Posts Tagged ‘God’

Well, the Gabriel part is over, anyway, and though many of the challenges persist and will persist – I’m not done talking about this stuff – the major difficulty is surmounted, the cast is off, and Gabriel is whole again.  He’s still not walking.  We’ll have more updates, so you can breathe out again.  But now it’s all about him, not about him and doctors and hospitals.

The night this injury happened six weeks ago, I have a scene in my head from outside the hospital.  I can see myself as if I were watching a  movie, walking across the parking lot of American Fork’s Emergency Room, still dressed in the remnants of my tuxedo from the Twelfth Night Charity Ball, watching the taillights of the ambulance as it carried my wife and little son away from me.  I remember feeling terribly alone, shaken and scared and hopeless.   For the first time in a long, somewhat disappointing night, I was by myself, and I began to weep.

I raised my eyes to Heaven, where dwells a Father I believe in, and I told him, “I don’t understand.  I don’t understand what you’re doing to me.”  We’ve been together, my Father and I, long enough for me not to insult Him by asking “why”, for no such answer is ever going to be forthcoming.  I know better.  Despite my sadness and frustration over this event, I wasn’t so lost as to forget that I was still the most blessed of men.  I wasn’t so far gone that I thought that God somehow owed me an explanation, as if a God omnipotent and all-loving might be making a mistake.  Of course He did not, and does not, and I will trust in Him, though he slay me.  But I wanted to tell Him, although of course He knew, that I didn’t understand.

He has spent the last six weeks helping me get over that.  And though I am not so simple as to believe that I can ever search all the ways of God, find out all His counsels, or ever know all the reasons why He does the things He does, still I can see so many places where His hand has been evident.  This post is my thank-you letter, to a merciful God that loves me better than I love myself.

Because this happened:

• How many friends have I connected and reconnected with?  Nothing brings friends closer than misfortune, and this misfortune was no different.  I can hardly count all the well-wishes we’ve received, all the old and new friends we’ve spoken to and been able to thank for their kindness and consideration of us.  If from this life I can take anything, it is surely not my home or my business, but the friendships and the relationships I made while I was here.  I’ve said before that I know that you CAN “take it with you”.  You just have to convert it to the currency they use where you’re going.  Thank you, all of you, for making me the richest man in town.
• How much more have I been compelled to be humble?  It’s a little tough to have unwarranted confidence when you’re faced with concrete evidence that often, there’s nothing you can do to make things better, or even different.  Sometimes, no matter your business acumen or physical strength or even your money, you just can’t do anything except keep on keepin’ on.  No money could make Gabriel’s leg heal any faster.  Nothing but playing with him and sleeping with him and holding him while he sobbed and screamed could do anything to make things better.  I saw often and clearly that I was powerless before the conditions that I found myself in.
• How much more of my real power have I discovered?  I have never fancied myself a great businessman.  I’m a Bailey – and not Harry Bailey, either.  Peter, more like, or George.  But what I have loved so much about the story of that film is the invisible power George has, a power that improves the lives and the fortunes of hundreds of people in ways that are obscure and even hidden from him.  Despite my feeling of powerlessness in the face of Gabriel’s discomfort, my wife’s weariness, my family’s displacement, the damaging or outright destruction of dreams and plans we had, I discovered to my surprise a different power, far stronger than I supposed, that could still improve things, even if making the problem go away was impossible.  I COULD hold my little son.  I could let my wife sleep in here and there.  I could focus our family on the things I could do.  And I could tell the story of what we were doing, in the hope that someone out there could benefit if he were caught in similar circumstances.
• How much fun have I had being a daddy blogger?  There are a huge number of Mommy blogs out there, and I love to read them, but I occasionally feel that perhaps there ought to be a few more Daddy blogs, because as important as it is for us men to hear how our wives think – I can’t tell you how useful I find that – it’s still nice to sometimes hear the truth about what’s going on in Dad’s head, too.  We tend to sit there like Lincoln on Rushmore and just take it.  At least, we look like we do.  But we hurt, too, and we feel powerless and hopeless and achy and all the same stuff everyone else does.  We just don’t talk much about it.  It’s been educational to use this space to be perfectly candid about our situation from the Dad’s perspective, and I’ve been grateful for those of you Dads out there that have let me know that you appreciate it, too.
• How much have I learned?  Before this, I knew nothing about the medical establishment.  I knew nothing of medical billing, hospital procedures, emergency rooms, medical staff, treatment options and possibilities for rehab.  I had done some vague thinking about insurance and government assistance, but nothing of concreteness.  That’s changed.  I’ve learned about thinking outside the box on daily challenges, being patient in extreme provocation with my youngest child, and how compassionate and creative my other children are because they love their brother.  I’ve been able to re-imagine my life, partly out of necessity, and discovered how incredible things can really be.  I was blind.  In so many ways, now I see.
• How would I have found Jill Peterson?  More than any of these other things, from a business standpoint, the greatest blessing of this ordeal has been the discovery (or re-discovery) of Jill Peterson, who became my executive assistant one week after the accident.  I’ll have more on this later.  She’s far too important a person to get just a paragraph here.  But suffice it to say that had she been the only blessing we received through this, it would have all been worth it. No fooling.
• How ignorant would I have remained about my wife’s incredibility?  We’ve long suspected that Jeanette was really Elastigirl in disguise, but this last six weeks has proved it.  She can go days with only the briefest of rests.  She can maintain her calm at 4am when the screaming child vomits, not because he is sick, but because he’s frustrated.  She can retain her appetite while sitting with a child that smells like the inside of a port-a-potty on a hot summer day.  She can re-arrange her entire life in a day, giving up or postponing huge numbers of things she’d really like to do.  There is nothing she cannot sacrifice.  There is no life she cannot affect for good.  She has been able to use this to grow closer to each of her children, and to me.  She’s the cement that makes the foundation of our family.  No husband could love his wife more than I love her, but then, no husband is as fortunate as I am.  We’re stronger and we’re better, because of this.
• I wouldn’t have remembered.  I blogged about this a long while ago, but it bears repeating here.  It seems that only in the face of disaster do we dare to re-imagine our lives, to let go of what we thought would be, what we are terrified of losing, and like a seed bursting from its pod fling ourselves into the unconstructed future, making of it what we can as the chance comes.  I remember now.

