Spencer's Mom

Except a kernel of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.

Hero to Zero

…until you lose your Super Powers.

 “Everybody come look at this!” a nurse called from the hallway, waving us all towards the break room. My assumption was there was more food – pizza, sandwiches, cakes that had been flooding in from the community. Or maybe more cards from elementary school students. Thank you for being a hero! in crayon or markers. We all piled into the small corner room – nurses, CNAs, housekeepers, doctors. From the fifth floor, we were able to get a good view of the road that wrapped around the hospital. A parade was moving slowly by, horns honking, flashers on, flags waving. Thank you, heroes! Thanks! Thank you! various homemade signs proclaimed. I watched this unusual spectacle for a minute, because we were, after all, at work, and thought this:

  • If I’m a Hero now, then I’ve been an undercover hero for over 30 years. AND…

I do miss the free lunches!

  • This won’t last long.

It was 2020, probably late spring, the kickoff to the pandemic that was supposed to be a predictable bump in the straight line of healthcare and we were ready. But Covid19,  the Coronavirus that tiptoed into the world during 2019, was not to be reckoned with. It was skittish, volatile and completely unpredictable. As the world divided into vaccination camps, and Dr. Fauci became another pop culture icon, we donned our gowns, gloves, eye shields and N95 respirators and went to work. My job is an RN, which means I care for sick people.

I became a nurse during the AIDS epidemic of the 80’s. “Universal precautions” was the new buzzword, which simply meant wear gloves, stupid. We didn’t know how it was transmitted at first, so we were fitted with these hideous Hazmat-type respirators. I’ll never forget the expression on a young  AIDS patient’s face when I walked into his negative-pressure room wearing one. I took it off. It was enough that he had a death sentence. The isolation and shame of being an “untouchable” is a scarlet letter medicine can’t redeem. But we can reach through the barrier and love. Was I a Hero? No. I was just trying to follow Jesus through a dark and murky unknown, just like Covid19,  35 years later. Sometimes the heart has to go before the science – that’s just my creed. I’ve been called Reckless. I like it better than “hero.”

Jesus understood mankind and our faithless affinities. One day, the crowds are shouting, “Hosanna in the highest!” as He is led through a pressing crowd of adoring followers. A few days later, many of these same fans are yelling, “Crucify Him!” And they did. I know Jesus felt a lot of things on the cross, but Surprise was not one of them. He knows what we are made of. And He loves us beyond what we can imagine anyway. As Oswald Chambers puts it:

“Our Lord trusted no man; yet He was never suspicious, never bitter, never in despair about any man, because He put God first in trust; He trusted absolutely in what God’s grace could do for any man.”

June 2021, I left work for several months to have a hip replaced. I came back just in time for the real wave to hit, the “curve” that looked more like a tsunami. As I got on the elevator, I noticed a carefully framed sign hung at eye level.

ZERO Tolerance

Our staff is here for you and has the right to carry out their work in a safe environment.

Violence, foul language, and/or abusive behaviors are unacceptable.

Verbal threats or acts of violence will not be tolerated and may result in the immediate removal from this hospital and/or prosecution.

If you are seeking care, you may be screened for prohibitive items to ensure the safety of everyone in the hospital.

 Hmmmmm. We’ve come a long way from parades and free lunch. They must’ve found out we were just human after all. By the time I hit the 5th floor, I realized something profound. Hero to Zero. It’s best to trust in neither – accolades or threats. Just do the next thing, and trust God alone.

I am not a Hero, and I never have been. I’ve taken care of dying Covid patients, AIDS patients and a multitude of no-less-important cancer, cardiac or “Comfort Care” end-of-life patients. Just this week I held an exhausted wife and let her sob into my shoulder. Healthcare can be triumphant, as we lined the halls back in 2020 and cheered Covid survivors on their way out the door. But it can also betray. We are frail. For all we try our best to do, we fail. To me, the heroes are those that reach beyond the limits, in obscurity, and touch the untouchables, letting sorrow have its place. “Mourn with those who mourn.” (Romans 12:15 NIV)

Just like the airlines, the supermarket, and used car dealers, healthcare has changed. Raging against those of us who have stuck it through will not bring it back to the pre-Covid good ol’ days when complaints and anger were linear, and the answers attainable. Many patients and families have expressed grace and gratitude and we appreciate that more than you know. But as Chambers said, to be Christ-like is to trust in God and what His boundless grace and mercy can do in any situation. That’s where I stand, without the cape, and preferably without the N95. May He continue to use these old hands to heal, reckless in His love.

