grandchildren

July 25, 2018

Color-Coded Chaos

Will finished his cigarette and took one last look around his yard, his house then grabbed his cooler and shoved it into the back of his black pickup and rode off. I could see him through my sunroom window where I pray every morning, through the thin layer of cedar and maple that separates our two homes. When you live so close, you either love your neighbor or, if you’re a Christian you “have to” love your neighbor. My husband and I did both, for six years, and in return I think Will liked us and may have even been a little sad saying goodbye.

Now my own life is changing, that much I know. In my excitement, I’ve started way too many things at once and I wake up exhausted. I’m not even working.

“Hi honey! What did you do today?” my husband asks when he comes in from a day of building things, caked in saw dust and sweat.

“Oh, I was working on the non-profit/ book stuff/coaching website,” whatever the case may be. And he nods respectfully even though I could be creating Frankenstein in the basement for all he knows. In a way I wish I was because I’d have something to show for hours of labor each day. But nothing. Just dreams that make more dreams.

Will was the best-ever neighbor. He watched our house when we were gone, rescuing all of my plants on the sun porch last winter when the temperature hit a numbing six degrees. He even watched our house when we were home, sending my husband text alerts about suspicious activity in the street. Once he saw me walking my dog at night past his house.

“You should be careful here at night,” he warned.

“I’m okay,” I assured him. “I have a big dog.”

“I have a big gun if you ever want to borrow it,” he offered with a smile.

Now looking over to his empty house is like looking at a corpse in a casket. He’s not there so it’s just a house, swept clean and echo-ey. Last night my husband and I prayed for good neighbors, maybe ones that we could point to Jesus. We tried with Will, inviting him to church many times.

“The church would burn down,” he responded. Or he would wave his can of Budweiser at us and yell, “I’m too drunk!” But I have hope for Will as he heads to his new home high in the Vermont mountains. God speaks through His creation and I believe our good neighbor will hear.

I’m in a season of transitions and I’ve always had a hard time separating things. Same with when I lose someone close. It’s like the whole weight of everyone I’ve loved and lost bears down on me and I’m crushed. My son Miles and his wife and children just packed up their lives and left their home of seven years in North Carolina, to begin a new life in Malaysia.

“Malaysia? ” people say, with their faces twisted up in shock. “How long are they going to live in Malaysia?” I think only God knows that answer. It’s far, it sounds crazy but that’s how following Jesus often looks. And they are all ecstatic.

They visited us on the Cape before they left. And to complete my joy, my other two grandsons were here at the same time. Balls, trucks, beach buckets and books lined every foot path inside and out. Joyful chaos. Then it was time for goodbye. As they pulled out of the driveway a small hand pressed against the back window, then they were gone. I know now why my mom hated goodbyes.

See I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the desert. Isaiah 43:19

A knife, a grenade and three crayons. I move methodically around the room, eyes to the floor that is strewn with the last remnants of my grandchildren’s busy worlds. The big stuffed teddy bear that Leo dragged around the house and yard with him had to go back in the Celtics can with his other buddies. Pipe cleaners, Popsicle sticks and the glue my granddaughters used for the odd jeweled raft they created that was semi-stuck to the small play table, were sorted back to their shoeboxes. I sighed. These kids utterly wear me out in such a glorious way. The bubbles go up high on a shelf and I turn to scan the room, still and quiet. Curious George, missing an eye, winks at me as I turn and go back to my grown-up world.

I wish my life was as easy to sort as that play room. Career up on a shelf, people close to my heart that I know God wants me to spend time with – maybe they can sit next to Curious George and chat while they wait for me look up from my laptop. The book, speaking invitations stacked neatly in predictable color-coded boxes. Just yesterday I stared at all the messages I had flagged in my mailbox, wondering why they were so disorganized and then it hit me. They were organized by color flag. Only I had picked a random color each time I flagged one.

“Oh purple looks cute! I’ll flag that purple!” Not a clue that there was an opportunity for some order.

But maybe, just maybe, I am exactly the way God intended me to be – the same girl that danced on the desktops to break up the monotony of a 2nd grade classroom. Jesus is probably shaking his head at my mess and thinking it would be a good thing if I could sort it all out a little more, and He would help me, no doubt.

“God is not a God of chaos,” I’ve heard over the pulpit more than once. And it’s true. But I think He’d rather have us doing something, than just being like Will’s house. Empty and echo-ey.

Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.