And today, another blessing, as we are reminded of the incredible miracle of just being whole.  To run, to jump, to dance…to touch the smiling face of a loving Father in Heaven, who had a whole treasure chest to give us, if only we would stay with Him as He pushed us into a place we would never have gone ourselves.

I still don’t understand.  But I’ve learned, even more, to trust Him anyway.

I believe in Santa Claus. I believe in him approximately the way I believe in St. Paul, in fact. Once, there was indisputably someone named Paul that went about doing good, and there was indisputably a St. Nicholas as well, who did similar things (on a little smaller – or at least less publicized – scale). These men are gone, but there are still missionaries like Paul – I was one myself – and there are lots and lots of people that spend money they don’t really have giving things to people.

But this post isn’t about Santa Claus, at least not directly. It’s about what else I believe about Christmas, which is that it is the greatest holiday ever conceived for anything. This is appropriate, since it commemorates the greatest event ever.

As previously posted, I deplore the fact that the Christmas bustle starts sometime in October, since Thanksgiving is not a marketing holiday. In fact, Thanksgiving is only used by retailers (other than grocery stores, bless them) as a convenient marker for the kickoff of the Rumble in the Aisles, the massive Friday-after-Turkey discount extravaganza that never fails to get Orlando on the map for largest number of people arrested at WalMart.

This type of behavior is exactly what the religious types among us bemoan at the Most Wonderful Time of the Year. It’s a Christmas sale, for crying out loud. Peace on Earth, people. But no. The struggle to get that one more thing seems to drown out the Reason for the Season, and that leads to an unbelievable amount of hand-wringing and sanctimonious preaching from the devout that the Real Meaning of Christmas Has Been Forgotten. Woe be unto us!

Let’s deal with the reason for the season then, just to get it out of the way. Christmas, as you might expect if you’ve ever looked at the word, has to do with Christ. It is, in fact, the Mass of Christ, the celebration of the birth of the Savior of Mankind into the world. I won’t retell the story, because if you don’t know it, even if you are Jewish, then you’ve lived your whole life on Mars. But it’s a true story, and a deeply important one. It’s so important in fact, that it shines through even modern society’s very highly-developed methods of obscuring it.

