Out of the shadows

Most of us have something that has scored our soul, a darkness that we hide, or hide from until we become strong enough, or are forced by circumstances, or the heat of love to pry our fingers off the door and let the light in.

Sometimes the shadow flits so quickly across our vision that it doesn’t register as darkness. We say life is good. We don’t look back.

Sometimes it has gouged a canyon in our psyche and we think that is who we are. The lone pine, bent and twisted in the wind.

The darkness can be long-standing loneliness, the shadow of depression, chronic illness, a damaging relationship.

It can be the dread of what may come, or the fear that what we yearn for may never come.

Or fear of failure.

It can be a simple hurt, injustice or betrayal.

Or the loss of a loved one.

Whether we sing hello to the darkness that is definitely not our old friend (Song of Silence, anyone?) or laugh it away, no one survives life in our world without an injury, or two.

What do we do with the darkness, this unwelcome presence?

Does it matter?

When my firstborn had her first splinter in her finger, I sterilized a needle in a flame, as my mother and grandmother had done before me, and picked up K’s hand to tease out the splinter. She screamed before I even touched her and yanked her hand away. Huge tears followed, with pleading to leave it alone. K was sure it would come out with soaking, and without that nasty needle. Being a soft-touch first-time mother, I conceded and left the splinter to work its way out.

As I’m sure you have guessed, it didn’t. Instead, daily her finger grew redder and began to swell. The pain intensified as infection increased. Finally, she offered her trembling hand to have the nasty splinter removed. It was embedded in a very unhappy finger. What would have taken seconds the first day took many painful minutes of poking and digging with the dreaded needle.

Even if we try, I don’t think we are as good at hiding the darkness as we think we are. In spite of our efforts to suppress it, it can come out in many different ways: snide remarks or sarcasm, anger, belittling others, addictions and cravings (food is mine), depression, incapacitating fears or incomplete relationships. From meanness to low self-confidence, the darkness we suffer at some time in our lives leaves its mark.

Too sadly, it may drive us to leave an unhealthy mark on others as well. I understand the dysfunction in my father’s family, but that knowledge by itself doesn’t take away my wounds from his darkness.

I have been grateful to learn I don’t have to ignore, or accept the darkness or its effects on me. I can acknowledge it and hold my hand up for whatever it takes to rid my soul of the shadow before it can fester, or for cleansing if infection has already set in.

With the trust, and needs, of a child, I hold myself up to the Great Physician, the one who suffered far more than I ever will so he could bring light to every dark place. Heal every wounded heart. Dry every tear. Make every fractured soul whole.

Sometimes the healing hurts. Sometimes the path is way longer than we would like. Sometimes it doesn’t look like he is there at all.

In this world, he doesn’t promise perfection. He isn’t our Santa Claus waiting to deliver whatever our little heart desires.

He wants us whole, and holy. He will use whatever is necessary to clean the wound.

No matter the means, his way leads us toward the light.

Out of darkness.

It only takes one person

When I unfurl our American flag to hang out front, I often recall our first year in Honduras. We lived in Tela, on the north coast (on the Caribbean). The pervasive poverty had hit me hard and I felt impotent in the face of all the deprivation surrounding us. What was my offering among so many needs? When a U.S. Navy ship docked at the banana loading docks as part of a friendship effort by the Navy, I gained an insight.

The crew brought shoes and clothing personally collected in the States, and they shared freely throughout the community. They used their weekend liberty (time off) going around town to repair a roof for a widow, fix a door, or help in any way they could find. Several sailors painted the school where we taught. Our two teenage daughters drew the interest of a couple of junior officers and we ended up hosting all the officers for a delightful, encouraging dinner. Before the ship left the next day they gave us a tour, along with locals who had been impressed with the sailor’s generosity and behavior.

We stood on the beach as they shoved off. With a lump in my throat, I watched the American flag wave. I was proud of those boys. Proud of our Navy. Proud of my country. And I’d never been so proud of the red, white and blue. I covered my heart, and had to hold myself back from belting out the National Anthem.

A student during the height of the Vietnam years, jaded by watching the assassinations of our president, John F Kennedy, presidential candidate, Bobby Kennedy, and peaceful civil rights leader, Martin Luther King, Jr., along with the lies and deceptions of Watergate, it had been a long time since I’d been proud of my country.

Here I stood, on foreign soil, savoring the values that had made our country great.

That make the United States of America a place many still struggle to immigrate to.

Not speeches and politicians,
not railroad magnates
or corporate giants.
Not fat wallets
Or impressive churches.
Not grand houses
Or flashy cars
Or well-lined retirement accounts.
Not stardom
Or notoriety
Not tall buildings or big cities
or luxurious shopping centers.

Over two hundred years ago, it was simply people, of many nationalities, unnamed individuals who worked hard, but always had time, energy and “a little to spare” for someone in need.

I believe it remains the only way for the United States to be a great country, a nation with a future.

My husband and I were on a road trip a few days ago and listened to an awful audio book. (We kept thinking it would get better.) But one character’s viewpoint was worth the listening time.

Each one is valuable, or no one is valuable.

