What Alzheimers Steals

We've called him Opa since the day he first cradled me in the small German town where I was born.  A tall man of few words, content to sit in the corner of family gatherings and observe, sipping his favorite beer.  Kind eyes and so gentle and he made sure I knew I was adored, his only granddaughter.

 

How do I reconcile this with what Alzheimer's has turned him into, this frail, 92-year-old veteran of war, builder of parts for the first space shuttle, gift-giver, fisherman.  He pushed a nurse hard against a fish tank at his nursing home yesterday.  He spilled out anger and threats.  He's turned mean and it makes me ache. 

For many years he has joined us at family gatherings, and true to its symptoms, Alzheimer's has erased his short term memory, so that when my girls walk into the room he says repeatedly, "Who are these pretty little girls?"  I know their smiley sweetness stirs up memories in him of when I was young and we would hunt for shells along the Florida beach or go fishing in Canada or shoe-shopping in St. Louis.

Oma died years ago and he is lost.  How frustrating it must be to grasp for shreds of memory and never take hold.  Empty hands.  Aching heart.  Tired soul. 

This morning, I am sending him long, hard prayers across the miles, for small moments of joy in old memories bubbling up from spaces preserved in his mind.  Visions of teaching his little granddaughter how to drive a boat on a cool, clean Canadian lake, where everything was clear as glass.

And I thank God upon every remembrance of you, Opa. -Phil. 1:3

Even when you don't remember me.

Your pretty little girl.

Stepping Off the Page and Into the Day

I cracked open my Bible today just as the birdsong broke loose outdoors.  The feathered choir was the perfect soundtrack for Luke 9, where I joined 5000 hungry people, sitting on grassy knolls, eating bread and fish until our bellies were full.  I got the impression that only the 12 disciples knew they were starting with five loaves and two fish.  The hillside crowd thought they were at a free banquet, while the disciples were sweating bullets. 

I'm not sure why Jesus fed the crowd.  It doesn't say he was buttering us up so he could share a "sermon on the mount."  He stood over the meager fare, gave thanks, and fed the people, then sent around the disciples to gather the leftovers.  What did he do with the leftovers?  Don't know.

What it does say is that after the crumbs were gathered, he led his dearest friends to a private place to pray and probe their hearts.  "Who do you say that I am?" 

It seems he was more interested in their personal transformation than in the crowd's satiation.

As I read this passage, I moved from the girl chewing bread on the hill to an insider, circling closely around this strange man, eager to hear his thoughts.  And then this God-Man lays it on the line to that ragged, motley crew of men, and to me, this ragamuffin girl....

Take up your cross daily and follow me.

Lose your life to gain it.

Do not be ashamed of me and my words.

These are not the Ten Commandments or even the Greatest Two.  This is not the Golden Rule.  These are instructions for those of us who want to conform our lives to Christ.  Don't call yourself a disciple and ignore these commands.  Figure out how to live them. 

If my arms are full of the cross, they cannot be idle.  They cannot push people away.  They are full of the people God loves; busy doing Kingdom work. 

If my feet are following Christ, they are not wandering off the path, bored and looking for a little excitement.  They are swift and beautiful as they run to serve.

If I am laying down my life for Christ, I am not busy self-indulging my desires, pampering my days and fluffing my pillows.  My hands are calloused and my heart is soft. 

And if I am truly unashamed of the gospel of Christ, my words are salty and life-giving, not laced with gossip and innuendo, nor mindless chatter. 

I have choices to make as I close the laptop and rise from my comfy couch.  How will I treat my children today?  How will I bless my husband?  Who will I cross paths with, and how can I sprinkle salt and life upon them?  How often can I set down my own desires for those of another?  What cross might I be asked to carry today, heavy and painful.  Will it be mine or that of another? 

These are lofty, idealistic questions.  I am the first one to admit that ideals and spoken priorities do not always match habits.  So I will leave us with this challenging quote...

Don't waste your breath proclaiming what's really important to you.  How you spend your time says it all.  There's no sense talking about priorities.  Priorities reveal themselves.  We're all transparent against the clock. -Betsey Stevenson 

Awake When I Should Be Sleeping

I suppose I have never had a better reason to lay awake at 3 a.m.  Three-fifths of my family has gone in three directions.  Boy Becoming Man is on a mission trip to St. Louis, one of the most dangerous inner-cities in the country.  Nature Girl is at horse/Bible camp, 4 hours north, where it has been cold and rainy all week, and she has never done something like this, Miss Reluctant To Try New Things But Coming Out Of Her Shell.  My husband is in New York on business, so I couldn't be lulled back to sleep by his peaceful breathing. 


