Megan woke up this morning a married woman. I woke up slightly dazed. I couldn't sleep last night till well after midnight, trying to recall the events of the day. Megan said the same. She and Jeremiah stopped by this morning on the way to Miami after spending their first night together in the same little house the bridesmaids had the night before. Mike had offered for them to drive our car in place of their truck and Jeep. (The clean white car looked a bit like a chariot as they drove away.) Our only real contributions to the wedding have been service.
He got up this morning to have us all clean the inside and outside of the car perfectly. He also hauled the greenery that thankfully I was able to craft together all day Thursday for table garland the way I made wreaths years ago for his tree lot. I consider it a gift that when I finally went out to play in the two feet of snow from last weekend, I came up on the ten foot top of a holly tree (still covered in berries) that had broken, so I drug it to the house to use.
All the sisters met us Friday morning to set the arrangements out on the table runners Mike's mom made, with centerpieces of bowls and large wooden candle pedestals his dad made and vases full of cranberries and cut white poinsettias that I had seen online and put together, placed atop cedar cuttings my dad had prepared, walnuts and tea candles dispersed over the eleven barn wood tables. Once the glass and silverware were placed with the red cloth napkins, it looked nothing less than exquisite. Then, there were the eleven display tables to fill.
But first, before it all began, we came together in the center of the "barn," held hands in a circle and took turns praying. It was spontaneous and real. Miranda, who called the prayer, went up to the loft and turned on the playlist I'd prepared, and we went to work, all day, leaving just in time to change and come back for the rehearsal and bbq dinner.
His three sisters and Megan's four all went to the little rented house to spend the night, went on a midnight run to Walmart, and were up doing hair and makeup at 7 am. Melody had their makeup photo shoot quality, and McKala made their hair into luxurious braided crowns and curls. Unfortunately, they were not ready themselves when the photographer arrived. Nor had Madalynn, 10, gotten to have false eyelashes like the big girls and was moping. Since Megan had already treated her to a pedicure and long manicured nails with them Thursday afternoon, I gave in and called Dad because I knew he was stopping at the store. Next thing I know, he's calls me back, standing in front of the eyelash display of all lengths and colors, making sure he was getting the right ones. The thought of it was pretty charming.
When it was time to put things in vehicles, I decided to change into my boots because snow melt was everywhere. What girls were left got up in Dad's giant, white, covered, dually truck that they'd been transporting things in, and I climbed into Mike's little Toyota hunting truck, floor length dress and all. But soon, they turned off into a parking lot. Megan had left her veil! So, I drove back to get all 10 feet of it with it's Latin flair (that she had bought with her dress, not far from the Texas border on deployment) and arrived at the venue 10 minutes before the 2 pm scheduled ceremony! Needless to say, the cowboy boots stayed on, even though I'd told everyone else theirs couldn't.
In no time, Michael, our now 20 year old, nearly 300 pound O lineman was escorting me to my seat. Very soon, after Macklynn escorted one and Madalynn the other, I had a lap full of 18 month old twin. Mom had the other. The girls all dressed in white toile barely made it to the front, much less to stay there. I had pacifiers and snacks in my pockets, along with Kleenex and my glasses and a comb and lipstick.
And then the violins cued Megan in. She looked majestic.
I think the particulars of the wedding were so important to her, because normally she's found working on or driving something. She wanted to be a "girl" for a day, and, boy, she pulled it off.
The ceremony itself is a bit of a blur to me, except that they both were visibly moved during the vows and during Pastor Kevin's thorough explanations of marriage and how the wife ought to prayer over her husband when he can't.
We were shuffled outside into the mist to start pictures. Inside, the quests had access to a bar of hot chocolate, coffee, and apple cider alongside a display of milk and cookies both grandmothers had made and manned, Lauren Daigle's Christmas album playing all the while.
I was struck in the picture taking when all seven of our children were lined up with Megan in their gray tuxes and red satin dresses, and no one looked small anymore, not even Madalynn.
We took the babies in for casual clothes, so I didn't see but am told Megan and Jeremiah used the snow covered hill and fog as their backdrop. She wanted snow. Man, did she get it.
Megan came into the kitchen just as we were getting the babies in the playpen or maybe just when the Chicago style pizza was being delivered. I can't remember. Either way, I never left the kitchen. We needed to bustle her two layers of train, the way they taught me in the store, 18 buttons and thread hoops to find! Thank God, Kaitlyn stayed to help after she changed the babies with me.
Somewhere along the way, I decided to run out and get a bottle of Mexican Coke at the head of the pizza and salad buffet and take it back to the kitchen, where I rolled up a slice of hot pizza (not without dripping grease down my dress). It seems like it took forever to eat it, maybe because I knew there were people I should be talking to. I was away so long that apparently there were people I completely missed before they left, never even saw to begin with. I didn't know until afterwards that Franklin Graham's wife did indeed come. Neither did my friend, Heather, who just found out it was she whom she "laughed and talked for quite a while" with. (It says something for Mrs. Graham that she never revealed who she was.)
Mike came to me while I was in the kitchen and told me of the talk he and Dad had just had. They hadn't spoken in over a year and a half. Dad extended an olive branch. Although onlookers were afraid it was not so, it was. And the anxiety that had haunted Mike every day had melted away. He and I stepped outside into the cold to "breathe." It was surely a reprieve from the sweat that had been running down my back.
