storytelling – Page 2 – Emptying The Backpack

Talking About Death Won’t Kill You.

Pulling death out from the shadows and examining it in the light does not make death happen. In fact, it does just the opposite. Thinking about death, learning about it and accepting it, makes life happen.
Virginia Morris, “Talking About Death Won’t Kill You,” Algonquin Books. Kindle Edition.

Death is a funny thing. And I don’t mean in a dark humor kind of way but, rather, funny as in strange: we all do it, and, these days, we all know we ought to muster up our courage and talk to our loved ones about what we know is coming at some time, and yet few of us do.

Talking about how we want to die and what needs to be done when we do is a gift to our families and friends, kind and considerate; sometimes that’s the last gift we give loved ones. Pastors and health care workers and counselors encourage us to start the conversations early but far too few of us ever get our courage up to start, even though we surely love our families.

We often don’t even talk to our loved ones

AS we (or they) are dying.

The first person I sat with who was dying, died alone in a hospital room while his family waited out in a waiting room. That was thirty years ago. We did not know how to help him not be afraid and nothing we said could ease the fear but no one wanted to name that or claim it either, so we talked around him when we were in the room. We talked about the weather, the dog, the cost of eggs, anything except death and eventually most went back out into the aptly named “waiting” room. I, just starting out as a pastor, stayed in the darkened room with this man who no longer wore his own clothing but rather a hospital-issued and worn cotton gown and asked for some socks that weren’t neon blue or orange and didn’t have those silly dot on them or some salt for the instant potatoes and who was just plain furious. He was angry about sox and pajamas and dying without some damn salt and without any choices: no choices about dying and not even any choices about how he would die. Thus far, as a pastor just starting out, I had read and discussed one book about how to minister to someone who is dying and could remember none of what the damn book said. I drove home that night screaming in my car. I had not signed up for that, and I was unprepared both for his anger and mine and this helplessness we shared. The journey into ministry was going to be rougher than I ever could have imagined.

Once I’d calmed down a bit, a pastor with more experience offered this simple advice: “Next time,” she said, “name it. Fear. Uncertainty. Anger. Questions. Whatever is in front of you while you sit there, name it.” There was a time when I would have discounted such a ridiculously simple suggestion, but it turned out to be great advice. In fact, in any difficult situation, naming whatever is in “in the room,” especially if it is scary, lessens the fear and opens up the space for questions, laments or even the jokes, all ways of sharing.

I buried about a couple of dozen members of that church over the next few years, including a suicide, my 18-year-old communion steward and a couple who had been married for more than 75 years and who died within a week of one another. All of those deaths brought up questions, and I tried to name what I saw and reassure us all that talking about death would not kill us. Most of those folks’ deaths happened fairly quickly, but one member of that first church took almost a year to die after receiving what he called his “death pink slip.” Over that year, David showed an entire church how to die a good death. Diagnosed with metastasized prostate cancer already destroying his back and ribs, the construction engineer who could no longer build houses started building birdhouses. He built hundreds of them in the months he was dying. His mind and his hands still moved well and in sync and he was grateful when his friends’ eyes lit up. He designed bird homes that celebrated the University of Tennessee for a Vols fan, several that looked like our little white country church and one I requested that mimicked a Lincoln Log cabin.

Birdhouses built by a former construction foreman who could not keep building homes for his friends so he started building them for the birds in the area. He built hundreds in the months after he was diagnosed with advanced Prostate cancer.

More importantly, though, as David died, as he dealt with the diagnoses, the treatments and the rapid onslaught of decay and death, he shared. He talked about what was happening to him to everyone who visited him. He taught us what the Hospice folks were teaching him, even describing what death might look like, how he might have some better days right before he died and what to watch for in his breathing as death grew nearer. In short, he did not hide or try to protect us from what was happening. He named all of it and we are grateful for this evidence of his courage and love for us.

Because of David, I also found a great resource and over the years referred to it both for personal help and also to preach and teach. In, “Talking About Death,” Virginia Morris addresses so much of what keeps us from these important discussions. First of all, she says, “Pulling death out from the shadows and examining it in the light does not make death happen. In fact, it does just the opposite. Thinking about death, learning about it and accepting it, makes life happen.”

When I started this project a friend of mine called me, all upset. She felt that this endeavor was not only morbid, but dangerous. By studying death, she said, I might make it happen. A friend of hers had died of cancer while studying Portuguese death rituals. I, too, might be on a suicide mission. This subject was better left untouched. Her concerns may seem a bit odd at first, but they are not unusual. Death is the boogeyman, hiding in the shadows of our bedrooms, arousing all sorts of anxieties and fears—some valid, some silly, some we don’t readily admit even to ourselves. Most of us can’t imagine the end of our existence as we know it. We dread the process of dying, the pain and disability. We panic at the thought of leaving loved ones, or having them leave us.

Morris, Virginia. Talking About Death (p. 7). Algonquin Books. Kindle Edition.

What Did COVID teach us?

So many died during COVID alone and unable to be comforted by family or friends and we are more aware now than ever of the importance of being there for one another.

NEVERTHELESS, we struggle with starting the conversations before we are ill, before we are hospitalized, before we need hospice care.

Part of the issue is that we simply don’t have to talk about death much anymore. We simply do not talk about death, not even in churches even though a church seems like the best place to talk about death.

Wartrace United Methodist Church, est. 1849. Homecoming suppers were “on the grounds.” For most smaller Methodist churches, the cemetery often surrounded the church building.

In so many of those little churches we attended, all of the “Saints” who’d gone before were buried all around the church in the cemetery just outside the doors. Every few months, we would have “supper” on the grounds, meaning we spread our biscuits and fried chicken legs and pickles on platters on old checked table cloths on top of the graves of our ancestors, who were buried all around us.

There was no pretending they weren’t there with us, bodies underneath and souls swirling overhead, whispering in our ears, reminding us all they’d taught us and all they’d done, good, bad or just human. Don’t slouch. Eat your greens, too. Wipe your fingers on that napkin and not on your shirt, young man. These were the folks who’d walked through those cemetery gates and into that old wooden sanctuary each week and they had taught us how to follow those 10 rules Moses brought down from the mountain AND to turn that other cheek. Still, they didn’t have to create a moment to talk about death because they reminded us of it every Sunday and during revivals as we entered that sacred space.

Today we don’t have those reminders. We do not see the cycle of life and death firsthand on a daily basis now. We do not wring the chickens’ necks and pluck them ourselves; few of rely on butchering hogs to have food for the winter, and we no longer prepare loved ones’ bodies for burial ourselves. We have people called to and trained to do these tasks and so the majority of us will never touch any dead body, never be faced with the need to handle a lifeless body, never have to be reminded we too will die, never find an occasion to talk about our deaths.

Easy for You to Say.

You might be thinking that as a retired pastor, of course, I have lots of experience sitting with people who are dying, sitting with the family and friends of someone who has died and just talking about death in general. That is true, but all that professional experience did not make it any easier to start the discussions with my own family or to begin the work personally. In fact, I am embarrassed to say that it was a neighbor who suggested the book that started me on the process for myself and my family, by suggesting the book she’d found: “I’m Dead, Now What?” (See below.)

I want to offer some suggestions, then, some topics and some resources to help you do what is one of the most loving things you can for your family: discuss with them, prepare and plan so they are not left with the burden when you are gone or can no longer help. We can do this.

Excellent planner to provide peace of mind for those who need to settle your affairs. Helps organize your information, from pet needs to email and social medea to banking. Available on Amazon. By Peter Pauper Press

Start with the easier stuff.

