I listened through the open window, and because I stopped and waited and listened I could hear their tiny voices dancing through the summer day, accentuated by the metallic strike of a hammer on a nail, the thunk of hammer on wood (missed!), the raspy sound of the shovel as it shoved into our narrow strip of city yard. They are five and six years old, the two of them, and their voices were serious.
I listened through the open window and they talked about building a tree house out of only a three-foot long board and the ten nails I had given them earlier, five in each dusty palm, five white nails that they held like magic seeds. They raced outside and one began digging and the other began nailing and that’s how it went for an hour or so as they planned and schemed the massive tree house they would build in the tiny tree that lines our city yard. Out of one small board. And ten nails.
This is what it means to be a child: to believe that even a tree house is possible, though you’ve never built one before, though you don’t have the tools or the materials, though you don’t know why or how. To believe it’s possible.
Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.
* * * * *
I spoke with Kelly Chripczuk the other day and we were talking about trust when she said something that made my ears perk up, something along the lines of,
“Until you lose your identity (as a writer or preacher or student or whatever), there’s so much pressure. Too much pressure. There are people to impress and a reputation to uphold. But once you can let go of that identity, it allows you to play again, like a little child, to create things and not worry about what anyone else will think.”
To play again, I thought to myself. This is what I have to allow myself to do.
* * * * *
I immediately thought of the novel I’m releasing this winter (I’m sorry if I’ve been talking about that too much, but it’s on my mind all the time, and to be honest I’m still terrified of freeing it into the world). But after talking with Kelly, I thought, That’s it! It’s all just play, this creating and conjuring and sharing of stories.
I enjoy writing stories too much to let what other people might think stop me from writing, from creating, from producing and sharing. When it’s me and all these potentially critical readers, I feel myself drawing inward. When it’s me and and the story, just us, and I’m making things up and chuckling to myself and nearly crying, that’s it. That is a life I could live and enjoy and be at peace.
That’s me in the back yard with not enough materials, not nearly the right tools, and ten measly nails. Making plans. Digging in the dirt. Climbing trees.
And believing.
What do you wish you could start believing for again?
If you’ve read my blog at any length since I began sharing here in 2010, you’ve been witness to what feels like an incredible journey, from those early days when I didn’t know where my next project would come from, to our 10,000-mile cross-country trip, to these last two years where I’ve had more work than I ever imagined I would have.
You can learn a lot of lessons in difficult times, but you can also learn a lot during times of abundance, if you keep your eyes open.
This year I’ve had some intriguing projects, some of which I’m in the middle of right now, and the amount of work allowed us to buy a house and move into the city and has just generally made life a little easier. We used to have to check our checking account before filling up the van with gas. We used to line up the bills and have to decide which to pay and which to hang on to.
But this “abundance” has also made life very busy. Very busy. I write all day, six days a week (sometimes 6 ½), and then usually a few hours at night. I’m constantly reviewing and editing and submitting, recording and transcribing and re-writing. Right now I’m at various stages of five different books.
I’m making good money, but a thought dropped into my mind a few months ago, and it stopped me dead in my tracks.
“Is this why you wanted to be a full-time writer, so that you could make a lot of money?”
No, was my immediate response. I never became a writer so that I could earn a lot of money. I never became a writer so that I could spend the rest of my life writing other people’s books (though I do enjoy that aspect, and helping someone else share their story seems like a very worthy part of my calling as a writer).
I became a writer because I have stories to tell. Some are true stories, things that actually happened to me and other people. Some are True stories, tales that, while fiction, feel like some sort of very personal history. And in my busy-ness and occasional fear of running out of work, I lost the ability to ask people to wait.
What if I tell them I’m not available for six months and they go with someone else?
But if I’ve learned anything over the last five years, it’s the importance of living life from a place of trust and not from a place of fear. So I’ve decided to start trusting again.
Part of that active trust means not taking on any new projects until early next year. I need to finish the ones I have, and finish them really well.
Just as important, I have a book that I promised my kids I would finish before the end of the year, the first novel I’m releasing out into the world, so I want to spend some quality time revising and editing that story. (I’ll probably release that through Kickstarter, so if you’re interested in hearing about that when it happens, stay tuned here at the blog or sign up for my email newsletter over in the right-hand column of this page.)
Which leads me to this:
Why did you start doing what you’re doing?