When we stepped back in, I heard music, the "wrong" music, as in it wasn't on the "playlist" I had carefully and painstakingly put together in hopes of honoring the Lord in our celebration. I was told it was because Jeremiah and Megan were lingering too long in conversations. Truth be told, I knew that weren't really wanting to dance to begin with; just not their thing. However, somebody finally turned on the father/daughter, mother/son song. My peace was momentarily removed when I instead saw Jeremiah and Megan dancing to it! Melody quickly notified Mike, so he stepped into his rightful position, asking for the dance. His boldness found a good place there, since they were soon in tears with each other. I looked beside me and so was our great friend, Heather, who had come through for us again and made the bouquets and boutonnieres. She was weeping for the healing that was happening right there in front of everyone's eyes. I looked to my other side to another of our great friends, Shannon (who had been flown in from disaster deployment just to be there), as she was recalling how things looked for the two of them only a year ago. And there I was with lasting, true friends in the Lord, who had flanked themselves on either side of me.
The intended song for Jeremiah and Megan came on, but they weren't out there. I was suddenly alerted to a situation occurring. Madalynn had gone to Miranda in an outburst of tears with fear that Mike would not live so that she might dance with him at her wedding, so she wanted to dance with him right then. I scanned over, and there she was, a river of tears as he cradled her head in his arm, dancing.
I had planned, and even sent a little line dance to several people to learn, hoping the songs and dance would be well pleasing to God, to set a new standard of fun. But I think emotions were so deep, both good and for others bad, resisting any rightness in the occurring circumstances, that it all just fizzled out, even when I made a call for folks to come up. Too, the ambiance was just really good: what seemed like hundreds of candles glowing, stomachs full, and conversations boisterous.
I let it go. I had predetermined not to take it personally. To be honest, just the preparation, the singing and dancing I did on my own has welled up a joy and vitality in my spirit that I intend to continue.
So instead of dancing, I pulled up a chair to my brother's table. I hadn't seen him in a long time. He's had a stroke and another during major surgery. Even so, he and his family stayed afterward to rinse plates, babysit, and to do anything else they could.
At whatever point, Megan was just plain ready to leave. We passed out tubes of bubbles to send them off, but not before I got to talk with a beautiful pregnant woman of Pakistani heritage, who is a friend of the groom's mother and had flown in from Dallas that morning, about how much she loved the reminders in the preaching and beauty of the room. There were people from all over, a young man from Washington state, who was a volunteer in Key West where Jeremiah and Megan met: some of Jeremiah's family from California and his childhood friend and groomsman from Alaska and another friend from Maryland, and plenty of others from up and down the East coast.
There, just like that, it was done!
Everyone automatically went into cleanup mode. A certain person we didn't even know named Daniel from Tennessee, his sister's escort, helped as much or more than the rest of us, as well as having done the organizing of the pizza in the kitchen.
Timothy, our six foot six son-in-law, and Michael, six foot five, were taking down the four trees from where the vows were made. It was intended to look like the outdoors with heights from 12 feet to 5. Dr. Miller kindly provided them from his tree farm (along with all the boughs I used for the tables), the same farm Michael was the foreman of a few summers back and the same farm that Miranda made wreaths for a few Christmases ago. Dr. Miller had ridden up with Jeremiah and Megan the week before to hand pick it all. Dad had made and brought up from Georgia old fashioned stands for them.
The music came in handy for the setup AND the cleanup. Everyone gathered their valuables, the sentimental things that'd been passed down or made: all the wooden things not only Pop made but Dad also, Mamaw's punch bowl, Cleo's silver platter, McKala's things from her own wedding, everyone's crystal, nativities, and vases, the pine cones Megan gathered on deployment in Panama City where she only got back from December 3rd and the Redwood ones a Samaritan's Purse volunteer mailed her from California and the ones her Grandmother collected from our hometown in Georgia, Megan's childhood Flexible Flyer sled that'd I'd gone through thousands of pictures to find snow ones to display on, together with the winter ones Jeremiah's mother sent of him. A special one I had enlarged was of him as a boy, loading Operation Christmas Child shoe boxes onto a small plane. I was able to come up with one of Megan and Melody processing shoe boxes in Boone, NC, the original site. I know there are others but there are still thousands more pictures on USB that I couldn't find time to go through. Besides, there aren't pictures of the first year we packed shoe boxes from home in Georgia. Megan called me recently when a question was asked at work, "Where did the first shoe boxes go?" She knew, the only one in the room that knew. She remembered what she put in it even. When we moved to North Carolina, she volunteered as soon as she was old enough, 14, in the shoe box facility, the only one at the time. Her brothers and sisters followed suit. Macklynn will be old enough next year, and he will be old enough to go on disaster deployment, with an adult.
His parents, Mark and Michele (gotta love that it's so close to ours, Mike and Michelle), staying at his apartment (and cozied and stocked it before flying home) left with the gifts, the top of the cake, their girls, a lot of the tuxedos, and I don't know what else. Pop and Memaw needed to get back to their hotel room and soon back to Georgia. Memaw is not well but was more concerned that she couldn't stay longer since Mike's not doing well. Her eyes misted over not only for this but for the way others chose to go about the occasion. I hated to see her leave in that condition. Just before she did, as Heather approached to ask what else she and two of her devoted daughters could do, Memaw said to her, "I don't have a best friend, but if I did, I'd want her to be just like you." Wow, did she get it right!