If talking about death at all is just difficult for you, start with putting your papers in order and maybe your mind will become more used to the idea of realizing there will be a day when you (posthumously) say, “I’m Dead. Now What?” When you are gone, will your papers be in order? Will whomever is left to pay the bills, deal with property, take care of Fido or make other decisions know where to find what they need? Thankfully, there are wonderful resources for that as well. Starting here will often help us begin the many conversations we need to have around our own deaths.

Passwords, please. Can I get an amen?

If nothing else, safely providing a list of the seemingly thousands of passwords we all have now is one of the greatest gifts you can give these days. Don’t forget to tell them what the site is for the password; you know how you have spent hours trying to get back into your Netflix account. Think about how that’s going to work when it’s time to close out the account and stop the automatic draft for that times about fifty or a hundred, depending on how many apps and accounts you have.

Talk About How You Want to Die

We all hope to die at a certain way if we are honest and think about it for a moment and sharing that with one another around a kitchen table is a way to learn about one another.

Some of us want to die quickly, instantly. Some of us only hope for no pain. Many of us in my culture hope to die at home in our own beds surrounded by family and friends. Some of us hope to die with a silk parachute inflating overhead one last time; others of us hope to die in in satin ballroom shoes, our hips responding to the beat on the congas as a Latin band plays a cha-cha. Still others of us would love to take our last breaths in the arms of a lover. Some of the sweetest couples I’ve known debate who should go first: some do not want to be left alone after a longterm companion goes but most are more concerned about their sweetheart and hope that the other will go first so they are not left alone to grieve. They would take that grief upon themselves.

Consider doing a bit of research, then sharing.

In Japan, at least thirty years ago when I lived there, everyone in the neighborhood chips in to help pay for the costs of a neighbor’s funeral knowing that everyone else will do the same when their own time comes.

Funeral traditions there offered us a number of occasions to talk about dying and our own deaths. Once, a neighbor came to visit after her father had died and shared with me about the funeral since I had not been in town on the day of the funeral. I remember trying to put my finger on what was wrong as we sat and looked at a picture album of the funeral gathering and ceremonies until I realized that what was strange for me was that there was a photo album of the event. I had never known anyone to photograph a funeral.

There’s some fascinating and/or disturbing historical examples of cultural differences around death, such as mummifying and burying with everything you’d need to survive in the afterlife, including, sadly, your pets, and others we pray have been banned forever such as the Hindu custom of a wife immolating herself on the funeral pyre of her dead husband.

Write down your information first, then your wishes.

Think about what you want for a service, write down your wishes and share them with a family member and a pastor or another family friend who can help when the time comes. What are your wishes around being kept alive? Wishes around resusitation, extreme measures and even feeding tubes are much more difficult for family members if they are not aware of your wishes.

Do you want certain songs included in your service? Have a favorite verse? Talk about what you want and need or don’t want. Tell a pastor or trusted friend who can help you when you need to let your loved one die the way they’ve chosen, whether that means no , no on every possible intervention, i.e., their choices as best can be honored.

Clean up after before yourself.

In some societies, sorting through all your belongings, “death cleaning” is an established tradition. They are aware of the stress and pain of leaving all our “stuff” behind for our family to have to sort and clear and give away or sell or keep.

“Death cleaning,” or “döstädning” is a Swedish term that refers the process of downsizing before you die. Death Cleaning, explained in “The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning” is an gift you give your family. Sorting through, clearing out, giving away or selling all the “stuff” we can accumulate throughout our lives is an indication, the author writes, that you love your family enough to clear our unnecessary things and make your home nice and orderly well before you think the time is coming closer for you to leave the planet. The idea is that our spouses and children or grandchildren are not burdened with what can become a beast of a process, yet another source of pain for those grieving us when we’re gone, yet another indication that we didn’t want to talk about death.

(Magnusson, Margareta. The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning: How to Free Yourself and Your Family from a Lifetime of Clutter (The Swedish Art of Living & Dying Series) (p. 2). Scribner. Kindle Edition.) Also available on Amazon.

Start the conversation any way you can.

We all face it; people all over the world face it, but not always in the same manner, using the same customs, so, I’m thinking maybe talking about cultural differences around death and dying might be a way to start a conversation.

Did you know that those death masks, usually made by taking a cast of a person’s face after their death, were often kept as mementoes or used for the creation of a portrait or perhaps a scupture after the person had died and been buried. That could open a conversation. A lock of hair often is kept, a tradition started by Queen Victoria after the death of her husband. Tiny brooches might hold cremation ashes. Do you want to be cremated? This is the time to make sure a loved one knows that.

Just start.

Finally, to start the conversation, if none of the suggestions above have spurred you to sit down with your spouse or children or companion or pastor or priest yet, here is a poem I wrote after sitting with a man at my last church who was dying. Perhaps you can start simply by sharing this poem over a cup of tea, a pint of beer or some lovely scones your neighbor dropped by to share. “Hey,” you can say, “I read this poem about death and dying today and it made me think. Can I read it to you and you tell me what you think?” You get a yes and maybe some discussion will follow. Have some questions ready. Maybe a version of “Would you rather…?” Would you rather be buried at sea or on a mountain? Would you rather have everyone sing happy songs at your funeral or maybe tell their favorite joke?

Every time I have spent time with someone who is close to death, I recognize I am closer to my own death and my own fears and though both death and the fear of dying creep ever closer, neither seem to crowd out the peace I have found in talking about, in naming, what is before me, even death. It’s pretty much the one thing we all have in common. Let’s talk!

Sitting with the Dying

I used to think sitting with someone who's dying took courage.
Now I think it is much more selfish than I might ever want to admit.
It is an act of hope, yes.
If I am honest, though,
the hope is that someone else will sit with me when I'm the one who's dying.
There is prayer
but the prayer is that someone who knows me will wipe the drool
from my chin when the time comes.
There is the seeking of promises, guarantees, bartering if
necessary,
so that someone whose face I used to recognize will
cup my face in the palm of their hands when I cry like a baby, or
pluck the hairs from my upper lip because even a dying woman
deserves to feel pretty.
The first time I sat with someone who was dying, I went into that dark room because no one else would and because I couldn't bear
anyone dying alone.
Except now I know we too often do anyway.
Still, if there's any comfort to be offered there, I will selfishly offer warm, gentle and soft touches if only because I know I want the return.
I confess then that sitting with someone who's dying
is a selfish act for me.
It is my way. A way to make the world the place I want it to be,
where no one dies alone
if only because I cannot bear to live in a world where we do.

~Jodi McCullah 2022

4 responses to “Talking About Death Won’t Kill You.”

Anne Culver

February 27, 2023

Thank you for these reflections, Jodi. As a hospital chaplain, I’ve found that many people who’ve been told “some bad news” (that they’re dying), desperately need someone willing to help them work through just what that might mean for them and their loved ones in our culture in which even thinking about death seems to be taboo.

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A. Getty

February 27, 2023

Thank you for sharing. We have been having more of these conversations lately and your reading suggestions are helpful.

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Earnie L

February 28, 2023

I was raised with grandparents who took me to their church’s dinner on the grounds. One of my favorite places to photograph is a cemetery. I imagine all of the lovely lives and interesting people there. And, my Mother taught me that there are far worse things in this life than dying. Thanks for the lovely article.

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Joan Butler

March 1, 2023

Jodi, thanks so much for these thought provoking words. We’ve started the process, but need to go deeper.

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Commit = Finding My Nerve Again.

Good news this week from Papa Luie: You are never too old to learn something new! Papa Luie is the conga player who encouraged me to learn congas so I could make music with the Saturday morning music group playing at the St Augustine Farmers Market.

