Auntie and the Letters

You are looking at one of my favorite people in the world: Auntie.

When I was growing up, it was this house--her's and Uncle's--that we came to when we were on furlough in the United States. Through my career years in parochial education I have often traveled to the denominational headquarters in Maryland for some meeting or committee. It just so happens that Auntie's house is a mile away, as the crow flies, from that building, so I stay with Auntie instead of in a hotel. I look forward to it.

I noticed early on that Auntie was not like my mom, although they had two great things in common: the love of my mom's brother, and a love of music. But there otherwise there were many differences.  My mom was a doctor and Auntie was trained to be a secretary. My mom worked at the hospital and Auntie was a stay-at-home mom. My mom got her meals on a haphazard schedule due to delivering babies, while Auntie had made-from-scratch meals on the table for her family at the same times every day. My mom came home to us at whatever hour worked out, while my cousins came home to their mom in the view in the picture above: Auntie standing at the door looking out, waiting to welcome them.

My mom and my auntie have loved each other dearly through the years. My mom is the one who suggested that her brother get acquainted with Auntie, whom Mama had met in a choir. And then my mom heaved a sigh of relief--she has said this many times--when Uncle and Auntie's marriage revealed that they were indeed a good match and Mama wouldn't have to feel responsible for messing up her brother's life with her matchmaking.

I've just returned from Auntie's house yet again, where I left and returned from work each day to this heartwarming view of Auntie in the doorway. I rested in her love and warm conversation, laughed and hugged, and picked up a new story or two about the family history before me.

Auntie has been going through some boxes downstairs and had come across some letters that Mama had written back to the family "in the States" when I was 9-13 years old. I'd seen other letters, but these were new, and I stayed up until 1:30 one morning reading them. There were several surprises in the letters, but one of the biggest surprises for me, was seeing how much our happy existence in the mission field was actually a result of the support that Uncle and Auntie provided to us from Stateside. I'd had no clue. They sent medical instruments that my parents asked for in the letters, sent money for special projects, and regularly sent gifts to us for birthdays and Christmases. That last one I knew about, of course, but this time I read it through the eyes of an Auntie who did the work of finding gifts for 4 people twice a year, packaging them up, addressing them, and paying costly postage to send them halfway around the world to a country she had never visited.

Another surprise for me was reading my dad's letters to my uncle, which were included in this bunch of letters. I had never known that my dad relied on my uncle so much for answering questions about urology (Uncle's specialty), nor that my dad had been such good friends with my uncle and confided in him to the extent that I saw in those letters. The tone was warm and trusting, true friendship.

I also read in one of the letters that when Uncle heard my mom had her eye and heart on a Yamaha grand piano, he had sent Mama a huge check which bought us that piano. It resides now in my home; we got it when I was in 5th grade, I practiced on it for my British piano exams, the talent I developed on it became part of my personal identity, and I have loved that piano always. I hadn't realized--maybe I'd been told, but it didn't stick--that my uncle and auntie had provided us with that piano. My uncle passed away 6 years ago, and I wish I could go back and talk that over with him with more focus and gratitude.

Realizing the constancy and breadth of the care and support from my uncle and aunt has brought me some new thoughts. As I told Auntie over the breakfast the morning after reading the letters, I never knew the strength of their partnership with us as my parents gave their lives in mission service. I had thought we were on our own, this little insular foursome over there. But Auntie and Uncle were quiet missionaries right alongside us, all the way from their unassuming brick house in Maryland. Their support made my parents more effective in their medical work, gave my brother and me a connection to the U.S. that we needed in order to eventually transition to this country, and provided the books and music that enriched us immeasurably, growing up. I am so very grateful as I realize how these dear folk that I thought were "occasional," were in essence there right with us.

And I'm thankful that I got to share these thoughts with my 86-year old Auntie, with tears in my eyes, early one morning this week over oatmeal and toast in her little kitchen in that red brick house in Maryland.

The Cringe Factor, Part 3

Despite my slowly accumulated appreciation for the strengths of the American people, there are certain events and situations that have shook me along the way and made me want to, again, hide under a rock or throw someone off the bus or go claim my Thai or Dutch passport rights.

I remember exactly where I was, the first time such an event happened. I was in our college cafeteria in 1983 when someone announced that President Reagan had sent troops to invade Grenada. Hello!!! What gave my country the right to go in like a big bully and invade a little island to the south with only 91,000 people on it? It doesn't matter if we don't like Grenada's leader. Who anointed us the policeman of the western hemisphere? 

Later I was embarrassed, as a U.S. citizen, by the whole Iraq war. It just seemed to me like we were behaving like impulsive cowboys, dashing in to shoot up a country we didn't understand, for reasons that were oversimplified, and in ways that would alienate the rest of the world. Learning that the reasons given to the American people were fabricated stories, and then seeing the pictures of the Abu Ghraib fiasco, just deepened my sense of shame. 

These were things my government did that embarrassed me because they smacked of the same bullying entitlement qualities I'd perceived in Americans when I was growing up. The American people were still good people even if their government went nuts now and then, right?

Until now. This is what I started this series of posts to write about: How my faith in the American people has been shaken to its core by the current presidential election. First of all, a question: can we not--out of ALL the people with experience in the culture of government--find someone with some wisdom, some dignity, and no continual shadow of "where there's smoke, there's fire" hanging over him or her? Is there NO one with any shred of integrity available to stand up and be willing to lead? 