When we found ourselves gathered in groups chatting, someone realized we were through. And we had a big round of applause! We all went home with the leftover pizzas and drinks, a nice reward: that no one would have to cook the next day.
Mike, Michael, Macklynn, Madalynn, and I came home with five 16 inch pizzas, cookies, dressings and (family caught) salmon - dip Jeremiah's mother made, tea Megan made herself to her own specs, and the second layer of the four layer alternating key lime and vanilla cake an SP coworker's wife made, no less beautiful or tasty than a professional's. I felt compelled not to throw any of it away and, in so doing, did my part in consuming these things over the past five days. Thank goodness it's gone, or my dress (I have already washed the oil and mud out of and put away) will not fit for the next wedding. Mike and I barely got it on for this one - up 15 pounds from the last one!
It didn't help that most of us, including Megan, caught a cold at the wedding, and that it's my PMS week. How easy it is to fall off the wagon, if for nothing but food! I should say that if only the cold, some parking deviations, the smell of a banned substance, and a lost, likely stolen, valuable are all that went wrong, it went well!
By Wednesday, I could finally see the countertops again. Jeremiah's family were back home in Alaska safe and sound by then also. We only had them over once for dinner during their 8 day stay, but I don't think I could've added in one more thing. It was certainly nice to finally meet the woman who has been reading and cherishing several of the very same books that I have here in North Carolina over these years. When Megan was there on one of her three visits, she sent me a picture of a particular stack of books one night that gave me chills, and I knew we were on to something, that Jeremiah had been raised up under teachings of the best kind, by Mike and Debi Pearl, that Dr. Ed Wheat had been an influence in their home, and that the Ezzos, as controversial as they were, found a place in their house too, with practical, sensible ways of training babies.
Today, Friday, the 21st, I think everyone is settled back in from their labor of love and waiting for Christmas, which Miranda and I were saying yesterday seems like a downhill slide/easy street after the last week. Mike is back to hunting deer and coyote from his rocking chair by the heater in his blind. Michael is working for Dr. Miller at the veterinary office and on farm calls during break, while we puppysit his three month old beagle, Lucy, in the basement and outside when it isn't raining. Melody is waitressing and finishing up class at the community college. Miranda and Timothy are each doing their work. Macklynn and Madalynn are closing out their online semester today. And McKala is bringing up those babies. But Jeremiah and Megan are on their way back after a night of gale force winds and waves trying to port after having been to Cozumel.
And here's the thing: Megan, the eldest sibling, has always had everyone's back, but now someone has hers. And I don't know where they'll be going together (both being SP employees now), but I know she won't be going it alone anymore.
And, THAT really makes me happy.
Sunday, December 23, 2018
Wednesday, June 27, 2018
A New Thing
Mike was restless Sunday afternoon and wanted to ride to the mountains. I didn't really want to go anywhere, but I knew he did. I even prayed in the car, as though we were wasting time, that the Lord might let us run into someone to share Him with, that somehow in this day He might be glorified.
Yes, being with your husband is good. But since he found out he is rendered permanently disabled a few weeks ago, I have been with him every day. And I wasn't seeing that more time with him was key, even though I know how different I am when I'm swept away from the house.
As we got up to the Parkway and he rolled down the windows to the shaded road and 80 degree temps, I started to unwind. Soon we approached the mile marker where we moved in the late 90s, and I was reminded of the sovereignty of the Lord, how we were so desperate. Yet we were in a setting so beautiful that it seemed removed from reality, there with three little girls and a boy on the way.
Within 5 years, we moved further into Ashe County and right in the midst of a 12 acre ridge that arced all the way around the house. It never really felt like home though, because there was a whole lot of spending and pushing the envelope. But there the kids were, five of them by then, in the middle of the high country, running around in the woods and creek, and riding anything with wheels or legs, and even getting to see Megan do a few flyovers.
In 2008, that life flight to Baptist changed everything: Resurrection: Easter Morning, March 23, 2008.
After a year renting in the city, our Jesus quickly made a way for us to live in dairy country in north Iredell County: pond, creek, barn, pasture, and field. The children, all seven born, could hardly have been in a more pristine environment, conducive to learning and working.
That, too, came to an end about three years ago, as it made more sense for us to live in Wilkes County, because 5 family members were working here and going to church here at Mt. Pleasant Baptist.
The recollections made me ask how is it that I could even be moved from the peace I have that God has always and will continue to have a good plan for us? How is it that deep inside I resisted leaving for that drive on Sunday, questioning whether God could be glorified in that day?
Mike stopped at The Cascades and surprised me by wanting to walk on down, this after having a defibrillator and pacemaker placed on Tuesday. We made our way slowly but surely. It reminded me that there is plenty we can still accomplish. It reminded me that we still make a pretty good couple. Parenting, on the other hand, has always been a hard place for us: instances where he should have been one thing and ones where I should've been another. I hope they will know that their suffering and want was not in vain, that their Lord has done a powerful thing in bringing us all this far.
