The green trace is on the maples and on the cottonwoods. The hasty crocuses have come, and have already gone away. Here and there is a riot of pink blossoms showing on the cherries. Everything is waking up and I’m trying to bind my heart to the deciduous resurrection. Soon it’ll be Easter, and then the long awaited days of early summer. How we do plan and pine to cherish those bright days. Those crystal hours of spontaneity and easy joy, the yellow sun warming cold skin, childhood memories drifting through the new air. Oh, for the nostalgic wellings-up that frame our current joys and ease the griefs that throb beneath it all. My brother is gone but the seasons won’t notice. They will turn over and over to remind me of old stories. But their turnings might also obscure memories, layer upon layer. And if I let them, they will make me forget. But I need to remember clearly now. I only saw my brother a few times a year, for major holidays and maybe for some rare summertime family rendezvous. Most of our adult lives were like that. He began drifting away in high school, maybe even before. But I will miss him for the rest of my life. Every new season, every Christmas, every single Spring.
Now, I tell God over again as I have done in years past like a proper elder brother, “This son of yours, this prodigal, yours.” And now His arresting response, “This brother of yours.” That pain is fleet and it haunts like background noise, even as the Father comforts me. I receive His comfort, I receive the comfort of my friends, the ones who are not afraid of me. They sit near and quietly bare the sorrow too. But now, here are memories of harsh words said by young fools. And now, thoughts of conversations we should have had, of chances missed. And this clutching, drowning desire to refuse the unalterable fact.
This brother of mine.
Now, this morning I tell the Father that I need something from Him, anything. An encounter, an encouragement, a revelation. Hands on my shoulders, a voice in my ear, something to hold on to. Yesterday was so hard. I’m learning that Mondays in this grief season might be a weekly step backwards. Today is more difficult though. I don’t make it through my work day. I leave abruptly with just a quick word to my boss and no explanation at all for my coworker. All day I struggled and tried to be strong but suddenly I can go no further. There is nothing for me to do but leave. I barely get out of there without breaking down completely. As I drive I do break down, ugly tears and broken words said for my heart’s sake and for God to hear. I drive, unsure of where to go. Before long I find that the Father is leading me down the old familiar streets and the houses of our childhood. Six houses within driving distance and within reach of my memory. He leads me through some of my earliest days, one slow drive-by at a time. He leads me through my boyhood, past the house where my sister flooded the dip in our driveway for us to splash in, and where mom planted strawberries in the front yard. Past our Grandma’s house which burned down and was rebuilt. Past the Primrose house. I stare at the tiny place where the four of us lived right up until a step-dad joined us and took us into some dark years. And the Father reminds me of how He tenderly led us out of those hazy, lost feeling days. I drive down the street where I can remember most clearly being friends with my brother. We ruled that street, we knew all of the neighbor kids. It was the two of us, dreaming up worlds populated by G-I Joes and LEGO’s. It was the two of us, organizing baseball games in the street and instigating night games of hide and seek that ranged up and down, with every kid nearby, in every neighbor’s yard. We rode our bikes all over, to Fred Meyer with black garbage bags bursting with cans, to forts hidden in blackberry jungles, to secret bike jumps along side Beltline Highway. We were brothers there. I drive on to the town that is still ours and I look at the house where we shared an upstairs bedroom, and another where we both finished out high school. And the Father reminds me of the wilderness that he led our family through. Then He reminds me of a talk I had with my brother. We were in Texas for our cousin’s bachelor party and we were riding in the back of someone’s van, maybe on our way to another bar. It was late and I don’t recall everything we said. But I remember telling Peter that I was very proud of him and naming the reasons why. I felt clumsy as I tried to express it, but I had a tremendous desire to give my brother something I felt he needed. I realize now, even as I write this that I wanted to give my two-years-younger brother a father’s blessing. I wouldn’t have called it anything like that at the time but that is certainly what I wanted for him. It was something neither of us ever really had. It wasn’t mine to give, still I hope with all my heart that my brother received it for what it was meant to be, something to carry with him, something to hold on to. Something better than what old Isaac gave. That sad patriarch who had two hands with which to give, and two sons, but whose eyes were blinded by scarcity. While the Father brings the memory of that talk back to me, he reminds me also that all those memories that have been haunting me, all of the harsh words I ever gave my brother, all of the ways I tried to differentiate myself from him, when I was that hurting middle child, desperate to establish for myself some unique and valuable identity. The stupid fights, the competition. They all came before that blessing, and never afterwards. After that night I only remember inviting him to come back home, to be my brother again.
God what a hard day.
But now, as I’m holding tight to this reordering, this vital chronology which I must keep remembering. And now, as July gathers in and summer’s cadence shifts us toward celebrations and laughter, this loss still aches underneath. And I am still not strong enough to satisfy the questions, or to carry the sadness, or to ignore the incoming anger.
Now, there are two kinds of surrender, one of despair and one of hope. We will all make our surrenders at some time, in one direction or another. And the truth is we do this in some form every day of our lives. I don’t know perfectly how God sorts things out after that final hope-filled, or else desperate surrender, but I know which one is better. I always tried to leave doors open for my brother. There was always a place waiting for him at our table. I didn’t do enough though, none of us ever do enough. But there is one who has done, and is doing more than enough. And it is to Him, and His unfathomable goodness that I must now surrender my brother.