Second, what is this insanity going on in all the people who would vote for Donald Trump? The guy is a liar, a bully, a misogynist, a cheat, a narcissist, and pretty much all the other names he's been called in the press and in your social media feed. I simply don't understand anyone who thinks that he could even just "be" in the presidency, let alone bring deadly harm to our nation and to its reputation with other nations in the world. What is wrong with your eyes and ears, People? The man in front of you is plumb crazy, and offensive and threatening, to boot! 

Then I see people making even more incomprehensible arguments, like the Republican lady who said that she was going to continue to vote for her conservative party's candidate, even if he was a jackass. (Yes, she used that word.) WHAAA???? Since when are we lining up like sheep with such strong allegiance to a group, that we refuse to leave that group in face of their committed allegiance to a crazy, incompetent leader? I could understand putting up with a crazy, incompetent leader in an organization such as--for example--a denomination where leaders come and go without affecting your local church, but I don't understand it in a political party. This has effects on our daily life and the ability of our nation to interact constructively with the rest of the world even into the future.

It is important, if our country is to keep its place and influence in the international milieu, that the leader have at least some shred of dignity and cultural awareness, let alone appreciation for other cultures. America has survived leaders who are crooks before, and other nations can still work with a crook who at least generally plays by international rules. Not a great feeling, and I'm not happy with the alternative, but voting in Hillary Clinton is a sight better than having a self-centered, completely culturally incompetent megalomaniac despot at the helm.

I see what my friends in other countries are saying. They're not dumb. The people of other nations are looking at the United States right now, looking at the fact that Donald Trump is even an option, and they're in shock at how such a large number of Americans seem to have completely lost their marbles. So am I, ...in shock. It feels to me like a large number of my compatriots have given up their brains, cashed in their integrity. They've traded in on group-think rather than preserving their individuality, dignity and right to demand a leader with at least some measure of wisdom and moral stature. By lining up with Donald Trump (and I shake my head at even using that phrase), they've cast their lot in with racism, misogyny, narcissism, fear, hate-mongering, low-class put-downs, the lack of a moral compass ...and Trump's complete inability to articulate ideas in any educated manner whatsoever. They've lined up behind a moral midget.

It's bankrupt. All bankrupt.

And I keep wondering, with some sense of desperation: Why? When did we sell out without noticing it? How has this nation and the good people in it devolved to this point? Where did it go--that strong American backbone, the insistence on people's rights, the belief that all were created with equal value? Furthermore, how can people who call themselves Christians even get close to Donald Trump's camp, let alone board his bus? His behavior is so completely antithetical to all the characteristics of Jesus. 

It feels like I have spent years building up respect for this nation and its people, only to seriously question it now. Because even if we have a President Clinton next January--and I hope with all my heart that we do--the fact will remain that I have lost all confidence in those friends and relatives and fellow citizens who will have voted for Donald Trump. "Benedict Arnold" is back, and I don't quite know how to handle all of this.

The Cringe Factor, Part 2

That's it right there: the console on the right and the pipes behind the screens,
the organ with 5000+ pipes that I practiced on daily during my college years.

Once I landed in the U.S. and showed up in small-town America for college, I started doing what every Third Culture Kid does when they enter a new culture: observing. For four years I watched what Americans did, how they talked, and what they valued. 

To be frank, there wasn’t a lot that was cringe-worthy. Citizens in small-town United States knew and cared very little about any other countries or peoples of the world, I noticed, but it wasn’t because they were self-centered. It was because this country is too big for small-town America to have opportunity to rub shoulders with a lot of cultures, languages, religions, races and perspectives. Unlike most countries in Europe, for example, you could drive all day and never leave some of the states. And unless you lived on one coast or the other, you didn’t typically cross paths with immigrants. It was pretty vanilla. My female college classmates tended to talk about boys and clothes and cars, and my male college classmates tended to talk about sports and cars and girls. I was interested in travel, the arts, and world events. Did I say I just listened for a long time?

If I said I was from Malaysia, my schoolmates had no clue where that was; “So that’s in Africa, right?” 

“No. You’re thinking of Malawi, which is in Africa. Malaysia the peninsula between Thailand in Singapore.”

And they would nod sagely and knowingly … with a blank look in their eyes.

“South of China, northwest of Australia,” I would try, feeling both affronted and desperate. It’s my home. It’s important. Don’t assume I am a nothing from nowhere.

But it was clear that China and Australia didn’t matter either.

Still, as I said, people in small-town America were good people. They weren't much like the larger-than-life, strangely self-centered and entitled tourists I'd seen too many of while growing up elsewhere. They were ordinary. They talked about the wheat harvest at church, brought good dishes to potluck, invited me over with other dorm students for an evening home-cooked meal, and sang and prayed like I did. Slowly but surely, I started seeing some great things about the United States. Truly great things. I’ve not researched how anyone else perceives this, but I've continued to observe in the three decades since I graduated from college, and I have thoughts about what I've seen.

Here are the observations of a slowly-converted Benedict Arnold:

By and large, the people of the United States of America are generous. I have never seen people dig so deeply into their pockets to help others when they are in crisis, as I have seen in this country. Over the years it has seemed to me that people here generally have HUGE hearts for helping, for doing good, for taking personal and corporate action to make someone's difficult life circumstance a little easier. Whether that comes from a historically Christian belief system or whether it comes from a family history of ancestors who came here fleeing difficult circumstances, I don't know. But it is this quality of generosity that makes me the proudest to possess my U.S. passport today.

People in the U.S. live from a creationist perspective; in other words, they believe in outsmarting the survival of the fittest. It's mighty comforting to think that the bully doesn't win in the end. Underdog-to-glory tales are rampant in our folklore, our movies, and our pulled-up-by-the-bootstraps stories about our own families. It’s in our DNA to cheer the struggler all the way to a triumphal win.

