STORIES FROM LIFE

Westminster Abbey



I love stories. I love the different ways they come to me. Sometimes they are passed on by friends; sometimes by family. Some of them are written; some make their rounds by word of mouth. But sometimes they come through photos in family albums, and currently, through social media. I am quite technologically challenged, but I have learned enough to allow me to Facebook. I have not really learned the language except I know what “lol” means. When I read FB posts and look at pictures, I imagine stories behind them. I ask, “Why did he say that?” “Why does she talk about forgiveness all the time?”

This past weekend I went to a Goodwill store. Thrift stores interest me. They are full of stories. I find old family albums full of photos and wonder why no one was interested in keeping them. On this day, I saw two big beautiful paintings which looked very similar and with these were two beautiful antique-looking end tables. They probably came from the home of a senior citizen who had just passed away. Whoever it was had excellent taste. I would have bought the paintings except our little condominium has run out of walls for hanging more paintings.

Cemeteries are full of stories. A few years ago, Don and I visited the most famous of
them all, Westminster Abbey. It was a walk back into history. I would have loved having a week just to explore this hallowed ground. I stood before the coronation throne, silently carried on a conversation with the first Queen Elizabeth, who reigned over England’s golden age. I more than glared at Charles Darwin’s grave for trying to rob the Creator of the glory that belongs to Him.  It felt so unreal to walk in between the graves of the rich, very famous, very gifted and very powerful, icons of many, and indeed worshipped by some. I recalled stories told by Charles Dickens and thought about the milieu in which he lived. Lines of poetry from Tennyson, Shakespeare, Shelley which I have committed to memory years ago came rushing back to me. I’ve seen and touched graves of men and women who have made history and have helped shape my present world, men and women who were bigger than life.

My favorite part of Westminster Abbey, Poets' Corner, can be found in the South Transept. It is the burial place of writers, playwrights and poets; the first poet to be buried here was Geoffrey Chaucer. Then there were Alfred Lord Tennyson, John Dryden, Robert Browning, etc. Many writers, including Dr. Samuel Johnson, Rudyard Kipling and Thomas Hardy were also buried here. Charles Dickens' grave attracts particular interest.

By the time we got to sit down at the end of the day to take in the Vespers at the Westminster Abbey, we felt overwhelmed by the whole experience. We stood on hallowed ground, final resting place for these illustrious dead who have left their mark not only on England, but throughout the world. Once more their stories came alive.

Each one of us is a story.  Do you ever wonder what kind of story you are writing with your life?  I do. 

HUSBAND, DAD, GRANDPA

               

Young Don

The Introvert

A classic introvert, quiet (sometimes extremely quiet for my taste), voracious reader (Amazon.com must love him so!). Says, “split a Pepsi with you”; hoards chocolates in fear that another depression might come and the country will be out of chocolates. Analytical (this wife complains, “Oh, Don, must you always wonder how many angels can stand on the head of a pin?”), cautious (always wants to have his ducks in a row). “Great guns!” is the strongest exclamation you would hear from him; needs at times to get away to reenergize; very deliberate. Forgets names but remembers faces; loses things but never his way when driving. Loves deeply but never wears his deep affections on his sleeves. Never showy and hates to call attention to himself. Authentic.

Does not like IKEA because they make him put things together; avoids doing dishes like the plague; has a love-hate relationship with the telephone; thinks his wife is silly when she buys cut flowers rather than flowering potted plants. Loves music, and really good music, but music does not love him (music teacher’s statement “I think you may be tone-deaf.”); likes birds and birdwatching (was so pleased to find out that he shared this hobby with John Stott, the English theologian).

A Passionate Love for God

But these are not the qualities that I have found of great significance about Don, rather

Kristy & her dad

it has always been his quiet, passionate love for God. I have always known that God was his first and great love, and I would be a distant second. That was fine with me. (Besides, there is just no competing with God!) If that could be passed on to my children’s DNA, I would not have given them a better gift. I know though that this love for God was not passed on to my children through their genes, but through the model that Don has been to them. Shortly out of high school, Matthew had a confrontational exchange with me over issues. It was very painful for me to hear what he had to say. He told me how I lost him when he was in junior high, because I was so busy with things at work and my involvement in political things. Amid my tears, I heard him say, “I want to be like my dad. My dad does a lot of good things quietly, without letting people know.”

