share how beautiful the experience was to her.

As we walked away, I cried again. Now I had to explain my tears. “She touched me,” I said to Jessica, whose gift of tenderness may actually surpass her gift of music. She always lets me cry, and enters into the cry with me.

I have been around folks with physical challenges my entire life, whether challenges since birth or brought on through accident or disease. I’ve done my best to help when I can, to empathize as best I can, and mostly to not let the challenge define the person.

But something is now different. This is a new look for me, this immediate, spontaneous crying thing.

I want to pay attention to it.

It seems that in one instantaneous moment the journeys of these folks, with all the dynamic moments on journeys like these, wash over my heart like a rogue wave.

Those moments when they realized their condition, whether gradually from a birth abnormality or all at once through an accident or disease (Was it shock? Was it surprise?); the struggle behind the acceptance of the fact that they don’t have it as easy as others; the whipsaw moments of weakness with every intention to throw in the towel, followed by moments of sheer resolve and determination, and then the cruel reverse of that sequence. But here they are: functioning in mass public—a busy airport, a packed concert hall—with aplomb.

I’ve been trying to assess the crying. Why the immediate well-up of tears? Later that evening in Miami I dropped Jessica off at the hall to practice for her next gig and I made the 25 minute walk back to the apartment where we were staying. I tried to get a handle on this. I’m sure it’s related to the journey of loss, the experience of a broken heart. But could it be something more specific? And then I was prompted by a memory.

Dana had been on chemo for about a year with her recurrent breast cancer (BC round 2, as we would call it) when we were driving on Breiel Blvd. in Middletown and happened upon a fender bender. But it wasn’t two cars. It was a car and a deer. The deer was badly wounded but was still alive and trying to pull itself off the road into the safety of the nearby woods. Dana immediately began to cry , and she couldn't stop crying. This was more than her usual soft spot for all things animal and “all the kitties in the world.” As we drove she expressed that she was identifying with the deer. She and the deer were both wounded. They were both fighting to survive. They were both longing for safety and the familiarity of normal. That event stuck with us for days.

And it came flooding into my mind and heart on that walk in Miami.

 

I am wounded.

I can identify with the challenges of these folks whose paths I’m crossing. I can empathize with the rapid-fire whipsaw of resolve vs. despair, denial vs. acceptance. I know what it’s like to walk with a crippling hole of hurt and loss, laboring to function in a world that caters to normal.

But here’s the thing: We’re all wounded.

We all carry something.

And I think that’s what my visceral reactions to the walking wounded around me are tapping into. My journey of loss has reworked my emotional DNA and I’m just now beginning to realize to what degree this has occurred. Yes, my heart is more generally moved these days (I tear up at some point during every episode of “Blue Bloods,” a new series on ABC that Jessica and I have locked into; and I don’t think it’s simply sleep deprivation), but connecting with those who have visibly pressed through insurmountable obstacles provides a window into just how re-worked my emotional DNA is.

The phrase “world of hurt” comes to mind, with new meaning. We’re all carrying something. We’re all asked to overcome something. To borrow the words of a new friend, Leneita Fix, who does urban youth ministry near New York City, “All teens are urban. It doesn’t matter where they live or what their circumstances are; given today’s teen predicament, they’re all trying to survive something.” (As a side, you may want to check out Leneita’s book, “Everybody’s Urban.”) The same is true for all of us. In some cases the striving to survive is visible: exiting a tram with a debilitated leg, applauding beautiful music with wrists. In other cases the striving to survive lurks behind the masks of our stoic faces as we navigate our daily routines of waiting in lines, paying bills, meeting deadlines.

I’m reminded of something written in 2 Corinthians 1:4, that “[God] comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.”

That’s pretty cool, and I think it describes why I’m having such a strong reaction to “those in any trouble.” This verse, perhaps more than any other, paints the picture of redemption that can emerge from “our troubles.” We are naturally and organically drawn to the wounds of others. And it’s good to react.

For now, I’m reacting with tears. I’m going to keep paying attention to this reaction, grabbing tightly to this thread, watching hopefully to see what fabric of redemption God might be weaving together. I’ve felt compelled to share this point in the journey. While it’s certainly a work in progress, I’m sensing there are more of us who have hidden wounds needing to heal, or healed wounds needing to be shared with others.