So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. 2 Corinthians 4:16-18

Renewed day by day. I like that, no, I need that. Yes, there is much to do. Maybe Jesus can help me color-code my dreams. Or we can build a jeweled raft and try not to glue it to the table.

“Hi honey! What did you do today?” my husband will ask.

And for once, I’ll have something to show him.

August 19, 2016

Where Does It Hurt?

Brooklynn and Olive, ready to operate

“Where does it hurt?”

My hip, I told the doctor, placing my hand on my right leg.

She paused, then said, “Let me look in your mouth.”

I smiled at the paper towel taped over my doctor’s nose and mouth and the roll of tape tied to the top of her head. Health care really has plummeted, I mused. The doctor is my six-year-old granddaughter, Olive.

The hip really is sore, as it should be. My husband drove me down to North Carolina ten days after hip surgery and left me here for a month to recover. Perhaps he knows what I intuitively reached for: the healing power of grandchildren.

Even in 96-degree heat, I could feel the healing begin when one-week-old Leo was laid in my arms, still unfurling from the womb, pure and sweet as heaven’s breath. I don’t think I realized how tired and frayed I had become until I leaned my head out of the car window and inhaled the lovely crape myrtle blossoms as the cicadas sang. It was soothing, like a cool washcloth on a fevered forehead. Then a newborn, pure as the Carolina rain, life unwrapped and a child of my child! My heart kicks and sputters and begins to beat again. I find a path, a bit overgrown, and turn towards home, my eternal home.

Kairos: a Greek word meaning the right time, the opportune moment. The implication is a window opened by God Himself, saying “This way.”

Sometimes it takes a six year old to show me. Or my two year old grandson running through a sprinkler as he looks back at me.

“C’mon, Ama, c’mon,” he says. And I stretch to my feet and pretend to run after him, carefully skirting the falling drops. Eli knows and stops, pointing to the sprinkler, to the spray of water. His brow dips as he repeats, for clarity,

Eli with new bro, Leo

“C’mom Ama!”

Okay. I run through the sprinkler, letting the water fall on my clothes, my hair and face. I don’t feel six, but I remember it now, screaming through the frigid arc of the garden hose, the sweat mixing with the water, the grass slick and cool under my feet. I remember joy. Kairos.

I have been forgetting things. Where I put my glasses and shoes. Whether I took Tylenol or not. Did I turn the coffee off? My keys, phone, my joy, my Jesus. Life somehow became something to do, not live. I lost gratitude, I lost balance.

Last week my son and his wife took me out to the Smokie Mountains for my first time ever. We arrived late in the day, but not too late to get in some tubing on a local river. Charcoal clouds hovered over the green mountaintops suggesting a storm, but we went anyway.

I think I found my favorite “sport” ever. Okay, floating on an inner tube down a mostly lazy river with a few riffles and rocks doesn’t sound like an Olympic feat. But you do have to walk a lot to get there and if you’re stupid like me and jump off the tube to push away from a rock, realizing quickly that the current is stronger than you are and maneuvering back onto a tube is about as graceful as a hippo on a balance beam – well, it’s a real work out.

But I learned something. If you lean back in the tube, looking up at the treetops and the sky, and tuck your legs up into the tube, you drift like a fallen leaf, easily navigating the current as you bounce and twirl beneath the drifting clouds, light dabbling your face, the water. Lovely. I learned this from watching Olive, who weighs just a touch more than a leaf.

After my doctors, Brooklynn and Olive, fixed my leg, they woke me up from surgery (I think I fell asleep) and informed me I needed a heart operation now. Brooklynn now wore the scrubs and Olive had changed into a dress with large pink and gold dangling earrings, and held a notebook and pen. She told me she was the doctor’s assistant.

“Your heart thing is too slow,” Brooklynn said.

“How bad is it?”

Olive gave me a thumbs down and I smiled, picturing the stern cardiac surgeons I know using this gesture instead of stumbling over their improvisation of the same thing. “But we can fix it,” I was assured.

Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Matthew 11:28 KJV

“C’mon, Ama!” I hear the sweet voice of a two-year-old. He does not see me as too old, too tired or too busy. C’mom! And get all the way in too. There you will find rest, you will find healing – you will find you were made for that place.