Far is exactly where Megan has been, visiting with the family of her Jeremiah, all the way up in Alaska. They met at Key West (where Macklynn likely contracted the West Nile Virus that made him quadriplegic, Macklynn, Meant for More?, and my faith and obedience were tried more than ever had up to that point) on deployment for Samaritan's Purse. She's been to see him 3 times, but this time he made it for keeps and proposed, in a place so remote they had to be flown there, the day before she left for the floods in Texas: Weslaco, which is where the mission church is that Mt. Pleasant Baptist seeded. She's been there years back working in the community and funding the church building across the way in Mexico. Not only is it her first official deployment as the mechanic/driver on site, (doing the selfsame job her father did), but there is actually a mission team there from the home church here in Wilkes: with the preacher, his family, and several others we know and care for. I mean, that's God.
It's God when you join a church in a different county and one day a young man named Justin taps you on the shoulder and says, "You're the Harpers." He was the one and only child from the one and only family we shared a gravel road with off the Blue Ridge Parkway. Now he's a music ministry assistant at the church we had just joined.
It's God when you move on to another church and see the man named Jerry who baptized you and your firstborn many years ago in the New River, sitting two pews in front of you and finding out his daughter is a member.
It's God when your daughter is hired on as a full time fire fighter, regardless of her broken leg, because she was highly requested and just as highly trained, at the only fire station in the state that brings in a Sunday school teacher on Sundays, where they are not allowed to perform "unnecessary work" on the Lord's Day, and where Bible study and prayer are witnessed frequently. (And on her days off, she still has work at the Crisis Pregnancy Center.)
It's God when that same daughter, who was a timid, late bloomer, has secured her own new car and apartment, right over the hill from another sister and her husband, and can be a very present aunt to her twin nieces. She is also good enough to offer refuge to her soon-to-be 18 year old sister, who has had a very troubled couple of years, so that she might heal and prosper in the next ones.
It's God when a well meaning, "religious," overly concerned of what "NOT TO do" mother of many can be used as a "'repairer' of the breach," likened I think to, "And they that shall be of thee shall build the old waste places: thou shalt raise up the foundations of many generations; and thou shalt be called, The repairer of the breach, The restorer of paths to dwell in," to her own family. (Isaiah 58:12.) This is "what TO do."
There was a definitive moment during the many months of our separation, in one of those up at 3:45 mornings for work at the YMCA, so that I could be home before the home school day began, that I came surrendering to the my Lord and Saviour, in a room alone, feeling as close as I have ever felt, however comparatively minuscule, to the anguish of Jesus. I felt physically strapped and drawn in opposite directions, torn apart, yes, for the guilt of my own sins I could now clearly ascertain, for the sacrifices I had to make, but by far, between my family which might never cohere again. Completely distraught, I made a very conscious commitment to the Lord, that, yes, I will take this as you use it for your glory, just as I prayed a very sober-minded question in the local school parking lot, empty as it were; asking if I had laid my marriage at the altar of homeschooling that it would be made evident to me, while I know many would have said the very opposite had occurred. But they don't know the ways I know I went wrong, regardless of anyone else's choices.
And these are the times that made me sure I had to let go, quit trying to save everybody and everything, to be quiet and watch God do what He does. He told me he would, that he would "deal with ...," and He surely did.
So much of what is classic Mike will no longer be: obviously, the binges, like the one that nearly killed him with alcoholic hepatitis in December. The "go fast": he's ridden his whole life, so he bought a super bike in January. He bought me a bike too and after a whole ton of prayer, I said, "Yes, I'll learn." I told our caseworker teary eyed that I had decided to be my husband's wife, and I meant it. But one night on a trip home in the tractor trailer, he asked the Lord if he was supposed to have it, and he promptly totaled it the next morning. I was spared the treacherous risk I had deemed it to be, but more preeminently my husband saw a prayer answered as swiftly and as clearly as he ever had.
His ribs had to heal, which gave me cause to give him care and affection and to meet his needs, the way I have a lot of times, but with overwhelming peace and security this time, with no accusations, no doubts. I knew where home was, wherever he was, and not because I always like everything about him or even feel love for him to be honest, but because I am in covenant with my Lord, and my husband is in so many ways my salvation, my sanctification through Him. I have seen provision and protection from other sources, but none can replace how God changes me through this person I'm to walk through this world with.
He likes TV and eating out as much as anyone. These things too shall go, as matters of budgeting. The big man-size meals he posts pictures of will change, oddly not because of cholesterol (his arteries look great) or sugar but because of the sodium that makes him gain 5-10 pounds overnight, stressing his already damaged heart.
Right now, even his strength is gone with the wrist injury from the tornado winds. He is watching the very fiber of his manhood waste away. After he made the choice to have the surgery for the defibrillator and pacemaker, which inherently nullifies his CDL, he went to the Social Security office after very deliberate instructions the doctor gave us both, and came home in tears with a dozen roses, per the song. All the times he said he hated driving were as they had not been. This was a game changer. This was the end of the only thing he knew to do to support his family, "unskilled labor" they call the work of an over-the-road driver, even though he can drive with his eyes closed, keep perfect records, and knows most every road, store, factory, town, and city in this country and people who work and live there. It was one year shy of 30 years, which is why the Social Security worker was shocked at the amount he's to receive once approved. "Oh, you've actually been working," sadly contrary to the majority of recipients.
He sees the end of something; I see the beginning, "Behold, I will do a new thing; now it shall spring forth; shall ye not know it? I will even make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert." (Isaiah 43:19.) I wrote a prayer the other morning, "Lord, guide our days that we know your Word and honor your name; that we waste nothing, time or thought, that we lean into each other and the children and that we all lean into the kingdom; that we pray, learn, serve, work/exercise together, that you be glorified."