 

Maybe we can all cheer and applaud for each other—with our hearts, with our hands, and even with our wrists.

"Where are you?"

“Where are you?”

It’s a question we’ve been asking of God lately, especially since the tragedy in Newtown, Conn. It’s an honest, heart-felt question. The question sounds a bit mocking, with a tad of derision. It’s not necessarily declaring a state of apostasy, but more of a natural reaction. Sometimes it just sounds good to ask the question even if we know the answer. But it doesn’t catch God off guard.

Especially since, He asked it of us first.

They were His first spoken words in the world’s newly realized fallen state, moments after the fateful bite of the fruit, or at least after just enough time to sew a few fig leaves together.

Adam and Eve were hiding in the garden and God asked, “Where are you?” (Gen. 3:9)

In His omniscience, God knew the answer. I’m certain He knew the whereabouts of Adam and Eve. But He asked the question, maybe just to get it down on paper for us to see, knowing that we’d be asking that question of Him, now that the world was in its fallen state.

And we have been asking that question ever since. Israel asked it. Psalmists asked it. Martha asked it. Even Jesus asked it.

I have asked it.

And I thought I’d use the occasion of the three-year anniversary of Dana’s passing to comment on that question.

I think the time I felt most abandoned by God was when we were in the slog of the fight. It seemed that any time we hit a juncture where things could take a turn for better or worse, a time when God could show His hand, it was then that things would turn for worse. In our short-sighted humanness it’s natural to feel that we’re on the wrong side of God.

But, in the cosmic scheme of things, we’re not the ones who moved. I think it’s because of the things we have to navigate in this fallen world that cause us to question the presence of God. It has broken my heart to hear people this past week ask, almost with a shaking fist, “Where is God?”

In my journey God has been extra merciful in reminding us of His presence. Rainbows in the sky, deer in the yard, and even a heart in the clouds. (You may want to search this blog for the key words in that last sentence to get geeked up on what’s come to be known as “God stamps.”) I say merciful because He has already told all of us in His Word that He is with us, that His Comforter is walking with us, that He will never leave us nor forsake us. And He told us those things in almost the same breath when He says that we will have trouble.

God saw it coming. And I think that’s why He asked the question first.

So these days, when I find myself asking that question of God, I want to ask it of myself. Where am I? I think that keeps me on a better track. Because the reality is, God is near. Always. Everywhere.

I want to leave you with a thought that’s more connected to marking three years than to the question “Where is God?” I remember about the second Christmas into the cancer recurrence fight (probably Christmas 2008) that Dana had a bit of a spooky thought. We were at a family gathering and she was picturing that gathering without her in the picture. With the threat of a serious illness, that picture can be more vivid. She was picturing all of us carrying on as if nothing had happened.

Those of us who are still here, fighting through the fallen world, know that nothing can be further from the truth. I have said this before: you can’t have known Dane for even a minute without having something change in you. We are all different.

As we reflect on three years on this earth without Dane, I might ask that you tap into that part of your personal DNA that was impacted by Dane. Keep it fanned and flamed.

And I think there’s something else going on that Dane would have no way of foreseeing. I don’t know about any of you, but we here have felt some kind of extra special encouragement that can only come from the Dana corner of heaven. There is more to tell, but suffice it to say I think Dane is having an absolute blast in more ways than one. More on all of that soon.

Return to the Fire

Through a quirky chain of events, I returned to the scene of the fire last Friday.

If you’re new to this blog, a quick recap of what I mean by “fire.” It’s the pain and fear that come from losing the person on this earth who has been the closest to you, the person with whom you have shared what you both called “one of the top five loves of all time.” My recovery modus operandi in my journey of losing Dana has been to adopt the military strategy of running toward enemy fire; when soldiers see or hear enemy fire they run toward it. My MO has been to run toward the pain and not run away from it. (You may want to check out this blog post for more detail.) Last week I had the chance to see how the philosophy of running toward the fire was working out for me.

And here’s what I mean by quirky chain of events: This past summer I added to my plate the task of serving as interim pastor at Breiel Blvd. Church of God in Middletown, the church that brought me to Middletown in the first place as youth pastor many years ago. “Interim” means I serve until a new pastor is in place.

Serving part-time, my primary responsibilities with the church are teaching/speaking on Sunday and meeting with the staff (a blessed, great staff I might add) through the week. I’ve had on my radar the possibility of helping with the pastoral care component, including hospital visits, if the need were to arise and if I had the time. Last Friday, the need arose. I’m not sure I had the time, but I was compelled to make the time.

