A Lost Year; A Year of Losses

When I was a child a Billy Wilder film won the Academy Award. It was "The Lost Weekend". I didn't see it during the first screenings. I was only four years old. I saw it years later, probably on TV and it became a favorite that I viewed several times over. I even read the novel it was based upon. The autobiographical novel was written by Charles R. Jackson.

For those not familiar with the story it concerns a young alcoholic writer's five-day drinking binge. During this period he descends lower and lower into the gutter, hocking his typewriter for booze money and ending up in the DT ward of Bellevue.

My lost year was nothing quite like that and certainly had nothing to do with alcohol. It mostly came about by events beyond my control.

'Twenty-twelve was bad from the get-go. I had become dissatisfied with the direction my church was going and left it a few months earlier and the job I had at the end of 2011 left me. Thus I began the year unemployed and somewhat adrift spiritually. I am a Christian, a true believer in the salvation of Jesus and the truth of the Bible, but when disconnected from a body of brothers and sisters in Christ tends to drift backward into my sins. I began the year already with a sense of lost...and with a feeling of nausea.

I was sick most of January. I hadn't been really ill in years, couldn't remember the last time. It must have been back in the days I worked at Wilmington Trust, back in the last millennium. But I began 2012 sick.  It went away after a week, took a little Carrabean cruise or something, then by late February returned to make me sick again twice over.

Not long into the first month of the year I also lost my ability to take the long walks that generally began my days. These are times of reflection as well as physical exercise. I can get away into the quite of our many parks and clear my mind. But one morning early on I awoke with a grapefruit in my left knee or what appeared to be some sort of bulbous melon.

It really hurt with one of those pains that doesn't go away no matter what you do. Lying down, standing up or sitting, the knee throbbed away. I could barely hobble about the house upon it and driving a car was pure agony. I couldn't ben tie my own shoes.  I certainly wasn't going to be hiking up any rocky trails in the Piedmont.

As we shuffled moaning into the drear days of February the grapefruit began to deflate. Healing came slowly, but came. My knees began to match each other, ugly twins indeed, but neither bloated or painful. But my ankle was.

As if he had been displaced by bursitis, angry man Author Itis returned taking vengeance upon my ankles. I still could not walk. I had to bear a few more weeks of agony, but by the Ides of March I too was marching forth with something of my normal gate. It seemed I was about to resume the life I had become use to living.

Then on the first Wednesday of April the phone rang at about 9:00 AM and my way of life simply disappeared. Caller ID id'd my parents number. They never called me this early in the day. My first thought was, "dad died". It was going to be the call I had anticipated for the last couple of years, but when I answered it was my dad's gravelly voice that answered back.

"Your mother's had a stroke. I want you ta come up here." (Pictured left, my dad and mom on one of the last days of their lives.)

Thus began a seven month period where I disappeared into handling my parent's affairs, seeking a nursing home that could care for them both, dealing with the slow moving government agencies and then with the deaths of first my mother and then my dad with a two week period.

By that point my wife's own health was a concern, our financial situation was deteriorating and two of my favorite cats also died. I also lost my Blog domain names.

I lost the Blog domains because Wilmington Trust had been taken over by another bank, which issued all new cards. My old Wilmington Trust MasterCard became this bank's Visa. My domain names meanwhile came up for renewal in mid-summer and dealing as I was as my parents now, I forgot to revise my automatic payment info. The Domain licenser's payment request was denied against my old now invalid card.

I did not find this out until months later, of course, because I had stopped writing. I am hoping I have reached a point I can write again.

This has become a lost year in a way and a year of many losses. But in the midst of all this pain and turmoil I found prayers answered and assurance that God was always nearby. I found a new church and a new spirit. I learned that what we cling to so tightly in this world can very daily slip away. I saw how material possessions disappear in the wink of an eye as I had to dispose of my parents belonging to meet the requirements of Medicaid. When the died all that was left were a few boxes of clothing, which I donated to Goodwill.

I saw this lesson again this December as I joined the Disaster Relief Team at my new church and spent weekends doing mud-outs in homes flooded during Hurricane Sandy. All the possessions of the owners ruined and stacked haphazardly on the sidewalk for trash pickup. The houses empty shells.