Wherever you are, whatever your country, as a citizen of this great Earth, tune in to opportunities before you, and around you, for lending a hand.

For caring.
For affirming each person as worthy, made in the image of God.
Even if you all you have to share is a touch or a smile.

It doesn’t really take a whole village. One person can make all the difference.
One teacher.
One neighbor.
One friend.
One stranger.

I was hungry and you fed me,
I was thirsty and you gave me a drink,
I was homeless and you gave me a room,
I was shivering and you gave me clothes,
I was sick and you stopped to visit,
I was in prison and you came to me.’ . . .
‘I’m telling the solemn truth: Whenever you did one of these things to someone overlooked or ignored, that was me—you did it to me.’

Matthew 25: 35,36,40 MSG

Has one person made a big difference in your life?
Have you acted to bless someone who never expected it?

Never too late for a father

More than forty years since we buried him, today I awoke and thought about my father, how his life and death have influenced me. The Commander, The Old Man, Daddy, or @#$%^##, as he was called by me or my siblings, was admired in the Navy, a strong officer and early-on initiator of civil rights reform. Personally, he struggled with his own demons.

And his family suffered.

An alcoholic, abusive, a “womanizer,” a man with a huge hand and the rage to match it that terrorized me throughout my childhood, he sent me to college with a profound Daddy-shaped whole in my being.

All my life, that gaping emptiness pushed me toward excessive shyness and insecurity in my younger years, and some poor life choices as I grew into adulthood.

It also ushered me into the hands of my heavenly Father.

Many times I felt as if I walked high above a rushing river, one foot on one beam and the other on another, shaky one, always threatening to send me tumbling into to raging water, and sure death.

By the time I received the call from my mother that Daddy was dying I was married with two adorable daughters and a marriage that was daily torture. I flew across the country, praying I would make it to my father’s bedside – the first prayer in quite a while.

The pain of my daily life had driven me into the desert, and I’d given up on what had seemed a God who didn’t hear, or wouldn’t. I hadn’t followed his will for my life, and figured I’d missed my chance with God.

To the surprise of his doctors, my father lived two more weeks after I arrived at the hospital. I stayed at his bedside caring for him while he was awake, then simply sitting and reading after he slipped into a coma.

The last night, about 3 AM, I looked up to see his blue eyes open, trained on me.

Full of love.

Due to a tracheotomy, he couldn’t speak, but I’d been his voice while there, and understood he wanted me to come closer. As I leaned over his bed, my long hair fell across his chest. He reached a shaky hand and stroked my hair – my first really pure, loving touch from my father.

I soaked it in.

As I blinked away tears, his eyes said he loved me – the kind of love I’d needed, yearned for, not the empty words I’d heard from a drunken abuser.

I whispered, “I love you, too, Daddy.”

He smiled, dropped his hand, closed his eyes and fell back into the coma.

In the morning, my mother arrived, finally rested from the long vigil she’d kept with him for months at Bethesda Navy hospital. I was totally exhausted. I patted Daddy’s unresponsive hand and left the isolation room to give my mother my chair by his side.

As I pulled off the mask and gown I’d worn while in his ICU isolation room, Mom tapped on the glass and motioned toward the bed. My father was awake, his eyes watching me. I was too tired to robe up again, so I waved, and went on to our room to collapse into a deep sleep.

Sometime later, Mom woke me. “Daddy’s gone.”

All six months they’d been there, she’d been gathering the courage to talk with him about Jesus. Seeing him awake, she told him how God loved the world, and him, so much that he’d given his son. She told him Jesus died for him, to clean him of all his sin. When she asked if he wanted to accept that gift of life from Jesus he nodded yes. She asked if he wanted her to pray for him, and he again nodded yes.

After the prayer, he closed his eyes and died.

As I listened, at first it was anti-climactic. Not there for that moment, after all the hours at his side, I felt shorted.

But a few days later, while I read the passage from I Corinthians 15 for his funeral, I realized that if God could love and transform a man like my father, even in the last minutes of his life, then God could still love me and work in my life.

It was my father’s death that gave my life a new beginning.

It has taken years of work, counseling and prayer, and love from others to heal the ill effects of his impact on me.

Now, I am whole enough to be able to identify the strengths I have gained from him, both genetically and learned by example.

And I am grateful for my father.

I share this today because some of you have also had a father who has harmed, abandoned, or simply ignored you. I want to encourage you into the arms of a heavenly father who will never hurt you or abandon you.

It is never too late for healing, for the pathway that once hurt you to be the one that gives you strength.

And for the man who is reading this who is that kind of father, and you hear the enemy telling you it is too late, you have gone too far, done too much or missed too much, I want to say, “As long as you are alive, it is never too late.”

Not too late to say you’re sorry.

Not too late to receive the same washing every one of us needs from the power in the death and resurrection of Jesus for us.

Not too late to express love to your child.

That makes for a truly happy father’s day, when the hearts of the fathers are turned to their children.

And to those good fathers, the ones who care for, love and protect their children, who interact with joy and sacrifice for your family, thank you. You make our world a better place.