It’s ironic that I would voluntarily make the time because it hasn’t always been that way.

When I first came to Middletown to serve as youth pastor at Breiel Church one of my duties as a member of the pastoral staff was to help with hospital visits two days a week, Wednesdays and Fridays. I confess that as I navigated the calendar-packed, high-energy nature of youth ministry, hospital rounds did not factor as a favorite “to do.” And inevitably, the Wednesday I was launching a new series in our youth programming (our big night was Wednesday night, and series launches meant more detail to tend to than usual) was the day I’d not only have several people to visit in the Middletown hospital, but also someone in Dayton (north of Middletown) and Cincinnati (south of Middletown). Before I sound too gripey, I need to say that the moment I would arrive at the hospital room, I embraced that time. I certainly understood that this was some of the purest, most consistent ministry I would be doing every week. I enjoyed talking and praying with the folks and they seemed to be encouraged by my visits. But that didn’t keep me from grousing a bit on my drives to and fro.

I left that youth pastor position having never resolved the experience of blending hospital/pastoral care with youth ministry. I was compliant to the duty and respectful of the task, but I probably didn’t full on embrace the experience.

It was during Dana’s cancer fight years later, when I lived in a hospital room for a month as a caregiver, that I revisited that unresolved experience. As you might expect, my recent journey has left me heartbroken for what takes place in a hospital room. But I hadn’t really had a chance to act on that heartbreak and was even beginning to wonder if it was real.

This is why I felt compelled to make the time for the hospital rounds this past Friday. I needed to take the heartbreak for a test drive. But in doing this, I knew that meant running to the fire. I knew I would be walking through a particular set of doors. The last time I walked through these doors was when I was walking out of them and into an ambulette for the 4 mile ride home to hospice care. So when I said, “I’ll visit the hospital this Friday,” I was saying it through the nervous lump in my throat: What if the flood of memories, which were bound to be filled with details I had forgotten, would render me useless? What if I were to walk boldly through those front doors, get a whiff of hospital and hear myself say “nope,” u-turning to walk just as boldly out of those front doors, not even giving myself a chance to tap into the heartbreak? There were some unnerving unknowns. Of course, they were familiar unknowns. They’re the kind of questions you face every time you run toward the fire.

What I underestimated was how God could use the flood of memories, the “fire” you might say, to massage the heartbreak.

I should have known that God was up to something because the visit started rather ominously.

Wouldn’t you know that on this my first visit back to the hospital where Dana’s final spiral began there would be a parishioner to visit on “Fourth Floor North,” the floor where Dana and I spent a month treating her cancer’s final play, the floor where I learned how to define progress as three steps backwards and only two steps forward, the floor where I learned to squeeze as much hope as I could from the smallest morsels the fight would offer up. And just to be sure I didn’t miss a trickle of the flood that was to wash over me, fate would have it that when I walked past the nurse’s station to say hello to a friend, I ended up standing in front of the very room where it all took place.

Walking into the hospital wasn’t as difficult as I thought. It was as I stepped off the elevator on the fourth floor when I was surprised at the first thing that started the flood of memories: the tile patterns in the floor. As a caregiver during a lengthy hospital stay you have many opportunities to stare at the floor. For me, it was usually when I was talking with family and friends on the phone. I would step out of the room to find a place where I could talk (and maybe cry) without waking up Dana (or alarming her), where I wouldn’t be bothering hospital staff at the nurse’s station or other caregivers in waiting areas (even though I was anxious and nervous, I was still loud).  My “step out” would usually take me to the elevator landing area: it had a big window with a spacious view and if anyone came by they were always passing through, never congregating. It was this area that I would talk and pace while on the phone. As I shared bad news, good news, and bad news with spin, the back channel of my mind would study the tile patterns in the floor: I like how they put a curve here; but it made for a tough cut of that tile piece; it was a good idea to change color tile at this break in the pattern; those are nice, warm colors; when I place the tip of my shoe in the corner of that tile it looks like a parabola from my geometry days; I wonder how Mrs. Hypes is doing; and now it’s an asymptote—the shoe line and tile line will never meet if you follow them to infinity. And on it goes.

