Sunday, June 1, 2008
The First Nominee is...
How many times after enjoying an activity have I said that was the best day of my life? Was it? Did I compare it to all the days of my life? What made it the best day? Was it truly the best or just one of the better? Could my whole perception of best and worst be off?
Thinking about the calendar of my existence, what date would I pick as the best?
Thinking about the calendar of my existence, what date would I pick as the best?
How about the day I was born? Egotistically speaking that has to rank way up there.
Except I don't remember the day I was born. How could the best day of my life be one of which I have absolutely no recollection? Frankly, I can't recall anything in the first months of my life. I have no internal images of life in my first two homes, of lying in a crib or my first steps, my first words. Those may have been great days for someone, my mother or father, but they left no impression on me.
I had very little to do with it at all. My birth resulted from an act of love between my parents. In the design of God a seed joined an egg and in that instant I was. After that God formed me as I was carried within my mother's womb until I was delivered into the hands of doctors and nurses, who spanked breath into my lungs, cleaned me and cared for me until my parents brought me home.
I remember none of this.
My earliest memory is of fright at the sound of a siren, people scurrying about, shades pulled, being suddenly surrounded in pitch darkness and hushed whispering. That scene comes vividly to mind. Perhaps I wasn't born, but burst to existence in the piercing whine of an air raid siren.
How can I prove otherwise, that siren is the first thing I remember, so maybe I didn't exist before then.
All the evidence I have of my birth is a piece of paper saying so, some photos before and after the fact that may be of me, and the stories of my mother and father and a few other eyewitnesses. I understand human biology and how it works, having had three children of my own, but that doesn't prove I was created the same way. With talk of clones, existing doesn't prove birth. I can only accept I was born in the normal way on faith and trust in those who told me about it.
All the evidence I have of my birth is a piece of paper saying so, some photos before and after the fact that may be of me, and the stories of my mother and father and a few other eyewitnesses. I understand human biology and how it works, having had three children of my own, but that doesn't prove I was created the same way. With talk of clones, existing doesn't prove birth. I can only accept I was born in the normal way on faith and trust in those who told me about it.
And I suppose I can eliminate a day I have no memory of as the best day of my life. I will have to nominate some other time, but I thank the Lord for that first day even if it has been disqualified for consideration as my best.
For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. --Psalm 139: 13-16 NIV
Some Further Nominees
Perhaps the best day of my life was graduation from high school. It was an exciting and anticipated day. I was very happy when it happened and to top off the glorious event, I met a beautiful girl at a celebratory dinner afterward.
But why was I happy?
It was because I didn’t like school. Graduation was escaping what I disliked, not a step toward anything. I graduated with very few prospects for my future. My parents had told me years earlier I wasn’t going to college and I was ignorant to other ways to further one’s education than one’s parents paying the bill. I left high school looking for any old job I might scrounge up, but jobs were scarce that year. I would say high school graduation really wasn’t the best day of my life.
Yes, but what about that beautiful girl? I did begin dating her. I was madly in love with that beautiful girl, but at the end of summer she dropped me with the falling leaves of fall. She broke my heart. With all the pain at the end of that relationship, I can hardly count meeting her the best day of my life.
What about these days: getting my first job, buying my first house and the first time my wife got pregnant. These seem like reasonable candidates for my better days, yet each came with a “but”. The jobwasn’t what I had trained or applied for so was a let down, the first house bought turned into the first home we lost leaving us financially worse off and the first pregnancy delivered a dead child.
What were my real best Days? Certainly I would list my wedding to the woman who has been my wife and closest friend these last 47 years. I would count equally the births of my three children as best days. Almost everyone would probably say the birth of a child was one of their best days, but there were circumstances surrounding these births making them more best. (Sometime I will tell that story.)
To paraphrase Charles Dickens: My best times were my worst times. It stands to reason, my worst times will prove to be my best times.
Well, we'll see.
But why was I happy?
It was because I didn’t like school. Graduation was escaping what I disliked, not a step toward anything. I graduated with very few prospects for my future. My parents had told me years earlier I wasn’t going to college and I was ignorant to other ways to further one’s education than one’s parents paying the bill. I left high school looking for any old job I might scrounge up, but jobs were scarce that year. I would say high school graduation really wasn’t the best day of my life.
Yes, but what about that beautiful girl? I did begin dating her. I was madly in love with that beautiful girl, but at the end of summer she dropped me with the falling leaves of fall. She broke my heart. With all the pain at the end of that relationship, I can hardly count meeting her the best day of my life.
