When God's Call Requires Change

The Curse of the Comfortable Life

Melanie did not have an easy life.  Her parents were passionate and impulsive, which sometimes meant laughter and excitement, but more it often manifested itself in screaming fights, and moving, and periods of fearful uncertainty.  As a result, she grew into a woman who deliberately contradicted everything about them.  She was gentle and soft, she never raised her voice, and she agonized over the tiniest decisions to the point of making herself sick.

Only one decision came easy to her: marrying Rob.

Rob was not a man in the way that her father was.  If the toilet was clogged, Rob was useless.  It also fell to Melanie to roll up the newspaper and smash the wasps that continually found their way into the apartment through a gap near the dryer vent which, it never occurred to Rob to repair.  But that didn't matter to Melanie because he was a man in the way that it mattered to her.  He would protect her with his life, and nearly did one night when they were visiting friends downtown.  Perhaps the incident wouldn't have come to that but Rob didn't back down.  The next day he asked her to marry him and she said yes before he got the question out.

Rob didn't have much luck finding a job.  He tried working in sales and hated it.  He had moderate success in IT but was laid off.  In a complete departure, he worked in landscaping for a year and didn't mind it but couldn't see supporting a family that way.  Though Melanie had always wanted children (and still did) she asked one night how Rob felt about nursing school.  "If that's what you want to do," he had said with a shrug and she thought, perhaps, he was a little bit relieved.

She took her time, researching, deliberating, weighing each program, predicting how it would fit into her life, deciding which one would make her happiest.  When she finally selected one, she found it to be much harder than anticipated.  But the day came when she sat on a cushioned stool in front of a real live patient for clinicals, the smell of latex in the air, a throbbing purple vein before her, and she reached down and found the magic balance between cold detachment and warm compassion.  She plunged the hollow needle into the vein and watched as the tube filled with dark blood.  Her patient had said, "That wasn't so bad," and she knew she was born to do this.

It didn't freak her out when Rob came to her one day and said he wanted to enlist in the Army.  She knew that it would be a long process, if it actually happened (which she doubted), and that she would have plenty of time to accomplish her goals, so she told him to go ahead and talk to the recruiter.  It couldn't hurt to ask questions.

He burst through the door of their apartment that same afternoon, flush with excitement, a thick packet of papers in his hand, and said, "They want me on a bus to Fort Sill in three weeks."  He spoke rapidly, breathlessly, telling her the unusual circumstances of his immediate ship date but she didn't hear any of it after he said, "We'll be at our first duty station in four months."   He put his hands on her hips and did a little suggestive dance and said, "You'll be playing the little Army wife in no time."

She shoved him away and said, "You expect me to be happy about this?  What about my career?  I've worked so hard for this and I'm supposed to just throw the last eighteen months in the garbage?"

They didn't speak for two days. 

After that, Rob was angry and she was sorry because he had a right to be.  Two years ago, she was as desperate as he was for him to have a good job so that they could have a good life.  She would have followed him with no regrets.  But now she was creating her own good life and she was so close to the finish line.  There was such promise ahead if she stuck to the nursing program, and what could Rob promise?  A tiny house on post with old cabinets and an endless job search for her, an under-qualified woman who would never, ever finish anything she started because she would have to follow him wherever he went?

When so much time had passed that they began to feel that they were wasting what little time they had left, she wiped her eyes and said, "I love you, Rob, but I need to stay here and finish what I've started."

Rob shipped out and Melanie got her nursing degree.  She landed the job she'd always wanted.  She stayed faithful to Rob and he to her despite the distance.  This was not exactly the life she planned but she was making it work and that little part of her that craved stable, predictable life was happy enough.  Rob didn't hold it against her.  He understood.  He always held out hope that she would give up her version of a good life for the one he promised.

This is a story that I've seen played out many times.  Sometimes it ends badly but sometimes, like with Rob and Melanie, the end is not necessarily bad, but you get the feeling that it could have been better, don't you?

I think that's how we are so often when God has called us to something that has the promise of greatness but the risk is just too big and we're just too comfortable where we're at.  There is a story in Numbers in which the Israelites are about to go into the Promised Land.  It's been 40 years since they left Egypt and now all they have to do is muster the courage to cross the Jordan and fight to obtain it.  They've waited their whole lives for this, for the "land of milk and honey," for God to make good on what He promised their parents.  There are good things, finally, to come for them. 