I think it’s something your mind does (or at least my mind) to keep you grounded. It notices inane, ordinary things, things that have nothing to do with the fears you’re facing. It’s probably a bit of an escape mechanism, as in, wouldn’t it be nice if this was all you had to worry about? Seeing this forgotten but familiar tile pattern reminded me of the intensity of those days, the relentless monitoring of symptoms, the draining interplay of hope and reality, the constant nagging of the haunting question, “What if this is it?” Your mind will relish the smallest things for a break, including a cup of coffee. Every sip of coffee in that hospital stay provided me a two to three second mental break. It was a moment when I didn’t have to make a decision, or worry about an outcome, and I knew what I was doing when I took that sip. It was a moment that was the complete opposite of every other moment during the stay.

The folks I visited last Friday were dear friends from my time as youth pastor at Breiel Church. The visits were rich and full of good conversation, much of which centered around questions and comments like “Where’s your wife Jessica? I can’t wait to meet her!” Jessica, of course, is a favorite. These comments then led to the redemptive work that God is doing in all the experiences of our lives. And yes, it was impossible to be in any of these hospital rooms without my eyes doing a scan of the surroundings: the whiteboard with the day’s date, the futon that made into a more comfortable bed than you would expect (thankfully), the patient wristbands that increase in number as the stay lengthens in days (allergies, “fall risk,” DNR).

As I left the building I was also reminded of the first time I was in Middletown's new hospital, Atrium Medical Center, even before it opened. Every three years the hospital’s foundation hosts a gala. I wrote about the one I attended shortly after Dana passed…a gala she helped plan.(I posted about that here.) The gala preceding that was in 2007 and Dana and I attended. It also was the celebration of the opening of Atrium Medical Center and included a dessert reception inside the hospital at the close of the gala, which was held outdoors under a beautifully decorated giant white tent. Dana and I were one year into the cancer recurrence battle at the time. I remember standing in the atrium of Atrium and thinking, “This place is fresh and new, there has been no bad news shared with anyone yet, there have been no deaths in here yet. It’s a clean slate.” I think it was the slog of battling cancer that took my mind down the negative trail. Because you can also go down the positive trail, which my mind eventually did, as I thought, “This will also be a place where good news is shared: the surgery was successful; the scan is clear; it’s a boy (or a girl).”

I’ve learned that life happens somewhere between those two trails, a truth that might have been part of my compulsion last Friday as to why I wanted to MAKE time for the hospital rounds. The Bible tells us to rejoice with those who rejoice and to mourn with those who mourn (Romans 12). There aren’t too many physical places in this world that actually provide opportunity for both: rejoicing and mourning. A hospital is certainly one of them.

One more thought. The picture below is the floor of the elevator. When I realized the significant role the tile floor played in my hospital experience, I snapped this to document the tile formations that I had studied while riding the elevator several times a day during that September in 2009, wishfully overhearing hopeful conversations of short hospital stays and “heading home to recover.” The framing of the picture was completely random; I simply pointed my phone down and snapped. It was while studying the picture more closely that I noticed what I captured—a cross.  In all my trips up and down that elevator in the month of living at the hospital, I don’t think I noticed the cross formation. It was simply a tile pattern, a pattern I studied as a mental break on an elevator ride. But the cross was there the entire time, whether I noticed it or not.

This is when God began to do a number on me, when He used my experience in the “fire” to massage my heartbreak to help others in their own fire—showing me that the heartbreak is real and giving me clarity on how to use it. I think that the tile on the elevator floor depicts our role with each other: reminding each other that the cross is there whether we see it or not. Whether it’s good news or bad news; whether it’s a short hospital stay that leads to recovery or a long hospital stay that ends in death; the cross, a symbol of victory over suffering and triumph over death, is always there.

 

Whether I knew it or not as a youth pastor years ago making my obligatory hospital “rounds,” I was reminding people that the cross was there whether they knew it or not. It may not have been anything I said or did, but just the fact that I came as a representative of the gospel—the gospel that delivers peace and comfort and eternal hope.

So the next time I have an opportunity to visit the hospital, I will make the time. There’s one other thing about fire that we all know: it refines. Maybe that’s what running toward the fire is all about, or at least a big part of what it’s all about. The fire does more than massage the heartrbreak, it refines the heartbreak and helps clarify the path of redemption that emerges from the pain.