You sometimes suffer in this world and you can easily slip into self-pity, then you step out into the places where others have suffered even more and you understand why we must lend a hand to our neighbor.

This was a lost year and a year of losses for many, but as for me, I know even more that God has my back and God can lift me up.



PSALM 116: VERSES 1-8 (KJV) 

I love the Lord, because He has heard
My voice and my supplications.

Because He has inclined His ear to me,
Therefore I will call upon Him as long as I live.

The pains of death surrounded me,
And the pangs of Sheol laid hold of me;
I found trouble and sorrow.
 Then I called upon the name of the Lord:
“O Lord, I implore You, deliver my soul!”

 Gracious is the Lord, and righteous;
Yes, our God is merciful.
 The Lord preserves the simple;
I was brought low, and He saved me.
 Return to your rest, O my soul,
For the Lord has dealt bountifully with you.

 For You have delivered my soul from death,
My eyes from tears,
And my feet from falling.

                    

Iron Faith Fellowship and Hurricane Sandy Relief

A couple weeks back a call for volunteers was made at church. I considered saying I'd go, but then thought that was not a good idea. I feared I'd be more a detriment than a help. This body isn't what it once was, not that it was ever all together great. But back a few years Arthur Itis wasn't hanging around my joints. I can't even squat down anymore, and if I kneel or sit upon the floor it pains me and it is difficult to get back up.

I've lost a lot of strength as well. I was able to press at least a hundred and twenty pounds straight overhead, but these days I struggle to carry a 40-pound bag of kitty litter. So, no, I better not go.

I brought this subject up at the dinner table that evening. My eldest daughter, Laurel, said, "Oh, I'd like to do that. I'll go." Since she was going to go I decided I would as well, but not without trepidation.

I went. I found I was right about my loss of strength when I couldn't lift one end of a table to help move it, but I could pull nails and sweep and pick up debris. Age caught up with me in mid-afternoon when my hands began to cramp, freezing my thumbs solid against the last knuckle of my index finger, but at least I didn't collapse.
.

The devastation is startling. We drove down street after street with the curbs on both sides lined with the ruined discards of these people's lives. This junk was their furniture, appliances, walls, floors, and personal belongings, and irreplaceable memorabilia of their lives. The houses often looked fine standing behind these heaps, but they were like movie sets, empty shells, stripped to the bone inside.

Where do you begin?

You begin with prayer and then you bend your back and you do as much as you can.

Some ask, "Why did this happen to these people? What did they do to deserve this?"

One day Jesus stepped outside after having his supper. Some who where around mentioned a recent atrocity that befell some Galileans at the hands of Pilate, the Roman Pocurator of Judea. Pilate had them killed and their blood mixed with that of the sacrifices. These people apparently though the Galileans had sinned in some way to have come to this end.

Jesus said: "Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners that all the other Galileans because they suffered this way?  I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish. Or those eighteen who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them - do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem?  I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish." (Luke 13: 1-5)

We live in a cursed world since man fell. There are events that randomly overtake us, destroy our property and sometimes our lives, not because we are greater sinners that someone down the road, but just because murders and towers falling and hurricanes happen. These things happen to good people and bad, to the unrepentant and the saved.

Jesus was not warning these people that if they did not repent that a tower was going to fall on them or an earthquake would swallow them up. He was warning them they lived in a dangerous world and such things could befall them. And if such things did not happen to them, they would still die same day, but they could not know if that might be sooner than later. If they had not repented and found salvation with God they would not only die, but perish in Hell afterward.

We must not only help these people rebuild their property and lives, but also rebuild their faith or find a faith they may never have had. You don't just do this with a prayer and a God bless you. These people do not feel very blessed right now. You do it by putting deeds behind the words, by getting your hands dirty and standing beside them to do what little you can to make their recovery quicker.

And you realize how this could have been you and next time may be.


The video is what I pieced together from that Saturday.  All the photos are mine, except of the Church of Grace and Peace", which I called "Peace and Grace" in my narration.

Tears

It is a little more than two weeks past six months since my life was no longer mine. On April Fools my mother was struck down by a moment eruption of a tiny vain deep in the brain. 