But three tribes, Rueben, Gad, and the half tribe Manasseh beg Moses to let them stay where they are.  They've built up their livestock, and the land they're on now is good enough, and, well, they just don't want to cross the Jordan right now.  Things are going ok for them, so why take the risk?  Moses is initially furious with them and thinks they are being unfaithful but they assure him they are not.  They pledge their young fighting men to go when duty calls but they say, "We simply want to build pens for our livestock." 

If they are willing to accept this portion of land instead of the one that is waiting for them in the Promised Land (Numbers 32:16-19), what is left for Moses (and God) but to say, "Fine.  If this is what you want, I'm not going to drag you kicking and screaming.  The choice of whether or not to enter into God's will is ultimately up to you." 

This is the question we have to ask when we have made our choices and we are satisfied with our lives the way we have ordered them: Am I shrinking from potentially great things because of the risk that stands in the way?  Have I ever led my family to shun comforts in favor of the hard work of obtaining promises seen from a distance?

We are at such a disadvantage as Americans who "create our own destiny" and amass wealth that tricks us into thinking our lives are just fine, thank you very much.  When you're settling in at the end of a comfortable day, looking ahead at another comfortable day tomorrow, and the next day and the next, and hoping that it just goes on this way for 30 years so nothing ever gets uncomfortable, do you ever wonder what you might be missing?  I promise you, God does, for He did not call you to a life of fear and timidity.

The Big D: Countdown to the end

12 September
Every day that passes gets me closer to the end of this.  Until then, I just continue to carry on and stay active, putting things on the calendar and taking care of things that need taking care of but I think this last little bit is going to feel like the longest of the whole deployment.

I have a handful of friends whose husbands just returned in the last week or so and I'm not going to lie to you. It is so hard to see them with their husbands. I had to watch a friend and her family sit in front of me at church last Sunday and their little boy (who looks SOOO much like his daddy, who I had never seen before) was crawling all over him, clinging to him and whispering in his ear, and I knew how happy they were because I watched her cry, 10 days before his return, overwhelmed by the absence they had endured and the excitement of him finally coming home. But there I was, still alone and fighting the urge to be insanely envious of her. In those moments, it feels like I still have SO LONG to wait!

There are so many of those hard moments when it feels like this separation will never end, and maybe it even feels like the cost of this life is just too great.  I've heard from several women who are struggling and I'm the kind of person who says we have to be master of our emotions and turn to something that encourages us.

I happen to be reading "Bonhoeffer," right now, a book about a German pastor who stood up to Hitler in the years leading up to WWII and was arrested and executed for his part in an assassination attempt. He spent 18 months in prison before being executed by the Nazis but during those long months he was permitted to write letters and he had a fiancé named Marie who received many of them. Something he said to her in one of his letters has encouraged me and I go to it in my mind every time I want to feel sorry for myself or I wonder if this is all worth it:

"No, you needn't have a moment's worry--I'm not worried either. You do, of course, know from the little we've said to each other that danger exists not only out there [on the battlefronts] but here at home as well, sometimes rather less so, sometimes rather more. What man of today has the right to shun it and shrink from it? And what woman of today should not share it, however gladly the man would relieve her of that burden? And how indescribably happy it makes the man if the woman he loves stands by him with courage, patience , and above all--prayer." Dietrich Bonhoeffer

I want to encourage you who are struggling. The separation will end, the hard moments will pass, and when you are reunited, the painful memories will fade. I don't say this as an expert because I am still living through it. I say it because I believe it will happen. Be courageous, have patience, and pray.  If all else fails...

    

Delivered

Evelyn settled herself into the cushioned chair, set her purse on the floor, and used her orthotics-clad foot to slide it under her seat.  There were 20 or 30 chairs in this small, shadowy room and thanks to the thoughtful design of stadium seating, the spectators would get a great view.  As if they had come here to watch a movie or a ball game and not to watch somebody die.