Actually, he said, “Learn conga or washboard. We need both.”

I chose conga, though I was more than a little intimidated. Now he’s teaching me and making a place for me to play music too. The lessons last week centered around some new patterns to practice, as well as three rules: 1) there are no rules for playing; 2) you’re never too old to learn; and 3) ya gotta commit. Papa Louie, whose age I will no longer try to guess, took up playing conga when he was 75. Yeah. Now he’s like my own personal Yoda and that is not because he is a head shorter than me. “There is no try. Only do. Commit… or go home to your recliner,” he said.

Commitment is the theme of the week: commit to not backing away, commit to not being timid but rather putting your back into the return of the ball in a volley, commit to the drive, commit to the first few notes of a verse. Commit or go home.

Photo Courtesy of Doug Mackenzie, Mackenzie Images, 2023

Commitment

Actually, commitment was this week’s lesson ad nauseum. From traffic, bluegrass music, pickleball, and life in general, I heard: Do not back away from what you want to or need to do.

The time is now to speed up a bit more when you enter traffic, to move forward, not backwards when you see the ball coming at you, and to sing out rather than wait for another chance.

Commit = speed up or move over?

As it was, the insistence of several noisy and angry drivers behind me was not so gentle after all, though. I confess they were justified in their angry gestures and (likely)rude comments; I was, in my mind, still driving in Monteagle, our bucolic and peaceful mountain (of course) town and summer home, where rush hour” means six cars, the speed limit on many roads is whatever you want it to be, and meandering drivers share the gravel roads with speeders. We don’t even have a stop light in Monteagle. That’s actually for safety’s sake. Besides the deer, the biggest danger for drivers in Monteagle is fog. We live at about 2000 feet elevation there, and the fog comes in and sets for a spell, has a cup of coffee and lingers far too long in the winter. Uninvited, the fog seems to camp out on our front lawn most of the winter, and, while it is pretty if you’re sitting by the fire looking out, driving in the fog is nerve-wracking for those of us who are already more timid drivers.

Ghost ship in the fog off California Coast
Photo Courtesy of Doug Mackenzie, Mackenzie Images.

The advice they give you for driving in the fog doesn’t help, either: “Roll down your window because you’ll hear the other cars before you see them.”

Driving in the fog 101: “Roll down your window because you’ll hear the other cars before you see them.”

Such dangerous driving conditions separate the timid drivers from the more aggressive ones; some drivers seem to see the fog as a reason to hit the accelerator. Wisdom dictates then that putting a stop light in downtown so some of us might be waiting to start or turn when another driver barrels through would be a foolish and short-lived experiment. Driving in Monteagle, though, usually allows me to meander, to notice who’s at the Piggly Wiggly when I drive by or decide if the line at the pharmacy is too long and I can wait to get those meds tomorrow. Driving in Florida, where we are “wintering,” however, does not tolerate, invite or accept any lack of commitment when I turn onto the road. Meander onto the Beach Highway at your own risk.

Wait, you might wonder: doesn’t being at the beach encourage you to meander?

That’s the rub, as they say. (Pass the Coppertone.) So many folks now want to live where they can meander that others move to the beach to serve them beers and crab legs, to sell them big beach houses or to build newer, even bigger ones. All those folks are in a hurry; they have zero patience for meandering. The many interactions between those two groups of beach dwellers as well as the struggle many visitors have with being able to slow down while on vacation combine to create what is the social ebb and flow of today’s beach life. Meander onto the Beach highway then at your own peril. You have to commit, to turn onto the road and be ready to accelerate immediately, not after you’ve checked the sidewalks for neighbors out walking dogs. They’re out there dodging traffic themselves as they make their way to the quiet of the actual beach, where we all have permission not to commit to much of anything except meandering.

Commit = Don’t Back Away

“Commit.” Be ready to accelerate. Be ready to hit that ball when it comes your way on the pickleball court or accept being in the losing team most of the time. “Don’t back away,” Steve, my partner in several games yesterday, encouraged me. “It [the ball] won’t hurt you,” he said. (Actually it does sting, but not as badly as always losing or worse being the one person no one wants to play with because you let the ball go by too often.) “Stand your ground,” he said, gently, but with some insistence. “You’re not here to watch, right?” Steve is older than I am, slender and wiry, clearly someone who has always been athletic. He sports a neatly-trimmed beard and is the kind of consistent player I’d like to be. “You didn’t start playing this game to watch the ball go by,” he says. Steve makes it look so easy to keep the ball in play without being aggressive. I find his coaching to be so much more compelling precisely because he isn’t one of the “Every shot is a kill shot” players. Those guys tell me not to back up and watch the ball go by as well but, in my thinking, they are suspect because their response to aggressive play is more aggressive play. “If the ball is hit hard, hit it back even harder.” Steve, though, is himself trying to navigate the game by being assertive rather than aggressive, and I really appreciate the distinction.

Assertive Does Not Equal Aggressive

Coaches and Instructors have shown me how to practice returning those more aggressive volleys, they’ve shown me how to use my torso to garner greater strength myself, they’ve even taught me, at my request, how to slow down someone else’s aggressive volley. That takes a lot of practice. And commitment. We haven’t talked, though, about the struggles of those of us who have been intimidated around more aggressive folks all our lives. Easily half the pickleball players out there struggle when facing more aggressive players, which can be especially disappointing in light of the fact that many players take up the sport as much for the social outlet as for the workout or the competition. We’ve wondered more than a few times if this was really our game since we don’t want to be aggressive ourselves and so many players seem to embrace the aggressive potential of the pickleball.

I’m grateful I realized, though, that the encouragement from Steve was not whether to be aggressive but whether or not to stand my ground as best I could, to take my place as one of the players on the court for that particular game, or simply to give it up. Instead, his encouragement was just that: encouraging. He was suggesting I needed to see how it feels to claim my space. That’s not the same as being aggressive. Aggressive players want their space and mine. I have the option of walking away and letting aggressive players have my space, or, I have the option of standing my ground and that, Steve was trying to tell me, is satisfying and even empowering and is why many of us play. I’m actually okay( with not winning all the time. Well, most of the time.) I’m good so long as matches are close games and include lots of good volleys and points. I don’t like getting “pickled” (losing 11-0) any more than the next player, but, mostly, the fun comes when the games are fairly evenly matched. A game where one server simply aces every serve bores most of us. Like most every other player, I’m here on the court to try to improve my skills, to compete, and to play. “You gotta commit,though,” Steve said. “You aren’t out here to watch the ball go by.”

Commit = Sing Out

That message seems to be everywhere right now. The next step in my joining in with the Saturday morning jam session at the St. Augustine Farmers Market (see previous post about setting goals) is being allowed to sing a song or two, and I’ve been practicing to meet that goal. I’ve been studying bluegrass singing techniques, practicing finding the tenor or baritone line above or below the melody and learning lyrics to old bluegrass songs.

“Commit,” Annie said. Annie took up banjo later in life also and she gets my hesitation but she knows hesitation is not a singer’s friend. “You gotta hit that note or it’Il sound like you’re being strangled,” she says.

At a session in the near future, I’m gonna have to ask to sing lead but first they need to hear me harmonize and so I’ve been joining on Mondays with a smaller group to harmonize and offer percussion.

Talking about singing won’t get me anywhere, though; they need to hear me sing. So, this week I jumped in with that smaller group and, while I’m not sure my tenor line wasn’t flat, I committed. I sang loudly enough to be heard or so I thought. Let’s just say the invitations to sing did not come flying in, though, and it was clear heading into the larger jam session this week that I would have to work that much harder at overcoming my timidity. My desire to participate needed to outweigh the tendency to shrink back into the wings, to stay on the fringe, not risk being bad at this.