I once had a discussion with a friend of mine who is a borderline agnostic (raised one religion, now regularly attends no church, but is pretty sure there’s a God). We were discussing the foreknowledge of God, and how we could be free to choose our own path in this life if there was an omniscient being who already knew what we were going to do. It occurred to me that if God were not omniscient, if He were not in complete command of the situation, if He were not able to make all things – all things – work together for good for them that believe, that I would have no interest in worshipping Him. What kind of God is surprised, or even occasionally outmaneuvered? Wouldn’t you want your God to be better than you are?

Man, I sure would.

Fortunately, God is actually God, and that means that He’s got things pretty well in hand, whatever we do to rain death and destruction and misery down on ourselves. This would include the birth of His Son, I think. There is no way He is surprised that the events surrounding His Son’s condescension have spawned a two-monthlong marketing bonanza that makes the heathen feasts that used to mark the end of the year look like a ladies cotillion. This has not caught God off guard. He is still God, and He is still running things.

And He’s smarter than we think.

Yes, we hear from the pulpit over and over how we’ve lost the Spirit of the Season, that Santa Claus has replaced the babe in the manger, how we concern ourselves far more with Decking the Halls than with having an occasional Silent Night to contemplate the birth that makes the holiday happen in the first place. But do we?

Here’s a line at WalMart at 11pm the week of Christmas. There are enormous carts filled with magical – truly, folks, magical – goodies of every type and description. It’s late and it’s a work day and everyone is tired, including the cashier. Someone fumbles with her purse and the change goes spilling across the floor like candy from a broken jar. The woman tiredly reaches down and starts chasing the glittering coins, but she isn’t alone. Everyone in line is on the floor with her, smiling, scooping copper and zinc back into her purse. Except one man, who reaches across while she’s down there, zips his card through the reader, punches in his PIN, winks at the cashier, and puts the small sacks of her goodies into her cart. Bends down and scrabbles on the floor with the rest of us. When the woman stands up her bill is paid and no one will own up to having done it. The cashier wishes her a Merry Christmas and out the door she goes, bewildered and grateful and tearful. As are we all.

Tell me you’re going to see that in March.

Here’s something else. The line is longish, and especially after something like that, people get to talking. I ask the man in front of me “so, what you got there?” He smiles and says “my mother has been complaining about her feet the last couple of months, saying that they’re always cold. So I got this whirlpool-style foot massager that heats the water.” “That ought to handle it,” I say. “Yep. I think it will.” He goes on to show me, as we shuffle forward, a half-dozen other items in the cart, one for his little girl, some for his twin boys, a couple of little candies for his wife. It occurs to me, a little at a time, the way the sun rises, that his $230 basket of gifts contains not one thing – not one thing – for himself. We’ve talked for 15 minutes and he hasn’t said a word about himself. I don’t even know his name.

There are perhaps 20 people in this line, and there are 4 of these lines in this store, and there are 3900 Wal Marts in the US. And every single cart is filled with things for people other than the ones doing the buying. Every purchase is a gift.

I’m sure this happens in August, too. On some other planet.

If giving to others is the forgetting of oneself, and if the forgetting of oneself is the path to finding oneself, if the surest path to God is the caring for others, then somehow, miracle of miracles, God has contrived it so that the entire hedonistic season points men back to Him.

I like giving gifts. I spend months planning them. I like buying things. I spend as freely as I possibly can, and I’m here to encourage you to do the same. Don’t be stupid. But do go all the way. Give what you truly wish to give and let January deal with the fallout. Giving with your heart is never – it is NEVER – a bad idea. If someone nags you about it, smile, be polite, and don’t pay them any attention. All the preaching and the moralizing probably has its place, too, but honestly, more often than not (and I am, myself, a fairly religious fellow) it seems like the preachers are telling us to stop having fun because they are worried that if they don’t personally put a stop to all this getting and spending that God will be unable to do His thing.

Wouldn’t you prefer a God that didn’t much need your help?

Well, good news. You have one.

Merry Christmas.

(Much of this post was originally written in December of 2005)