Left on the whiteboard by an elderly patient I cared for.

The Last Vacuum Cleaner

 

 

             I bought a good vacuum, a sleek German-made canister that hums while it works, determined and swift. It’s uncharacteristic for me to splurge on an appliance. My washer was the cheapest Home Depot could offer. The dryer was donated. But this was my thought:

           Maybe this will be my last vacuum.

            This fills me with both joy and dread. I’m 66, which is a lot of birthdays, but the meaning is vague and ill-defined. I’m okay with being old, but then I meet someone 92 and feel…pretty good! Today I feel quite alive, although my knees groan, my eyes pull hard to focus. I misplace things – groceries left in the car, keys retrieved from the trash. And words. What’s with the hide-and-seek? The one you need the most is snickering in a closet, so you pull out the first reasonable alternative to cover the embarrassing lapse. I feel the panic, then blush. Uncovered.

            I mentioned joy. Growing old is growing closer to the finish line, to “the mark, for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:14). I pare down, stripping off everything that hinders – vanity, pretense, ideologies. Daily. And then there is legacy. My children, my children’s children and the story God has given us. I can say, Look! The curse has been broken. Here’s the torch…now run! And they are.

             But I also mentioned dread. I’ve been a nurse for over 30 years, and not to sound too morbid, but I’ve seen Death… a lot. I’ve seen him come suddenly – one minute I’m chatting with a patient, then the sense of “impending doom” every nurse dreads. The eyes roll back, the color shifts to blue and breath just stops, like a wind-up toy.  No exhale, not even a struggle. Gone, despite chest thumping and shocking over and over. Gone. Or there’s the Death that likes to pull up a chair and put his feet up, waiting for God knows what, until you are so tired, even Love says Enough already. You turn away, and Death slips out the back on a last breath, quiet as a cat.

             I’ve thought about the death I want, like ordering takeout. Hold the pain, and I’d like the Drop-Dead-In-Your-Sleep option, if available. Or a fast cancer, so I have time to say goodbye, but not waste away like an unwatered houseplant. And please, just not a Dumb Death, like getting sucked out of an airplane window. It’s futile, I know. And besides, God tells me He will be there, the only one Death has to listen to.

   

     Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints. Psalm 115:16

             He doesn’t say there will be no pain or suffering. But He gets to call it, then bend down and scoop us up ever so gently.“Come home,” He will say, and I will be light as a small bird. I think He loves watching our faces when we first open our new eyes and behold His glory face to face. It’s all worth it.

             Time counts down. Much has been wasted, poured out on things temporal and vain. Words spoken I can’t get back, and unspoken that lie in the grave. Lord, make my words count. Writer, speaker, nurse, friend. Crazy lady that stops strangers on the street.“Do you know Jesus really loves you? Do you know this Love that reaches into the foulest trenches of the earth, that pulls out a filthy, squirming mad drunk and calls her MINE, Chosen, Holy, ‘who are his rich and glorious inheritance’?”(Ephesians 1:18) I know who I am. I am His.

             However, I did not get a map.  And never, I mean never could I have ever imagined where He would lead me. But He promises provision, and hidden treasure along the way. I think there’s more as you get closer to the end. Or maybe it’s just that I move slower, so I notice the smell of leaves turning mixed with salt air, the cardinal’s call, my husband’s cut-wood smell, his crushing embrace. There is joy in the going, even with bad knees.