The call came early. My mother never called me in the morning. But the voice on the other end was not my mother, but my father and my father never called. “Your mother had a stroke,” he said. This was not the script we wrote. The call that had been expected since his heart attack a couple years back would be of his passing, not one of my mother’s failing. He was supposedly the weak one and she the caretaker. And now I was the caretaker of both by some odd reversal of nature. It never should be that the child becomes parent to the parents.

These six months have been ones of suffering for them, who lived so long, perhaps beyond a reasonable age. But the will to keep on keeping on is strong within us, even when our bodies have begun to desert our souls and hope is only that the suffering might end.

The world that surrounds us can be sympathetic, but is inefficient and slow moving. The gears of bureaucracy move slower than the fingers of beckoning death. And while you wait for these instruments of government and care to turn and click on you see all the trappings of their lives dissolve away, until finally and mercifully they too slip off in the night

BRIDE

She comes all winter warmth
Swathed in clinging frost
And diaphanous gloom.
Her smile of frozen teeth
And her eyes of icy ponds
Send shivers through the room.

We think of death as skeletal,
Cowled with cloak of black
Hunched like some old farmer
Over his scythe and sack
To cut and carry us to our doom,
But no, death is not the groom.

Death comes dressed in marriage veil,
In a snow white bridal gown
With a long icicle train.
Our final vows are sealed by one
Who doesn’t steal, but stills our heart
With a lover’s kiss that ends all pain.

On September 23 my mother felt that kiss and her soul went to The Father, shedding the ravaged body and leaving dad alone.

He wanted to be there to the end, holding her hand as he had for those days before, telling her he loved her so she knew as if she didn’t all ready. But fate and failing lungs carried him from her in the end and he could not be there then. I held her hand that afternoon and told her everything on earth was done and in place and she should not worry anymore and said goodnight. And on that good night she died within the quarter hour before the clock struck eleven.

And he came back to the room they shared during the week after he found her gone and he was too frail to attend at her final resting, to see her body off, to gather up like flowers the regrets and love of long time friends and relatives.

This past Monday dad seemed strong as if he would continue on for many more days and months. Then yesterday all that changed into a gurgle in his throat and a weakness in his body. I could hardly believe it was the same man I had sat next to in the day room the other day as I stood with my wife beside his bed today. He seemed to have shrunk, his breath a gasp and rattle, his eyes wandering up as if seeking escape. He tried to talk, but I could not understand what he was trying to say. He was grasping at the cover over him and I did not know what he was reaching for.

Then at one point as I leaned over trying to hear I did hear what may have been his last distinct words. He said, “Thank you,” which were words my father never seemed to find in his vocabulary before. 

And last evening, October 11, 2012 my father died within the quarter hour before 11:00, within the same time as his wife, the love of his life, the woman they told me he was reaching out for yesterday, had passed. She called for him and he went.

It has been just over six months and in all that time I didn’t cry. There was too much to do for tears. It is 3:38 AM on the 12th of October and now the tears have been coming, in bursts and fits and waterfalls all the last few hours. Now the six months of tears have burst through the dam and flood me.

All is gone now. Willy and Milly have passed beyond the scope of this world. Their house is sold, now the possession of another. All their worldly goods are gone as well. There is nothing left of them except the memories and the feelings they left with others. That is enough, is it not? 

This ordeal has drawn me closer to The Lord and it has taught me many things. Three weeks ago I prayed intently about these things and these passings were God’s mercy both to my parents and to me. 

Take from my parents whatever they left within your hearts, but also see the truth of where our treasure must be for as Job said:

“Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will depart. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; may the name of the Lord be praised.”

WHERE THE RAINBOWS END

We begin this journey of life

Down a road we do not yet know.

We see the blossoms of the moment,

Costumed in dancing colors

That entice us like the bees,

To their perfumed petal traps

And we lust to gain their beauty,

 To glisten like the rose after a rain.

We watch the sun rise upon the distance city,

Turning the towers of glass to gold,

Shimmering like a river of riches

And our eyes serve us our breakfast of “wants”

Sprinkled with the sweet sugar of excess.

We glutton for the fat of the land.