For the authors out there…why did you start writing? Was it so that you could build a platform and create an audience and market and beg people to read your book? Or was it something else, something inside you that simply had to tell a story?
Why did you first take the job you have now? Why did you become a painter? Why did you become a pastor or a teacher or a business person? Why did you start that charity?
We are all in tiny vessels lost at sea, and even though we’re fortunate enough to find true North for brief moments of time, we will always drift from that heading. Living a good life means constantly evaluating where we have drifted, and doing what must be done to get back in the direction we are meant to travel.
So, can you remember why you started? (Seriously. That’s a real question. I’d love to hear your answer in the comments.)
Today’s guest post is brought to you by my friend Chris Hall. Thanks for reading.
Wednesdays are hard for my mother-in-law. There’s too much time in them, too many memories.
Wednesday nights, Sara and I meet her for dinner or, at the very least, take her out for ice cream. It doesn’t matter which. They’re both just a reason to get her out of the apartment.
On this Wednesday we’re eating at one of those “All American” restaurants where the menu has more pages than the last book I read and the drinks are served in mason jars. She sits across the table from us. She looks tired, like a statue that’s been standing in the rain too long.
“I came home from work yesterday,” she begins. “And I don’t know how I hadn’t seen it before, but Becky wrote on the wall above her bed.” She stops and takes a breath. Her eyes fall to the table. “She said ‘I will fight’ and wrote the date with it. April 21st 2014.”
The rest of the restaurant felt suddenly vacant. No cooks, no waitresses, no customers, no mason jars, just those words. I will fight.
“I don’t know why I’m surprised,” she said. “She was always writing things on the wall in her room when she was just a kid.
“That’s our Becky,” she sings. “She loves to push my buttons.”
The way she speaks of Becky is always an odd pairing of past and present tense. I don’t think she’s ready to speak of her in only the past yet. I’m not sure she’ll ever be.
I look at my Sara, the ink barely dried on our marriage license, and softly run my hand over her back. She’s been strong, stronger than I would be in her place.
* * *
It’s been less than two months since our wedding. The day was warm, breezy and bright with a sky like the sea from a distance. We were surrounded by fields of almost-ripe wheat, still green with the vigor of spring. My bride walked down the grassy aisle, her feet gliding over the blades until she was next to me, breathtaking. Her dress was pink, like the first blush of a garden rose. I took her hand and we pledged our lives.
We laughed, we danced, we kissed.
Perfect. The day as perfect.
. Except it wasn’t. There was an absence keenly felt, readily seen.
It was visible in the too few number of bridesmaids, on the deeply drawn lines of my mother-in-law’s face and in the empty chair at our table.
Becky had gone into the hospital five days before the wedding, racked with pain in her abdomen. We prayed for fast answers and faster healing, but it wasn’t until 2 days later that we had any answers: Peritonitis, an infection in the thin tissue covering the abdominal organs, and Sepsis.
Becky was placed in the Intensive Care Unit. She wouldn’t make the wedding. I did my best to catch Sara’s tears. The doctors were hopeful they’d caught the infection in the early stages. That was enough, enough to hold on to as we prepared for our wedding.
* * *
I like to think that Becky was born with her dukes up, ready to brawl, because that’s what she did throughout her life. She fought.
Born with a heart defect, she had open heart surgery at only a week old. Her chances were slim. Her will, iron. She grew up pushing the limits of what her ailing body could handle, dragging oxygen with her for years. At age 7 she was diagnosed with Protein Losing Enteropathy, a side effect of her heart condition that rendered her body unable to absorb proteins. Life with PLE was like putting numbers into alphabet soup. It complicated everything. By 20, she was in need of a new heart and liver. Still, she fought.
I once heard Becky talk about the future, of all the things she wished for her life, as though it were her’s to claim. There was no diagnosis that was going to keep her from trying, no handicap that would keep her from dreaming.
* * *
A week after the wedding we visited Becky in the hospital for the second time. Concern flushed my mother-in-law’s cheeks.
“Why are you worried, Mom?” Becky said softly, her words came at the expense of an entire breath. “I’m not worried. God’s going to take care of everything.”
The following Monday I was back at work when Sara called. The Sepsis had damaged Becky’s kidneys beyond repair. She was back in the ICU. After over 21 years of humiliating the odds, Becky was losing her fight.