People in the U.S. are some of the most creative people on the planet. Inventive people can be found all over the world, but I have not yet seen quite the pervasive strength of drive to accomplish problem-solving and invention anywhere else. There is in both the history and present a brain trust in this country that is incredibly creative. Immigrants come here seeking the opportunity to create—create success, create solutions, create a brighter future, create knowledge. We’ve set up an environment specifically to incubate creativity here. We are dreamers.

And finally: People in the U.S. seem to adhere to an undying belief that every person can achieve and become remarkable. This belief in the individual drives an educational system that is generally resistant to stratification and comes close to considering itself a right rather than a privilege. The downside of it is that the current generation has been weaned on the mother’s milk of “I am special; I am award-winning; I am entitled to recognition and fame.” Nevertheless, there is still that openness to achievement that enables the individual to go further and dream bigger than people do in most other countries. And we know that a belief in one’s own ability is half the battle to achieving one’s goals.

There are, in my opinion, other qualities that may be found in greater quantities in some other countries—sturdiness, persistence, quality of workmanship, ability to create efficient systems, precision, tribal loyalty, respect, appreciation for history, attunement to nature, dignity and so on. But my point is that, after coming to the United States of America seeking access to pipe organs, I came to appreciate to see and appreciate these great American qualities that fill a room as surely as the sounds of my great instrument at the front of our 3000-seat college church.

(to be continued)

The Cringe Factor, Part I

"Benedict Arnold," my best friend called me one day. She called me that a few times afterwards, too.

My best friend had lived in the United States during some of her elementary school years, and I had not. Other than missionaries, who are a different breed, my experience with U.S. citizens had shown that the Ugly American was alive and well. When tourists came from the United States to visit Malaysia, more often than not they expected life to provide what they were used to in their home country: a comfy bed with sheets like they were used to, air conditioning that would make the muggy weather bearable for them, foods that they were more familiar with, and that devilish "the customer is always right" concept that creates monsters out of people.

And I would become deeply embarrassed.

I had no loyalties to my passport country, having not lived here yet. I had three birth certificates--one Thai, one Dutch (because of my father) and one American (because of my mother). I carried both Thai and American passports until I was 11 years old, and knew I could claim the Dutch one if I wanted to. So why should I defend the bad behavior of Americans? And why should I not complain about it when I saw it?

People who said that the United States was better than any other country, mystified me. I'd traveled to a lot of countries, and there were plenty of good ones out there (providing freedom and democracy and all that good stuff), with plenty of good people sprinkled around. What kind of hubris would make Americans boast like they did? European and Australian tourists were far more culturally aware, I noticed, than the Americans.

"The United States is NOT the greatest country," I told Lois.

"You're just a Benedict Arnold," she replied, hotly.

When I was 17 years old the new Chemistry teacher from my boarding school came by our island for a visit. She was 24 and wanted to take a train up through Thailand to Chiangmai in the north. She invited me to join her on the trip. So I packed my backpack, took the ferry over with her to the train station, and we headed north through rice paddies and rain-forested mountains. After touring around Bangkok, my teacher and I went to the bus station to catch an overnight air-conditioned bus up to Chiangmai. The idea was to lean our seats back, sleep while the driver drove, and arrive in the highlands of Thailand ready to sightsee.

The bus broke down somewhere out there on a dark road that night. That meant the frigid air conditioning went out, and we sat. And sat.

Eventually another overnight bus pulled up in front of us and we joined those passengers, along with our stuff. There weren't enough empty seats for the combination of two busloads, so my teacher was left standing in the aisle while I sat on the steps just inside the door. I heard her ask the conductor for a seat. He indicated that they were full. (Duh.) I heard her ask how long it would be until we arrived. It would be something like five hours, he said. I leaned back against something and settled in for a long night.

And then I heard my teacher tell the conductor, quite insistently and with voice raised (the way American tourists do when they think if they speak louder, people will understand better), that she had paid for a seat, and she should have one.

You've GOT to be kidding! I was so embarrassed, I wanted to crawl under a seat. No, I wanted to open the bus door and push her out. Okay, maybe I wanted her to just be quiet. I wanted to not be carrying my American passport next to THAT attitude. Did she even have a clue how lucky we were not to be back there in the broken down bus on the side of the road? It was just more of that "You owe me" attitude I had seen in other American tourists, and I wanted none of a country that behaved with that kind of entitlement and lack of cultural sensitivity.

I grew up with the sense that I was a citizen of the world. ("Third Culture Kids," the research calls us nowadays.) When it was time to go to college, I applied to a college about an hour's train ride outside of London, England, and was accepted. But then some administrators came through Singapore from my father's alma mater, a little college in Washington state. I just happened to ask them, "If I come to your college, can I get my hands on a pipe organ?" (An instrument I desperately wanted to learn to play.) They said sure. In fact, they said, they had...and they stopped to count them...six pipe organs at the college. That did it for me! Certainly I would get a chance at plenty of time on a pipe organ if I went to my dad's college out in the no-wheres.

On the strength of that serendipitous little conversation about pipe organs, my whole life pivoted, and this Benedict Arnold came to study and live in the United States.

(to be continued)

Glance Back

"I will remember the deeds of the Lord;
yes, I will remember your miracles of long ago."
Psalm 77:11 (NIV)

The other evening I noticed a simple and pretty sunset to the west (pictured above). God's artistry in our California skies is always worth stopping and appreciating.

Then I felt an inner urge to turn around, whereupon I saw this:

Looking eastward I saw complexity, beauty, and glowing colors that I would not have suspected were there, because that's not where the action (sunset) was taking place.