My desire to participate needed to outweigh the tendency to shrink back into the wings, to stay on the fringe, not risk being bad at this.

I used to have nerve until…

I’m pretty sure I was considerably more self-assured, bolder even, when I was younger. I did not hesitate to enter the flow of traffic using only peripheral vision to scan lanes while I pedaled a ten-speed bicycle into city traffic. I didn’t think twice about riding at night through town or riding alone even in the dark. That, though, was before I realized I was mortal.

Perhaps realizing you will not actually live forever is something most folks don’t realize until they are “up in years” as my grandmother used to say, or declining in health or strength. Some of us can point to a moment when we lost at least some of our nerve, though, because we suddenly realized, “Hey, we could die.” Until that time, many of us had ridden or skated or raced through life, jumped trestles, run stop signs and woven through traffic like our favorite friend of Mario. Life – or at least the possibility of it ending – first slapped me upside the head when I was about eighteen. I was biking to a college class, weaving in and out of city traffic and, of course, wearing no helmet. No one wore them back then. I stopped at a light next to a semi. The light changed and I started pedaling just as the truck turned my way, dragging me and my ten-speed along the road. Another driver evidently alerted him to the bicycle and rider he had been trying to crush, and, thank God, he stopped. I remember thinking, as I was being dragged, that those big rigs looked even more menacing from underneath. When the dragging stopped, I laid my head on the pavement for a moment, grateful that my bike had protected me from the truck’s tires. I phoned home and got a ride to my classes.

…that moment when I realized I am mortal after all.

Maybe realizing I could die, that I was not going to live forever, ought to have compelled me to trade up from my ten-speed to something more substantial—a small tank, for instance—but mine and my parents’ response at the time was to get me a motorcycle. Maybe we figured I’d be able to outrun the big rigs. I got a couple of lessons from the guy at the dealership, then the salesman said I was good to go and so I went. I had to get to work and school, and, with two adults and three driving teens in the family, we simply could not afford a car just for me.

Like so much else, the motorcycle worked for a while, right up until I woke up in the back of an ambulance. Thing is, I wasn’t driving that motorcycle when we wrecked; my mother and I had decided together that she ought to learn to drive the motorcycle as well. Yes, my mother was driving and no, she had not taken the lessons. In retrospect, that was not exactly a shining moment for either mother or daughter. I have long regretted climbing on the back of that little Yamaha 250 to share with my mother my vast experience handling a motorcycle. In our defense, we lived on a small road where the only regular traffic consisted of neighbors pulling into their driveways. The road did, however, dump out onto a busier road so while Mom did well driving down our road away from calamity, the trip back required she remember how to apply the brakes and, well, that didn’t happen. It was a bonafide miracle that we ran into the side of that car; if we’d been going another mile per hour faster, he likely would have hit us full on and shoved us into ongoing traffic. As it was, I was thrown backwards onto our road. Thank God we were wearing helmets. Mine was cracked; that’ll tell you something about impact. I woke up in the ambulance the first time, looked at the EMT and asked him what day it was. He got flustered and couldn’t tell me and I remember thinking that, if the EMT didn’t know what day it was, what chance did I have to figure it out? A nurse told me when I awoke again later in the hospital that I had upset the EMT. Poor guy, he was not much older than I was, and it had been his first day. I would like to be able to tell you that he wore the uniform well or that he visited me in the ER and I found his blue eyes haunting. Instead, I wonder to this day if he had any personal thoughts about mortality when he saw a girl his age lying next to her mother on the pavement unconscious.

The physical effects for both my mother and me were miraculously minor. We each had a concussion and lots of scrapes but those injuries were far less memorable than the tension and strain of living in our home for the next few weeks. I did apologize several times over the next few weeks to my father without much effect. He couldn’t speak to me or my mother for several weeks even though neither of us were injured worse than we were. He didn’t even lecture me when he showed up in a used car for me to drive from then on.

I can show you the scars on my legs nearly five decades later, but the greater impact of those two incidents was that I was no longer confident about much of anything and my go-to response for anything coming at me fast was to curl up like an armadillo and hope whatever it was would bounce off me. This is the red carpet of trauma I have been trying to unfurl now for years and lately, life has been saying in so many ways, it’s time.

…lately, life has been saying in so many ways, it’s time for me to find my nerve again.

Everywhere I turn in the past few months, weeks, days, I see or hear encouragement to commit, to overcome the tendency to sit back and let the ball go by or miss my chance to make music. Yesterday, Annie, who gets my hesitation, took matters into her own hands and shoved me up front to where the microphone was so I could sing that tenor line on “Roll in My Sweet Baby’s Arms.” It’s apparently time. Being thrown onto the pavement was neither the beginning nor the end of trauma for me; but, after decades of watching too much of my life go by, it seems the universe is urging me to accelerate back into the midst of life’s flow, to not just sit and watch the ball go by, to risk being the one making music and to not simply stay on the sidelines any more.

“There is no try. Only do. Commit… or go home to your recliner.”
Papa Luie

Asking Your Questions Before It’s Too Late

**Erasmus Pershing – Civil War era Ambrotype Portrait – We have no other information about him so far**.

During a visit some thirty years ago, my (now late) grandmother mentioned being descended from French Huguenots. (I had to look them up at the time: A French Protestant movement in the 16th and 17th centuries. Calvinist. Suffered persecution by the religious majority at the time and many thousands of them emigrated from France). Grandma also lamented at the time that very little of her family history was recorded anywhere. Because I was working outside the home then and raising two little boys, I could only lament with her and suggest she record some stories for us on a cassette recorder. She didn’t, though, and now she and her siblings are gone and we have lost most of that history, including any details about our little soldier in the Ambrotype portrait above.

Many family stories today go untold, or if they are told, they have gaps, and placing them in time or understanding the story is tough after all the actors have left the stage. After Grandma died, I could find no one who knew anything about Huguenots and a family connection. No one was left to rebut the rumors of our being related to President Grover Cleveland (because Grandma’s family name was Cleland, not Cleveland, that is highly unlikely.) I had known through my research that she was a cousin of Black Jack Pershing, but we had not talked about any of this and now we cannot.

Grandma lamented once that she possibly was descended from the author of the Fanny Hill: Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, an erotic novel that led to the arrest of author John Cleland in 1748. This particular piece of history especially mortified Grandma, which is sad because it is likely accurate, and I would love to know more about how her parents and grandparents felt then, too.

Most of my family history though has been learned through online research, which means that by itself, it is just the list of ancestors with little of the background, the scenery, or the props and, of course, no narration. The result of relying only on such research is that we get just enough of several of the stories to need and want more – context, detail, resolution – but, again, because the principals were gone, we are left to research and then try to fill in the gaps, leaving many of these rich stories to be lost forever. Needlessly.

Too many of these rich stories are lost forever. Needlessly.

I once even learned from online research that I had a great-grandmother who was alive until I was fourteen and lived an hour away, but I never met her. When I asked, I was told, “We didn’t like her very much.” I was stunned at the time and now of course totally regret that I did not press the matter and ask about what had happened, did not seek the story while there was a player still around to offer some narration.

Turns out, I’m not alone. Elizabeth Keating, PH.D., is the author of The Essential Questions: Interview Your Family to Uncover Stories and Bridge Generations and writes about the loss of these stories:

“The people I interviewed knew so little about their grandparents’ or parents’ early lives, such as how they were raised and what they experienced as young people. Few could remember any personal stories about when their grandparents or parents were children. Whole ways of life were passing away unknown. A kind of genealogical amnesia was eating holes in these family histories as permanently as moths eat holes in the sweaters lovingly knitted by our ancestors.”