The Model

A pastor’s life is not the easiest. As we raised our children, we had our share of fears. We relied heavily on God’s assurance that He was with us. The pressure of raising a pastor’s children as normally and as close to the scriptural way, in a culture that more often than not, conflicts with God’s ways, weighed heavily on us. Don’s being pastor of a small, interracial church also had its unique demands. But God as always, was faithful. Our lives have been the richer for everything He has allowed us to experience.

If imitation is the highest form of flattery (I rather want to say “compliment”), I think our daughter has flattered us.   She, too, chose a pastor’s life when she married a man who has the same passionate love for God as her dad. She and her husband have been pastors to young people for about ten years of their 14 years of married life.

                                                         Grandpa Don & Haley
Have a very special
Father's Day, Don, and to all the fathers out there!

PARADIGM SHIFTS & HEROES

 
Childhood Heroes

A red cape. That was what Matthew wanted, so he could swish it around his little body, pretending he was Superman. I can’t remember how old he was at the time. But I did make him a red cape. It was fun for him for awhile, running around our hallway and living room, just like the man of steel did, but no, he was not allowed to stand on the dining table. (Mom’s usually have high tolerance levels, but there are limits, you know.) Superman was my son’s hero, for awhile. Then came Spiderman. Yes, he had Spiderman bed sheets and pajamas. Then there was Indiana Jones.

Kristy and her young friends spent countless hours watching the Anne of Green Gables series. Whether Anne became a model, I don’t know, but I sure hope that there were some strengths in that young lady that Kristy found worthy to emulate. I know that like Anne she has become a voracious reader.  But her dad is quite a reader, too, so she may have been influenced by both.  Like Anne, she majored in English Literature and was also into drama.

Did you have models when you were growing up? We used to call them heroes. I had several. I used to have the picture of a young Filipina in her WAVE uniform. I had it scotch taped on my closet door. I so admired her. She looked so smart, pretty and had an air of confidence about her. I wanted to be a WAVE in the US Navy just like her.

Five Missionaries to the Auca Indians

On January 8, 1956 five young American missionaries were killed in the jungles of Ecuador. They were young men, in their prime, bright, energetic, with their whole lives ahead of them. Rather than pursuing careers that would guarantee easy, comfortable lives, they chose to commit themselves to sharing their Christian faith with people in the jungles of Ecuador who had not heard the name Jesus. I was so impressed by their commitment. Jim Elliot, one of the men, had said, “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.” The picture of five dead bodies sprawled on the beach of Curaray, Ecuador still lingers in my memory. (We have recently met one of the men who were entrusted with the task of bringing down the bodies from this jungle scene. Fifty-eight years later and he still talks about this very difficult task as if it happened only yesterday.)

Hungarian Freedom Fighters

On October 23, 1956, the Hungarian revolt led by young students against the totalitarian Communist regime, was in all the newspapers. I remember looking at the picture of young students standing before Russian tanks that were about to mow them down. I thought why were they doing this? In my youth, I had not quite understood that indeed there were causes worth fighting for and dying for, one of which was freedom. 

Paradigm Shifts and Heroes

These young men’s courage, commitment, selflessness and purposeful pursuit of causes bigger than themselves touched me deeply. And so, the hero of my younger years – one who looked really impressive and pretty in her uniform, was slowly displaced by the missionaries to Ecuador and the young Hungarian students fighting for freedom. I was beginning to grow up. My paradigms were shifting. And they have continued to shift. As a young mother, I looked at other mothers; as a Pastor’s wife I found Catherine Marshall, wife to that famous “Man called Peter.” I admired her and her mother. We named our daughter after her mother (but changed the C to K to make it easy for our Indonesian friends to say.) Now, past these milestones, and into the winter years, I look at Caleb in the Bible, a model of a man. He was one of twelve men sent by Moses on a reconnaissance team to the land promised by God to the Israelites. He was one of only two who gave a truthful report. As a result Moses promised him that the land on which his feet have walked would be his inheritance and that of his children forever, because he had followed the Lord his God wholeheartedly. Forty years later and at 85 years of age, he declared to Joshua who succeeded Moses as leader:

 I am still as strong today as I was in the day Moses sent me; as my strength was then, so my strength is now, for war and for going out and coming in. Now then, give me this hill country about which the Lord spoke on that day, for you heard on that day that Anakim were there, with great fortified cities; perhaps the Lord will be with me, and I will drive them out as the Lord has spoken.” (Joshua 14:11-12 NIV Bible)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

IN THE COMPANY OF THE YOUNG

A Trip to Costco

Yesterday I went to Costco, shopping with a young friend, probably less than half my age. He is supervising young summer missionaries in the City and I was helping him pick up groceries and supplies. He shared some stories as we drove the 20 minutes to Costco. He told me how he, from Georgia and she, from Virginia, met in New York. They fell in love, got married, came here to do graduate work in a Bay Area seminary. We talked about their struggles as a young seminary couple with not much money, settling in a culture away from what they knew and unexpectedly having a baby in the midst of their adjustments to the new environment, etc. This brought back a lot of memories. Some 30 years ago, Don and I went through the same experience. We traded stories about God’s faithfulness through the financial struggles and adjustments to marriage, having babies and living in a different culture and environment. Soon we were at Costco, grabbing one of those flatbed carts, we maneuvered our way through the aisles to get the paper plates, paper cups, groceries, household cleaners and the rest of the items on his list. We talked about what 12 young college kids would like to eat. Yes, tacos, spaghetti and meatballs and on and on we went picking up ingredients and chips, snacks,etc. Chocolates, young people need chocolates. It was fun shopping, especially because we were not spending our own money!

This may not have been an earthshaking experience, but I have begun to really savor experiences like this because I always come away enriched by it. When I was younger, relationships that crossed racial, age and gender barriers intimidated me. Crossing these barriers frightened me. Sometimes because of this fear I have deprived myself of experiences that could have enriched my life, and I’m the poorer for it.

The Paralegal Class

Amazingly, my life has taken a turn that took me from my birth country to the United States, transplanting me in a different culture and among a different group of people. My interracial marriage was another barrier breaker. And as I have become older the fear of relating to younger people crept in on me. How do you relate to people half your age? Though I have worked with some who were younger than I, most of my co-workers were more my age.

However, a few years ago I took a paralegal course that put me in a classroom of more than 30 students with all but one, were the age of my children. I was late on the first day of class and I remember how intimidated I was to see all the young faces that stared at me as I entered the room. But as we struggled together through the intense two-full day sessions every weekend for a number of weeks, memorizing legal terms, turning in homework and papers researched and written in-between regular work hours and sometimes through the wee hours of the mornings, constructing legal briefs and doing legal analysis of cases, we got to know each other. Soon it no longer mattered to me that I was old enough to be mother to my classmates. And the truth of the matter is, I don’t think my age mattered all that much to my classmates either.

Seminary Studies

After I retired from my job, I enrolled in a Seminary to study theology. I was encouraged by my experience in the paralegal class. Again, I felt out of place in this school, with the students half my age. How do I relate to them. How do I keep up academically with these bright, energetic young folks? But soon I got to know some of them. We sat together in classes. We’d meet in the library as we did research and wrote about Tertulian or Augustine, Karl Barth, or Spurgeon, or the history of the church, etc., etc. We sat in chapel together, and in the student lounge, having our sandwiches, or lunches from MacDonald’s or the nearby Panda Express as we tried to catch up on last minute readings before class. Every now and then, we would have personal discussions as we walked to our cars in the parking lot or on the way to the library. Some confided problems they were struggling with; some joyfully shared their excitement at starting church ministries. Some I’ve prayed with about choosing life partners. A young couple away from their families, found out they were having their first baby. I was so thrilled for them as they shared this news with me even before they were able to tell their families.

My young friends from the paralegal class have moved on, some have decided to go on to law school; some are employed in law firms in the City. I know of one who is with a law firm in Chicago. My young friends from the Seminary are serving in ministries in different states of the US; others are preparing for foreign missions assignments. My life has been enriched by my friendships. Every now, and then I say prayers for my young friends – friends who turned me onto Facebook, helped me study for quizzes and energized me as I shared in their excitement for the future.