Why, just when I am entering a new school term, would I pause to look over my shoulder at the past? Because the view may just give me more courage than if I look forwards.  

Sometimes the very things that we're glad to have left in the past, take on a gorgeous hue under God's paintbrush. God is coloring the grey beautiful, painting the storm clouds with pink-orange linings, bringing out a new third dimension in situations that we only saw in two dimensions. If we didn't take some time to look back over our shoulders at the right time, we would miss the reflections of His glory.

"Sweet light," as my photographer friend, Gary Hamburgh, refers to this time on the borders of darkness and light, day and night. Sweet light. The view over your shoulder may well be more beautiful than the view ahead of you, where you think the light is. Ellen White, an early writer in my church, described this same sentiment.

In reviewing our past history, having traveled over every step of our advance to our present standing, I can say, Praise God! As I see what the Lord has wrought, I am filled with astonishment, and with confidence in Christ as leader. We have nothing to fear for the future, except as we shall forget the way the Lord has led us, and His teaching in our past history. (Ellen G. White. Life Sketches, 196.)

Glance back. If you do so with a heart for clear vision, you may arrive at the same conclusion I have:

We have nothing to fear.

Tribal Markings

I've pondered this week's Comeback Bloggers' prompt to write about tribal markings--how we "all choose to do body decorations (or not) in a way that is like tribal marking. We modify hair, we modify our ears, we modify our bodies. We wear certain clothing because it marks us as belonging to some group."

And I've thought: If I write about this, people are going to think my tribe is nuts.

Okay, so be it. We all live in quirky families, if we'll just admit it.

So, I grew up in a church where we did not wear jewelry of certain types. The idea was that we were following the Bible verse literally, which says,

In like manner also, that women adorn themselves in modest apparel, with shamefacedness and sobriety; not with broided hair, or gold, or pearls, or costly array; But (which becometh women professing godliness) with good works. (1 Timothy 2:9-10, KJV)

This was our adornment guide when I was growing up. It is still the guide for my fellow denominational members in most parts of the country and the world. While some might read the guidance from Paul to mean that we should give more emphasis to our inner character than to external decoration because character takes our attention and effort (ahem; that would be my understanding of what he's saying), in my church it got interpreted to mean (ahem; shallowly, in my opinion) no wearing of necklaces, earrings, rings or bracelets.

As is the case in most churches who tend toward the literalist reading of the Word, this resulted in inconsistencies. No one seemed to pay any attention to the issue of braided hair; that one was fine. And no one went around asking whether your church suit was from Nordstrom or JC Penney or a thrift store. The "tribal marking" really was focused on certain types of jewelry that would make another church member's hair stand on end, and would mark you as being outside the boundaries of righteousness.

Ironically and predictably, women who love beautiful things found other ways to adorn themselves acceptably within the confines of the way our church culture interpreted 1 Timothy 2:9. My mom wore beautiful brooches, some with gold and precious stones in them. Another missionary woman doctor who worked near the opal mines in New Guinea gave my mom a massive, breathtakingly beautiful green-blue opal (one I hope to inherit someday) set in a gold brooch. My mom wore that brooch, or a cameo brooch, or a brooch with pearls in it, or a scarf clip that was decorative and lovely. And there were other inconsistencies: someone of means who would not be comfortable with his wife wearing a pearl necklace might wear a Rolex watch. Or a woman could get away with a watch that had jewelry-ish decorations on it because it was functional. I once heard someone say, with significant sass, that if the jewelry touched your skin it was not okay, but if it only touched the fabric of your clothes, you were good to go. And others joked that when we get to heaven everyone else will know us by the watches in our crowns--making the gold circlet okay because it is also functional.

And I shake my head in disbelief.

Since I'm in a denomination that is worldwide, and different regions don't talk to one another enough to get everyone on the same page, and thus there are lifestyle differences. And since I travel quite a lot, I get to see a variety of interpretations of the verses from 1 Timothy. I was surprised when I took a year off college to work at a school in Finland, to find that necklaces and rings were perfectly acceptable, but the school staff had long discussions in faculty meeting about girls who were wearing earrings. I asked, "How is it that other jewelry is okay, but earrings are not?" No teacher had an answer for me, but later in the day when I dropped by the music teacher's apartment for something, she said to me, "I've been thinking about your question. The problem with earrings is that you have to mutilate your body in order to wear them." Oh. I see.

And I walked away from there shaking my head in disbelief.

One outcome of not being able to wear rings was that people in the church of my childhood simply did not wear wedding rings. Pastors would tell new converts that the wedding rings had to come off before they could be baptized. (See? I told you that readers would think my tribe was nuts.) For Marguerite, my parents' neighbor across the street, that was the last straw. She would not take her wedding ring off and just kept coming to church with it on, but didn't become a member.

Frankly, the whole "no-rings" thing really irritated me. I was a single young adult working in an environment where there were quite a few nice men who were part of my church, and I couldn't tell if they were just married men being friendly, or if they were actually single and showing some interest. "If men would just do us the courtesy of wearing wedding rings," I stormed to my single friends, "we wouldn't have to play a guessing game as to their availability."

And then, to add insult to injury, some high-up committee decided that wedding rings were okay. How they decided it, I don't know. Perhaps they were just capitulating to the fact that those liberal California church members were already doing it. But at that point, quite simply, Marguerite said "Okay," and joined the church with no grudges held.

And I shake my head in disbelief.