Every single word, I mean. These two youngest kids have held our family together like glue. They have been the subjects of ferocious protection, and they have been a reason to finally get this right. Not to objectify them, but it is awfully amazing to watch what the Lord will work out because of and through practical needs. If we had quit our family as it were convenient, they would not have been born. And "today" would not look the way it does, with our eclectic 13 year old son and our artistic 10 year old daughter.
In this trial, I professed also, as I was led of the Lord, to make His word paramount in our home. And as it stands and is portrayed in Matthew 4:4, “But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God," we "eat" of it three times a day: in the morning with me, before lessons individually, and at night with their father.
Our new norm is going to involve a lot of togetherness, which is something we have not experienced outside of crisis. It will be challenging to not have a "breather"/dispatched trip to make us miss each other. But the kids will have a full time father. Macklynn is particularly in need of it. And Madalynn will not have a distant father or the influence of a perpetually strained mother.
I suspect that things I can't imagine will come to fruition. I expect that I will finally learn what it means to be my husband's lover. I think we will all learn together - he was always the more fun teacher anyway. I believe we will worship together. I hope God has a mission for us together. I look forward to planning and making meals together. I wonder where we will walk and explore together. I smile at the thought of seeing our grand babies, together. I can't wait to watch Michael play football at Western Carolina, together, and to give our Megan away to the one who sees in her what we do, together. I anticipate the Sunday afternoons together when the kids come around, not because they are coerced or always want to or even feel like it, but because they have respect of the Father's will, purpose, and order: Proverbs 16:3.
And here's what I know: that my place is home, wherever that lands me and however many more times that Mother's Day rose bush from the Parkway has to be dug up. That fact was apparent to me before all the tests came back and decisions made. And, who knows, the Lord might make room for me to write about it all. But for now, I am witness that every day is a big day for our family: every kind gesture, every visit, every invitation, every conversation, every ounce of forgiveness, every defeat of sin and submission to Christ, not because Mike is dying but because ....the Holy Spirit is living.
Yes, being with your husband is good. But since he found out he is rendered permanently disabled a few weeks ago, I have been with him every day. And I wasn't seeing that more time with him was key, even though I know how different I am when I'm swept away from the house.
As we got up to the Parkway and he rolled down the windows to the shaded road and 80 degree temps, I started to unwind. Soon we approached the mile marker where we moved in the late 90s, and I was reminded of the sovereignty of the Lord, how we were so desperate. Yet we were in a setting so beautiful that it seemed removed from reality, there with three little girls and a boy on the way.
Within 5 years, we moved further into Ashe County and right in the midst of a 12 acre ridge that arced all the way around the house. It never really felt like home though, because there was a whole lot of spending and pushing the envelope. But there the kids were, five of them by then, in the middle of the high country, running around in the woods and creek, and riding anything with wheels or legs, and even getting to see Megan do a few flyovers.
In 2008, that life flight to Baptist changed everything: Resurrection: Easter Morning, March 23, 2008.
After a year renting in the city, our Jesus quickly made a way for us to live in dairy country in north Iredell County: pond, creek, barn, pasture, and field. The children, all seven born, could hardly have been in a more pristine environment, conducive to learning and working.
That, too, came to an end about three years ago, as it made more sense for us to live in Wilkes County, because 5 family members were working here and going to church here at Mt. Pleasant Baptist.
The recollections made me ask how is it that I could even be moved from the peace I have that God has always and will continue to have a good plan for us? How is it that deep inside I resisted leaving for that drive on Sunday, questioning whether God could be glorified in that day?
Mike stopped at The Cascades and surprised me by wanting to walk on down, this after having a defibrillator and pacemaker placed on Tuesday. We made our way slowly but surely. It reminded me that there is plenty we can still accomplish. It reminded me that we still make a pretty good couple. Parenting, on the other hand, has always been a hard place for us: instances where he should have been one thing and ones where I should've been another. I hope they will know that their suffering and want was not in vain, that their Lord has done a powerful thing in bringing us all this far.
Far is exactly where Megan has been, visiting with the family of her Jeremiah, all the way up in Alaska. They met at Key West (where Macklynn likely contracted the West Nile Virus that made him quadriplegic, Macklynn, Meant for More?, and my faith and obedience were tried more than ever had up to that point) on deployment for Samaritan's Purse. She's been to see him 3 times, but this time he made it for keeps and proposed, in a place so remote they had to be flown there, the day before she left for the floods in Texas: Weslaco, which is where the mission church is that Mt. Pleasant Baptist seeded. She's been there years back working in the community and funding the church building across the way in Mexico. Not only is it her first official deployment as the mechanic/driver on site, (doing the selfsame job her father did), but there is actually a mission team there from the home church here in Wilkes: with the preacher, his family, and several others we know and care for. I mean, that's God.
It's God when you join a church in a different county and one day a young man named Justin taps you on the shoulder and says, "You're the Harpers." He was the one and only child from the one and only family we shared a gravel road with off the Blue Ridge Parkway. Now he's a music ministry assistant at the church we had just joined.
It's God when you move on to another church and see the man named Jerry who baptized you and your firstborn many years ago in the New River, sitting two pews in front of you and finding out his daughter is a member.