I’ll keep working on that.

 

Meanwhile thank you for your patience, not only for the length of this post, but for the length of time since the last post. I apologize for the dry spell. More soon!

Lossology 101

Loss comes in all shapes and sizes. We lose our keys. We lose our data. We lose our minds. We lose our tempers. We lose our innocence. We lose our money. We lose our jobs. We lose our security. We lose our loved ones.

I remember as a kid coming into my own realization that death seemed to come in threes. I’ve since learned that this is some kind of cultural phenomenon—more than folklore or an old wives’ tale. In fact, Google “death comes in threes” and you’ll see over 100,000 entries. Take away the quote marks and you’ll get over 1 million. It seems to hold true…unless it comes in MULTIPLES of three, as it seems to have been doing in my little circle lately.

Within a few short months I’ve lost a neighbor, a childhood friend, his mom, a cousin, a dear family friend, a colleague in youth ministry, and just this week, a fellow breast cancer fighter. All of this, of course, is layered onto the loss of Dana.

So I thought I’d use this rash of recent loss to dust off my blogger keyboard and get back to sharing some observations on the journey. My apologies for the dry spell. (It was never my intention to go such a long stretch; I'll blame it on lots of life transition.)

This brings me to tell you about Weezie, the dear family friend mentioned above, who passed away on April 1.

Weezie was my “second mom.” And my “second grandma.” And my “second aunt.” And as you would guess, my “first spoiler.” And she was my dear friend. She and her husband Arnold (whom I called Arkie, and still do to this day), having no kids of their own, “adopted” my sister Becky (whom I called Beck, and still do to this day) and me as their own, especially on Sunday mornings when Beck and I were church orphans while Mom played the piano and Dad directed the music and choir at the East Park Church of God where my grandpa (whom I called Grandpa, and still do to this day) was the pastor. We needed somebody to tend to us in the pew.

My folks and “WeezeAndArkie” were already dear friends (they took monster trips out west before us kids came along). We did Christmas’s together. They were Mom and Dad’s go-to overnight baby sitters. There were lots of outings, French fries after Sunday-night church, late-night ice cream runs, Thanksgivings, sing-alongs around the piano, and so much more.

And then Arkie, who had hardly been sick a day in his life, suddenly passed away from a heart attack.

On April 1, in fact, 37 years to the day, before Weezie passed.

Other than unexpectedly losing our dearly loved collie, Lassie (I know, I was not a creative “namer” as a kid) Arkie’s death was one of my first “aware” losses—a loss that I actually felt. My grandma (Dad’s mom) had passed away a few years earlier, when I was 8. I remember seeing Dad cry and thinking “this must be big.” My dad’s brother Paul passed away when I was in early high school, and that was probably the first death that scared me. If it could happen to Uncle Paul, who was the father of close cousins my age, it could happen to anybody. Including my dad. Or my mom.

I reached out to Weezie at the time of Arkie’s death with a letter, trying desperately to connect with her through the pain I felt from losing Lassie. From my current adult perch this action seems a bit precocious. But the consensus of adults in my life at the time was that the letter showed me to be wise beyond my years. I spoke of heaven, and the fun Arkie was having chatting it up with the Apostle Paul, and I invoked wisdom from one of my junior high teachers that we’re all dying, some just get there sooner. (I recently read the letter and I must admit, it was pretty good!). I think, though, without knowing it, I was tapping into something that God built into us: the ability and desire to comfort others out of our own pain.

My mom has long said, and I agree, that we were not wired for loss. With loss not being a part of the plan at the beginning, the ability to cope with loss was not hard-wired into our DNA. That’s why it’s so brutal. And it hasn’t seemed to have come any easier over the centuries. If I were to make a point against evolution here, I’d note that dealing with loss is something that we have not adapted to. Mankind has never gotten used to the pain of loss. So it seems that if the brain had any say at all as to what needs to adapt, it would be doing something about the pain of loss, even before it developed, say, toes.

