Releasing Dad

Arthur Fred King
February 2, 1927 - February 27, 2010

Very gently, my father left us, Saturday afternoon around 3:15 p.m.

A Song for Duang

October 2008.

We are outside on the porch of the guest house at Doi Saket I, an Asia's Hope orphan home near Chiang Mai in Thailand. Imagine a good sized deck with wooden bench chairs all around. Young adults all of them, some with their own babies playing in the middle of us, line the benches and cover the floor. They are the Staff of the orphan home who, as well as caring for the hands on needs of the 100 or so children who live here, participate in the spiritual and educational development, including the programming. Right now they are practicing music in preparation for the retreat planned for the weekend upcoming.

There is only one guitar, but lots of great harmonies, especially from the young men. Many of the songs I know. One in particular - Give Thanks - is sung in both Thai and English. Words have been printed out on a paper because the Staff is just learning this one. A young man beside me offers to share his paper with me so I smile and hold it with him, even though the song is written out in Thai script and I can't read it. Doesn't matter. When they get to the English part, I sing along just fine.

And now, let the weak say, "I am strong"
Let the poor say, "I am rich"
Because of what the Lord has done for us

It's hot and there is a fan set up even though we're outside. Locusts scream quietly from the trees, sort of a tropical background vocal effect. Babies happily move among us. The singing is strong and comforting and disturbing all at the same time. I find I have to stop because it's making me cry.

It occurs to me that around me, singing with great energy, are people who have far less and have suffered more weakness than I will ever know. Yet, in the short time I have been privileged to know them, I recognize a depth of spiritual resource, a strength of spirit, a joy and gratitude that I very much need to inspire and energize my own faith.

I am remembering that night on the porch this week because Duang is gone. He was one of the young men lending harmonies and life into that moment. So was his wife Lew. But last week a fatal accident took the life of Duang and has left Lew and one of their two daughters, Kelepaw seriously injured, still tenaciously recovering in hospital.

So my heart is singing for them quietly right now. That the poor may know infinite riches in Christ. That the weak in body may gain miraculous strength. I sing and pray for the community at Doi Saket, and all there whom I sang with that night and carry in my heart - for the intensity of their grief to propel them even deeper into the arms of God.

My dear, dear friends. How my heart aches for you. I wish I could be there with you to share in your sorrow by your side. As it is, I share it with you from so far away, but very close in spirit. Thank you for all you have been teaching me about being rich and strong. May God hold you together, grant you peace, and give you everything you need for life and godliness as you grieve this terrible loss.

Groaning, and singing, with you,
Ahjahn Rut

Letting Go of Me

He did it again. We're going to have to call him Rebound Man and make a special super hero costume for him I think. Today was the second time within six months that it looked for certain Dad was on his way. But just like the last time, the tensions of the morning come cautiously around the corner of midday, only to bash into the afternoon's big smile and hearty 'Amen!', trademarks of....(echo effect here) REBOUND MAN!

By supper, when Dad was resting well with good colour again, I felt two things most keenly. One was that familiar knee-weaky-sensation of the post adrenalin dip. As much as I tend to walk through days like this with an air of calm, I am enough self-aware to realize that the threat of losing Dad was very real in my psyche, and my body has responded accordingly. I am spent...and I did nothing today but sit beside his bed and hold Dad's hand.

I did nothing today...which leads me to the other thing I'm feeling. Unspeakably frustrated. A day that was lining up so perfectly, a day badly needed by my randomness-battered schedule, a day where I was finally getting that sense that I was catching up, not having to sneak work in on a Saturday, be confidently ready for Sunday, solidly in "Quadrant II" (a good place to be for us organizational geeks).....and just as I was getting into it, it gets snatched away. For what? Another false alarm?

Please understand that when the time comes for either of my parents, the priorities are clear and the excellent "other players" in my life will be immediately deployed. I know I'm not indispensable, and that competent team members and good structures will prevail in the time of my absence.

But this just feels like cosmic highway robbery. It was a hard day to lose to an emotional game of "PSYCHE!!!!"