So now I'm living in that liberal land of California again. It's nice here. No one has a thing against wearing jewelry, even in the church context. I wear my pieces of jewelry when I'm away from work. My work does not have an anti-jewelry policy, but because my church culture at large is still in a state of flux, and because my area of the university serves a large population of denominational teachers--some of whom live and work in conservative areas of the western U.S.--, and because I don't see any point in offending or distracting the more conservative teachers, I don't wear jewelry to work except for my engagement and wedding rings. It takes summoning up all the maturity I might have to do it (you know those verses in the New Testament about doing something for the sake of the weaker brother?). But I think it's probably the better part of wisdom, if I want to be heard and respected by all, and to keep my place at the table of national-level influencers in denominational education.

And at those last two sentences, I shake my head in disbelief.

That big gorgeous green-blue opal brooch, though? I intend to wear that to work or even a national-level denominational committee, someday.

Wounded

My brother and me in Rome, early 1975

Every kid, I suppose, has an "injury story" of some sort, the kind that puts little tendrils into one's life tale and contributes to one's identity. My husband tells one about the time he shot himself in the head with an arrow. (It's a good story.) One of my best friends spent weeks in a hospital as a two-year old, surviving burns from being scalded by hot water in a bathtub when her mom's attention had turned elsewhere at the wrong moment. Another best friend walks with a cane to this day because her hip is malformed, the outcome of an infection resulting from a childhood immunization administered in India with a dirty needle.

I have written about my "defining injury" here, but having a somewhat impulsive personality, I have collected some other memorable injuries, as well.

Torrential downpours are typical in the hot afternoons of the rainy season on my home island of Penang, Malaysia. The water has to go somewhere, and thus the city developed a system of drains, most of them open, along the sides of houses and streets. The drains by our house were little shallow ones that caught the runoff from the roofs and channeled it away to the larger drains. Every now and then I'd see a shrew scuttle down the open drain and dodge into a pipe leading to a downspout. (Nasty little guys, those shrews.) And every now and then one of the hospital gardeners would come along with a long-handled stiff brush, walking along and scrubbing the drains so that the black-and-green greepsch wouldn't build up into a thick slime.

People weren't safety-obsessed back in those days, so the drains remained open, easy to unplug and easy to clean. As we ran around playing we knew when to hop across the drain. If you tripped and fell by a drain near the house, you were just a klutz who wasn't looking where they were going. Pay attention next time, kid.

But down by the main road in front of the mission hospital there were deeper open drains. I remember them being about 2 feet deep or more, built that way so as to carry away all the accumulated water from our little shallow drains that emptied into them. Alongside the deeper drain was a paved pathway for pedestrians. We didn't happen to go down there very often, so while we were aware the drain was there, we weren't altogether familiar with the margins we needed to keep when walking along it. And the open drain was perhaps too wide to jump, so it didn't offer the same ease of the ones by our houses.

Being kids and liking to goof off, we were horsing around one day by the big drain when I was in 7th grade. We'd gotten big enough to hop across if we put some energy into the jump, and the risk made it fun for the lads to try. I tried it, too, but I'm not as good a jumper. On the way down--short of my goal--my shin caught the cement edge of the drain, leaving a big gash that dug down to my leg bone. I walked into the hospital crying, shin bleeding enthusiastically, and got cleaned up by one of the nurses. There was no talk of stitches, just a nice fat pad of sterile gauze over the wound and taped down.

I probably wouldn't remember my injury so well except that we were due to leave shortly to Europe and the United States for furlough. Had we stayed home in Malaysia I would have left the wound open to the air and it would have healed quickly. But it was winter in the northern climes, and I had to wear panty hose plus wool pants (where do you buy wool pants in Malaysia?) to stay warm enough as we dropped into Italy to get a look at the Vatican on our way "back" to the U.S.

Rome fascinated me. Since my dad was not along on this trip, my mom signed us up for guided tours. That's when I learned the value of a professional tour guide--so much history and culture to be learned. It was absolutely marvelous, and I soaked it up!

But there was my wounded leg to distract me in Rome. I didn't have fresh bandages along, so my hose continually scraped across my wound as we walked the cobblestones and marble floors of the old historic spots. One of my forever-etched memories of Rome, besides the Sistine chapel, the Parthenon, and the Coliseum, is that of undressing in the hotel room every night and trying to peel my hose out of the pus-encrusted scab on my leg.

There's probably some deeper metaphor in that, but I don't know what it would be. Maybe that when you leave a wound open rather than covering it up, it's going to heal a little better? Some of my readers have more expertise in these things than I.

Old Age: An Evening with My Parents

My parents on their 56th anniversary in June

Last night I walked into the TV room in the Memory Care section of the assisted living where my parents reside. There they were, just the two of them watching a movie. I'd been out of town for the long weekend, and I'd missed them.

My dad sat beside my mom, their chairs about two feet apart, their walkers parked in front of them as if they needed to be ready to rev up and go at any moment. His head was bowed, his hands folded with fingers intertwined in front of his chest, and he was snoozing.

My mother looked up, and as she watched me walk in there wasn't a glint of recognition in her eyes. Just her mouth open as she looked at me and tried to place me. I drew up a chair beside her and took her hand.

"How's my mama?" Usually that would bring a smile to her face.

She paused a moment and then replied tentatively, still not recognizing me. "She's fine."

My heart sank as I drew closer to her and smiled. "Well, you're my mama and I'm very glad to see you," I said. She was still looking at me in wonderment...as in, "wonder"-ment. Still trying to place me. "What are you watching?" I asked, seeing the biblical characters on the screen. Some lady was dying and disciples were gathered around her.

Mama didn't respond.

"Do you know what the story is?" I asked again.

She still didn't respond.