It's God when your daughter is hired on as a full time fire fighter, regardless of her broken leg, because she was highly requested and just as highly trained, at the only fire station in the state that brings in a Sunday school teacher on Sundays, where they are not allowed to perform "unnecessary work" on the Lord's Day, and where Bible study and prayer are witnessed frequently. (And on her days off, she still has work at the Crisis Pregnancy Center.)
It's God when that same daughter, who was a timid, late bloomer, has secured her own new car and apartment, right over the hill from another sister and her husband, and can be a very present aunt to her twin nieces. She is also good enough to offer refuge to her soon-to-be 18 year old sister, who has had a very troubled couple of years, so that she might heal and prosper in the next ones.
It's God when a well meaning, "religious," overly concerned of what "NOT TO do" mother of many can be used as a "'repairer' of the breach," likened I think to, "And they that shall be of thee shall build the old waste places: thou shalt raise up the foundations of many generations; and thou shalt be called, The repairer of the breach, The restorer of paths to dwell in," to her own family. (Isaiah 58:12.) This is "what TO do."
There was a definitive moment during the many months of our separation, in one of those up at 3:45 mornings for work at the YMCA, so that I could be home before the home school day began, that I came surrendering to the my Lord and Saviour, in a room alone, feeling as close as I have ever felt, however comparatively minuscule, to the anguish of Jesus. I felt physically strapped and drawn in opposite directions, torn apart, yes, for the guilt of my own sins I could now clearly ascertain, for the sacrifices I had to make, but by far, between my family which might never cohere again. Completely distraught, I made a very conscious commitment to the Lord, that, yes, I will take this as you use it for your glory, just as I prayed a very sober-minded question in the local school parking lot, empty as it were; asking if I had laid my marriage at the altar of homeschooling that it would be made evident to me, while I know many would have said the very opposite had occurred. But they don't know the ways I know I went wrong, regardless of anyone else's choices.
And these are the times that made me sure I had to let go, quit trying to save everybody and everything, to be quiet and watch God do what He does. He told me he would, that he would "deal with ...," and He surely did.
So much of what is classic Mike will no longer be: obviously, the binges, like the one that nearly killed him with alcoholic hepatitis in December. The "go fast": he's ridden his whole life, so he bought a super bike in January. He bought me a bike too and after a whole ton of prayer, I said, "Yes, I'll learn." I told our caseworker teary eyed that I had decided to be my husband's wife, and I meant it. But one night on a trip home in the tractor trailer, he asked the Lord if he was supposed to have it, and he promptly totaled it the next morning. I was spared the treacherous risk I had deemed it to be, but more preeminently my husband saw a prayer answered as swiftly and as clearly as he ever had.
His ribs had to heal, which gave me cause to give him care and affection and to meet his needs, the way I have a lot of times, but with overwhelming peace and security this time, with no accusations, no doubts. I knew where home was, wherever he was, and not because I always like everything about him or even feel love for him to be honest, but because I am in covenant with my Lord, and my husband is in so many ways my salvation, my sanctification through Him. I have seen provision and protection from other sources, but none can replace how God changes me through this person I'm to walk through this world with.
He likes TV and eating out as much as anyone. These things too shall go, as matters of budgeting. The big man-size meals he posts pictures of will change, oddly not because of cholesterol (his arteries look great) or sugar but because of the sodium that makes him gain 5-10 pounds overnight, stressing his already damaged heart.
Right now, even his strength is gone with the wrist injury from the tornado winds. He is watching the very fiber of his manhood waste away. After he made the choice to have the surgery for the defibrillator and pacemaker, which inherently nullifies his CDL, he went to the Social Security office after very deliberate instructions the doctor gave us both, and came home in tears with a dozen roses, per the song. All the times he said he hated driving were as they had not been. This was a game changer. This was the end of the only thing he knew to do to support his family, "unskilled labor" they call the work of an over-the-road driver, even though he can drive with his eyes closed, keep perfect records, and knows most every road, store, factory, town, and city in this country and people who work and live there. It was one year shy of 30 years, which is why the Social Security worker was shocked at the amount he's to receive once approved. "Oh, you've actually been working," sadly contrary to the majority of recipients.
He sees the end of something; I see the beginning, "Behold, I will do a new thing; now it shall spring forth; shall ye not know it? I will even make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert." (Isaiah 43:19.) I wrote a prayer the other morning, "Lord, guide our days that we know your Word and honor your name; that we waste nothing, time or thought, that we lean into each other and the children and that we all lean into the kingdom; that we pray, learn, serve, work/exercise together, that you be glorified."
Every single word, I mean. These two youngest kids have held our family together like glue. They have been the subjects of ferocious protection, and they have been a reason to finally get this right. Not to objectify them, but it is awfully amazing to watch what the Lord will work out because of and through practical needs. If we had quit our family as it were convenient, they would not have been born. And "today" would not look the way it does, with our eclectic 13 year old son and our artistic 10 year old daughter.
In this trial, I professed also, as I was led of the Lord, to make His word paramount in our home. And as it stands and is portrayed in Matthew 4:4, “But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God," we "eat" of it three times a day: in the morning with me, before lessons individually, and at night with their father.
Our new norm is going to involve a lot of togetherness, which is something we have not experienced outside of crisis. It will be challenging to not have a "breather"/dispatched trip to make us miss each other. But the kids will have a full time father. Macklynn is particularly in need of it. And Madalynn will not have a distant father or the influence of a perpetually strained mother.