            Lord, write my story with brave words, soaked in mercy. As you order my steps, direct my speech into your Truth, immersed in grace. Make me fierce in your love. If I fear anything, let it be wasting the time and words you’ve given me here. This is not my home. But I do have to vacuum it occasionally.

             Thanks, Jesus, for making it all last to the very end – strength by strength, words, wisdom and a good German vacuum cleaner.

 

 

 

Waking Up to a Priest

 

“Psssssst! Wake up miss!”

My eyes snapped open and focused on the jowly, soft face of a priest, his eyes searching mine through thick wire rim glasses. I sat up from the hard pew and quickly looked around. We were alone.

“Mass starts in an hour,” he informed me. “Would you like some hot tea?”

I nodded yes, trying to fully come alive in the dim, sepia sleepiness of the small church. Light fused through the stained-glass windows just enough to splash gold, red and blue upon the dark brown pews and the small altar. Growing up Episcopalian, it felt familiar, but I had never been to this church. The door was open, that’s all. It was a place to lie down.

I followed the shuffling priest down the aisle, his robe billowing around his feet, to the small kitchen downstairs. I remember the tea bag in the Styrofoam cup, that he was kind, and never admonished me to go home or keep out. I was a 13-year-old runaway; perhaps he knew more of me than he let on. I knew to leave in plenty of time to evade the church service, the families like mine had once been, with young girls stuffed in busy dresses and patent leather shoes buffed with Vaseline. My brothers always looked like they were slowly suffocating inside their ties and jackets. The torture was only made worse by a pretty day, a play day, and there we were – penance paid for some vague and discomforting sin dimly illuminated through the colored glass, forgotten by Monday.

Churches were left open back then, before the wave of drugs swept away anything untethered, even things holy. I began running away when I was twelve. By fifteen I was gone more than home until one day my mother said, “Just stay out.” Often, I was not alone. It was the late 60’s and my running merged seamlessly into the hippie revolution, my companions a jumble of stoners, bikers, rebels and loners.

If it rained, I knew the church was open, but I didn’t mind a summer rain, the smell of the wet tar under my feet, and the sound of the leaves deflecting each drop. Homes were lit up with life and meals around a table, families settling into the routine of homework, TV and bedtimes. More than once, I confess I stood in the street, watching, aching.

“You’re so lucky,” my friends would say. “You can do whatever you want.”

Yes, I could. The problem was I didn’t know what I wanted. I was running away, not towards.

Benches, beaches and worst of all, basements. I was young and knew only what I didn’t want, which was to be cold or caught.  I remember cutting through a parking lot, distracted, and hearing my name. My father stood about six feet from me. His voice was soft, and he cocked his head slightly, as if I were a stray cat. We both froze.

“How are you?” he asked. He stayed still, so not to frighten me.

“I’m okay.” We looked at each other for just a moment, then I turned and walked away, saddened that he did not call after me.

It took fifteen more years of running and wandering to finally just run out. There were times when I felt I had found true freedom – like holding my first-born child, still wet and squinty, becoming mother and overwhelmed with possibilities and wonder. Sometimes I would put my face next to his as he slept and watch him breathe, inhaling love. Such joy was impossible! And elusive too, like a flying dream. Inside, I was still running. In time I became a good cynic and forgot about hope. And freedom – until I met Jesus. He was just waiting.

You number my wanderings; Put my tears into Your bottle; Are they not in Your book? Psalm 56:8

One day God said, “Enough!” Then I found out who I was running to all along. In my defeat, I found freedom. In my failure, forgiveness and a Love beyond anything I’d ever known.

Sometimes I wonder why the old priest never told me about Jesus. That sounds comical and sad too. Would I have listened? Maybe. It would have been nice to know that the far-away God of the stars and still nights  saw me walking in the dark, looking for an empty church. And really nice to know He loved me anyway – that He was there too, not just in a colored window, but over me, singing a song of hope. Or maybe sitting there on the hard pew, watching me breathe, His face close to mine.