We rushed to Philadelphia. Becky was still with us but her bouts of consciousness came in short bursts. We spoke with her, each of us reassuring her of our presence, our love.
More people came throughout the day. Friends who had been a part of her story from the outset, family who came back so soon after a celebration. They came to see Becky, to wish her farewell as she prepared to make a journey none of us could make with her. They came to comfort a mother caught in the agony between giving everything for her child and giving that child over.
“Where is God?” someone asked.
The question filled the hospital room. It was the expectation of a friend who said they’d be there only to stand everyone up. “Where is He?”
We gathered around her that night. We sang. We prayed. We spoke the words of those who have no hope left but for a miracle. It would be another one to add to the list. She just needed one more.
It didn’t come, though. Not this time. On Tuesday the rest of her organs shut down and we waited with dreadful anticipation.
Still, she fought. Just as she had done from the day she was born. Her mother fought, too. She fought to keep her will from spilling onto the white tiles. That waiting, that in-between, was the hardest thing I’ve ever seen anyone endure.
My new wife cried into my shoulder, her salty tears rooting in my skin. When I said “For better or for worse” I didn’t think the latter would come so soon.
“Where is God?”
A thousand pat answers rambled through my mind. All the promises I’d been taught, all the words of comfort I’d heard from the pulpit fell flat. I held Sara, mixed her tears with my own and hoped it would be enough.
Wednesday began with a call at 4:40am. They’d turned Becky’s pacemaker off. It wouldn’t be long now. It couldn’t be. Sara and I drove what had become the all too familiar route to the hospital.
Becky’s breaths – short, raspy struggles – came only a few times per minute now. We held our own with her between each of them, wondering if this was it.
Her mother could only be in the room for brief moments. She who had endured the loss of her husband to a brain injury, who had taken up the mantle of leader for her family, who had given all she had and more to raise her three children, was face to face with the day she had beaten back for so many years. If Becky was a fighter, it was because her mother had passed that fortitude on to her.
Becky’s last breath came shortly before 11:00 that morning. The vibrant, goofy girl who’d had such tender hold in all our hearts was gone. What remained was like the shell the locust sheds, giving the appearance of the thing but holding none of what made it.
I sat down that afternoon to write the obituary of the girl who ran to hug me every time I walked into the apartment, of the girl who had been my sister for 11 short days. Words have never been more difficult.
Becky’s memorial was held that Saturday. People from her everyday, from far away and long ago filled the church to remember her. She was loving, compassionate, brash, adventurous, temperamental and bright.
Bright. That was how I saw her. She was like a star who doesn’t care that the night is far darker and far longer than it knows.
“Where is God?”
The question clanged in my mind again, like a misshapen bell in a crumbling tower, ugly and cold. I looked up as my mother-in-law held a tissue under curled fingers, a microphone in the other hand. She shared of her grief, of her thankfulness for all who were there, all who had shared in Becky’s life.
God was there.
He was in the presence of friends around the hospital bed. He was in the songs that were sung as Becky drifted slowly from this world. He was in this church, not because it was a church, but because of those who were there, bearing his name, and comforting a grieving family. Grieving with us.
* * *
I watch my mother-in-law across the table. She finishes the iced tea in her mason jar and asks “When are you two gonna give me some grandbabies?”
Sara and I laugh. We’ve heard this a hundred times already.
“You know I’m just teasing,” her mom says. “Just don’t wait too long.”
I smile, glad to know she’s looking forward to something, and I think to myself that sometimes the fight isn’t as much about a test of will as it is the willingness to move forward, to hope.
I’m in bed with my 6-year-old daughter Abra, waiting for her to fall asleep. She rolls over and pats me on the shoulder as if to say, “Everything will be okay.” Then she faces away from me and tucks her hand under her pillow.
Outside of her room, the sun has set on a cool summer evening in a beautiful little city in the United States. Trees line the streets here, their night time shadows drifting along the sidewalk. When I sit on my porch during the day I watch cars stream by. Doctors and nurses walk past my house on their way to the hospital down the street. Teens hang out on the steps of the tattoo parlor. An old, African-American man waves to me, smiling, nodding his crown of silver hair. I wave back.
Not too many days ago, fifteen hundred miles south of my city, small children rode into another small town on a large bus. They were greeted by a mob, many of whom were Christians, demanding they be returned to where they came from. We have no room here. There is no space for them.
