Facing the Giants

It's 1:00 in the morning. I really should be sleeping, but I can't. My younger brother called and woke me at 11:00. He wasn't calling about anything important; he thought I'd be asleep and intended to leave a message. But these days I sleep with my phone's volume on high and jump to answer when it rings, my heart pounding in my ears, because all of a sudden life got unpredictable.

Who am I kidding? Life has always been unpredictable. Once on my way home from work I saw a car along the side of the road smashed into an accordian shape as if it were a toy, and I knew that despite all wishful thinking the person in the car couldn't possibly have survived. The realization that someone was waiting at home for that person hit me in the stomach. It was a Friday night. They probably had plans; maybe supper was already on the table, and the person in the car never made it home. Who can prepare for that?

My brother-in-law's dear father went to the doctor with what he thought was some sort of flu and weeks later found himself in the operating room having a brain tumor removed. Only the doctors couldn't get it all, and a handful of months later my brother-in-law's father went home to Jesus. It was just an ordinary day when my brother-in-law got the phone call that his dad had cancer. No one saw it coming.

I'm not a fan of unpredicatbility. One of my worst fears, the one that keeps me up at night, is getting a phone call that something bad has happened to someone I love. This fear ties my insides in knots and brings me instantly to tears. I know better than to be afraid; I know God holds the future. But I want to hold on to the people I love with a white-knuckled grip. When the phone call came last week that my mom was seriously ill and in the hospital, my fear to some extent was realized.

An infection was raging through my mom's body. Thankfully, it's mostly under control now, but the toughest part is still to come. Surgery today revealed a great deal of damage to her foot. The weeks and months and maybe even years ahead are going to require more patience and strength than my family has ever mustered before, and I'm scared. I'm scared for my mom. She's got an inner strength to rival Abraham's, but my heart breaks for the loss of her use of her foot for an undetermined amount of time, and I wonder how one even starts to deal with such a thing. I'm scared for my dad. He's been a kind a gentle caregiver, but how he's got big decisions to make and a lot more care to give, and none of us kids are near enough to be there all the time. And I'm scared for me, in a selfish way I suppose. I wonder what I can do, how I can help. I live the closest and want to there, but I have a job and family too; I don't know what the balance should be. I wonder how all of this will change my mom and dad. I feel helpless, and I hate that.

I suppose that's why I'm awake at now 2:00 in the morning. All of this will take time to process and understand. I'm thankful God spared my mom's life and pray for his continued healing and mercy. I know what God says about fear; I have dozens of Bible passages at the tip of my tongue. I know Jesus said time and time again, "Do not be afraid." I know all this. But like everything else, surrender also takes time. It will come, of that I am certain. And certainty in God's promises wins over the unpredictability of this life every single time.

I think maybe I can sleep now.

The Simple Things, part 2

Last Friday evening, Kev and Teenage Stepson went to a retreat at church, so Teenage Stepdaughter and I had the house to ourselves. After tidying up in the kitchen a little bit, I decided to go to the grocery store to pick up some things for the weekend meals, and I asked Teenage Stepdaughter if she wanted to come along. Though the prospect of grocery shopping on a Friday night didn't exactly put a spring in her step, perhaps due to sheer boredom or a lack of a better offer she shrugged and said, "I suppose."

At the grocery store, after gathering ingredients for build-your-own burritos and while the browsing the organic section for quick freezer meals, Teenage Stepdaughter said something about how Amy's Pizza Snacks look like Pizza Rolls. She had me at "Pizza Rolls." We'd eaten supper early so the guys could get off to their retreat, and my stomach was growling. I couldn't get Pizza Rolls out of my head.

"Those sound really good," I said. "Should we get some?"

She was on board.

As we hurried to the freezer aisle, I had a moment of deja vu and laughed out loud. In my preteen and early teen years, my dad was on several synod committees that required him to travel to Wisconsin for meetings three or four times a year. He usually stayed overnight in Wisconsin, and on those nights he was gone, my mom took us kids to the store to pick out TV dinners. On the way home from the store, we often stopped at the library to get a video to watch. As we sat in front of TV trays in the living room and savored our salisbury steak and chicken nuggets and, if we were lucky, the warm chocolate pudding that usually came with the salisbury steak or chicken nuggets, while we watched the movie from the library, we wished we could have this ritual every night.

Those rare evening three or four times a year were pretty much the only times we didn't eat at the table, and they were certainly the only times we had TV dinners, and so they were special. 

After I finished college and moved back to Minnesota, not too far from but not too close to my parents' house, my mom would call me when my dad had to go out of town. She'd pick up eclairs from the grocery store and order a pizza, and we'd eat in the living room while watching a movie--usually something with Sean Connery.

While laughing out loud in the freezer aisle, I shared this memory with Teenage Stepdaughter. We checked the bakery aisle and snatched up the last box of eclairs. Then we went home, curled up on the couch with our Pizza Rolls and eclairs, and watched one of the movies I'd watched with my mom years ago.

You just gotta love the simple things.