There was an armed guard standing in the corner, wearing a baseball cap of all things (the casualization of society, she called this), watching people trickle in.  There were a few she figured were reporters.  Who else would want to memorialize this event with a yellow legal pad and a ballpoint pen?  Some faces she recognized from the trial as families of the victims.  One of them was a victim.  Evelyn tried not to look at her.  She sat two seats away and one row down.  The woman had been shot and raped and left to die but somehow survived.  Her testimony at the trial was horrific and is probably what convinced the jury to vote unanimously for death.  In a perverted sort of way that Evelyn would have denied if anyone had asked her about it, she hoped the woman got some kind of satisfaction out of today.  Then at least one good thing would come out of her son's life.

She kept her eyes on the window in front of her and wondered if it was a one-way glass.  Maybe Richard wouldn't even know she was here.  Maybe it was best that way.  She thought of him as a boy and how he would stick out his hand, and wave a big goofy wave, and say, "Hi, Mom!" when he saw her, the way he did when she was 15 minutes late picking him up from school once.  He was the only student left and stood on the sidewalk with a teacher who lifted her watch and stared at it when Evelyn arrived.  Richard never doubted that she would be there for him eventually.  She hadn't once come to visit him in prison.  

Time had stopped for her around the time he was convicted 11 years ago.  She knew intellectually that he was no longer a boy and that a grown man of 29 would walk through the door on the other side of that glass, but she preferred to live in her memories, a time of promises made, before she knew they wouldn't come to pass.  Not in Richard's lifetime anyway.

The door to the room beyond the glass opened and Richard walked through in his baggy orange jumper, hands behind his back, followed by a physician and a man in a suit.  Richard said, "You want me to sit?"  Evelyn was shocked she could hear voices.  She thought it would be sound proof and panicked a bit at what she might hear in his last moments.  Despite everything, she didn't want to hear him suffer.  The man in the suit told him not to sit just yet and took the handcuffs off.  He bumped Richard lightly as he moved around him in the small space and Evelyn heard her son's voice again saying, "Pardon me," as he rubbed his wrists.

They nudged Richard toward a gurney in the center of the room and sat him down on a plastic green mattress and hooked him up to a heartrate monitor, which seemed to her like a waste.  Thin black velcro straps dangled limp from the sides of the bed, jostling with Richard's weight in a grotesque little dance. 

Richard was calm.  More calm than she'd ever seen him, though to be fair, the last time they were together he was on drugs.  For six excruciating years, his eyes were either dilated and darting all over the place or glazed over, hollow and sunken.  Now they were clear and blue.  His face was clean shaven.  He looked so...healthy.  There wasn't even a tremor in his hand as he stretched his arm out to have the inside of his elbow swabbed with alcohol by the physician, another waste of time it seemed to her, and have an IV started.  

He laid down and inched his body up the mattress a bit to position his head on the little white pillow.  The man in the suit fastened the velcro around Richard's arms and legs.  He mumbled something she couldn't hear and Richard looked up at him and nodded.  She thought Richard would be scared but he wasn't.  He was just expectant, as if he was being strapped into a ride at an amusement park and had just been asked by the bored, sweaty, zit-plagued employee if the straps were tight enough.  "Enjoy the ride," the teenaged boy would say, and it would have been vaguely appropriate here but that's not what the man said.  He asked Richard if he had any last words.  Richard stared unblinking at the ceiling and said, "Life is death, death is life. I hope that someday this absurdity that humanity has come to will come to an end.  Life is too short. I hope anyone that has negative energy towards me will resolve that.  Life is too short to harbor feelings of hatred and anger. That's it, Warden."

Evelyn gripped the arms of her chair.  It was all she could do to keep herself from standing up and facing the room and giving a proper statement for Richard.  She wanted them to know that he was sorry for killing his own brother with a 20-gauge shotgun.  He was sorry for shooting those two other women, raping one of them, and leaving them all for dead.  He had to be.  She wasn't mother to a monster. 