Every morning I work, I sit in the parking lot with a cup of tea and pray. In the winter it’s dark, with the sun hinting of a new day to the east, splashing the sky on the horizon with strokes of fire. In the summer, I can watch the cranberry bog before me come alive as the morning stirs God’s creation. And I try to remember to pray this:

“Thank you for this day. I rejoice in you Lord!” I think God likes to hear this from us, before we are swept into the undertow of measured time and happenstance. But lately it has become rote and Hail Mary-ish. As soon as rejoice leaves my lips, my mind reaches for joy, something I used to know, a free and glorious gift, defiant of circumstance. Yet as the day unfolds, it eludes me, and I am disturbed by my aloneness. It had become my strength, my way. The spontaneous joy found only within the mystery of the Kairos moment was missing. No wonder I was looking forward to surgery.

He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. Ecclesiastes 3:11

I am learning, again, the need to put my time, every moment, in the capable hands of a sovereign God. And to pull my legs up and float, face to the sky, eternity in my heart, carrying the sound of the river coursing over rocks with me through each day into the night.

Thanks, Brooklyn and Olive, for the heart surgery; Eli, for not letting me pretend and Leo, for reminding me that life is precious, it is now and forever; it is the way everlasting.

Smokies!

May 30, 2014

Casting Bread

Behold, children are a heritage from the LORD, the fruit of the womb a reward. Psalm 127:3 ESV

Daddy Jake with Eli

At 2:35 PM, on May 23^rd, Eli Hudson Farnsworth was delivered into this world, and my first grandson was born. Thanks to 21^st century technology and my friend and cohort in grandmother-hood, Nana Beswick, I watched him holler with that funny little old man face that newborns have, just minutes after he arrived. I cried. I do that a lot and I wonder if it’s a getting older thing. Anyway, he is perfect, created especially by God, cell by cell.

Strange to think that God sees the boy, then the man, and even the father. I think back to my three births and how I have watched two of my boys become dads. It’s a perfect circle and it makes me feel like I can say “There!” to motherhood and usher in a new season of joy: being a grandma, or “Ama” as I am called.

I started a tradition with my granddaughters a few years ago where I write them a letter on each birthday. I try to capture who they are, before it changes again. I like to think that one day, when they are moms maybe, they will pull out Ama’s letters and remember what matters, how they were loved, how Jesus delighted in them even then. A year from now, I will write my grandson.

Eli can barely focus on the loving faces that bend down to kiss his little cheeks. His body is hitching into gear, all parts perfectly joined, already accustomed to this new water-less world. He turns to mommy’s smell and daddy’s voice. He trusts in every set of arms that lifts and holds him.

“Cast your bread upon the water…” A seemingly hopeless act of throwing your best far from you. (Matthew Henry commentary)

If you know me, you know I love to boast of my grandchildren. It’s what grandparents do. But there’s a deeper side to the picture. I remember a stormy night in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, sitting in my car with the rain pounding on the roof, calling my pastor on the phone. I was crying so hard I could barely speak.

“I have one son dead, and two that are far from God,” I sobbed into the phone. He talked me down as he always does, but I will never forget the hopelessness of those days, and the failure that haunted me.

I had taken Jake, who was almost 16, and put him on a plane to Jacksonville North Carolina with a one way ticket. We had a sister church there, I knew the pastor, a few people but not the family who had offered to take him for us, a six foot two teenager, big with attitude and resentment. But as we stood in the airport, awkwardly saying goodbye, I knew that even Jake understood this was God’s Yes, it was a rescue mission. The poverty and defeat that permeated Pawtucket was taking him down.

I admit that mostly desperation and exhaustion have brought me to the altar of God’s grace, laying my children down, my best, my “first-fruits”. But the longer I live, the more convinced I become that this is God’s desire. The Potter sits at the wheel, waiting. Yet we take our kids and run, sure that we know a better way than the One who made them. Christians are the worst offenders, because above all, we want to look good on the outside, even if all hell has broken loose behind closed doors.

The precious family that took my son moved out to a farm surrounded by cows, on one road that took you for miles to nowhere. They loved him, showed him how to work, and Vicki prayed over his lunch everyday before she packed him off to school. Jake was mad. And there were days when his dad and I really wanted to rescue our poor baby, take him somewhere softer, nicer, not so hard. But we held back. The Holy Spirit gave an emphatic Hands off! And it was there, in the middle of those fields, under the big night sky, that Jake met God face-to-face and surrendered. It was there he discovered His love, a love bigger and better than any mom’s.