We cannot live and escape loss. So why do we think that it shouldn’t happen to us? Loss will happen. This may not sound like much fun, but my firm grasp on that reality had a lot to do with staying upright in dealing with the loss of Dana, both in fearing that loss and in experiencing it. And here’s how, but it’s not a quick answer:

I’ve long been intrigued by a scene in the book of Acts. Acts records the exciting events that took place in the life of the church within a few decades of Jesus’ ministry. It laid the groundwork for how the church can model itself and it gave God’s people a great “heads up” on what to expect as they seek to be God’s people in a fallen world (and here’s a hint, it isn’t going to be easy). The events noted in this book were hand-picked by God for our learning pleasure. And right smack in the middle of all of this is a scene that seems to be one of the most unfair situations of all time. Check this out (and I tried to shorten it, but it’s just not possible):

Acts 12:1-11
It was about this time that King Herod arrested some who belonged to the church, intending to persecute them. He had James, the brother of John, put to death with the sword.  When he saw that this pleased the Jews, he proceeded to seize Peter also. This happened during the Festival of Unleavened Bread. 4 After arresting him, he put him in prison, handing him over to be guarded by four squads of four soldiers each. Herod intended to bring him out for public trial after the Passover.
So Peter was kept in prison, but the church was earnestly praying to God for him.

6 The night before Herod was to bring him to trial, Peter was sleeping between two soldiers, bound with two chains, and sentries stood guard at the entrance. 7 Suddenly an angel of the Lord appeared and a light shone in the cell. He struck Peter on the side and woke him up. “Quick, get up!” he said, and the chains fell off Peter’s wrists.

8 Then the angel said to him, “Put on your clothes and sandals.” And Peter did so. “Wrap your cloak around you and follow me,” the angel told him. 9 Peter followed him out of the prison, but he had no idea that what the angel was doing was really happening; he thought he was seeing a vision. 10 They passed the first and second guards and came to the iron gate leading to the city. It opened for them by itself, and they went through it. When they had walked the length of one street, suddenly the angel left him.

11 Then Peter came to himself and said, “Now I know without a doubt that the Lord has sent his angel and rescued me from Herod’s clutches and from everything the Jewish people were hoping would happen.”

Did you notice that Peter was set free but James was killed?

Ponder that for a moment. Two men doing great work for God. Both men thrown into prison. Both men  undoubtedly on every church’s prayer chain. An angel delivers Peter, the kind of miracle we expect and pray for when things look impossible. But James is killed. Same prayers. Same God. Way different outcomes.

So the question I have to ask is, not so much, “why did James get killed?” But “why did God hand-pick this scene for us to see?” He must have wanted us to see that things are not always going to turn out like we’d planned. Or hoped. Or dreamed.

Maybe that’s why God has given a provision to help with loss. It’s like an escape hatch when things go wrong. It’s the same type of mechanism available to a forest devastated by fire—the seeds that germinate after intense heat. This helps replenish the forest. It’s depicted in movies when you see someone listening to a tape that says “if you’re listening to my voice something must have gone terribly wrong.” For us, the “terribly wrong” happened in the Fall in the Garden of Eden.  The escape hatch is the ability to share loss with each other. Sounds simple, I know; but stick with me. I think it gets more profound as we go.

First, we have this from 2 Corinthians 1:3-5.
3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, 4 who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. 5 For just as we share abundantly in the sufferings of Christ, so also our comfort abounds through Christ.

This passage tells us of a few things we can count on. First: troubles and suffering. But secondly: comfort from God, which propels us to comfort others.

Jessica and I (editor’s note: if the phrase “Jessica and I” is throwing you, check out the last few posts) were recently talking about the different shapes of loss, in particular, the losses she had experienced in her life—not simply loss of life necessarily but loss of other things: scars, pain and hurt collected from paths taken and not taken, decisions made and not made.

Jessica shared that the night before she had spent a good amount of time with the pictures linked to this blog (the Shutterfly link). It contains a couple photo albums, mainly from buzzin-in-law Aaron—some photos from Dane’s visitation and some photos from “happier times” such as a couple beach vacations. Jessica said that she had seen the pictures before but this time she let herself study them and enter into the scenes.

As we talked and shared about our mutual losses we realized something had been happening in our relationship…something rather miraculous. We were actually both a little perplexed with the conversation in that we were chatting on subjects we had already talked on deeply—ground already covered, grace dispensed. But there was a different vibe and a new, surprising reason why we were covering the ground.

We were absorbing each others’ losses.

As you might expect, this doesn’t come easy. There is pain to share. There is grace to dispense and support to give. But it’s beautiful and I think it’s as close to heaven on earth as we can get. It takes sacrifice and love. And, of course, when you put these two things together, you get the best product from heaven that we get to enjoy on earth: sacrificial love.