She labored for 26 hours to bring Richard into the world.  His head was stuck for so long in the birth canal, when he finally emerged it was misshapen and lopsided and covered in meconium.  His nose never did quite straighten out but she loved him even more for it.  "Look what we did!" she had whispered excitedly to her husband in the dark early morning hours after his birth.  "This is the one.  Our deliverer," she said, welling with pride over her beautiful boy.  He was born with the promise of greatness and he could get Evelyn back home where she belonged.  She didn't deserve to go back after what she had done but the promise had been made and she trusted that it would be kept.  Richard would save them all.

She reminded him of it often, even when he began resenting her for it.  The summer Richard turned 12 was when her faith in him began to waver.  He'd been in trouble more than he was out of it and she stood at the stove, stirring a pot of pasta and letting him have it.  In her mind, she liked to see herself as June Cleaver with her apron, flats, and pearls, in control of every situation, telling him why he needed to stop this behavior and come to his senses.  "We're all depending on you, Richard.  Don't forget that."  But in reality, she was barefoot, uncombed, exhausted, stressed to the point of sickness, and the pasta water had boiled over, hissing and bubbling, scorching the glass stove top. 

"I don't give a (the foulest expletive in the English language, in her opinion) about the promise!" Richard shouted.  Her fingers froze, just short of the knob to turn the heat down, and she stood like a statue while he railed at her.  "Andy never gets this bull(another vile expletive that makes her cringe to remember).  Why don't you do this to Andy?  You leave Andy alone and you're always on my back!"  Of course that was peppered with proclamations of hating her and wishing she was dead, but that wasn't what haunted Evelyn about the exchange.  Later, she scrubbed furiously at the stovetop with her brillo and Softscrub, stunned that he was jealous of Andy.  If anyone had a reason to resent her, it was Andy, who was always being overlooked and disregarded in favor of Richard. She didn't mean for it to be like that but so much was at stake for Richard and Andy just...was.  Andy, eternally sweet Andy, never held it against her.  He loved everyone and did everything that was asked of him without complaint.  He was probably professing his love for his brother right up until Richard shot him.   

Evelyn was constantly going over the years leading up to that nightmare in her mind, redoing scenes in her imagination that might have changed the trajectory, if only she would have known what Richard was capable of.  One scene she would have like to do over was the evening her husband had been working late in the fields.  Richard approached him and demanded to be paid for his labor.  His father laughed in his face and told him his labor was unacceptable, and that it took a lot of nerve to walk up to him in this field with his hand out, as if he owed Richard something.  Richard faunched and fumed and sputtered horrible things about hating his father then too. 

Evelyn would have gone beyond praying if she had another chance at that night.  She would have begged and pleaded with him, disgracing herself if need be, to get him to return to his father with a contrite and humble heart, knowing her husband would never turn him away.  Nothing would have worked though; she knew that now.  Richard's resentment morphed into an all-consuming bitterness.  The whole family walked on eggshells around him.  His anger bubbled to the surface any time he didn't get his way.  Drugs entered their house.  Richard dropped out of high school.  A stolen car led to jail, then probation.  Finally, the unthinkable in a field 16 miles outside town.  An act so heinous, Evelyn refused to believe it until she watched Richard in the courtroom, cold and remorseless, not denying that he had done it.

Richard came back to the house after killing Andy to sleep off a drug-induced high.  He woke up famished, drank half of a gallon of milk while he stood in front of the open refrigerator, and kissed Evelyn on the top of her head before walking out the door to take care of his "business," which she now knew was to pay off a drug dealer with money from an earlier robbery.

She shuddered in her seat, remembering that kiss, as the warden gave a little nod.  Someone somewhere was flicking a switch, or pushing a button, or depressing a plunger that was shooting poison into Richard's body.   Seconds passed and Richard twisted his head back, raising it up off the pillow, to find the warden who stood behind him. 

"Wow!" Richard shouted. Evelyn jumped in her seat at his outburst.  "That is great. That is awesome! Thank you, (that foul expletive again, an adjective this time) Warden!"  His head fell back on the pillow at an angle that looked like it should have been painful.  His mouth and eyes stayed open but everyone watching from the other side of the glass knew the end had come for Richard.  He was gone.  But the promise wasn't gone with him. 

It was foolish of her to believe that it would be her son.  Her own sins were too greivous.  She never thought in a million years that murder would be the result and she would give her life to undo her mistakes.  But she wouldn't spend the rest of her life grieving Richard either.  He always believed he had a right to his anger and his life reflected that.  He chose to hate and to hurt others.  Now, looking at his dead body, Evelyn could see that the one who was really destroyed was him.  