Our stressed hearts beat faster

As the grasp of our hands

Fills our veins with the empty

Calories of success.

We ignore the storms of warning

That dare darken our skies and the path

To our ever bigger car and grander house.

We fill our rooms with knick-knacks

To gorge our obese egos

And we ignore the dust specks of reality

That swirls about the air to settle

Lightly upon our treasures

As if in echo of some ancient tome.

Not Home Sweet Home,

But ashes to ashes and

Dust to dust.

We do not see the light for the shimmer.

Our eyes are always to the rainbow,

An illusion of sun and water,

A trick of diffusion

And a lure to delusion.

We cannot own the colors,

But can we the Pot of Gold at its end?

But where the rainbow ends

Lies the mire of despair and truth.

When we reach the distance touchdown point

The rainbow fades away

With all we ever gathered

And we are left naked before the eyes of God.

To My Mom 1920 - 2012

My mother suffered a stroke on April 1, 2012. Before that day she had been independent, albeit sometimes using a cane. She was caretaker to my dad. The stroke was in the Pons area of her brain stem. It took away the use of her left hand and left leg and led to a feeding tube inserted in her side. So she loss her ability to walk and eat, and to do much handling of things. The speech was unaffected.

Her mind was clear and focused until the end. During the last few days when she was actively dying this brought even the experiences Hospice nurses to tears. One told me this was the darkest thing because my mother was aware and responsive to everything going on and most people by that stage were not.

My father sat beside her bed holding her hand those last few days. On Sunday morning he had a build up of fluid in his lungs and they took him to the hospital.

I sat with her Sunday afternoon and held her hand. I told her not to worry about anything. All was taken care of and under control. I told her I loved her and bid her goodnight.

She died at approximately 10:45 Sunday evening September 23, 2012.

Dad holding mom's hand the day before the end.

I want to tell a story and a last lesson my mother taught me about what we should value.

My mother was born in 1920 and her growing up was not in a home her parents owned. There was a prominent family named Thomas, one of the founding families of the Quaker Track in Chester County, Pennsylvania called Whiteland. My mother’s family was tenants on George Thomas III’s estate “Whitford”, in an old white house back of a pond. The “big house” she called it. There was a Blacksmith Shop down the lane from them. That smithy was still working when I was a boy.

She was nine when the Great Depression began and it lasted until she was a grown woman. The family had some hard times. My mother said one of her fondest memories of childhood was every Christmas Mr. Thomas would come to the house and give her a new pair of gloves.

Her dad pulled weeds for a dollar a day. The average America salary was $26 a week, he was making five or six. Her mother became a maid for the wealthier in West Chester and at some point teenage mom labored in the dark of a Mushroom plant, while dreaming of being a motion picture star.

She even entered a talent search for an unknown to play Scarlett O’Hara in “Gone With the Wind”, but she didn’t win. Somebody named Vivian Leigh got the part. The movie premiered in 1938 and in that year a friend asked mom to go on a moonlight cruise with her, her boyfriend and a friend of his. That’s where she met her Rhett Butler back 74 years ago. He was this tall, wavy haired fellow known as Wild Bill.

He must have thought this little 5 foot one, 98-pound redhead was something, because he’d walk the 15 miles from Modena to Whitford to see her, sometimes sleeping on her porch before walking home again.

Just before they married in 1940 he lost his job and after the wedding they were so poor she went to her home to live and he to his. And so they lived separated the first month of their marriage and except for World War II that was the last time Milly and Willie weren’t together until she left him last Sunday night.

On Monday, when a nice lady from the Hospice went with my daughter and I to the hospital and told dad mom was gone, he quoted Scripture to us. There was once a day when no one would have believed that Wild Bill would ever quote Scripture. It was right after he said, “She was the love of my life and I will miss her.” It was part of a verse from Hebrews. He said, “Well, it says don't it, it’s appointed to every man to die? And now she’s better.”

My daughter, Laurel, and I brought her things home from Pembrooke (the nursing home) that same day, five cartons. Five Cartons was all that was left of what she gathered in her 92 years, mostly clothes, which we donated to Goodwill. All her worldly goods are gone. And it made me think of Matthew 6: 19-20, and made vivid the truth of that Scripture. “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth… store up for yourselves treasures in heaven.”