"Well, it looks like a Bible story," I said, letting her off the hook. We sat for a minute, me holding her hand, both of us watching.

Valerie the Caregiver beckoned to me from the hallway, and I rose to go talk with her.

"She's not had her evening Xanax," Valerie said. "She wouldn't take her blood pressure medication either."

"Has she been difficult?" I asked.

"No. She just sat right here on her walker seat this afternoon and slept, but she wouldn't eat and she wouldn't go anywhere else. And when it was time for her supper this evening she wouldn't eat."

"Do you want me to get her to take her meds?" I asked.

"Well, maybe her blood pressure medication," Valerie said. "Do you think she should take her Xanax?"

She was asking me? I don't know. They know more about giving meds than I do. Xanax is PRN, though. "If she's not being obstinate," I said, "She probably doesn't need it."

"No," said Valerie.

"Well, maybe bring me her blood pressure pill, and I'll get her to take it," I said, and went back to sit with my parents while Valerie headed down the hall to the meds room.

I moved my chair to the other side of my mom, between her and my dad, and gave my dad a kiss on the cheek. "Hi, Daddy," I said, putting an arm across the back of his shoulders.

He came to. "Oh, hello," he said. "Aren't you back early from your vacation?"

"I just came back. My grandkids got picked up by their parents, and then I came straight over to see you."

"Oh, and did you have a nice time?"

"Yes, I did. Looks like Mama didn't have a great day though?" I asked. I glanced over at Mama. She didn't show any interest in what we were talking about as she continued watching the TV.

"She's been worse most of the time since you left," Daddy said. "She doesn't talk much, and she yells at the caregivers to 'Get out!' But I guess they are specialists in dealing with people like that."

"Yes," I said. "They don't let it bother them." Both my dad and I have had a hard time with the embarrassment that comes when my mom does things that are socially unacceptable and rude. "That's her Alzheimer's talking," I keep saying by way of reminder to my dad and myself. But we apologize to the caregivers anyhow.

"This morning she wouldn't leave the breakfast table," said my dad quietly. "She wouldn't move, and they needed to set up the tablecloths for lunch. I couldn't help. I've been having more pain." He pointed out that this was new pain--ulnar pain that burned in the outside edge of his palms right down to his fingertips. When you have your own pain, you can't tend another person's pain.

"Oh dear," I said. Valerie came into the TV room with the blood pressure pill in a little paper cup, and a plastic clear cup of water. She handed them to me.

"Mama," I said. "Here's a blood pressure pill for you." My mom looked suspiciously at it and clamped her lips together. "You need to take this to keep your blood pressure in a healthy spot," I added. "You've had much better blood pressure since you started taking these little guys. Come on, can I help you?"

Mama resisted, and looked mad. I brought the paper cup with the pill up toward her lips and said, "Ahh pahk!" They're the Thai words my mom used to say to me when I was a toddler and she was feeding me. "Ahh pahk." Open your mouth. It worked like a charm. Her mouth opened, I popped the pill in and handed her the cup of water. She slowly raised the cup, s-l-o-w-l-y, tipping it as she lifted it so the water was in danger of spilling down her dress. I caught her hand and helped her raise the cup to her lips. She drank and then made a bitter, bitter face.

"Taste nasty?" I asked, grinning. She screwed up her face worse. "Here, drink more water," I said, helping her lift the cup again. She drank until it was gone. "It's good for you to stay hydrated, Mama," I said. She smiled a little, seeming to warm to my interest in her well-being. And she went back to watching TV.

I turned to my dad. "I'm sorry, Daddy," I said. "It must be hard for you to watch her go downhill."

He didn't respond to that, but started telling me about how he tried to explain to her that the workers mean well and that she should treat them a little more nicely. With my dad life is all reason and system. As my parents both falter he copes with her disease by trying to explain to her logically how to deal with life. These are his tools, and he has no other ones. He has never once acknowledged that it's painful to see his wife forget who he is, to see her personality change; to watch her slowly lose her mind, her ability to swallow at times, her ability to take care of herself, her ability to control her bodily functions. Never once.

The movie had ended. "Full of Grace," it was called, about the mother of Jesus. My dad pointed out that the caregivers haven't figured out that Catholic movies don't connect with them, but also generously added that the movies are interesting. The Netflix movie selection screen glowed, frozen, in the dimness of the room as we talked.

We got up and made our way down the hall to my mom's room. My dad's room is right across the hall from her; they let him live in Memory Care so that my parents can continue to be together, at least until Memory Care fills up and they need his room. I think it will be awhile.

Instead of calling on Valerie the Caregiver, I got my mom bathroomed, nightgowned and into bed as my act of love for her. As she tried to lie back in bed and her left leg muscle spasmed, and she howled in pain. She's always been sensitive, but it's gotten worse with her Alzheimer's. I waited a bit for it to pass, and we tried again, this time successfully although she was still groaning. I kissed her on the cheek and told her she is a good mom. She just looked at me.

I turned to tell my dad, who was sitting on the couch next to my mom's bed and snoozing again, "You can come kiss her goodnight." I knew it would start his evening good-night ritual. He raised his head, grinned and told me that last night he kissed her goodnight three times--twice when she got in bed, and then he'd come back in the middle of the night to give her another kiss. "But I don't think she remembered, today," he said.

"Well, the important thing is that she's happy when you do it," I told him.

He pushed himself slowly up from the couch and wobbled over to kiss Mama in her single bed where she has slept for the last year, separate from him because of the discomfort caused by her incontinence. She's been lonely, but it had gotten to be too much for him, waking up in a wet bed several times a week. He was hyper-aware at first of how people would judge them, sleeping in separate beds, but he seems to not worry about that anymore; his own mind is starting to slip, and with it his social concerns.