This brings me back to the thing that has kept me upright in my journey: embracing the reality that loss will happen.  There is absolutely no reason why I should expect to be exempt from loss. And the sooner I embrace that, the closer I am to allowing someone, or Someone, to absorb that loss with me.

And I think this gets at the heart of why we are on this earth with each other: to absorb each others’ losses, no matter the shape or size of the loss. This action probably gets us as close to being like Jesus as anything else we can do. (By the way, if you’ve never read “The Ragman” by Walter Wangerin, Google it now and read it.) 

I don’t know about you, but I could use all the help I can get in being like Jesus. I figure absorbing loss of the people around me is as good a place to start as any.

When I was in the epicenter of my own grief, my good friend Bill said to me, “You know, we believers do not have a good theology on loss.” Maybe this little post can be an installment in Lossology 101.

If so, Day One in the syllabus might go something like this:
Day 1: Either find someone, or Someone, to help absorb your loss or be the one to absorb the loss of someone around you.

More soon. And I promise, it won’t be so long in timeframe, nor in length.

Thank you,
Barry

Marking Two Years

I can’t believe it’s been two years.

Two years since Dana, as her uncle Jon said, accepted a better offer on where to spend Christmas.

Two years to the day since Dana traded me wiping her tears for Jesus wiping her tears.

It’s been two years of loss and recovery.

And if you don’t mind, I’d like to reflect on those two years for a moment.

Besides the God stamps which have so mercifully assured me of God’s presence, the most direct impression I received from God came in the form of these words: recover well. That phrase (which I posted about at the time) has been the North Star of this journey to keep me on track. It’s been the mountain peak in the distance to provide perspective. I found great hope in those words in this way: there is something to recover for.

And of course, one of the first things I was to recover for? Love. One of the questions I asked early on in the journey was this: What does the best-loved man in the world do when he has lost the source of that love? The quick answer, which has had staying power, was simply that I would love well. At the time of that Q and A with God the roles of life that I could apply that answer to were son, brother, uncle, grandson, cousin, friend and many others. I will be a better son, brother, uncle, etc. Obviously I had no idea that the role of husband was just around the corner. In fact, the last two blog posts have documented that miraculous turn in the journey and the wonderful gift of Jessica.

There are so many things you learn through loss—things you would not have learned without the loss. You learn things about yourself. You learn things about life, about gratitude, about God. You feel like you gain a unique perspective on existence itself, on the meaning of everything. What has blown me away is how all the things that I have learned have seemed to custom-build me for the love that I am now getting to experience. And that’s not just being a “new and improved” husband (I am better at keeping horizontal surfaces cleared and cupboard doors closed, but still a long way to go), but loving out of reservoirs that I did not know existed.

I’ve begun to see the slightest glimpse of the redemptive thread that God is knitting into this journey. I’m seeing some of the reality of the reasons for “recovering well.” I’m overwhelmed at the gift of relationship that I have been given to practice “loving well.” With regard to the state of “the journey” you and I have been observing these past two years, I’m doing okay. Better than okay.

But I’m wondering about you.

I’m wondering about my and Dana’s dear friends, our close families and extended family, our circles of friends who Dana knitted with, scrap-booked with, lost weight with, studied the Bible with. The grieving spouse, and that’d be me, has obviously lost the most. But the grieving spouse, and that’d be me, has had a very visible, nearly tangible, goal to shoot for: the possibility of another relationship. While I never thought this would happen (again, see the last two blog posts), it was still a healthy goal to shoot for—a goal that helped me set other valuable milestones in the journey toward recovery.

I am getting to put into practice all that I have learned (which is more than I expected) through not only knowing and loving Dana, but also losing that love. And since every person who came into Dana’s life was deeply loved by her, my hope is that all of us are finding a similar path. I’m hoping we are all getting to explore what it means to love well in all the relationships we have in our lives.

Today has been a special day. I’m in Los Angeles celebrating Christmas with Jessica’s family. While life is screaming busy as they are finishing up a house renovation project (putting on the finishing touches before the big family Christmas Day), Jessica and I still managed to slip away this afternoon to the beach for a little walk to think about, commemorate, and honor Dana. Yes, my mind has been on the minute-by-minute countdown of this day two years ago (although the West Coast time has kept me a bit messed up) since I woke up this morning. Actually the countdown began a couple days ago, remembering the special visits from friends in those last days, and recalling how Dana and I finished reading the book of Revelation on Tuesday, Dec. 22.