These are sweet memories of promise, small fires to warm by while most of life recedes into shadows, lingering like smoke. The priest was a small flame, a shelter in a harsh world and maybe that’s all God wanted him to be. I’ll never know. I do believe that life is meant to be hard. This is not my home, but I’m on my way now. I know what I want. And should the shadows close in, or I grow weary, there is a safe place, open always. My Father never locks the door.

He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High
Shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.
I will say of the Lord, “He is my refuge and my fortress;
My God, in Him I will trust.”  Psalm 91: 1,2

 

ENJOY this beautiful song!

You Are My Hiding Place by Selah

 

 

 

Reflections on a Father’s Love

Tools and testosterone

It was clearly a man’s world, the hardware store in downtown Old Greenwich. And I felt part honored and part trespasser when I followed my dad through the door . It was Saturday morning, part of a ritual my dad kept, probably to keep himself grounded after a week of working in advertising and finances in New York City. I never understood what he did. “Public Relations,” I’d repeat to my friends and watch the same puzzlement cross their faces that I felt . One day my dad told me it was “the art of BS” and I didn’t know what that was either until a few years later. My father never swore, unless it was late Christmas Eve and he still hadn’t assembled a train set or doll house, then it was muttered just above a whisper which my mom always heard even if she was in another state.

“Bob, stop the Navy talk,” she’d say quietly.

In some ways I was the apple of my dad’s eye. The first daughter, I was less stressful for him to be around. The boys had Little League, Boy Scouts, Indian Guide and tree forts to build. My dad loved it all, but it was another male conquest, with all of the guts and glory that he had to wade through.  I think he liked the simplicity of my world, the side-line bystander,  and the low-demand aspect of our relationship. So I became a part of his trip to the hardware store and I would keep still next him as he bantered with the other men there, then wandered down the dark aisles smelling of grease and metal. He left always with a purchase that would end up on his workbench in the basement, his man-cave and escape, that smelled like the hardware store with a hint of mildew.

I can’t explain it, but I felt so safe with my dad in his paint-splattered khaki pants, my little steps trying to keep up with his big ones. Even on vacation he was in  overdrive, running from fishing to swimming to camping to skiing. But Saturday morning trips to the hardware store had a secret kind of rhythm – sort of a transcendent harmony. I saw my dad relax. And he let me be a part of it.

Not too long after that everything changed. My brother Timmy died when I was eight and my father became angry, then quiet and then he was gone. I grew into a young woman, awkwardly leaving my little girl body behind, compounding my father’s uneasiness in my presence. From my perspective, it was my first and worst rejection. A bottle replaced family, career, his very life. Years later, when we were cleaning out the house before it was sold we found a huge cache of little liquor nips stashed above the workbench. Booze had even taken over his sacred place of peace.

My father was not good at fixing things. The few times I wandered into his workbench world, I was under impressed. Something was clamped, or in scattered  pieces around my brother’s monster models. When a repair actually needed to be made, you could tell my dad fixed it. He was not a man of detail and finesse. Mismatched paint strokes, lumpy patch jobs and screws that never held. More navy talk. But he was the Master of Raucous Fun, best party-thrower, bedtime Story Teller, bringing us aboard lost ships and through creepy castles, then meeting  gentle giants, and silly snakes. The Art of BS was just the Story Teller in a suit, taking on Manhattan.

On Father’s Day I always reminisce. Mine died almost 40 years ago, but as I travel back, it always seems the first place I visit is the hardware store, long ago engulfed in a wave of corporate buy-outs. Once it was the best place, a place of privilege for a little girl normally excluded from a man’s world. Maybe because I am so secure in my heavenly Father’s love now, and the apple of His eye, I can afford to revisit the sad parts with grace and understanding. Thirty five years ago, after I had knelt at an altar and asked for God’s forgiveness, He in turn asked me to forgive my father. The deep roots of pain and bitterness were gently removed and a new love, a real and perfect love was formed in my heart. And I am grateful for my dad, because he loved me the very best he could.

Miles with Brooklynn and Olive 2013.