His brother Miles took a different road, in fact, around the world, but eventually came to that same place, knew it was right, it was time, and his wife joined him. Now my granddaughters sing a song about God’s’ love being as big as an ocean. Yes, indeed.

Cast your bread upon the water, and after many days, it will return to you. Ecclesiastes 9:1

I’ve buried a child and sat in the silent ash of unspeakable sorrow, thinking, “I gave him to you Lord. And this?” There’s a lot I can’t understand on this side of heaven. But I can say that God continues to bring new life through Spencer’s life and death, in small ways that you might miss if you weren’t looking, and in very big ways that leave me speechless… it will return to you.

When I die, I won’t have much to leave. Some teacups and recipes. Lots of books and blog posts, and too many scarves. But the greatest legacy is what I see when I look at brand new Eli Hudson Farnsworth, secure in his daddy’s arms, and every time I walk past my granddaughters’ pictures. I know that they have been handed down the best, God’s personal promise to us, to our children and our children’s children Here is an eternal inheritance; I didn’t even have to work for it, I had nothing but a mess to give to him. Jesus gave it to me for free although it cost Him a lot. All he asks for in return is that we trust him with our best, whether it is your kids, grandkids, spouse or your very life… let go, and after many days it will return to you.

Listen to me, dear brothers and sisters. Hasn’t God chosen the poor in this world to be rich in faith? Aren’t they the ones who will inherit the Kingdom he promised to those who love him? James 2:5 NLT

March 10, 2012

No More Tears

: Olive and Brooklynn begin a new day

The plane rose steadily above the North Carolina country until the visible details of life diminished into diffuse patches of green and brown farmland. “I’m not going to cry”, I silently challenged myself. I had stayed awake the night before, restless with dread. Snapshots of the last week flipped through my mind…of my two granddaughters, their warm little bodies snuggled up to mine, the way their wet hair smelled after a bath, singing next to my son at his church, the richness of fellowship and a deepening connection with my daughter-in-law. Their passion for life, each other, their desire to serve and please God leaves me awed and inspired.

When my mother visited us, she would just get up early in the dark morning and tiptoe out the door , no goodbye, no fanfare. I heard her car quietly back out of the driveway, and she was gone.

“She doesn’t like goodbyes,” I casually remarked to my stunned husband.

“Really? She just leaves?” he said. I shrugged and smiled, comfortable with my mother’s idiosyncrasies. And as my thoughts turned back to kissing my two granddaughters goodbye at the airport, my heart turned over and took a deep sharp sigh. Maybe mom was just being practical.

I hate crying. I cried so much after my son died that I started to look at it like throwing up. Sometimes you can psyche yourself out of it, other times it’s best to just give in and let it go. There was a time I wore sunglasses everywhere to hide the unpredictable burst of tears. My eyes burned and my head ached. I wore no makeup for three years.

For me, a woman who never liked to drop the emotional guard, who ran outside and hid behind a tree so my kids didn’t have to see me cry, this has been a transforming brokenness. I’m softer now. Though crying is still a little scary and unpredictable to me, I acknowledge the sadness in things, like goodbyes in airports.

I don’t think heaven is a bunch of fat little babies with wings sitting on clouds. I know it is a real place, immeasurably more vibrant and pulsing and alive than the best this earth can offer. Still, pushing up past the clouds in a jet helps me get perspective on this little planet. Somehow the clouds draw my heart closer to God’s peace and promise of a place with no more tears or goodbyes. As the beautiful old hymn goes,

Turn your eyes upon Jesus

Look full in His wonderful face

And the things of this earth will grow strangely dim

In the light of His glory and grace.

I returned home feeling tired and frail. And as I unpacked my big red suitcase I thought of my next trip to North Carolina, not too, too far away, and tried to cheer myself. Then at the bottom of my bag I found a piece of cardboard still sticky with glue. Brooklynn had presented it to me last weekend.

“Look! For you Ama!”

She had glued odd shapes of blue and yellow paper to it, in the free-form style of a three year old noting that she even managed to glue buttons to it too. I think whatever was within reach was going to be glued to that little piece of artwork. There had been three buttons but one had come off in the bag. I held the little blue button in my hand and let the tears roll. Love does crazy things like that and I’m grateful for the whole messy lot. Thankful, too, for a glue stick I found in my drawer that will hold a blue button where it belongs. And as I added it to my refrigerator gallery, I thanked God that I can get through every goodbye “in the light of His glory and grace”.