I suspect that things I can't imagine will come to fruition. I expect that I will finally learn what it means to be my husband's lover. I think we will all learn together - he was always the more fun teacher anyway. I believe we will worship together. I hope God has a mission for us together. I look forward to planning and making meals together. I wonder where we will walk and explore together. I smile at the thought of seeing our grand babies, together. I can't wait to watch Michael play football at Western Carolina, together, and to give our Megan away to the one who sees in her what we do, together. I anticipate the Sunday afternoons together when the kids come around, not because they are coerced or always want to or even feel like it, but because they have respect of the Father's will, purpose, and order: Proverbs 16:3.
And here's what I know: that my place is home, wherever that lands me and however many more times that Mother's Day rose bush from the Parkway has to be dug up. That fact was apparent to me before all the tests came back and decisions made. And, who knows, the Lord might make room for me to write about it all. But for now, I am witness that every day is a big day for our family: every kind gesture, every visit, every invitation, every conversation, every ounce of forgiveness, every defeat of sin and submission to Christ, not because Mike is dying but because ....the Holy Spirit is living. Thursday, June 7, 2018
As for Me and My House
It's after midnight, and I'm about finished with the hard work of parting with the majority of the books that have lasted till this move. Now, I had sworn off years ago nursery rhymes, Disney, anything even slightly promoting "good" witchcraft, and anthropomorphism, which leaves no wonder that children think animals know their imminent demise. But, somehow along the way, I let down my guard, compromised for sentimentality or for traditionalism, because we can't seem to get enough of good ole country living stories.
You know, we wonder why our kids are satisfied with things that are "unprofitable," futile, and vain. Yet, look what we've been "feeding" them, since they were old enough to listen. How is it that a Christian would read her child a book that her God has intentionally been left out of? Why is it okay that the lessons He has taught us from the beginning are so easily portrayed as someone else's morals, as though he does not exist? No wonder we need a hero; there is no God.
This process is gut wrenching for me, as selective as I thought I'd been, especially the young children's ones and those they learned to read to. Because certain of these books represent windows of time and memories with each child individually. But how can I continue to harbor them when I know what I know now? In this age of information, it doesn't take long to find out: that when a person looks up the author of Sarah, Plain and Tall, "Christian" is automatically marked out of the search because there is no association; that when Louisa May Alcott is searched, we find her father was a Transcendentalist and the apple didn't fall far from the tree; that L. M. Montgomery of "Anne of Green Gables" fame wrote books that were "moral, but not Christian," and was disillusioned by religion as was evidenced by occult and humanism themes in her later work; that John Piper writes that Robert Louis Stevenson went so far as to join a club with the motto, "Ignore everything that our parents taught us," renouncing, of course, the faith of his father; that Mark Twain was quoted saying, "Faith is believing what you know ain't so," and, "if Christ were here now there is one thing he would not be - a Christian;" that Pooh's creator's son said that if he had spent the time on him that he did his characters that he might have had a father; and that even Old Yeller has nothing firm to stand on.
Then, there are Carolyn Keene's Nancy Drew books on Focus on the Family's pluggedin's review that say "None" under Christian beliefs. Fancy Nancy, that we have many of, has no Christian anything yet is sold on Christianbooks. That should be an alert to how far we've gone. And an article about the American Girl company says that there has not been a new book accompanying a doll with a Christmas story since 2000.
Have we been the silly women led astray the Bible speaks plainly of? The one thing I can say is that I'm glad the kids have been workers more than readers, else they might have spent many idle hours with these books, of milk instead of meat. A good thing is that we can hold on to tales like Pollyanna and The Swiss Family Robinson and Little House (although it sounds like Pioneer Girl has something more to offer than the others), and even Pride and Prejudice. And there are still mainstays like C. S. Lewis, John Bunyan, and Elizabeth Prentiss.
We get one shot at this. Make it count.
You know, we wonder why our kids are satisfied with things that are "unprofitable," futile, and vain. Yet, look what we've been "feeding" them, since they were old enough to listen. How is it that a Christian would read her child a book that her God has intentionally been left out of? Why is it okay that the lessons He has taught us from the beginning are so easily portrayed as someone else's morals, as though he does not exist? No wonder we need a hero; there is no God.
This process is gut wrenching for me, as selective as I thought I'd been, especially the young children's ones and those they learned to read to. Because certain of these books represent windows of time and memories with each child individually. But how can I continue to harbor them when I know what I know now? In this age of information, it doesn't take long to find out: that when a person looks up the author of Sarah, Plain and Tall, "Christian" is automatically marked out of the search because there is no association; that when Louisa May Alcott is searched, we find her father was a Transcendentalist and the apple didn't fall far from the tree; that L. M. Montgomery of "Anne of Green Gables" fame wrote books that were "moral, but not Christian," and was disillusioned by religion as was evidenced by occult and humanism themes in her later work; that John Piper writes that Robert Louis Stevenson went so far as to join a club with the motto, "Ignore everything that our parents taught us," renouncing, of course, the faith of his father; that Mark Twain was quoted saying, "Faith is believing what you know ain't so," and, "if Christ were here now there is one thing he would not be - a Christian;" that Pooh's creator's son said that if he had spent the time on him that he did his characters that he might have had a father; and that even Old Yeller has nothing firm to stand on.