The Essential Questions: Interview Your Family to Uncover Stories and Bridge Generations, by Elizabeth Keating, PH.D., is available on back order if you want a hardcopy but a Kindle version is available. I think the hard copy would be a great gift for family members

Asking family members for family stories ought to be quite easy and entertaining but that doesn’t seem to be the case in our media-saturated world.

The good news is that we can use our online research and our boxes of pictures to start the conversations. Keating gives lots of examples of what to ask to flesh out your family’s tales. If there are still older family members alive, starting the storytelling can be as simply as carefully studying some of those old sepia tone family portraits.

On my father’s side of the family, most of the stories I’d learned were from online research until the day his sister asked if I’d be interested in a box of old photos. That cardboard box was a treasure chest of stories about tumult, typhoid and the kindness of strangers. The next time I saw my aunt, I came to the conversation with some specific questions and a vague feeling about why two photos in particular made no sense to me.

The photos set her memories flowing and one story in particular that she remembered as being set in the Depression but, we soon realized, could not be the case. Certainly the family, like many in the country, lived with few creature comforts even before the country was plunged into a depression. Indeed, pretty much everyone spent their lives at the mercy of the elements, epidemics and accidents with little modern health care and only the food they could plant and harvest, hunt or gain in a barter.

My aunt knew that the father in the family was out of the picture; he would die in a sanatorium with tuberculosis. So, at the time that this story begins, my great-grandmother was running a small farm with her children, whom records indicated were born in 1903, 1905, 1911 and 1914. My grandmother was the one born in 1911.

The children’s pictures below, shared with me by my aunt, were what directed my questions and, eventually, led her to remember and share the story of what she called “the family’s angel.” The configurations simply made no sense to me.

The first picture is of her (and my Dad’s) uncle Raymond (born 1905), with baby Pearl (born 1914) and my grandmother, Arbaleta, born 1911. That picture would have been taken after 1914, obviously. Love the box Grandma is standing on, by the way. The second picture would have been taken later, with Grandma Arbaleta (standing,) then Raymond and then Pearl. Even though the picture to the right says it is Caddie on the left, actually she is absent from either picture. Caddie, their older sister, was born in 1903, but died 1909. We found no pictures of her. Had she lived, there would have been a girl taller than Raymond in the picture to the left. Okay, that mystery was solved. Still, something was off.

We turned to the rest of the the dates recorded in the front of the family Bible and my aunt was reminded that Pearl also had died young, and that particular tidbit of information started the memories swirling. Her memory of what happened to Pearl is the real treasure here: over the next hour, she told me about how a stranger, an “angel,” she said, kept the family together in a time that could only be described as bleak.

Evidently, Baby Pearl, (in both pictures) died in 1923 at age nine when Raymond was 18 and Grandma was 12. Their father had died three years earlier, and a typhoid epidemic took Pearl and made their mother, Mila, deathly ill.

Things would have been rough enough since Mila was trying to keep a small family farm going even before the typhoid epidemic hit the area. When Pearl died, the fact that their mother was near death meant Raymond, 18, and Grandma Leta, 12, were left to do what most folks did back then: they had to prepare their sister’s body to be buried. Few could afford for an undertaker to come, so, typically, a coffin would be built by a friend or relative and then it would be laid upon the kitchen table so the family could prepare the body to be buried. As I sat there listening, I could not imagine how tragic and overwhelming it must have been to have a coffin for a sister laid on the kitchen table before me. I could not imagine taking a cloth and soap and water and preparing the body of someone I loved in order for them to be buried. Worse, in this case, though, was that, because the mother was so ill, two coffins were delivered, one for the little sister and one for the mother who was expected to die soon.

The future for these two siblings looked pretty bleak, too. They likely both wondered how they’d manage, once their mother died, and how they’d find food, or pay for oil or firewood. We’re not aware if Raymond was working or at what at the time, but, for the time being, he was tasked with keeping things going and caring for their mother as well. It must have been somewhat overwhelming, but, the story goes, one day, a stranger happened by. Travelers often stopped at farms then – there were no gas stations or Cracker Barrels – and even before the Great Depression swept across the nation, it was not at all unusual for a stranger traveling through to stop to ask for a bite of something to eat or offer to work for a day to earn a meal and a place to sleep.

Such a traveler evidently stopped into the home of my great-grandmother Mila as she was dying of Typhoid and offered to help this young boy and girl keep the farm going. Perhaps this traveler was even hoping to stay after Mila died.

Can you imagine standing outside the door, being told there was typhoid in the home but being so tired, destitute and hungry that you would offer to stay anyway if it meant some food for a few days? Who knows, maybe he thought, “Either I’ll be spared this illness and have found a new home OR I’ll die soon.” Evidently it was worth it to him because this stranger stayed. He helped the two teens keep the farm running, helped them bury their little sister in the church cemetery and made sure they had heat, the occasional hamhock and hope while they cared for their dying mother.

Turns out, though, Mila, my great-grandmother didn’t die. Instead, she began to recover, and once she was able to be up and about, the traveler took his leave. When my aunt shared this rather miraculous ending, I hoped she also would share what happened to the traveler, but, alas, she said, we don’t know his name; that piece of the story was lost.

All that my aunt remembered was that the children had a stranger willing to help to keep things going and, because of him, the family stayed together and kept the home. I’d love to know more about this stranger, this “angel.”

I encourage you not to rely simply on genealogical research if your desire is to know your own family’s stories. Such research is a great start, but it’s a little like being online friends: the tendency is for there to be very little face to face time or conversation, and, in the end, what you have is a more shallow, less meaningful, sanitized experience. Your interaction might be safe but not necessarily satisfying, like the “hug” emoji in place of a real hug. If you want the story, the real hug, you need to sit together and ask specific questions – about social interactions, treasured possessions, popular culture when Grandma was young, and how these all changed with historic events or her own life changes, for just a few examples.

What did you have to do to get your picture scratched off of the family record?

Of course, this is risky since the feel-good miracle stories often are right next to the bitter ones in the picture box. Potentially huge clues to family history can be found on documents that still exist but have been angrily altered like the photo below where some family member’s face has been scratched off. In a time when having even one portrait of yourself was a true luxury, and often that picture is the only record of a family group, what did you have to do to get your picture scratched off of the family record?

What caused someone to scratch out the picture of the woman seated 2nd from right? You know there’s a story there.

In the book, Keating argues that sometimes this kind of research is touchy but NOT asking just perpetuates the pain. She talks about her own family stories and the questions she didn’t ask of her mother, for example: “Before she died, I—like many children, I suspect—avoided any potential clashes, wanting to preserve harmony rather than ask sensitive questions.” (Keating, Elizabeth. The Essential Questions, p. 2. Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.) Take the chance, she suggests, to avoid regrets.

Finally, Keating asks and I would ask too: what do you wish people knew about you? That question is one I ask myself as I write this blog. I think especially of my children and grandchildren and want to offer them some of the stories we have not shared before now. While on the one hand such explorations can feel selfish, I know how much I wish even one of my grandparents and I had sought the answers to these questions while we still could.

Go then.

Ask.

Ask specific questions.

Ask them to tell you what you don’t even know to ask. Maybe you’ll find your Huguenots before it’s too late.

War in the Second Grade

**Some of the mementos from my backpack. Ever wonder why you held onto some and not others?**

As stories go, this one is incomplete, like a puzzle missing some corner pieces, or a picture torn, by accident, of course. It’s my hope that through this process of unpacking my backpack of memories, I’ll locate those missing puzzle pieces or that torn corner of the picture and all – or at least more – will make sense.

