Letting our souls catch up with our bodies

Sometimes our best advice to others is forgotten by ourselves.

Not very long ago I admonished the worshippers on Sunday morning to slow down, do less, and take a true Sabbath rest. We tend to get swallowed up by life’s demands and forget the important stuff that really matters.

I told my listeners the story of the young, high-strung, typical Type-A, American tourist who was exploring Africa. He hired a guide and gave him the jammed packed itinerary. The tourist had a tight schedule because he wanted to see as much of the African wilderness as he possible could in his limited time. The first morning, he was up early and moving, rushing from one site to the next. The second day was much the same as he relentlessly kept to his agenda like a hound dog after his prey. The third day was the same. But on the fourth day, the tourist awoke and couldn’t find his guide. After a quick search, he saw the guide resting under a tree. The American was incensed and wanted to know why the guide wasn’t ready.

“We must stop and let our souls catch up with our bodies,” the guide calmly said.

It happens to us, doesn’t it? And you don’t have to be a young, activity driven American tourist to feel it. I talk to retired people who tell me they are busier than before retirement.

I awoke today, longing to go and sit under that tree with the tour guide and let my soul catch up with my body.

Sometimes life comes at us like several action movies being played in our mind all at the same time. And even when the movie is over and the screen goes white, the script still plays inside our heads.

And it’s not just the filled schedules that can overwhelm us. The absences of life, or fear of them, can create vacuums that suck the wind from our sails, leaving us adrift on the sea of life.

This summer we buried my wife’s dad. And a few weeks ago, my dad was diagnosed with a terminal illness.

Several times I’ve awakened and felt my heart thump, thump, thumping. I had to admit that it has been weeks since I’ve had the Sabbath rest I advised my listeners to take.

“So, I’ll just clear my schedule and take off for the Abby of Gethsemani,” I thought this morning and then I halted after weighing the consequences of cancelling commitments.

Glancing out the kitchen window, I saw the small bench some friends gave Lori when her father died several months ago. The early morning sun was spotlighting it, catching my attention. The bench seemed to shimmer and beg, “Why not? I’m here. Won’t you come and join me?”

And so I did.

But before I sat down, I read the inscription on the bench. I had read it before, I felt sure, but had not really thought about it.

Until now.

“A father holds a child’s hands for a while…their hearts forever.”

I recalled a photograph of Lori’s father, George, holding her hand when she was 8 or 9 years old. His youthful smile had a “take on the world” confidence to it. Lori’s eyes are sparkling, proud to have her daddy’s hand. He’s been gone several months now. But his presence I still feel in Lori’s heart.

And I felt my dad’s hands there on the bench, too, my hand latched to his when at about 10 years of age I tried to keep up with him as we scurried across the downtown square to pick up a package one cold Christmas Eve, his hands full of youthful energy, transferring the anticipation of Christmas to mine.

Those hands, once the steady hands of a skilled dentist, now tremble when I help him up from his wheel chair.

“None of us are going to get out of here alive, David,” Dad reminds me as he answers my question, “What did you think when they told you it was cancer.”

“So, there’s no sense in being sad about it and dwelling on it,” he concludes.

We let go of the hands, finally and forever.

But not the heart.

It’s with us always.

We have to remind ourselves of that because we tend to forget. Sometimes we have to stop, rest a while, and at least let our souls begin to catch up with our bodies.

And embrace the things that last forever.

Dad’s still Dad

“I miss you tucking me in bed.”

The words were not from one of my children, now grown and away from home, longing for the comfort of days gone bye.

The words were from my dad. He had been diagnosed with cancer several weeks earlier and had just completed his first treatment when I visited him. The prognosis for longevity is not good---less than a year.  

Dad told how me how he missed our nightly ritual after I had returned home from my visit with him and Mom.

I quickly learned Dad’s routine of getting to bed. First, of course, I help him get undressed and into his pajamas. I make sure his trousers are creased on the hanger and his shirt collar buttoned.   “Would you put my shoes on the far end of the closet?” He repeatedly reminds me he doesn’t need my help with his shoes, even though we both know he is not able to bend down low enough to get them on and off.