I love to watch my son Miles with his two daughters. Even at their young ages, I can tell that they reflect their own beauty and sense of worth, of woman-hood, off of their very loving and attentive dad. They’ve already won the battle that so many father-less little girls face. They are secure in their daddy’s love. And when they are grown with wings of their own, they’ll search for a man who loves and honors them the way their father does. But the most valuable thing my son does for his girls is point them to Jesus, towards a perfect Father, who will love them with an everlasting love, who will guard their hearts and keep them pure.

 I salute all of you dads out there this Father’s Day and the amazing job you do –  loving your kids, your wives and your aging crazy moms like me! It is a beautiful, if imperfect, image of God’s love for His very needy children. And I thank you, my Abba Father, for Your patience, Your tender mercies and grace; for granting me a secret place of my own, within Your heart. even better than an old hardware store on a lovely Saturday morning, a place of refuge and a Father’s perfect love.

 

“How Deep The Father’s Love” by Selah

https://youtu.be/4-GM9w6IA2M

 

The Good Dirt

The “garden”

Behind the house, within the backyard, is another yard enclosed in a chain link fence. When I first saw it, I thought the other yard was an odd cutout of the neighbors yard. Why else would you run a chain link fence through a nice looking yard? But the fence had been there for some time. Now I figure the previous owners, the only other owners of our house, had put it up to protect their garden, probably when deer roamed through.

That garden had vanished when we moved in. Old Mr. and Mrs. Drew had also. He built the house in 1951, just in time to start a family, grow some more kids, bump out the attic for room sake and tack on a sunroom and a shed in the back. He could walk to work, to the Steamship Authority, where he ran the parking lot like it was his own front yard. Then he retired. The wife taught swimming I heard and raised the best tomatoes around. They grew old together, following each other closely into nursing homes and then the grave. In the linen closet upstairs I left the peeling masking tape that the woman’s diligent hands had taped to the pine shelves. “Twin sheets,” “washcloths.” I like to think of her hanging out diapers between the two thick posts in the back, then checking the tomatoes.

“One plants, one waters but God gives the increase.” 1 Corinthians 3:6

I try to remember this when I do anything for Jesus: when I sit in a little classroom at the county jail with 12 poker face women, when I play “Amazing Grace” for the hundredth time, when I ask a dying man if he knows where he’s going. Chances are, others have gone before me and I’m not sure if I’m carrying a spade or a watering can. Or maybe I’m dropping a tiny seed into the darkness. It doesn’t matter though. Only God makes it grow, makes a tomato turn red, makes anything break through the sandy crust of my herb garden

Last week I caught my husband leaning over the chain link fence, staring into the garden. We dug it up three years ago, the ground still rich and dark from the Drews. Living on a sand bar, you appreciate real dirt and we laughed and hollered like we had struck gold. But C.B. knew it could be even better, so we trucked in dirt from a lost farm outside of Bridgewater State Hospital, an ancient manure pile that only insiders knew of, and the dirt, when my husband had finished screening it, looked like Italian espresso. I knew he was looking at the dirt.

When I look at the garden, I see tomatoes, little gold ones and fat red ones, and cucumbers twisting off vines, and I see some squash and jalapeños. So he lets me plant after he prepares. Right beside the garden is a small patch of rocky sand that I call my herb garden. The Dirt Man doesn’t notice it, on purpose, and it becomes a wild tangle of basil with a thyme bush that grows ever larger each year, choking out the oregano and wrestling with the mint. It’s a study in adversity for me because I have no patience for preparing or weeding or even moving rocks. No sissy herbs in my garden.So then neither he who plants is anything, nor he who waters , but God who gives the increase. Now he who plants and he who waters are one, and each one will receive his own reward according to his own labor. 1 Corinthians 3:7 NKJV

 The Dirt Man gets ready, and I dream a lot. God made us for each other I think because you need both just to hope. And sometimes you can hope and pray with all your might and you’re still left with just dirt.

“And each one will receive his own reward according to his labor.”