Last Sunday at Highview we put bricks of ruthless trust into a wheelbarrow of faith. It was a symbolic gesture, something we do from time to time on a Sunday morning, this time indicating our willingness to give over our precious things to the Jesus who wants to take us on the ride of our lives. Charles Blondin, the daredevil who crossed Niagara Falls on a highwire, daring spectators to get in his wheelbarrow, was the inspiration for our symbolism.

"Rise, rise, people of God arise. Give yourself away. We're not safe, we're not safe but we will rise"....we sang as we picked up the coloured sponge bricks and tossed them in. I did not hesitate. By now it feels like I've let go of so much at such cost, that such an exercise for me seems redundant almost. Yes Lord. I wave the white flags and hand over my blueprints and toss in my bricks with genuine abandon.

But today I realized that there was a brick still finger-numbingly clutched in my hand. I recognized again how hard it is for me to let go of my "list", of all the things I want to do in a given day. How excruciating it is for me to have work left undone that could have been so done, so checked off. How crazy it makes me not to be able to work as hard as I'd like. And how hard it is to flex with the grace God just might require of me on any given day.

Because I want it my way. And I want nothing to stop me from my attaining my treasure of high performance living.

Why am I even frustrated about this, getting to this place in my soul, on a day when my Dad almost died? Why am I not writing anecdotes about his life and my memories? I will. When the time is real, I'll be there. But not today.

So what to do?

Not sure. I'm still too ticked.

But I am ending my day more consciously having to repeat my first morning prayer disicpline. "Good morning Lord. The day is Yours. Do with me as You see fit this day. I submit myself to Your agenda." turns to "Forgive me God. I obviously didn't mean it."

And I am breathing in and out quietly right now. I have my hands open and upward as I prepare for bed. And I'm praying...

Forgive me God. I obviously didn't mean it.
I know my heart is still inclined to me and not You, or even others, the way it should be.
I relinquish all my desires for accomplished things, and whatever trappings of accolades that come along with all of that
into Your capabilities for grace and love and humility and truth.

Dad is Yours. His timing is Yours.
I am Yours, and all I seek to do for You,
I acknowledge again,
is Yours to orchestrate,
with crescendos and diminishings
like You did today.
It's organic not linear
and can't be checked off a list.

So be very God, as You so very are and were in this day.

For you are God and I am not. I am so not.

Thank You for another reminder today.
And thanks for whatever time I still have to learn from and love my Dad.

Feels Like a Valentine

There's a mystical passing of time that happens when you're a Gramma. You're snuggling with or reading to or coming the hair of or wiping the face of or laughing with a newer version of the children you raised once yourself. It's dejavu all over again, quite literally.

And it makes me remember things. This week I'm remembering Valentines.

Quite a few Valentines Days ago, when David was about five and Kristyn seven, I decided to do something different than the little grocery story Valentines we'd always done with the kids. They were fun, sure, with their cartoon characters and cheesy, mushy ways of saying "Be mine." Tiny little envelopes. All good fun.

But I felt that this particular year, the kids were old enough to have me write out an actual letter of love.

So a few weeks before hand, I sat down with heart stickers and a red fine point marker, and I started to write them out. I wrote all about how much my life had changed because of them, how deeply grateful I was that God chose us to be a family, how crazy I was about them. And as I'm writing I'm crying, my mother-love pouring out on the page.

I put the stickers in various locations on the letter and the envelope, sealed them, prayed over them, and waited for Valentine's Day.

The morning of, I could hardly wait to give the kids my letters. I handed Kristyn hers, and she opened it, read it herself and came gave me a hug. "Thank you Mommy," she said with her arms tight around my neck.

David however, was not impressed. I handed him the envelope and he started to wail. "That's not my Valentine! I don't want that! I want my Valentine!"

"But honey." I was genuinely confused. "This is your Valentine. Mommy wrote you a love letter."

It took some convincing, but finally David climbed into my lap and rested his snotty little face on my shirt to let me read the letter.

I read it carefully, slowly, each declaration of my confidence in him, my delight in him explained in simplicity and sincerity. I showed him the heart stickers. I told him how crazy I was about him.

And when it was all done I asked him what he thought.