I laid there, awake, with their three faces flashing in my head, wondering if they were laying awake, too, longing to be home.  I prayed for each of them, which I have deemed the best use of insomnia. 

All along, this homeschooling mom has had the nagging worry that she is not preparing her children well for life...these children who all three clung to her legs in new situations when they were younger, who wouldn't look adults in the eye and clammed up when spoken to. 


But I have prayed and gently nudged, cajoled a bit, perhaps.  Eased them into unfamiliar territory. I have tried to fertilize their roots and hope they sprout wings.  I have emphasized character more than test scores and serving others more than satisfying themselves.  I have tried to lead their eyes past idols and onto the Kingdom of God.  

But will it stick?  Will they care as much as I?  Will my own struggles with selfishness and idols speak louder than my words? 

My spinning mind walks through these tall, unchartered jungle grasses of worry, and I push them aside, only to feel them snap back, razor-edged.  I am searching for the "ancient path."  As a parent, I want to take this God-challenge seriously...

This is what the LORD says: “Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls. -Jer. 6:16

Ah, rest for my soul.  The holy grail of laying awake at 3 in the morning.

When a Little Head on Your Lap Has Been Replaced with Your Head in a Laptop

For days overripe with sibling squabbles, whining discontent, and a strung-out mother, there are ways of escape.  Susanna Wesley, mother of 19 children including Charles & John, would sit in her kitchen and throw her apron over her head.  This was her posture of prayer and the children knew to leave her be.

I have a lovely window seat, where I have placed a prayer journal, a Bible, meditative books, and a pen.  I'm supposed to go there when I need to escape.  The children know that although it is in the main living area, it is a quiet place, for anyone who needs it.  


But where do I usually escape to instead?  My laptop.  E-mail, Facebook, blogsites, Amazon.  A colorful, interactive, addictive distraction.  I have no memories of my mother sitting in front of a computer, but I wonder if this will be a strong memory of my own kids. 

A mom whose face is set aglow by monitor light. 
       The faint click of the keyboard. 
                 Her rapt attention to a glass rectangle,
                     where they seem to temporarily fade into the               
                                                                                   background.  

This is not the picture I want to model, let alone imprint on their memories; not a legacy I want to pass on to them.

Can I change?  Can I learn to gravitate to the window seat instead of the laptop?  Can I learn the art of being present, so the temptation to escape is not so strong? 

Can I throw the apron over my head, or will I end up looking like this...

Western society has accepted as unquestionable a technological imperative : not merely the duty to foster invention and constantly to create technological novelties, but equally the duty to surrender to these novelties unconditionally, just because they are offered, without respect to their human consequences.  ~Lewis Mumford

When You Forget Your Anniversary

Between church, play dates for the kids, and a music rehearsal today, we forgot to look at the calendar.  If we had paused to register the date, Dave and I would have realized it was June 12 and that 18 years ago we came together in a little vintage church on the grounds of Living History Farms in Iowa.  We might have sat close on the couch and talked about that warm wedding day when we rode off down the lane in a horse-drawn carraige, or the romantic honeymoon on Mackinac Island in Michigan.  We might have reminisced  about our first, and least favorite, year of marriage, or about all the history between us since that blessed day we met in a college dorm room.

But, no, we plain forgot.  Until 9:00 tonight.  He was on the phone with his mom when I mouthed the words, "Happy Anniversary" with a sheepish grin.  He quickly said bye to his mom, and we went to Flapdoodles for ice cream and some humble apologies to each other. 

But the truth is, it didn't bother us.  After 18 years, not much suprises us, particularly forgetfulness.  We shrugged it off and laughed along with our kids.  For us, what runs deeper than any dutiful acknowlegement of a date is this solid rock of a foundation we've carefully laid.  Some years it has cracked under strain.  But those fractures have been tended to; not left to widen and threaten the integrity.  Signs of the repair job still remain like small scars that remind us to be more careful stewards of this mysterious oneness called marriage.

When we returned home, our stomachs full of sweetness and our hearts blessed by a spontaneous date, we wandered outside in the cool twilight.  I pulled this man I love close and we looked straight up into the dusky sky.  Just emerging like small diamonds was the faithful Big Dipper, tipping earthward, pouring out something invisible and forever.

The Science of Time

Chronos is the Greco-Roman god of Time, found in ancient mosaics as an old man spinning the Zodiac Wheel.  Father Time.  Serious.  Unstoppable. 

Chronology is the science of locating events in time.  It's timelines and dates and wars and all the stuff of a history lover laid in the proper order. 