What about these days: getting my first job, buying my first house and the first time my wife got pregnant. These seem like reasonable candidates for my better days, yet each came with a “but”. The jobwasn’t what I had trained or applied for so was a let down, the first house bought turned into the first home we lost leaving us financially worse off and the first pregnancy delivered a dead child.
What were my real best Days? Certainly I would list my wedding to the woman who has been my wife and closest friend these last 47 years. I would count equally the births of my three children as best days. Almost everyone would probably say the birth of a child was one of their best days, but there were circumstances surrounding these births making them more best. (Sometime I will tell that story.)
To paraphrase Charles Dickens: My best times were my worst times. It stands to reason, my worst times will prove to be my best times.
Well, we'll see.
And the Winners are...
When I was a young man, many eons ago, I was walking home from work one winter night in the snow. The flakes had been falling all day. Even though it was dark, the white covering over all seemed to give off its own light. The sidewalks were tricky, some deep with drifts making the legs weary with the effort to walk and then would come patches where someone had shoveled earlier in the day. These had been recovered and slick underfoot. At the end of one of these nearly cleared paths I slipped. It was jolting as I tried to catch my balance, but I failed and fell face down on the pavement. Most of my body landed where snow had been once or twice removed leaving no cushion for my body. My face fell just beyond where the next door neighbor had not shoveled and was buried in cold mush.
This seemed a dirty trick after working a long day. I knew from the way I wrenched my body I would feel it tomorrow and it was uncomfortable with snow under my collar and sliding beneath my coat and shirt. This was bad.
Wait, no, this was good. As I pushed myself off the ground I felt paper beneath scratch my cheek. I picked it up and saw several bills totaling twenty dollars. Someone else had had the bad day, perhaps falling at this very spot when they lost this money. I felt sorry for them, but it was lost money with no identification. I tucked it in my pocket, got back on my feet and headed home whistling a happy tune. Twenty dollars had real value in the early 'sixties. You could go to a "fancy" restaurant then and buy a steak dinner for two, with cocktails and desert for $12.
Sometimes when we think we've taken a bad fall, we get rewarded instead. Other times, as shown in my last two posts, what we take as one of our best days, turns out to be one of our worst. It works the other way as well. Here are what I consider some of my best days.
Best Day Number 3: The day we lost our seventh child. That’s right, our seventh. How in the world could that be a best day? Here is the scene. My wife was in her fifth month of pregnancy lying in a maternity room with a drip in her arm to impede labor. She was to be this way for a week. I was at her side every moment after work. There was a monitor nearby recording the heart of the baby inside her. All that time, beep, beep, beep on that machine, the beat of a life fighting to continue living. It was a strong beat, but it was doomed.
One day a doctor called me aside to say it was dangerous to my wife to stall labor longer. Now the drip in the arm was inducing labor. Beep, beep, beep, drip, drip, drip, this was the sound of an execution. Although the baby had a strong heart, her lungs weren’t ready for the outside world and Amy never lived to hear her name.
I heard something more than her heart beat. I heard proof that something existed I didn’t believe in – God. The life desire in the beating of my unborn child’s heart was more than a bodily function of accidental animals.
There was depression and malaise following this seventh tiny death. It was such a devastation to my wife, such a depth of suffering to her, that I could not selfishly brood over my own despair. As a desperate attempt to resurrect something within us I suggested we try church again. There was a brand new church just opened near us and we went there. The sermon, taken from James, "Elijah was a man just like Us" James 5:17, spoke directly to my pain and a few days later I turned my life over to Christ.
Best Day Number 2: This is a sequence stretching from September 2001 through January 2006. Two days after my 21st anniversary with them, my employer terminated me for having the audacity to turn 60 years old. (My interview with the Outsourcing Agency in the tallest building of the city was cancelled for some reason on September 11, 2001.) In the opening days of 2006, I went to the annual congregational meeting of my church only to discover I had been erased from the rolls. The minister pointed to a group of us, called us goats that needed to be separated from the sheep. In less than five years I had lost my long time job and my long time church.
These are two of my best days? Losing a job, suddenly unemployed, my savings quickly drying up, thrown into debt to the IRS by circumstance? Yes. Being branded a heretic to be driven from my place of sanctuary and comfort? Yes.
It made me examine how far I had wandered away since I first came to the Lord. How complacent I had become. How willing to drift along with the world I was. But before I discovered the truth about myself I had to deal with the anger. I was angry and distraught about what the church had done. I wanted to prove them wrong. This drove me back into the Bible looking for their error. Instead I discovered my error. It was not that they were right in what they did to a lot of people that January evening. It was it didn't matter. We were better off cut off from what our old church had become.