All around Evelyn, hugs were exchanged, sighs of relief that had been held in for 11 long years were expelled.  But the woman who had been raped hadn't moved.  She stared at Richard's body, seeming totally unsatisfied, maybe even feeling a little jipped.  She probably came here to see him suffer or cry like a pathetic, scared child.  Evelyn wished she didn't feel the inclination to apologize to the woman because her son wasn't more pathetic but there it was.  She was burdened for this woman who would walk out of the room this day with a choice to make as well.

People began to trickle out.  They had seen what they'd come for.  Now it was dinnertime and they would celebrate as they broke bread together at the TGI Friday's across town.

After 15 minutes the doctor entered the room and pronounced Richard dead.  They unhooked the heartrate monitor and wheeled the gurney through the door and out of sight.  Evelyn had already checked the boxes and signed the papers for the prison.  There was nothing left for her to do except to leave this room as well and go home to get on with the rest of her life.  She pulled her purse out from under the chair, hooked it over her shoulder, and stood up, realizing that the woman had remained in her chair, staring through the glass into the now empty execution room.  They locked eyes for a second and Evelyn looked away. 

"You had another child," the woman said rather than asked.  Evelyn choked out a hoarse, "Yes."  She cleared her throat and said it again, clearer this time.  On the one year anniversay of Andy's death, baby Seth had arrived via c-section to her aged body.  In the quiet, early morning hours after his birth, she had whispered to her husband through tears of grief, "The Lord has given us another son in the place of Andy."  Her husband had agreed at the time but as Seth grew, Evelyn realized that Seth was different than Andy. Seth was obedient like Andy, but he also had a love for God that came from somewhere beyond Evelyn's doing or understanding.

Evelyn shuffled through the narrow path between the chairs and timidly laid a hand on the woman's shoulder.  "Choose love.  Choose life."  She paused and said, "So that you can live long after this life is over."  The woman remained stiff and unaffected but Evelyn gave a motherly squeeze and left the room.

Seth had a son named Enosh.
Enosh
Kenan
Mahalelel
Jared
Enoch
Methuselah
Lamech
Noah
Shem
Arphaxad
Shelah
Eber
Peleg
Reu
Serug
Nahor
Terah
Abram
Isaac
Jacob
Judah
...
David
...
Jesus, the promised Deliverer, referred to himself as a Son of Adam (Man) more often than as the Son of God.  





This allegory of Genesis 3:15-4:25 is loosely based on the story of Texas inmate, Richard Cobb's execution in Hunstville on April 25, 2013 as reported by Michael Graczyk, AP.
http://news.msn.com/crime-justice/man-put-to-death-for-texas-store-abduction-slaying

This is Home

I looped the strap of my carry-on bag around the metal stem of my suitcase, then looped it again so that it was all one intertwined black mass of nylon straps and heavy duty zippers.  I let it rest on my foot, an added measure of security in case some wacko tried to pick it up and make off with it while I stood there, looking around, taking in my crazy surroundings.  I tried to be smooth and seem as if I was just taking it all in with thoughtful fascination, or even better--with a sense of longing and sadness because I was about to say good-bye.  But the truth is that I was looking around like a lost child, eyes darting here and there, skittish, watching my back.  I was in unfamiliar territory in the middle of this airport in Tegucigalpa, Honduras.

There is an added layer of craziness when the language that is spoken all around me is not my own.  It has been an exhilarating and exhausting week of work, and sickness, and friendships formed, and preconceptions shattered, and watching God move in Honduras.  I wouldn't trade the experience for anything.  Really.  And I will come back if the opportunity ever presents itself.  But after 7 long days out of "The States," I am ready to go home. 

There are 14 of us conspicuous-looking Americans (though much less conspicuous after 7 days abroad), and many of us are minors.  Most of the grown-ups are slightly worn down after this week but the adrenaline starts pumping as we stand in clusters at the airport, checking bags, double-checking the flight status, triple checking the time on our wrist watches.  So many things can go wrong when one person travels.  Throw in a handful of teenagers and a foreign country, and disaster can fall in any of a multitude of ways. 