My dad leaned down and kissed his wife goodnight.

She was already asleep.

~~~

My dad wanted to walk me to the door. We made our way slowly out of Memory Care (he has the code to the door) and down the hall toward the entry doors, locked earlier in the evening.

"I don't think I'll sleep very well tonight," he told me. "I never do. I can fall asleep sitting up, but I can't sleep lying down." My dad has always had a significant sleep disorder, no doubt exacerbated by his boyhood in Holland under the Nazi occupation as well as violent trauma experienced when he was in the navy. The nights are long, and he has always spent them restless.

"Well," I said lightly, unwilling to take on a counselor role when I was so tired, myself, "maybe you should sit up on the couch all night and sleep well." 

He smiled. It's how we banter.

I hugged him goodnight at the door and planted a kiss on his cheek. "I love you, Daddy." And I headed out the door to the car where it was parked in front of the dining room.

As I sat in the car and texted my husband that I was headed home, I glanced up through the windows and saw my dad making his way slowly with his walker back past the open door of the dining room. He paused, peered out toward where the car was parked, no doubt saw his own bent-over reflection, and then proceeded on and out of sight.

And I felt prickles behind my eyes and a huge lump in my throat.

Grudges, Part V: Seeing Through

Image from here, text added

My husband used to be the principal of a boarding high school in Hawaii. He once told me of walking across campus in the afternoon and seeing a female student sitting in the doorway of the gym, which had all its doors ajar to the mild breezes outside. As he glanced at the student, she suddenly caught his attention, he said, and it was like he could see right through her exterior and into her soul. I've heard that anecdote from my husband several times over the years, and have found that when I try, I too can look past the exterior of a person and catch a glimpse of their soul.

Parenthetically: My theology is not one that believes the soul can be separated from the body. When one lives, the other lives; and one dies, the other dies. But I do believe that there is an inner spark which God puts there and which grows with life and human development: the character and personality of a person. The inner spark is something we know and love, and that is what I refer to as "soul." We can love it because we are made in the image of God, who is Love. Sidebar over.

A teenage artist named Shea did an art experiment a few years ago that has caught fire: the "You're Beautiful" experiment. She set up a camera and posed people in front of it, and then told them, "I'm taking pictures of things I find beautiful." The video and the stills are both striking. Her assessment of people as "beautiful" actually makes them so. It's like a window opens and you can see their souls, lovely, vulnerable and intensely personal. The copycat video experiments posted to YouTube are just as striking and touching.

Why do I talk about seeing a soul? Because for me that has been the only way to lay down a grudge. Somewhere behind the facade of that person who has caused me pain, is a soul. I don't always get the story of the person, but I have gathered bits and pieces often enough to know that inside a person who offends, is someone whose soul has been deeply scarred and shaped by events that have enabled them to turn and hurt others. Maybe it's my imagination, but those who have been the most hurtful to me seem to have been making it from one day to the next with either very warped and twisted souls, or very callused souls. Either way, twists or calluses are both caused by trauma.

Does that devalue the importance of my hurt at their hands? Not at all.

My dad taught me in my teenage years, until I could repeat it perfectly, to say to myself, "Never allow yourself to believe that anyone is deliberately trying to hurt you." Saying this has been a way to open my own eyes to what is happening in the other person's soul. They may actually be trying to hurt me, in fact. It's a human reaction to strike back when struck. Or to lash out as a way of self-protection, much as I yelled at two threatening dogs that accosted me on my walk in the wee hours of this morning. Both of those, however, are reactions that arise from fear, and fear comes from prior hurt.

So here's my own struggle with grudge-holding: I spent eleven long years working in an institution where a teacher publicly and privately lashed out at me, accused me, denigrated me, and questioned my efficacy and fit for my job ... any time he had an opportunity. To complicate matters, he had once been my schoolmate. When such a person possesses talent, high intelligence, cleverness ...and tenure, there's not a whole lot you can do. Frankly, I deliberately chose to do nothing reactive, hard as that was for me, solely because of my desire to be like Jesus. But I didn't walk away without baggage. I have fought over and over with the grudge that rises up and tries to lay eggs in my nest as I remember the accumulated memories of those eleven years and how beaten down I felt.

Yet I always come back to this man's soul, and when I do, the questions arise: What makes a person so vicious? Why did he have such deep-rooted convictions that I was out to make his life miserable, and thus he must strike back over and over? How deeply must he have been hurt at some earlier time of life! What kinds of hurts would make him so awful to me and to other authority figures in his life? How did he arrive at the conclusions that an organization works on an economy of doing favors and trading in on emotional debts owed? What kind of family system taught him to say such insidious, mean-hearted things with such calm and iciness?

While I was living with the situation I looked through to this man's soul with as much objectivity as I could muster, and saw it to be poisonous and grimy on the side he showed to some of us, yet bright and winsome and funny to others. Jekyll and Hyde, callus and vulnerability, brilliance and evil, scarred and bleeding on one side but brandishing a dagger on the other side with blood from the backs of others dripping off of it. Such a mix of darkness and light. Yet somewhere deep at his core, I realized, was a child who was hurt and still weeping. I wish I could say I saw this on my own, but I believe it was insight coming as an answer to heartfelt prayer.

That kind of effort, "seeing through" until you gather the picture of someone's soul, makes it impossible to hold onto a grudge. Seeing a soul forces me to lay down my anger, at least for a while if not forever. It may not be your solution to letting go, but it's the one thing that works for me. 

Really look at the offender. Be willing to see him or her with supernatural eyes and perceive something beyond flesh and bone and hatefulness.