Dad was a dentist, so brushing his teeth is mandatory.  “Would you please hand me that toothpaste from the medicine cabinet?” Always the polite gentleman, Dad prefaces his requests with, “David, I hate to ask you this, but…”

We then switch his electric mobile wheelchair (mobi) with his regular wheelchair and place it next to his bed.

Dad instructed me on how to roll up a towel and place it against the bed railing to support his back while he sleeps. My sister-in-law, Joy, had perfected this technique when she was helping him to bed before my visit. If I didn’t get the towel wrapped tightly enough and in the correct spot, he would gently remind me how Joy did it. I couldn’t help but smile.

After having prayer with Dad, I would bump fists with him. A nurse started this little tradition with Dad, and my older brother Mark picked it up. After bumping fists, they would make a swishing sound as they slowly pulled their hands away from each other. This always made Dad laugh, for some reason, and so I continued the ritual.

The moment Dad told me how much he missed me tucking him into bed, I thought of how often the roles of children and parents reverse as they age, although Dad wasn’t the one to tuck me in when I was a child. Mom did that.  And after tucking Dad into bed, I would make my way to Mom’s room in the assisted living area of their retirement complex and help her to bed.  But that’s another story.

For both of them, I am still their son, and they are still my parents. At times it feels like our roles have reversed, but it’s not so much that they have reversed as that they have changed. When I am with them, I am a caregiver.

And the time will come when my role will change in another way. As I struggled to get Dad’s shoes on him, my son, Dave, who was there with us for a few days, bent down to help, and I wondered when he might someday be assisting me with my shoes.

Time flashes by just as quickly as the swooshing of our hands after we do our fist bump at bedtime.

Only yesterday, it seems, Mom and Dad were waving bye as I drove off to college for the first time. I had a lump in my throat then.

And I felt it again when I got into the van to leave for the airport after my stay with Mom and Dad. Dad was determined to follow me to the parking lot. There, we made one last fist bump followed by the swoosh.

I think Dad must have had a lump in his throat too, for there he was, in the rearview mirror, waving from his mobi, tears welling up in his eyes.

I may be a caregiver for him.

But Dad’s still Dad.

  

Moving on up with my books

I’m moving.

Not out but up.

To be more exact, I’m moving up one flight of stairs.

Our church’s growing children’s ministry needs the space where my second study is located, so I’m giving that room to them. How can you turn down children?

But this is an enormous task, for I have books, many books.

If my books were all e-books, or on a computer, this would be a cinch: I’d just carry that little reading device upstairs to my new hideaway.

If only it were that easy.

I have hundreds and hundreds of books. It’s almost embarrassing. When I first moved here, I had to ask for this second study, not just because I do my best thinking when I’m away from the noise and interruptions surrounding an office, but also because one room couldn’t house all my books. So, I have books in two offices or studies and more books in my third study at home.

When I was pondering where to place my books to accommodate the children, I thought, “Why not just take all my books to the house and have one study there?”

“Oh no,” Lori immediately voted (And I might add, hers is the only vote that counts) “there is no way all those books could fit in this house unless we sold half of our furniture. It would look like a library and not a home.”

Now my poor books look so lonely and sad, like the puppy left behind because the family didn’t have room for him when they moved. And I’m not sure the location on the second floor will solve the book space problem, for as the church grows, as I hope and expect it will, we will someday need the new second study space as well.

As I begin the tedious task of packing those books, I tenderly place them in boxes, holding each one, thumbing through the pages, reading notes I’d made in margins. It’s like sitting down and getting reacquainted with an old friend over a cup of coffee.  Each book is unique, not only for what I learned from each one, but also for the memory I have of where I was intellectually and physically when I read them.

Reaching for the top shelf, I start with the theology section, in alphabetical order. And soon I find my old friend, Karl Barth, the Swiss Protestant theologian. He’s impossible to miss, stretching across an entire shelf with his thirteen-volume magnum opus, Church Dogmatics.  It’s cumbersome taking them from the shelf, (over 6 million words and 8,000 pages) not to mention reading them.  And if reading them was a challenge, and I didn’t study every word of each volume, think about writing that much.