To me, a mom with a little calendar on the fridge full of scribbles and lists, chronology is simple: 

first things first....

make the coffee

wake up before everyone else to meet with God

snuggle with the bleary-eyed, disheveled little bodies that shuffle toward you in the morning light

kiss your husband good-bye, surprise him with a little passion, heck with the coffee breath

hug and compliment each kiddo before you start in on the to-do lists and hurry ups

everyone puts away 10 things or does a chore to help the house stay fresh and clean...the colors of the day are brighter with a clean palate rather than a muddy one

pray together

when there is family tension, stop what you're doing and work it out or help them work it out...people's hearts are more important than whatever you are doing

If I was conducting an experiment in which I had to fill a jar with different size rock and sediment, I would, of course, start with the big rocks.  The aforementioned things would be the big rocks.  Everything else would be the sediment, settling in the open spaces, but never taking the place of the big rocks.

Did you notice that stone statue of Chronos in the picture?  He has wings.  Because, well, there is that heart-wrenching aspect of time...

it flies.

In the Theater of God

Outdoors, in the theater of God,
I sat, stream-side, while girls
with nets and grand schemes
hunted tirelessly for crayfish and minnows,
and tufted dandelion seeds floated on
the soft breeze like first snow. 

Something lost
in the long Minnesota winter
was restored
on that dappled, grassy floor
beneath the towering elm.  

Something in my cells
was released and flowing again,
sap-like and life-giving,
streaming LOVE. 

The Paradox of Works

How do you teach your children (and yourself) this paradox?


(There is) a two-edged quality of Scripture- the capacity to intensify a passion for excellence with an indifference to human achievement.  -Eugene Peterson, Running with Horses


There are so many double-edges to Scripture.  Perhaps the "narrow way" is walking carefully down the center of the sword.  Your foot slips one way and SLICE,  you are taking pride in your own accomplishments...the glory-stealer.  Your foot slips the other way, and SLICE, you don't care about the quality of your work...the sluggard. 


I have children who teeter on either side, and as for myself, I battle to stay in the middle, though I drift precariously to the pride side, caring too much of others' opinions of me, and then the other, not attending well to the truly important things. 

God's grace softens the razor-edges, but the more I care about how I live this faith-life, the more I feel the cut. 

Sara Groves sings my heart in This Journey is My Own.  Her aching, repetitive challenge in the bridge of the song is this:  "Now I live and breathe for an audience of one."  

To pour myself out with breathless devotion to a God who loves me beyond my greatest achievement and in spite of my basest failure...this is the God I worship. 

And I will tell my children that each thing they do MATTERS, and how they do it MATTERS, because Who they do it for MATTERS, and all must be done for an audience of One. 

Bang, Bang, I Am a Worrier

There was a song recorded by Pat Benatar in the 80's called I Am a Warrior.  I remember jamming to it in my bedroom, my finger guns smoking..."shooting at the walls of heartache, bang, bang, I am a warrior." 

Since we love a good parody, my husband said I should rewrite this song for my concerts.  How about...


I Am a Worrier.


I didn't used to be a worrier.  I've always had an innate confidence in my abilities (except, ironically, that I can never confidently spell the word "confidence."  Is it a c or an s at the end?  Thank you, spellcheck.) 


I grew up pretty fearless, always game to try new things and usually finding a decent amount of success.  Fearless, that is, until I had kids and became a stay-at-home mom and home school teacher. 


A strangling fear creeps in that I am blowing this precious opportunity.


It is the biggest gift God could give me...the freedom to be home with my kids, teaching them, learning alongside them.  In the beginning, I painted a Monet dream of our lives, soft brushstrokes, idyllic scenes, homey and relaxed.  The books I was reading fed into this vision.

 

I think, though, we more often look like a Picasso. 

You could come hang out with us for a week and think we're a quite normal, cheerful group.  This battleground is mostly in my head, where what I imagine doesn't line up with what is. 

"We should do things more like this family" can stick like a burr. 

"I am not enough for this job" can take root like a thistle weed in poor soil.   

The worries branch out to poke my kids and my husband with the subtle, unspoken message that "This is not how I want you to be."  They are most pronounced when I'm laying in bed, not quite asleep or awake,  my mind a fertilizer.

The closer my children get to growing up, the more I worry.  Poor habits I used to dismiss are becoming ingrained in them.  Fruit I'd hoped to see is not there yet.  I'm just not sure how to do all this.

Wisdom says,

We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. -2 Cor. 10:5.

I lean hard into this.  It's all I have, really.  The ability to tear out weeds and plant seeds of truth.  To surrender to His abundant grace and walk the best I can on his weedless path.


To find beauty in the sharp lines and strange angles of this picasso-life.