Then, there are Carolyn Keene's Nancy Drew books on Focus on the Family's pluggedin's review that say "None" under Christian beliefs. Fancy Nancy, that we have many of, has no Christian anything yet is sold on Christianbooks. That should be an alert to how far we've gone. And an article about the American Girl company says that there has not been a new book accompanying a doll with a Christmas story since 2000.
Have we been the silly women led astray the Bible speaks plainly of? The one thing I can say is that I'm glad the kids have been workers more than readers, else they might have spent many idle hours with these books, of milk instead of meat. A good thing is that we can hold on to tales like Pollyanna and The Swiss Family Robinson and Little House (although it sounds like Pioneer Girl has something more to offer than the others), and even Pride and Prejudice. And there are still mainstays like C. S. Lewis, John Bunyan, and Elizabeth Prentiss.
We get one shot at this. Make it count.
Sunday, May 27, 2018
I'm Worn
I'm tired, run down. All the activity looks good on Facebook: 6 doctor appointments in one day, seeing all 7 kids on others, doing anything from checking on a baby horse Michael delivered to racing down the drag strip with Mike. When I posted that, in 24 hours, Mike had been flung by a tornado, Miranda had broken her leg at work, and Melody had had a seizure waking up from oral surgery, I got a lot of prayer and concern comments. My first thought was I hadn't gotten my point across that this is pretty predictable for us.
As the days have gone by, I've been hoping those prayers are still in play. Because often it isn't the event that's as cataclysmic as the fallout is, the upheaval of daily routine. Now, sometimes it's God moving us out of our comfort zones, but oftentimes it's the devil removing us from the discipline of Godly living.
When I'm "running," there's less sleep, more caffeine, whatever food, a disorderly house, more acne, less exercise, more haze, less accountability, more irritability, and more importantly - less intimacy, on every level with everybody. I have an actual list of times when the distraction of exhaustion led to life altering circumstances in our family.
So, I've learned to guard the fundamentals, to rid anything that isn't essential, to welcome the cleansing fire. Since we've moved back in together in March, we have been careful not to reintroduce things that don't matter, clutter of any kind. I have learned during the separation to take things directly to the Lord for his approval or disapproval. "Seeming good" is no longer good enough. I want answers. I want God.
You know what it is on these busy days? I realized it crying in the shower while ago. In only a matter of days, I miss my Father. I miss waking up talking to Him and lingering there. I miss studying His word with great intention and wonder. I miss finding His will so neatly pieced together, in the little things throughout the day and conversations. I know these things can and should happen regardless, but there is something about home, something about not being in a rush every morning, something about looking forward to how I might please my Lord by pleasing my husband, something about sharing my God with my children in all things, something about knowing what's going on at home, something about having time to maintain and feel like a woman, something about pulling things together for a meal, something about sitting in the sun or watering the plants. There is life in these things.
When I get led away from home, something begins to die; everything begins to die. That was part of the unraveling of last summer. I remember vividly lying down in complete and sheer exhaustion the afternoon before our 28th anniversary, even posting the song, "Worn." After all, in the prior month alone, McKala had delivered twins and Melody had had brain surgery, among other things. That day my life spun out of control, much because of distance and disillusionment.
So, I've seen up close and personal that, "The thief cometh not but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: ...," the very fiber of family, by dividing out, one by one, and by throwing off attentions so that yet another might be lost.
But God ... but God continues, " ...I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly." (John 10:10.)
As the days have gone by, I've been hoping those prayers are still in play. Because often it isn't the event that's as cataclysmic as the fallout is, the upheaval of daily routine. Now, sometimes it's God moving us out of our comfort zones, but oftentimes it's the devil removing us from the discipline of Godly living.
When I'm "running," there's less sleep, more caffeine, whatever food, a disorderly house, more acne, less exercise, more haze, less accountability, more irritability, and more importantly - less intimacy, on every level with everybody. I have an actual list of times when the distraction of exhaustion led to life altering circumstances in our family.
So, I've learned to guard the fundamentals, to rid anything that isn't essential, to welcome the cleansing fire. Since we've moved back in together in March, we have been careful not to reintroduce things that don't matter, clutter of any kind. I have learned during the separation to take things directly to the Lord for his approval or disapproval. "Seeming good" is no longer good enough. I want answers. I want God.
You know what it is on these busy days? I realized it crying in the shower while ago. In only a matter of days, I miss my Father. I miss waking up talking to Him and lingering there. I miss studying His word with great intention and wonder. I miss finding His will so neatly pieced together, in the little things throughout the day and conversations. I know these things can and should happen regardless, but there is something about home, something about not being in a rush every morning, something about looking forward to how I might please my Lord by pleasing my husband, something about sharing my God with my children in all things, something about knowing what's going on at home, something about having time to maintain and feel like a woman, something about pulling things together for a meal, something about sitting in the sun or watering the plants. There is life in these things.
When I get led away from home, something begins to die; everything begins to die. That was part of the unraveling of last summer. I remember vividly lying down in complete and sheer exhaustion the afternoon before our 28th anniversary, even posting the song, "Worn." After all, in the prior month alone, McKala had delivered twins and Melody had had brain surgery, among other things. That day my life spun out of control, much because of distance and disillusionment.
So, I've seen up close and personal that, "The thief cometh not but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: ...," the very fiber of family, by dividing out, one by one, and by throwing off attentions so that yet another might be lost.
But God ... but God continues, " ...I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly." (John 10:10.)
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