Before tucking Barth away, I glance at the tiny print of one the seemingly endless footnotes he worked into the main text and smile as I recall being diagnosed with a mild case of eye convergence insufficiency at the close of the semester I spent with Barth’s Dogmatics. But I loved him still, and was so was enamored with the “Father of Neo-Orthodoxy” that when my parents were touring Switzerland, I asked if they could possibly manage a detour to Basel to take a picture of Barth’s study, which they did.

Having packed Barth and the “Bs,” I came to the “Cs” and there sits my old friend, John Calvin and his Institutes of the Christian Religion. Staring at those two volumes, I’m back at Princeton Theological Seminary, sitting in Professor E.A.Dowey’s seminar on Calvin, feeling like a nervous kid on the first day of school in a new grade, for Dr. Dowey was one of the preeminent Calvin scholars of the day, and after all, this was a seminar on the profound theologian, John Calvin. Thumbing through the pages, I see notes and the neat underlining I made with a ruler and ink pen, straight and exact, like Calvin’s thinking.

I’ve only started the “Cs” and time is getting away.

With digital books, I would be done by now.

But there is something about the rustle of the pages, the details of the cover, the feel of the binding, even the smell of the each book that for some people like me, evokes memories that in themselves remind us not just what we learned but how and when and where.

And that in itself can be an impetus to read more, propelling us forward.

Or at least to the second floor.  

The good in a bad resume

In the “What’s Trending” segment on The Today Show last Friday, July 24, Savannah Guthrie reported on an advertising executive who sent out two resumes. The first was your typical resume showing successes and accomplishments.

But the second resume highlighted his failures. For example, under “experience” he wrote: “Worked on three losing pitches; Failed to produce anything worthwhile in my first year here.” Beneath “non-skills” he put: “Could be more punctual.” And under “missed honors” he wrote: “Have yet to finish a book I started writing years ago.” He even listed “bad references” and gave their names and emails.

Guess which resume got the most responses? The “bad one.”

When Guthrie referred to the second resume as the “bad one,” The Today Show’s host, Matt Lauer echoed, “the honest one.”

“Wouldn’t it be nice if we could be honest on a resume?” Guthrie then asked, to which Lauer sarcastically replied, “When was the last time anyone was honest on a resume?”

As Billy Joel sang years ago, “Honesty is such a lonely word.”

Why do we try so hard to hide our failures or at least make them appear better than what they are? A football coach once gave this advice on dealing with failures: “When they’re about to run you out of town, get out in front and make it look like you’re leading a parade.”

But most mistakes eventually get uncovered, and sooner or later, they find out you’re the goat and not the leader of the parade.

We fear the consequences of revealing the truth about ourselves. As leadership expert John Maxwell observed, too many people live by the dictum, “If at first you don’t succeed, destroy all the evidence that you’ve tried.” Maxwell says of failure: “We hide it, deny it, fear it, ignore it, and hate it.”

But there is something admirable about people who are secure enough with themselves to be honest about their shortcomings.

In the Seinfeld episode, “The Opposite,” George Constanza (Jason Alexander), decides to do the opposite of what he has always done, which often involved a lot lying about himself. The Seinfeld characters are hanging out in their favorite diner, when George notices an attractive young lady looking his way. So he does the opposite, and instead of being his usual cowardly self and doing nothing, he boldly approaches her and says, “Hi, my name is George.  I’m unemployed, and I live with my parents.” Rather than telling him to get lost like George expected, she seems pleasantly surprised and in an inviting voice says, “I’m Victoria. Hi.” George raises is eyebrows, shrugging his shoulders with an “I can’t believe this is working,” look as he glances back at his friends.

It may not work exactly like that in real life, but being honest about yourself has advantages. As political commentator, Randi Rhodes, said, “It takes two seconds to tell the truth and it costs nothing. A lie takes time and it costs everything.”

Of course, we don’t need to share all our deep, dark secrets. Too many people could get hurt if we recklessly share what would be better left unsaid.

So what to do about those failures? Charles Kettering, the great inventor, maintained that we should learn how to fail forward. He gave three suggestions for doing that: (1) Honestly face defeat; never fake success. (2) Exploit the failure; don’t waste it. Learn all you can from it. (3) Never use failure as an excuse for not trying again.