Some years ago, I went looking for, or at least information about, my teacher from third grade. I’m sad to say, so far, I haven’t found her, though I am pleased to report I’ve found some folks I’d lost track of some decades ago. As the child of a father who moved us to new cities – and even new countries – at least every three years, I certainly have felt disconnected. For the longest time, because I also was estranged from my family, there existed no one in my life who could vouch for me ever existing prior to college. No one would say, for example, “You were always the tall one in the class.” No one was ready and eager to remind me that I was always late for the traffic patrol crossing guard duty – dear God, they let us do that in sixth grade then! No one would raise their hand to verify – or deny – if I were accused of being teacher’s pet (I sure wanted to be.) or if I had read every historical biography in our primary school library. (I had!)

Thorpe J. Gordon Elementary

I attended Thorpe J. Gordon Elementary School in Jefferson City, Missouri, from the last part of second grade until sixth. We arrived after living overseas for a couple of years (There’s another couple of items from the backpack and a few more stories for another cold day). Today, though, I am seriously regretting tossing all those class pictures a few years ago. You know, the ones where we all stood on those metal risers and tried to hold still long enough for the photographer who counted it a win if he could get us all looking at the camera when the bulb flashed. (If you have pictures from Thorpe J. Gordon Elementary in the mid-sixties, by the way, I’d love to see them.)

To the best of my recollection, my teacher when the year began was a Mrs. Peterson (sp?). She was young, pretty, energetic and fun, and we all loved her.

At least that’s how I remember it, but then, for the longest time, I remembered this as happening in second grade. Since I didn’t start Thorpe J. Gordon until after Christmas in the second grade, seems like some memories got fragmented and some pieces indeed might be missing. We do all have somewhat mashed up, muddled memories, don’t we? I don’t know about you, but whether they are from last week or our childhood, my memories toy with me.

In my mashed up memories, Mrs. Peterson was lively and pretty and cheerful, which was amazing because she was married to a Soldier. Mr. Peterson was, at the time, serving in Viet Nam. He was at war. We didn’t know why he had to be at war but we knew she didn’t get to see him or talk to him much and he wasn’t at home when her day was over. We knew too that he was a pretty nice guy because, every time he sent a cassette-taped message to his wife, he included a message for our class. In return, when Mrs. Peterson was preparing her own cassette message, she allowed us to add some greetings and questions. Sometimes, much to our delight, in the subsequent message, he answered those 8- and 9-year-old’s questions. We felt special and connected and heard, both from him and from her, something most children could not say in that generation, to be sure, and something that, sadly, would not last.

Christmas Corsages

That year, just like every year I can remember, we were off of school for two or three weeks for Christmas break. Before the break, at the class Christmas party, we’d all given Mrs. Peterson our Christmas gifts. The practice in the mid-sixties in the cold, gray, windy midwest, or at least in our neighborhood, was to give your teacher a Christmas corsage; these were pretty, often fake flowers (or no flowers at all, if I remember correctly) and they were adorned with ribbons and trinkets. They certainly were festive. The trouble, as far as I could see at the time, though, was that everyone gave the teacher a corsage. How many dang corsages could one teacher wear? So, I opted that year to give the teacher something else, likely some candy or perfume; it made sense to me, but the gesture did not pass without incurring grief from several of my classmates.

A Typical Christmas Corsage

Over time, I would become more accustomed to classmates wondering what on earth I was thinking. In fifth grade, for example, a couple of us created a class-wide crisis when we did not wear dresses on picture day. Whoa. (Strangely, we were allowed to wear pants in grade school at that school; later, I’d transfer to another town where girls were required to wear dresses, no matter what the weather.) What some of us had figured out, though, was this: when we wore a dress (with nice shoes) for picture day, recess was a wash and we really, really liked running and climbing during recess. In addition, the individual pictures were only head and shoulders so a pretty blouse would serve the same purpose as a dress. Finally, at least in my case, since I was the second tallest kid in the class, I always always stood on the back row for the class picture anyway so no one ever saw what I was wearing. I could see no reason to endure the discomfort of the dress and patent-leather shoes all day when I could be in pants and tennis shoes. Sadly, I had to explain that about twenty-five times that year and, while I was annoyed at that, I was more annoyed at myself for not figuring this out in first or second grade. Still, embracing my generation’s dictim “Question Everything” was a learning curve, and the Christmas corsage might be considered the first volley in my war on ridiculous expectations.

No Questions Allowed.

Still, this post is about war, war and children.

That Christmas break, we went home a happy lot and looked forward to returning in January. When we did step back into that classroom, we did not find Mrs. Peterson at all. What we found was another teacher, an older woman whom I’m sure was a lovely and gifted teacher, but on the first day back to class that frosty January, we were told simply, “Mrs. Peterson is gone and this is your new teacher.” End of discussion. No questions allowed though you know we had plenty. In my child’s memory, our anger and questions were dismissed, sent to the corner, not allowed.

Now, if any of our parents heard about this from us or if any of them knew what had happened or reached out to the school with their own questions, I don’t know. I don’t remember if I had any conversations with my parents about this either. I can reliably tell you that they were not advocates of my budding proclivity for questioning everything.

It would be decades later when some of that memory came into focus for me; I would realize, belatedly, something must have happened to Mrs. Peterson’s husband. Perhaps he was injured, or killed; we could hope, even, he simply returned home to the states and they were transferred or moved. We never knew though and no one ever told us, which meant our imaginations would have been allowed to run wild if it hadn’t been made so clear that there was no room for that. For me, those banished questions would not surface again until, as a Campus Minister, I began working with students who were combat veterans.

(Lazarus Project, which started as The Lazarus Project, became Soldiers And Families Embraced. The free counseling program began in 2010 as a United Methodist Campus Ministry project to help combat veterans and their families who were attending Austin Peay State University in Clarksville, Tennessee, adjacent to Fort Campbell, Kentucky. By that time, the US had been at war for nearly a decade, but much of burden of fighting was borne by less than 1% of the US population and felt then quite keenly by their families.The program expanded into the entire community as we began to hear from veterans and family members from all eras who needed to process their pain, grief, anger and ask their questions.)

The name “Lazarus Project” was inspired by the idea that when the biblical Lazarus emerged from the tomb he still had the trappings and stench of war on him and the community is told by Jesus to “go to him” and unbind him that he might live again, rather than wait until he asks for help. See John 11, especially John 11:38-44. We started with peer support groups for veterans and their families and evolved into a full-fledged counseling program offering free counseling still to those affected by wars of all eras.

One part of the program for several years involved joint retreats to find healing from war, and one of the first activities in those retreats involved introducing yourself by sharing some symbol of your experience with war.

Back to the Second Grade

As I prepared to go to my first retreat, I was at a loss to share any personal experience with war until I was cleaning out a drawer and stumbled upon an award I received at the end of sixth grade from the American Legion. It was not until I was holding that award that I realized my own experience with war began in second grade with Mrs. Peterson.

It was not until I was holding that award that I realized my own experience with war began in second grade with Mrs. Peterson.

Certainly, this award, which, I was sure was going to my classmate, Karla, did not – in my sixth-grade mind – have anything to do with war.

American Legion Award given each year to one boy and one girl in the sixth grade of each local Elementary school for “Courage, Honor, Leadership, Patriotism, Scholarship and Service.”