This brings me to the endpoint, thus far, of my reflections on grudge-holding. I continue to ponder the ways in which grudge-holding ties us down, walls us off, and limits our joy in life. Grudge-holding breaks friendships and sours marriages, shadows the workplace and shackles organizations, starts internal wars and produces interpersonal strife. I think that laying a grudge down is bigger than just forgiving. It's more than acknowledging the hurt but choosing not to suffer. It's more than letting it go simply for your own health and well-being. It's a willingness to see through, to see beyond, to see beauty and vulnerability somewhere in the offender and to choose to protect that little bit of God's image in the person. And oh boy, is that ever a tough job!

Interested in your thoughts.

Grudges, Part IV: Choosing to not suffer

Photo from here

Two descriptors that I think characterize the nature of grudge holding ("a persistent feeling of ill will or resentment resulting from a past insult or injury") are suffering, and narrowed vision. Let me take those two characteristics one by one.

The whole focus of a grudge is that you have been hurt, and you deliberately nurse that hurt. Think of the meaning of the word "nurse." A nursing baby draws life-giving nourishment from its mother. Similarly, a grudge draws in its nourishment because the person holding it is cradling it, feeding it, growing it by supplying it with their own life forces. Nursing a grudge means making that past insult or injury a part of yourself, making it an extension of you. 

But why do that? After all, the rehearsal of a past insult or injury only serves to extend it. If it's a small offense, it grows bigger. If it was a brief hurt, it only lengthens.

My husband and I walk and talk together several times a week, and he said something a week or so ago that startled me: "We all get hurt by others, but it is our choice whether or not to suffer."

We all get hurt by others, but it is our choice whether or not to suffer.

When we let go of harm that has done to us by someone else, we choose to not be harmed over and over and over again by that person. Every. Single. Time. We. Remember. We refuse to let them make us suffer. We move on, choose a different life. Instead of nursing a grudge and being repeatedly reinjured as we rehearse it, you and I have the power to chose freedom from that original injury done. Easier said than done, I know, but we DO have the choice.

###

I was in Denver yesterday for a university alumni gathering, and I noticed and reveled in the big sky there. When you stand outside on the prairie with big huge fluffy clouds scudding across the blue, blue expanse of the heavens, it's a feeling all its own. Your heart grows bigger. You know in your bones your own little-but-free place in this universe. And yet anything is possible. 

That's how it feels to let go of a grudge. There's something about rehearsing a perceived injury that feels like dark, foreboding mountains closing in on all sides. Your inner gaze narrows, focuses on every tiny feature of that injury that you felt so keenly, and in that hyperfocus your vision is blocked from seeing other possibilities, from seeing the goodness of the great big universe around you that can diminish and even erase the size of that hurt that seemed so big.

Get rid of the closeup focus! Let the mountains flatten out and the sky become big and blue overhead, and let things take their rightful perspective for a wide-open life of freedom. Your freedom. You may have been injured, but you can choose not to suffer.

(to be continued)

Grudges, Part III: The research

In the previous post I reviewed the five instances or stories in which the Bible writers highlight the negative outcomes of grudge-holding. In this post I'd like to look at current research.

Psychology has recently turned its attention to some of the "softer inquiries" that researchers used to scorn: happiness, forgiveness, even spirituality (gasp!). Grudges fit right in with those newer areas of intellectual curiosity. Considering the damage done by grudge-holding, it's no surprise that there's a specific line of inquiry into the effects of hanging on to a grudge. It's related to the Forgiveness research, but I think it carves out its own little niche.

Researchers in Singapore conducted a fascinating study in which they asked people to recall a situation for which they still held a grudge against their offender. Then they were asked to estimate the angle of slopes depicted in various photographs. (The idea was to bring to mind the task of climbing a steep hill.) The people who had not let go of grudges estimated the slopes to be steeper than those who had let go of grudges. Researchers described it as similar to wearing "emotional backpacks," like real backpacks that make an upward trail seem steeper in real life. And the researchers went further in their exploration: despite controlling for other factors such as fitness, they found that people who thought about their grudges could not jump as high as those who had forgiven their offenders. The Singapore researchers concluded that holding a grudge is actually physically taxing to a person, limiting their abilities.

Medical researchers have also found indications of the chemical effects of grudge-holding. Recent findings are well represented in a 2012 study by McCulloch and Tabak which indicates that holding a grudge increases the production of the stress hormone cortisol, and inhibits the production of oxytocin, the "love hormone." Well, of course. But those hormones also affect our health. Too much cortisol has a negative effect on a person's weight, causes inflammation, depresses the immune function and raises the risk of chronic disease. Additionally, grudge-holding has been linked to an increased risk of cardiovascular disease, pain disorders and stomach ulcers.

Somewhere in the past year I spotted a study reported somewhere, saying that people who held grudges were more likely to experience dementia in old age, but I can't find that study now. Nevertheless, that concept intrigues me greatly. Could choosing to forgive and let go improve your chances for preserving mental functions? Well, let's follow the logic. If holding grudges raises cortisol, and and higher cortisol levels are related to weight problems and cardiovascular disease, and those are both correlated with an increased risk of dementia, it seems to all connect. But short of finding a direct link in the research, I can't reference a study in which a connection between grudge-holding and dementia has been indicated...yet.

The point is, holding a grudge is not only destructive in human relationships. Holding a grudge is not only seen by Bible writers as a dynamic that leads to no good whatsoever. It's also clearly indicated in scientific research as having a significant negative effect on both your physical and mental health.

(to be continued)