Our certainty and our anger give us the strength to pick up even a millstone, and we attach it to that bus and throw it into the bottomless sea, and the rope begins to grow taut, but it is nothing to us because this is our land.
We forget that the other end of the rope is around our own necks.
Don’t be cruel to any of these little ones! I promise you that their angels are always with my Father in heaven.
Halfway around the world the missiles and the rockets are fired and children are killed. 1,760 Palestinian children have been killed since the year 2000, along with 132 Israeli children. We argue on Facebook and post videos and the massacre continues. Hospitals are hit. More rockets fired.
What are we doing for the least of these?
In America, we have less and less time for the least of these. We barely have time for our own families. So we race from work to home to sports to our television sets and the least of these are crying out all around the world, all around us while we collapse into bed, too tired to feel the rope tightening. The millstone is growing heavy.
“What are we doing for people here, in our community?” Maile asked me last night, and I didn’t know what to say.
What are we doing for the least of these?
We feel bad. Of course. But we turn them away.
And he will answer, ‘I tell you the truth, when you refused to help the least of these my brothers and sisters, you were refusing to help me.’
So we march and we shake our fists and we talk about things like immigration policy and national pride and “why-can’t-the-person-on-the-other-end-of-the-phone-line-talk-English-for-God’s-sake” and we celebrate in the exhaust and dust of a retreating bus, children’s faces pressed up against the window.
We call ourselves Christians, but we don’t even recognize the true identity of the one we’re protesting, the one we’re refusing to help.
* * * * *
I walk downstairs and check on my 5-year-old son. He is already asleep. He smuggled some Legos into bed with him, and they fall out of the covers when I move to tuck him in. His face is peaceful.
I woke up at 1am and I couldn’t stop shaking. Every muscle in my arms and legs, my back and neck, convulsed and shook. I was freezing cold. I pulled the comforter tighter around me and tried to warm up, but the shaking seemed to move deeper inside of me, and soon my breathing was coming fast and shallow.
I stood up out of bed and nearly collapsed. I mumbled something to Maile, something incoherent. What I meant to say was,
“I’m freezing cold. I’m going to go get in the shower.”
But I’m not sure what I actually said. I stumbled out of the room and down the hall. The shakes made the stairs difficult. I depended on the bannister. I turned on the hot water in the downstairs shower and stood in the steam, then undressed and got in. I still couldn’t stop shaking. My breath dried out my mouth, and soon I was gasping for each gulp of air.
I can’t keep this up, I thought. In five minutes I might not be conscious.
I pulled the shower curtain back and shouted.
“Maile!”
I sat down in the shower because my legs were giving out. In all the shaking I banged my head against the tile wile. I wondered if she would be able to hear me above the fans and the air conditioner.
“Maile!” I shouted again. Panic.
This isn’t it, right? I mean, I’m sick, but this couldn’t kill me. Right?
I felt myself nearly pass out. I gathered myself and shouted for Maile as loud as I could. I heard her footsteps come out of the bed, down the hall, down the steps. The bathroom door opened.
“Mai,” I said, between the gasps and the shaking that made my voice waver. “You have to call 911.”
* * * * *
That’s how I found myself in an ambulance on the way to Lancaster General Hospital. When I arrived they stuck me with two IVs, one with icy cold fluid I could feel oozing up my arm. My temperature was over 103. My heart rate clipped along at 140. My blood pressure didn’t even have two numbers. It was 41. They packed ice around my body to bring down my temperature.
Cat scan. Chest x-ray. Antibiotics. By 6am they wheeled me up to a room on the 8th floor of the hospital. I slept on and off, my IV machine beeping, nurses coming in every thirty minutes to check my temperature, my blood pressure, my heart rate.
By the time the morning came, I felt weak but calm. Outside my window I watched the life flight helicopter come and go a few times a day, landing on a section of the hospital roof a few floors behind me. In and out. Life and death.
* * * * *
My room was divided by a curtain, and on the other side was a man in his 80s. He had fallen at his house, and they weren’t sure why, so he was under observation.
“The doctor says I can go home this afternoon,” his wavering voice said quietly to one of the nurses.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Garvey, but you’re not going home today. Remember? We’ve already talked about this. You’re being transferred to physical therapy for ten days.”