I would add a fourth suggestion to Kettering’s list: Turn your mess into your message. No matter how bad your resume, your story, your life history, God is not through with you.

After all, the Bible is filled with people with bad resumes. Moses had a crime record (murder), a physical handicap (speech impediment), and a bad temper, which had something to do with his crime record.

What would Joshua put on his resume?  Under “leadership,” he could have written, “Stretched what should have been an 11 day hike into a 40 year journey to the Promise Land.”

David’s resume would have included murder, adultery, and being a negligent father.

Simon Peter? Violent crime (Slashed off a Roman soldier’s ear); Failed in a stressful leadership situation by denying his Lord three times.

What about the Apostle Paul? A felon (as an accomplice to murder); had little patience with the young disciple John Mark, refusing to include him in a missionary journey.

What about the Lord Jesus Christ himself? Had someone written his resume from the scene at the cross, it could have read, “Failed to defeat the enemy; only a handful of his followers remained with him; lost everything.”

And the resume would have been honest.

But incomplete.

And so is yours.

If you don’t give up hope.

A Doggone Day

My mom’s voice cracked, then it went silent.  I looked again at my cell phone to make sure I’d called the right number.

“Mom? Is this you?”

The next voice I heard was that of my older brother, Mark, speaking for Mom because she couldn’t.

The day had come. They would have to give Zoe, Mom’s Maltese of many years, to someone who could care for her. Dad, now 91 years old, has fallen twice in the past month trying to care for Zoe, his last fall being serious enough to require hospitalization. And Mom, at 93, isn’t able to care for the mainly blind and frequently incontinent 98-year-old (dog years) pet that has other health issues as well.

When Mark and his wife Joy went through Zoe’s belongings with Mom, she wanted to talk with me, to tell me it had come to this, and ask me to pray for God’s help to walk her through it. By the time I noticed the missed call and was able to return it, she had become too emotional to speak.

This has been far from easy, for Zoe has been like a member of Mom’s family.

Mom is certainly not alone in having such a fond affection for a pet.  Joe Yonan, an editor for the Washington Post, cites a 1988 study in the Journal of Mental Health Counseling that found that among a group of dog owners, 38% ranked their pet to be closer to them than any family member.  He notes that other research comparing how people grieve over pet and family members has come to different conclusions, but at least for Mom, her pet has definitely been part of her family.

When they moved to a retirement facility, Mom and Dad said “good-bye” to their home of many years, precious belongings, familiar surroundings, and proximity to friends.  Then Mom gave up her car, along with driving.  And now it appears Dad may too have to find an alternate mode of transportation. Like many others who continue to grow older, they have become more and more confined to one place as the world often seems to become smaller and smaller. All this can produce a profound sense of loneliness.

Through all the change, Zoe has been Mom’s constant companion. And now she has to release Zoe, too.

Zoe dances around in circles whenever Mom returns after they’ve been separated, even if Mom’s been gone for only an hour or so. And Zoe has her perch beside Mom in her chair. Mom talks to Zoe, and Zoe seems to understand. They watch TV together, nap together, and sleep together.

One time I made the mistake of referring to Zoe as “the dog.” Mom nearly stomped her foot, quickly reminding me that Zoe is not “just a dog.”

In Mom’s world, Zoe is truly more than a pet.

Novelist Dean Koontz described what many pet lovers feel: “Once you’ve had a wonderful dog, a life without one, is a life diminished.”

And so I grieve for her grief.

Many of the common tips for helping seniors cope with the loss of a pet---find a new hobby, take a class, connect with friends, exercise with a group in tennis, golf, or swimming--- somehow don’t ring helpful with Mom, at 93.

When I was in fourth grade, a car ran over my dog.  It happened in the morning on a road that was frequented by high schoolers driving to school. Dad was angry with the imaginary teenager speeding down Hightower Street, “probably late for class,” but Mom sat down and put her arm around me while I cried. I don’t recall anything she said.

Just knowing she cared helped.

The best I can do for her now is listen as she shares her pain.

It’s not much.

But I hope it helps.