Not how big your tomatoes are or how many peppers you pick, but how hard you work – digging, sweating and praying for rain. This gives me peace when I have a hard night at the jail. Sometimes they just stare at me like I just climbed down a ladder from my spaceship.

“You think I’m crazy, don’t you?” I asked last week, just so I could stop talking.

They laughed, but it was a sweet laugh, like they were grateful to me just for that.

“Good crazy,” one of them said. And that was enough.

Way in the back, behind the old shed, where the dark forest is overtaking the outer edge of the Drew’s boundary markers, stands a tree. I keep meaning to look it up, but it’s a pretty tree and I know he planted it there, years ago when there was no forest and it was just a sapling. Now no one ever sees that tree, not even the neighbors and even I forget it’s there until I happen upon it when I’m dumping leaves in the compost heap or moving one of the fourteen garbage cans around that my husband thinks we will need someday.

Right now, that tree will take your breath away, like you walked into another world. It’s covered in soft white blossoms, each with a whisper of pink around the center – majestic and lovely like it’s Queen of the forest. No one sees it except for squirrels and angels but it’s no less pretty for them than me.

I think that’s how God’s kingdom works. We plant, then water, then wait. We might wait a long time. Maybe I will follow the Dirt Man into a nursing home and a young woman with a bushel of babies will run her fingers over the old masking tape in the linen closet and smile. Maybe her husband likes dirt. Seasons change.

These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised. Hebrews 11:39

Sometimes when I am having a sad day, when I just want to go home, my husband will smile and say, “One day closer to glory!” The reward.

But until then, he will get the dirt ready and I will dream and God will send the rain. There is joy in the going, there is rest in the labors of all who have gone before us and there is a God who loves to plant hidden treasure along the way, a taste of glory here on earth, to be discovered when you play Amazing Grace 101 times or maybe right in your very own back yard.

The Weight of Twenty Years

Twenty years ago the 26th of this month, I gazed upon the lifeless body of the boy who made me mom. Spencer was a few weeks short of 22, a young man really, but always a boy to his mom, as I point out to my other two sons, who are now fully men.

Spence with South African friends

Twenty years. It sounds like a lot of time. But having now lived through three spans of 20 years and change, I can say it’s not really the time – the days and months neatly stacked into years. It’s the stuff in-between the straight lines. Things learned; things lost. The letting go and full surrender, and the tenacious grip of what I know I must never forget. Then the more subtle change, like a rock worn smooth by the press of a timeless river. I have stayed and stood. And there’s much to be said for that – especially from a girl who used to dance on desktops during naptime in kindergarten. Twenty years of decisions, trying to negotiate the next step and keep my heart pure, hungry for truth and filled with a love that only God can give; to look up to things eternal, when temporal charms clamor to distract and deceive. I have failed too many times to count, but I could count His grace and mercy one more time than that.

It always puzzles me when I run into an old acquaintance of Spencer’s and they are gray or bald with a teenager skulking behind them. What? Oh yeah, twenty years. My own grandchildren are soaring in age and size, the oldest now a teenager too. A new generation has sprouted, and I like that. I am getting tired, and I long for nothing more than a place on a bench, where I can delight in the glory of God’s blessing. And some rest is nice too, although God nudges me on. He is not finished with this story yet.

My granddaughter Olive, is eleven now. When asked to write a paper on “Who inspires you most?” she chose Uncle Spencer, someone she never came close to meeting. You could argue he was no hero, no legend like Martin Luther King or Billy Graham. True! But like all legends, he was remembered for his sacrifice and courage, not his humanity. Peter denied, Winston Churchill drank too much, Lincoln and Spurgeon struggled with deep depression. Martin Luther King was no angel. Nor was Spence – but in a true sense of heroic, he fit the bill. Ever conscious of his humanity and all the failings and stumblings that go with that, he would want us to remember that too. I do. In fact, it was this unseen side of my son that draws me and others who knew him well the most. As Olive noted:

It wasn’t until his death that all the ways he had served others throughout his life were revealed. His humility and willingness to serve others was inspiring.