More importantly it was a good slap upside my head, my "coulda had a V-8 moment". Like a dousing in cold water awakes a dreamer, I was shocked out of my lethargy. My spirit was revived and my priorities were set in the proper order. This made those days the better ones of my life.
What will be my Number One Best Day? Easy! The day I die will be the best day of my life. I get to worship God where he dwells and live forever in the new Heaven and Earth.
Does this mean I want to die right this minute? Absolutely not. I may be of service yet here on earth and there is much I enjoy about this life. I expect there will be down days and up days for many years to come. All it means is I don’t fear living and I don’t fear dying. And I know events are not always what they seem, that sometimes good is bad and bad is good, but in the end good wins.
This seemed a dirty trick after working a long day. I knew from the way I wrenched my body I would feel it tomorrow and it was uncomfortable with snow under my collar and sliding beneath my coat and shirt. This was bad.
Wait, no, this was good. As I pushed myself off the ground I felt paper beneath scratch my cheek. I picked it up and saw several bills totaling twenty dollars. Someone else had had the bad day, perhaps falling at this very spot when they lost this money. I felt sorry for them, but it was lost money with no identification. I tucked it in my pocket, got back on my feet and headed home whistling a happy tune. Twenty dollars had real value in the early 'sixties. You could go to a "fancy" restaurant then and buy a steak dinner for two, with cocktails and desert for $12.
Sometimes when we think we've taken a bad fall, we get rewarded instead. Other times, as shown in my last two posts, what we take as one of our best days, turns out to be one of our worst. It works the other way as well. Here are what I consider some of my best days.
Best Day Number 3: The day we lost our seventh child. That’s right, our seventh. How in the world could that be a best day? Here is the scene. My wife was in her fifth month of pregnancy lying in a maternity room with a drip in her arm to impede labor. She was to be this way for a week. I was at her side every moment after work. There was a monitor nearby recording the heart of the baby inside her. All that time, beep, beep, beep on that machine, the beat of a life fighting to continue living. It was a strong beat, but it was doomed.
One day a doctor called me aside to say it was dangerous to my wife to stall labor longer. Now the drip in the arm was inducing labor. Beep, beep, beep, drip, drip, drip, this was the sound of an execution. Although the baby had a strong heart, her lungs weren’t ready for the outside world and Amy never lived to hear her name.
I heard something more than her heart beat. I heard proof that something existed I didn’t believe in – God. The life desire in the beating of my unborn child’s heart was more than a bodily function of accidental animals.
There was depression and malaise following this seventh tiny death. It was such a devastation to my wife, such a depth of suffering to her, that I could not selfishly brood over my own despair. As a desperate attempt to resurrect something within us I suggested we try church again. There was a brand new church just opened near us and we went there. The sermon, taken from James, "Elijah was a man just like Us" James 5:17, spoke directly to my pain and a few days later I turned my life over to Christ.
Best Day Number 2: This is a sequence stretching from September 2001 through January 2006. Two days after my 21st anniversary with them, my employer terminated me for having the audacity to turn 60 years old. (My interview with the Outsourcing Agency in the tallest building of the city was cancelled for some reason on September 11, 2001.) In the opening days of 2006, I went to the annual congregational meeting of my church only to discover I had been erased from the rolls. The minister pointed to a group of us, called us goats that needed to be separated from the sheep. In less than five years I had lost my long time job and my long time church.
These are two of my best days? Losing a job, suddenly unemployed, my savings quickly drying up, thrown into debt to the IRS by circumstance? Yes. Being branded a heretic to be driven from my place of sanctuary and comfort? Yes.
It made me examine how far I had wandered away since I first came to the Lord. How complacent I had become. How willing to drift along with the world I was. But before I discovered the truth about myself I had to deal with the anger. I was angry and distraught about what the church had done. I wanted to prove them wrong. This drove me back into the Bible looking for their error. Instead I discovered my error. It was not that they were right in what they did to a lot of people that January evening. It was it didn't matter. We were better off cut off from what our old church had become.
More importantly it was a good slap upside my head, my "coulda had a V-8 moment". Like a dousing in cold water awakes a dreamer, I was shocked out of my lethargy. My spirit was revived and my priorities were set in the proper order. This made those days the better ones of my life.
What will be my Number One Best Day? Easy! The day I die will be the best day of my life. I get to worship God where he dwells and live forever in the new Heaven and Earth.
Does this mean I want to die right this minute? Absolutely not. I may be of service yet here on earth and there is much I enjoy about this life. I expect there will be down days and up days for many years to come. All it means is I don’t fear living and I don’t fear dying. And I know events are not always what they seem, that sometimes good is bad and bad is good, but in the end good wins.
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