Holding it all those years later, however, gave air to a mass of memories. To my surprise, the memory of Mrs. Peterson and her Soldier were near the top. Processing those memories in that retreat, sorting through the confusion and child’s anger, I am grateful to say, helped the Lazarus Project and then SAFE become community educators about the effects of war on children. The first thing we taught was that children DO know about war, whether we adults want to admit it or not, and denying their experience has both immediate and longterm consequences.

Already, one of our first clients for counseling had been an angry child, a six-year-old, who had been expelled from school for stabbing other children with pencils. Her grandmother came to us asking for help. The child’s father had been deployed into combat three times for a year at a time since she had been born and her mother had melted under the stress, grief and fear of all those long deployments. All that the child knew was that now Mommy also had “gone away.” The child was angry and she had lots of questions no one could answer. We learned quickly that she was among the many children of that war and so many other wars who wake up wondering if Daddy was still alive, if Mommy would be able to come home, and if, when they did come home, they’d be “all right.”

“You lied,” he said. “You all lied.”
A ten-year-old client of our program.

One of the saddest days of our program was when a child whose father had sustained a serious Traumatic Brain Injury declared that all the adults around him were liars because they had all told him Daddy would be okay, and he did not need to worry. You lied, he said. Like most of us adults who want to protect the children, the adults in his life underestimated his ability to grasp the seriousness of the situation and discounted his need for honesty and his right to have the chance to grieve the possibilities and air his fears, too.

All of us at Lazarus Project were amazed, though, at how much it helped the six-year-old just to have an adult hear her and assure her that of course she was angry and rightly so. She desperately needed someone to normalize that anger. Being able to ask her questions without upsetting everyone else around her didn’t fix the situation or mean she wouldn’t need more counseling to understand and name her feelings but it did help her stop stabbing other children with pencils. Allowing her space to air her questions likely had the added bonus of helping her process them before they became jumbled fragments tossed into a backpack that might not be opened for decades, if ever.

As the wars continued, more and more resources surfaced to help talk about war with children. Sadly, as those wars continued, there were children who had spent their entire school experience, twelve years or more, with one or the other parent deployed into combat zones. The questions they have and the feelings they need to process will continue throughout their lives.

Our questions don’t always need answers, just air, the air to breathe, the chance to be counted.

As I write this, I think of my granddaughter who is only seven and, while she seems quite young, she does know about death and she has dealt with the losses of animals and people she has known. Thankfully, she is blessed to be surrounded by adults who allow her to ask questions, even if they don’t have answers for her.

It’s not easy to hear her questions some times, but it IS simple. What we are learning by listening is that our questions don’t always need answers; they do need air, the air to breathe and the chance to be counted.

Wrestling with God

People often assume that, because I am a pastor, my relationship with God must be bucolic, nurturing, all green pastures and peaceful waters. They are surprised then when I tell them that my relationship with God, in fact, more closely mirrors the story of Jacob wrestling with the angel. (See Genesis 32, or better, go back and read the whole story of this trickster who became the father of the 12 tribes of Israel.)

I refer them to this story because while I would love to say God and I are just great buddies and I, like Mary, sister of Martha, spend my days sitting at God’s feet listening and learning, the reality is much more that I wrestle with God and often, the wrestling feels like a life and death struggle.

Rapids

About five years ago, my two sons and I went kayaking on the Harpeth River on a rainy 4th of July. We were the last group of people allowed to get in the water because the rain had been coming down so long that the river was starting to rise. Those who ran the kayaking and canoeing outfitters were concerned and so they stopped letting other people get in the water. It was still manageable when we got in, and all three of us have a lot of experience with canoeing and kayaking, so we felt quite comfortable–even if we were soaking wet.

Almost immediately though, really before we could even get settled in our kayaks, we had to make a quick decision at a split in the water – a stretch of rapids either way but we had no time to think and no time to weigh the two and find the safest. My youngest son went right and my oldest and I went left. Within seconds, I watched in horror as my oldest son was sucked underneath a pile of brush that had collected on the side and then, almost as quickly, only had time enough to take a breath before I also got sucked under the pile of brush myself.

I remember being clear I did not want to be carried any further under that brush pile, because, well, there did not appear to be a way out on the other side. I, of course, immediately lost my paddle and kayak and just focussed on not being pulled any further under. I did know which way was up and managed to grab onto a branch, but I was not strong enough to pull myself to the surface. I remember that I kept holding onto the branch and was especially grateful when I realized it was living and attached to the riverbank. I could not find any way, though, to push myself up and get my head out of the water. I remember kicking and kicking and holding on until quite suddenly I found a foothold and pushed up until my head came out of the water and I felt a hand grabbing mine.

I was not underwater for a long time, but the time that I was underwater went by slowly while I was struggling, and I remember two thoughts as I was kicking and searching for a foothold and trying to push myself up: the first thing that I was thinking was I didn’t know where my oldest son was and I was really scared he was underneath the brush; and the second thing I was thinking was honestly that I might not get out of this alive. I was under water and struggling long enough to have time to think I might not make it.

As it turns out, I was not the only one thinking that, though, because I found out a bit later that my youngest son — the outdoorsman and most experienced of the three of us, the one who has survived several brushes with death that mom doesn’t want to know about, that son apparently had enough time to stop trying to retrieve my paddles, to yell to his brother, “Mom is not coming back up” and to start sprinting for where he’d seen me go under.

Apparently, though, his brother, who I’m so grateful as able to quickly surface, was already trying to reach me and when I finally found a submerged log with my foot and was able to push up and reach up, that son grabbed my hand and pulled me on up and out. And that all happened in five minutes or less of putting our kayaks into the water! My heart still races just thinking about it!

Praying, Not Praying….

Now you might hope that, in the midst of chaos and a frightening situation, that a preacher would be praying, right!? And, I’d really like to say that I was praying but I don’t remember that. I do remember being calm, even when I thought I might not make it. I remember being focused and I remember doing what I knew to do, focus on finding a foothold to push myself out of the rushing water. I remember being fully present in each moment. I remember pushing again and again and I remember hoping it would work. I remember that I kept trying and that I kept reaching. And when I felt that hand grab mine, when my sons pulled me out of the water, absolutely soaking wet, I remember taking a really deep breath.

Afterwards, once I felt the relief of seeing both boys safe and sound, I think I felt worse for my oldest son who — Poor guy — had just given up cigarettes a few weeks earlier. He looked like he needed one. As for my younger son, well, he got a taste of what Mom had felt so many times with him and his brushes with danger and death. I remember registering that it must have been serious because it was highly unusual for him to be worried but he was so worried, he ran!

I remember being grateful that my oldest son was above the surface trying to get to me the whole time and grateful to see his face when he pulled me out. Quietly, with little conversation at first, we set about trying to retrieve our paddles and whatever gear we had. Much was washed down the river and gone. We found what we could see in the rain, secured that gear to the kayaks and got back on the water because, as drenched and drained as we might have felt, there was no going back up the river – there was only one way home.

I remember we floated in silence for a bit until my youngest son turned to me and asked, “Don’t you just feel so alive right now, Mom?”

Well, yes.

And No.

I was far more exhausted than I normally would have been, considering we really had only been on the water for a few minutes. But I also could say I could not remember many times in my life when I have felt that present, and that much in the moment, and that keenly aware of and focussed on what I needed to be doing.

I felt quite shaken, I told him, but grateful though I was very clear that it never needed to happen again!!

All that is to say, I felt like most people do in a terrifying situation. While scary movies are quite popular with many of us, most of us do not actually like being in danger. In fact, we have a high need to control that kind of chaos; we certainly do not like it. As far as most of us are concerned, it is God’s job to make the chaos stop and God’s job to restore safety and help us feel comfortable again.