 In fact, it was this side of Spencer Macleod that was most riveting in my mind. Out of the spotlight, without a mic in hand, when no one but Jesus would know, he loved sacrificially. That, to me, is a real hero.

Last week a woman sat at my table with me and I could tell she was more than depressed. End of the rope, frustrated, stymied. Where was her answer? I prayed silently for words – the right words. Finally I leaned across the table and said softly, “You know, God makes this real simple. You have to love.”

I know this is not really what she wanted to hear. As grand and heroic as Love sounds, it’s not a viable option when you’ve been hurt, legitimately crushed near to emotional death. But I added this:

“If God commands it, He will equip you for it.”

This is hard. Jesus knew it would be. He even said, If all you do is love the lovable, do you expect a bonus? Anybody can do that. (Matthew 5:46 The Message)

The true Gospel will always challenge every rational fiber in our mind. You may get your best friend to agree with you, or even your pastor, but you won’t move the Holy Spirit. Rock of Ages, Ancient of Days. Where there is no “shadow of turning,” there is also no compromise, no exceptions. Forgive, love, surrender. Simple commands that we consistently complicate.

When Spencer left this world for his real heavenly home, he passed a torch to me in the ER that dark night. I was still learning so much about True Love. Yet I had no doubt that even as he breathed his last breath, he forgave. Love scooped him up and carried him home. And I was left with his wallet in my hands and a story I couldn’t see from my view in the valley for several years. It took time, it took obedience – the grueling press forward when you’d rather quit and go for what’s behind Door #2 or 3. It took learning to love the way my son did. Others first. Not just loving the Unlovables, but recognizing I am one.

A kingdom scale has a different balance than an earthly scale. The impact of that night still sends tremors through my soul. I still wince when I see an ambulance, a large knife or a fight. My breath quickens when I hear a Trauma Alert overhead at work. January 26th 2002, the earth shook and shifted and opened right up under my feet. Everything I thought I could hold onto vanished. But the only One I needed was holding onto me.

The scale of “haves” rose dramatically against the weight of “have nots.” God has not picked up all the broken pieces and placed them back where they belong. He had a better plan ­– a Kingdom-Designed-Forever plan. And over 20 years, which is just a breath to the Master, the scales are tipped again. His love flat-out broke the scale. And all I said was, “yes.”

Let the redeemed of the Lord say so,
Whom He has redeemed from the hand of the enemy, Psalm 107:2

 The Enemy thought he had won that night. He thought there were too many pieces to ever rebuild. And he was right. He thought I could never be strong enough. Right again. But he missed the torch passed from the hand of a son to a mother, the Father reaching down from heaven to ask me, “Will you forgive?”and my feeble “Yes.” He didn’t understand that God IS my strength. And he didn’t even consider Love, the Redeemer’s most powerful weapon. There were times when Door #2 looked very attractive. But I said “No.” You do not need a seminary degree to do this.

Simply let your ‘Yes’ be ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No,’ ‘No.’ Anything more comes from the evil one. –  Jesus (Matthew 5:37)

Twenty years. The old adage, “only time will tell” carries some truth. Elisabeth Eliot wisely noted, “Cruelty and wrong are not the greatest forces in the world. There is nothing eternal in them. Only love is eternal.” Only Love tips the scale, and keeps tipping it. My Redeemer lives, and so does yours. When we say YES, He gets to work and delights in bringing not just light in darkness, but “joy unspeakable and full of glory.”

Spencer wrote:

“This life is nothing more than a pilgrimage to heaven. This journey is a journey of the heart.”

 Dear Pilgrim, How is your heart? Is God waiting for your Yes?

Olive Macleod will one day meet her Uncle Spence. But until then, she can carry the torch. She also wrote, “Spencer Macleod makes me want to become a better person.” Comes with the torch. Carry on, little pilgrim. Let love bring you into His glory and grace, and a place of redemption and ridiculous joy. Maybe I’ll stick around another 20 years just to see it.

Just make sure there’s a bench nearby…

 

 

Olive