As Jessica and I walked the beach, reflecting on the journey and talking about Dana, it should have been no surprise what we saw in the water. The picture is at the top of this post. You may need to zoom in; those are dolphin fins you’ll see. If you need a refresher on the significance of dolphins, you can search this blog for “dolphins.” For now, we can take assurance that ...

…the God stamps continue.

Many prayers and thanks, and Merry Christmas!

Barry

Love Is A Gift

I want to talk about love for a minute.

Love is a gift.

I’ve learned that some people, sadly, never get to experience love in its best form in this life. And others of us seem to have more than our fair share. I’ve long realized how blessed I am with a loving family—from my parents all the way down to cousins five times removed.

Plus, I have had great marriage love. In fact, Top Five all-time, as Dana and I would say. And then, of course, I’ve lost that love.

There are things that I have learned about love ONLY because I have lost great love. That, to me, is a cosmic perplexity.

The last post was about a recent, unexpected turn in the journey, appropriately titled, “A Turn in the Journey.”

And it’s recently become an even bigger turn. As of just two weeks ago, Jessica and I became engaged. I am getting to experience a love that I never thought I’d see again. Since December 2009 I’ve told myself that I will hold out for nothing less than what I’ve experienced before. I was sure that that vow would keep me single for life.

Until now.

I’m a blessed man.

You learn a lot from losing love. And now, I am getting to apply what I’ve learned, as well as experience an entirely new and different love. I appreciate being able to share with you about this turn. It’s made me realize something about this journey. It’s not about me (although most posts are Bear-centric). It’s not about Dana. It’s about God. It’s about His love for us. It’s about His merciful stamps assuring all of us that He is near and in this process.

And now for the bigger turn.

Jessica and I are getting married, in a small, private ceremony convenient for us (given our schedules and travel, especially Jessica’s), and then a full-on celebration with our friends and family down the calendar pike. Within a couple days of our engagement, which happened in Montana at the end of August, we began to explore scenarios and dates of how we would marry. As we considered options, we began to channel a line that Dana used for our somewhat-quick engagement: When you know what the rest of your life is going to be, you might as well get started.

The wedding date? My birthday, September 13.

Yep, I know. On paper, it looks crazy. I’ve seen people move this fast before and thought “How can they know what they’re doing???” Maybe those folks did or didn’t know what they were doing. I know what love is. Jessica knows what love is…and what it isn’t. We’ve been in a constant state of “oh wow” regarding how we’ve seemingly been custom-journeyed for each other.

I know this news is a surprise. And so many wonderful people in our lives deserve a personal call or lunch or breakfast or cup of coffee to share this news. But that obviously isn’t feasible.

Jessica and I are excitedly and adventurously committed to entering into the next era of our relationship: a covenant relationship that builds on the love we’ve already developed; a relationship that gives us both a chance to be the first to sacrifice for the other; a relationship that gives each of us an opportunity to develop a love that casts out fear; a relationship that gives me a chance to love her as Christ loves the church, and a chance for her to experience that level of love.

In my last post I briefly mentioned some God stamp moments in this journey. The first week that Jessica and I met we were driving on a short trip and within 10 minutes we saw a deer and a rainbow. Jessica knew both stories and we glanced at each other curiously, sort of saying, “Let’s not over-interpret here, but that was wild.”

And then after a couple weeks of knowing that we were onto something special, we looked up in the sky and saw the cloud you see at the top of this blog. That is not a photo-shopped image.

There is still much to mine out from my journey of loss and grief. God is up to something. We’re eager to explore what that might be.

And if I might make one more comment. We’ve had some beautiful conversations with Mama Sue and Dana’s family over the past weeks. We all share a deep love for each other. I know that this kind of step brings reminders of the permanence of Dana’s death. For me it’s a permanence I’ve dealt with minute-by-minute since 9:10 a.m., December 23, 2009. For others of us the permanence comes in waves or stages, and I know the news of this blog will be a big wave.

When a permanence settles in, we seem to open ourselves up to a new level of recovery (or more grieving). I hope to explore that, and many other facets, in the coming months of this journey.


Much love and gratitude,

Barry