Wrestling is Biblical, Turns Out.

In Gospel Medicine, Rev. Barbara Brown Taylor says, we think that’s how we can tell when God is present–when the danger has been avoided. When your heart stops pounding and you can breathe normally again? That’s when God is present, right? We believe we know that God is there when we’re not afraid anymore. “It is an appealing idea,” says Taylor, “but unfortunately the Bible will not back it up. As much as we’d like to think God is in the ‘keeping us from danger and chaos’ business,” in fact, she says, “much of God’s best work takes place in total chaos, while we are scared half out of our wits.” (Taylor, Rev. Barbara Brown, Gospel Medicine, 107-8.) Great.

In the Genesis saga where Jacob is wrestling with an angel, Jacob certainly did not want to be fighting for his life. But this story is where he does exactly that. When we find Jacob there, it is twenty years after Jacob left his family because he cheated his older brother, and lied to his father, and took his older brother’s birthright, inheritance, AND blessing and then had to flee.

“Likely he only knows which end is up because he can feel the dirt on his back or the gravel in his face as they roll and tumble and cling to one another all night, apparently evenly matched. We know he felt afraid for his life, thought he was likely going to die, in fact, which means he was keenly present and aware of every moment and every move because the next move, the next moment, the wrong move, could mean the end of his life on this earth.” (Taylor, Ibid. )

Jacob refuses to let go of the angel until the angel gives him a blessing and the angel changes his name to Israel, which, of course, will be hugely important, but also leaves Jacob wounded, limping for the rest of his life, which means always vulnerable in that day and time.

This story is perhaps my favorite story in the Bible. In fact, when folks ask me to explain my relationship with God, I tell them this story because while I would love to say God and I are just buddies and I, like Mary sister of Martha, spend my days sitting at God’s feet listening and learning, the reality is much more that I wrestle with God. Sometimes I question God, sometimes I get angry with God, sometimes I am grateful and feel blessed. But it is not usually a serene and peaceful relationship. I also love this story because it describes so well how so many of us experience life: crises, and relationship troubles, and illnesses, and accidents, seem to pounce on us when we are not looking. and all we can do is hold on tightly and try to come up for air when we can.

Faith, For Me, is Holding On, Ever Hoping.

Rachel Naomi Remen, an oncologist and author who struggled all of her life with her own Crohn’s Disease, and who has endured lasting, debilitating pain and multiple surgeries, talks about Jacob and striving with God in her book, My Grandfather’s Blessings. First, because she was a child when her grandfather told her this story, she says she was puzzled and wondered how anyone could confuse an angel with an enemy. Her grandfather pointed out, though, that the wrestling was not the important part of the story. The important part, he told her, is that everything has a blessing for us, and we can receive blessings even–and perhaps especially–in the times when we are clear we are not in control. Our task is to keep striving as best we can to understand, keep striving to learn, and maybe even, like Jacob, keep negotiating but we keep holding on.

Rachel Remen says, “How tempting to let the enemy go and flee. To put the struggle behind you as quickly as possible and get on with your life. In fact, though, it turns out that very often the struggle IS your real life and all the time we spend quietly, serenely, calmly is just the quiet before the storm that is our life. Perhaps,” says Remen, “the wisdom lies in engaging the life you have been given as fully and as courageously as possible and not letting go until you find the unknown blessing that is in everything.” (Remen, Dr. Rachel Naomi, My Grandfather’s Blessings, 27. )

This kind of wrestling is not pretty, though. Most of us shy away from this kind of struggle because it is so embarrassing to be so clearly overwhelmed by our lives. I am sorry to say I have struggled a great deal in my life, sometimes because of tragedy or trauma and sadly, just as often because I have allowed trauma to set the rules and too often closed myself off from healing or relationships.

When I do struggle, and it seems that I do nearly every time there’s a change I need to make, I have found it necessary to forget about how I look or how I present to others, as much about whether or not my eyes are swollen and red as about whether what I say makes sense to someone else. I have learned not to expect myself to sound rational or even be able to defend what I am feeling or thinking, only to hold on and not worry about frogs in my pockets or mud on my forehead or if anyone else understands right now. Every attempt, every time I push or grasp for words to explain what feels life-giving and what doesn’t, every move is more proof I am alive and I do care and still hope and, God willing, will reap a blessing from the effort.

As my sons and I floated down the river that day, I’d love to say I felt somehow triumphant, that I had gleaned some grand lesson the world would want to hear, that God had spoken to me and sent me back the land of the living to share some great wisdom that would make all of our lives better or more meaningful or help us cure cancer.

Instead, I was drenched, defeated and deflated but that didn’t matter because I was just grateful to be near enough my boys to touch them, to call to them, and to hear them call back to me for another day.

We Do All Have A Story

Part of unpacking the backpack I’ve carried now for more than six decades is recognizing that there are so many stories. Yours. Theirs. Ours. Everyone’s. We all do have a story and much of my life has been about sharing stories. One of my favorite jobs revolved around being assigned to interview a wide variety of people whose stories I was then tasked with telling.

This image is from a card created to benefit Room In The Inn in Nashville (roomintheinn.org.)

(So many of my favorite books, by the way, have been short story compilations or books about stories. As I unpack this backpack, the books I’ve held onto, often referred to and found worth rereading will be topics of entries. Below is one of my long time favorites. Rachel Naomi Remen, M.D., shares wonderful stories and I have quoted her more than a few times in sermons.)

My Grandfather’s Blessings: Stories of Strength, Refuge, and Belonging, by Rachel Naomi Remen, M.D., (Riverhead Books, New York, 2000) has long been a favorite, in part because she not only tells wonderful stories, but she also encourages and celebrates us all recognizing our blessings in hearing one another’s stories and in telling our own.
As you can see, this copy has been well-used.

I love stories.

Stories about trying to grow disease-free strands of chestnut trees, trees that have their own stories, by the way! (They used to grow in the south to be massive but now can only manage to sprout bushes. Grow, little trees, grow!)

Stories about small town festivals and cowbirds and killdeer who protect their young by pretending to be injured to draw predators away from nests.

Stories about how you refused to let anyone else tell you how to live your life, stories about first loves, stories about sitting with dying.

As, I unpack my backpack here, I’ll tell those and others, stories about travel to Japanese temples in caves or about stumbling over statues intentionally left lying in the middle of bridges in Rome.

Stories about Lazarus stumbling out of the tomb and how that image helped us find ways to help our friends and neighbors who have stumbled as they tried to come back from combat and wars.

Songwriters and poets are some my favorite storytellers, often as much for what they leave out and let us fill in ourselves. The embroidery below I did years ago and, if you’re a John Prine fan, you know that is a line from one of his songs, “Everybody,” where he sings that: “Everybody needs somebody that they can talk to, someone to open up their ears and let that trouble through….”

Some stories are more compelling but none is more important than another, only more important to me or you and only in a certain time and place. All of our stories need to and deserve to be told. Even the ones we regret. To be sure, some are more fun to tell than other and some are the kind of story that, while you’re in the midst of the story itself, you know this is gonna be epic…if we survive.

One benefit of hearing and then telling your stories is how your stories spur me to remember and tell my own, whether they were stories about nearly drowning or stories about all the mythology around pregnancies (and the tendency people have to warn you or tell you about the worse-case scenario when they see you sporting a swelling belly) or some of my earliest stories, which were about running away from home or trying to make sense of chaos using a child’s vocabulary and point of view.

Stories. We all have them, we all need to hear them and we all need to tell them. I’ve got lots so this is just the beginning. Might want to sit down. This could take a while. You go first.

Category: storytelling