Silence. The nurse leaves. Then, a few minutes later, the old man’s voice ventures out in the now-empty room. I can’t see him. I can only hear him behind the curtain. I’m pretty sure he’s not talking to me.
“The doctor says I can go home this afternoon.”
* * * * *
The doctor spoke in matter-of-fact terms. No big deal. It is what it is.
“You have a six-inch section of your small intestine that’s severely inflamed,” he explained. “And in the center of that section it’s almost completely closed. You need some rest and we’re going to try to bring the swelling down. Liquids only, for now, and we’re going to keep you in here until you can eat some solids.”
* * * * *
Three days later, I walked out of the hospital. We live two blocks away. The sun was warm but the day felt cool for July, and as I walked out of that place, no longer tethered to my IV cart, I was very aware of each free step, each breath. I stopped at a bench along James Street and just sat there for a moment. The world felt like it had slowed down.
Leaves scuttled across the sidewalk. Cars spun by. I wanted to stop each person in the street and remind them that they are here, in the world. They are walking around. The sun is shining, for goodness’ sake.
Man alive.
I got home and no one was there so I sat on the front porch and watched the traffic go by. I was reminded again, in a way I hadn’t been since my trip to Istanbul 18 months ago, that all of this busy-ness we create is a mirage that cloaks reality. We spin our webs and the storms blow them down and we spin again, ceaselessly rubbing our hands together, never stopping to look. Never stopping to live.
So I sat there and I waited for my family and the day passed and that night I held ten-day-old Leo on my chest, his eyes heavy, each blink taking longer than the one before. His breathing came in short, jerky spurts, then slowed into an even rhythm as his dreams melted into night.
Our good friends Steve and Coral had a child the very same day that our son Leo came into the world. Steve posted this on his Facebook page and I thought it was so well said that I asked him if I could share it here as well. Maeve is the name of one of his older children.
* * * * *
I was delighted, and surprised, honestly, that Maeve wanted to come to church with me this morning. We walked in and found our spot all the way at the end of the pew along the aisle and just about as soon as we sat down I heard over my shoulder,
“Morning Steve, would you like to bring up the gifts?”
I was, again, delighted and surprised. I’d never presented the gifts before. Maeve was quick to tell me that she had. I’d never even given the idea much thought beyond thinking that, as a matter of expediency, the people sitting closest to the bread and wine were asked to give it to the priest when the appropriate time came. Not much to it.
But I was suddenly overwhelmed.
* * * * *
I made a point to get to mass this morning because out of all the feelings that I’ve had over the past few days the one dominant and persistent feeling has been thankfulness.
We made it. 35 ½ weeks, complication after complication, hospital visit after hospital visit, the day finally came. Then Cesarean, then neonatal intensive care, then leaving the hospital without our daughter – but we made it. We made it and she’s perfect and lovely and we are crazy about her. I am so thankful – for my wife, my youngest daughter, my kids, my life – I thank God for it all.
* * * * *
I said “ Yes, of course.”
“How’s Coral?”
“Great! We had the baby!”
“Wonderful, congratulations!”
Then, standing, I look up at the stained-glass window above the tabernacle and the image of Christ on the cross and I think, “Bring up the gifts? What gift can I bring? What thing could I present that could possibly show my gratitude?” How could anything that I offer show the depth of humility I felt holding that sweet baby and knowing that I did nothing to bring her here safe and sound, I did nothing to deserve her, I can do nothing to keep her – She is 100% blessing and grace. She is the gratuitous love of God poured out on me, my wife and our family.
So, I’m standing there with tears puddling in the corners of my eyes (okay, streaming down my face) and now, finally, I’m thinking about the gifts. What are they? What does that mean, the gifts? Indeed, I have nothing to offer- no thing, no deed that could be credited to me as my own. The Bible puts it this way, “every good and perfect gift is from above.” So then what am I doing? And it strikes me in a new and poignant way that even the gifts I offer, the gifts that we offer together, come from above. We know that God looks with favor and love on the offering that Jesus made on our behalf. We know he did then and we know that he does now when we do this in remembrance of Him. But while the offering is ours – its only ours because it is a gift from above. St. Augustine said that “when God crowns our merits, he crowns nothing else but his own gifts.”
* * * * *
I hand the wafers to Maeve, take the wine in my hands, and as we approach the altar I’m acutely aware that I have nothing to give but that which I have been given. And I have been given so much.