But she did have some valuable treasures here as well. She had a group of friends, who loved enough to care for her and dad these last years and see them thought when they couldn’t always do for themselves. Thank you and bless you all for loving my mother.

And she had a man who even after 72 years of marriage insisted on sitting by her side all her final days holding her hand.

I spent a few minutes alone with mom on the Wednesday afternoon after she passed. It was a sneak preview just for her son of the girl who once dreamed of being a movie star before her final last staring role on Friday. I told her not to worry; dad would be by her side soon.

And they can enjoy their Heavenly treasures together.

R.I.P. Mom.

The Heavier the Cross, the Stronger the Shoulders by Rachel King

These are all warning markers—danger!—in our history books, written down so that we don't repeat their mistakes. Our positions in the story are parallel—they at the beginning, we at the end—and we are just as capable of messing it up as they were. Don't be so naive and self-confident. You're not exempt. You could fall flat on your face as easily as anyone else. Forget about self-confidence; it's useless. Cultivate God-confidence.

No test or temptation that comes your way is beyond the course of what others have had to face. All you need to remember is that God will never let you down; he'll never let you be pushed past your limit; he'll always be there to help you come through it. 1 Corinthians 10:11-13 (The Message)

For the first time, I am welcoming a guest writer to “Night Writing in the Morning Light. This article submitted to me by Rachel King seems apropos to our current little series on depression. Hopefully Ms King will appear occasionally at this site with her perspective. Below is some information about Rachel taken from the site for which she writes regularly as well a brief blurb of that site’s purpose.

       "Ms. King recently graduated from the University of Houston and has experience in the print journalism world. She was involved in many different Christian organizations while attending college. She uses this to her advantage while researching and producing Christian material for this website. Ms. King focus is to provide adequate and reliable information to the Christian community at large. Her hobbies include being active in her church community, knitting and watching a good movie.

       "Christian Universities is devoted to providing Christian students who are considering attending an online Christian university with an explanation of their choices and reviews of the costs and benefits."

The Heavier the Cross, the Stronger the Shoulders

by

Rachel King

Being human means we must undergo pain and suffering; no one goes through life with just positive experiences alone, and in fact, some of us endure more trials and tribulations than others. If we ask the question Why, we would have no answer. How do we know why certain people are chosen to suffer while others are not? The Bible tells us that God has a reason for everything that happens, that it is all part of his greater plan. So when something bad happens, perhaps you were chosen to be at the receiving end because:

·      God knows that you are strong enough to bear it. He has given you a cross that your shoulders can carry. If someone else with a weaker mentality had suffered this trouble, they would have broken down under the strain. Remember, the heavier the cross, the stronger the shoulders that God has chosen to bear it.

·      God trusts that you have the courage and strength to solve the problem and get past it. He has given you the tools needed to meet troubles head on and tackle them without batting an eyelid. He has made you a shrewd, mature and clever person who knows how to solve problems and get past them.

·      Troubles make us stronger people; they condition us to be able to take the ups with the downs and the rough with the smooth; and they teach us to take things in their stride instead of being affected by trials.

·      They bring us closer to God. It’s a sad but true fact of life that we think of God and become closer to Him only when we’re affected by troubles. We hardly ever pray when we’re happy and satisfied with life, even to offer gratitude and praise the Lord. So perhaps a small setback is just what you need to renew your relationship with God.

·      This setback is just a stepping-stone to achieving greater things. When I had to undergo knee surgery, little did I know that it was the foundation for me gaining stronger legs and a slimmer body. All the physical therapy in the gym to get my knee flexible and mobile again made me reduce my weight significantly and completely changed the way I looked. So in essence, my torn ligament was a blessing in disguise, a blessing I had to wait a year to realize.

So the next time you feel a problem is insurmountable, just close your eyes and pray for strength to accept and solve it, and you can rest assured God will show you a way out. After all, if He has led you to it, believe that He will lead you out of it too.

 

By-line:

This guest post is contributed by Rachel King, who writes on the topic of Online Christian Universities . Rachel welcomes your comments at her email address: r.king8383@rediffmail.com.