We vaguely and half-jokingly discuss what we'll do if a flight gets cancelled or someone doesn't get through customs.  I tell someone, "I don't care WHAT happens as long as this plane get me to 'The States.'  I can take it from there no matter where I am."  I said it with a smile but I was dead serious.  I didn't care if the plane got grounded in Ft. Lauderdale or Seattle or Timbucktoo.  I didn't care if we missed our connecting flight out of Houston and had to rent a car.  I  would be home and I could make it the rest of the way. WHATEVER.  I'd be home.  Even if I was still 1,500 miles away, I'd be home.  Do you get what I'm saying here?  After being out of the country for a week I was never so glad to be born an American citizen and get to call this great place home.  And I couldn't wait to be on American soil again where the language was mine, the roads were recognizable, the bathrooms had toilet paper in them, and all that good American stuff.  Home. 

Is there a sweeter word in the English language when one has been away for a while?  It instills such a longing for that which is warm, nostalgic, and familiar.  It's a place where you know you belong.  Where you're welcome.  Where you're accepted even though you were an idiot when you were a teenager and cringe to think of the dumb things you did while you were there.  You still want to go home and feel that comfort, that loving embrace, eat that meal that only your mom makes, see that little potpourri on the back of the toilet that's been there longer than you can remember. 

The airplane in Tegucigalpa took off on time and it got us to Houston on schedule.  I rushed through the International Arrivals hallway with the rest of my group, searching desperately for a bathroom since some of us were still dropping off little burning Honduran deposits.  Who cares?! We were HOME!!!  It looked like America, it sounded like America, it felt like America.  I handed my American passport to the customs guy with pride while he flipped through it, looking a bit bored, stamped it, and handed it back to me.  I wanted to grab him by the shoulders and say, "Wake up, man, and show a little pride!  You're an American!  You're the luckiest guy on earth!"

And then my prophecy came true.  The inevitable happened and we all missed our connecting flight.  Seriously.  How the heck are 14 people supposed to claim their bags, go through customs, recheck their bags, and get themselves two terminals away in 45 minutes?  Not gonna happen.  After being shuffled around for hours, we were told we would be staying the night in Houston and would leave bright and early the next morning.  Who cares?!  We were HOME!! 

I thought about that story a lot as I came to the end of my Genesis study.  It is the story of a people who long for home.  They all had to leave for one reason or another.  Adam and Eve left Eden.  Abraham left Ur, Lot left Sodom, Jacob left his parent's home after lying to his father and royally ticking off his brother, Joseph was taken out of Canaan and lived 93 of his 110 years as a foreigner in Egypt. 

After 7 days in another country, I just cannot fathom the longing he must have had.  He had one chance in all those years to go back home.  He was allowed to return and bury his father, Jacob.  And then he had to turn around and go right back to Egypt.  That must have been a pretty excruciating promise to keep. 

He is not the only Hebrew who never got to go back home.  There were the stubborn wanderers who waited to enter the Promised Land and never made it, Daniel spent a lifetime in exile, as did the rest of his generation.  And even though the New Testament 1st Century Jews were technically "home" they lived in a Roman outpost under Roman authority, and were never more miserable.  Even today God's people continually fight for what they believe to be their home.  I am not even dipping my toes into THAT debate, except to say that I have come to understand that there is no place on this earth--not a single place--that is truly home.

As good as it felt to be in America that day, I wasn't really home.  For though I was born in this body as an American citizen, what I REALLY am, is a citizen of heaven (Philippians 3:20).  What I felt when I walked through the International Arrivals hallway in Houston is a faint glimmer of what I will feel when I get to heaven.  What I feel when I walk in the house I grew up in and smell the familiar food cooking on the stove and see the same old décor up on the walls in that place where I belong--that is NOTHING compared with heaven.

It is dangerous to get so attached to a place on this earth that you are afraid to leave.  God still had work for Joseph to do in Egypt and even though it felt to Joseph like following God meant moving backwards, he was obedient to that and his life ended well.  He finished by passing on the eternal mindset to the next generation that they weren't home.  Not yet.