"I liked it Mommy," he said. "When I saw it at first, it didn't look like a Valentine. But when you read it to me, it felt like a Valentine."

To whomever you are saying I love you this weekend, and from whomever you are being loved, I hope things feel like a Valentine for you. I hope you feel loved, because you are. I hope you feel full of dreams and potential and wonder and beauty, because you are. I hope you enjoy the giving and receiving of love in all it's loveliness.

May the love of God empower your relationships, fuel your conversations and be unmistakable to your soul.

Counting Laps, Wedding Bands, and Gaining a Heart of Wisdom

It happens a lot when I'm swimming.

I'll be half way into the 14th lap or so, counting it off in rhythm with my stroke, and suddenly become aware of it. Fourteen? Is that right? So I glance up at the clock to check, and, yup...that would be about right.

I do 23 laps every morning, Monday to Friday, so I'm counting a lot. Some mornings I slog a bit. But most mornings it goes by quickly, and more than once I experience that tiny wonder of it. I distinctly remember getting in the pool, but it's almost as if I'm barely with my body as it pushes through the water, back and forth, working my heart and lungs, gaining strength.

It happened at the jewelery counter on Friday night.

Ken and I were shopping for a wedding band. This would seem odd, since we've been married for 31 years. But the truth of it is, in a tragic act of random weirdness, I lost my original wedding band when the little heart-shaped cup I keep all my everyday jewelery in, got knocked off the shelf, sending its contents scattering across the floor. All other items were retrieved. But not the wedding band.

Yes, I looked. Lifted the rug, swept under the bed, pulled back the furniture, pried off the trim. For almost a year I kept hoping it would show up somehow. It's crazy, because I know it's in the house. In the meantime, on my left hand, I've been wearing another ring Ken gave me, a gold band with three small diamonds, one each for our children, Kristyn and David and the baby we lost.

But this weekend Ken announced that he wanted to buy me another wedding band. "To say that I'd marry you all over again", he said. An early Valentine's Day gift.

Which took us to the jewelery counter, and the conversation with the woman behind the counter, and that sudden, surprising sense of having lost track of time. "We've been married 31 years," I explained, "But I lost my wedding band in a tragic act of random weirdness."

Thirty one years? Could that be right? I glanced up at the boy I'd met back in highschool, now the man, the Grandad, who is my husband, and....yup...that would be about right. We're older now, both of us. Our faces and bodies wearing the joys and sorrows of a lifetime together. Some of that has slogged a bit, if I were to be totally honest. But most of the time it's gone by alarmingly fast.

And walking through the mall back to the car, holding hands, enjoying the silly happiness of admiring the new ring, I experienced an enormous wonder of it. Thirty one years! When did that happen? I distinctly remember getting married, being there for all of it, but it sometimes, looking back, it seems as if it happened without me. It didn't. We were there, both of us. But...thirty one years?

There's a phrase in the ancient Hebrew psalter that's a prayer, and it says this.

Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom. Psalm 90:12

Have we gained any wisdom from the number of our days? I hope so, even though it feels more like we're having to learn things over and over again, especially when our marriage travels over brand new - sometimes less than friendly - territory.

I do know that I have a remarkable husband. The journey of our lives together has had so many surprises that, if you'd asked us at 15 and 16 (yes, that's how old we were when we met) if we would expect to be where we are today, I don't think we could have begun to imagine it. Ken, especially, has had to make enormous adjustments regarding expectations of roles and lifestyle and who we are as a couple now, in our 50s. And he's stuck it out with me. Buys me a new wedding band when I've been clumsy enough to lose the first one. Says that he'd marry me all over again. I am one lucky lady.

So I guess one day, God willing, when I'm looking up at him and we're 70....I hope I've numbered those days aright. I hope we've spent each day aright, loving on each other, being on each others' side and by each others' side.

Because it goes really, really fast. I want to make it count.

Happy Valentine's Day, Love.


NOTE: Ken and I are attending Marriage Max with other couples at our church right now. Check it out on joellifecoach.blogspot.com. Joel Bennett of Breakthrough Life Coaching Solutions is our facilitator. We're having an amazing time.