We are nearly three years in to our home school journey and I find myself truly enjoying the picture of what home school looks like for our family. I have been told that the third year is the “golden year” if you will, where you simultaneously throw out what hasn’t been working and grab hold of the things that do work for your home school. And this is precisely where I have found myself in these past months.
I was one of those moms who would never home school. I admired and believed in home schooling, but I didn’t think it would be a fit for me. However, in Isabella’s fourth grade year after much prayer, we decided we would home school her through the middle school years because – middle school. 😉 When I first started looking into this brave new world, I felt most comfortable with an online curriculum because it was all laid out for me, but being a person who turns over every rock (to near exhaustion), I messaged a home school friend from book club and she generously consented to answering my (hundreds of) questions. She sent me to a blog post that summarized several learning approaches. After exploring these and several other approaches, I kept circling back to Classical Education. As I learned more about it I was filled with an overwhelming peace and a strong sense that this was right for our family. I again messaged my friend and told her I was leaning towards a classical approach and she replied, “that’s what we do!” She recommended I read The Core by Leigh Bortins. I read the book over the next few sunny days, while Lincoln played in the yard. The thought that stood out to me was that a Classical Education isn’t about building up a person’s intellect in order to elevate them above others, but in order to have the tools to relate to all people, and bring others to the knowledge of the Father. It may sound silly, but I wept. It was one of the biggest paradigm shifts I had ever experienced. I realized that I had long thought I should keep what I know to myself because it was only to prove my own intelligence, and this perspective on education had never aligned in my heart and mind quite like this.
We enrolled our kids in a local Classical Conversations program and decided we are in for the long haul. In other wards, we are going all the way through the Challenge years for high school. I never would have dreamed this would be for me, but this education makes sense to us. Our hearts have always been for our kids to understand their theology down to it’s roots, and now with this method of learning, we can give our kids an education that will connect God to every aspect of knowledge. Classical learning fits our family like a glove.
It’s now been almost three years, Isabella has been a memory master for two years and Gracelyn one year. Lincoln soaks up facts and has a curiosity that keeps me on my toes, and Isabella has begun her first year of Challenge. Like many other callings, it hasn’t been easy. In fact, this has been our most difficult three years of child raising so far, but it has also been the most rewarding. We have many days filled with frustration over math, too much noise (Lincoln likes to talk:)), and tears and conversations through building character. But this I know, this is where God has called our family.
We hope you are celebrating our country’s birth with friends and family, unhealthy food and fireworks.
In hopes of adding a little extra patriotic richness to your day, we are sharing some of our founders’ words from the minutes and hours following the ratification of the Declaration of Independence. Despite all of its faults and black marks over two hundred and thirty nine years, this is truly a great country. May we live in such a way that upholds the grand dream of the Pilgrims, the Puritans, our founders and our fathers.
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“Gentlemen, the price on my head has just been doubled.”
-John Hancock, just minutes after voting
“We have this day restored the Sovereign, to Whom alone men ought to be obedient. He reigns in Heaven and from the rising to the setting sun, may His Kingdom come.”
–Samuel Adams,just minutes after voting
“The second day of July, 1776, will be the most memorable epoch in the history of America. I am apt to believe it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forevermore.
You will think me transported with enthusiasm, but I am not. I am well aware of the toil and blood and treasure that it will cost us to maintain this Declaration and support and defend these states. Yet, through all the gloom, I can see the rays of ravishing light and glory. I can see that the end is more than worth all the means. And that posterity will triumph in that day’s transaction, even although we should rue it, which I trust in God we shall not…
It may be the will of Heaven that America will suffer calamities still more wasting, and distress yet more dreadful. If this is to be the case, it will have this good effect at least. It will inspire us with many virtues which we have not, and correct many errors, follies and vices which threaten to disturb, dishonor and destroy us. The furnace of affliction produces refinement, in States as well as individuals…But I must submit all my hopes and fears to an overruling Providence, in which, unfashionable as the faith may be, I firmly believe.” –John Adams, Letter to his wife Abigail
If you are looking for a way to add meaning to this day, here’s what we will be doing :
(from Prager University)
All of us walk around with a need pulling at our insides. Some of us are more aware of the need than others. Some of us allow it to draw our minds ever more inward, as if self obsessed thoughts could fill the void. Some of us try to pave it over with the busy production of our lives. Some of us carry the need away; abandon homes and families to search meandering roads and far off corners hoping to find, we don’t know what.
I spent the 19th year of my life schooling with YWAM in Tyler Texas. That year was a pivot point for my life in more ways than I could list. I highly recommend any young person to take a year post high school and serve with an organization like Youth with a Mission.
For my first months, as I had done back home in Oregon, I occupied my mind by trying to purge away everything that carried the tang of regret. Like many young believers I became obsessed with every imperfection, every immoral impulse, every memory of a bad choice. I walked through steps of confession, true repentance, promises of future goodness, everything I could think of. Still, I could not shake feelings of unworthiness and shame. They stayed with me. I hid them away like unwanted contraband. I was terrified that someone would notice my struggle, and realize that I didn’t belong; that I wasn’t as strong as I should have been.
The broken cycle that seized those days was hard to take. But when the brokenness would finally overwhelm me and I became too exhausted to keep up my efforts, the Father’s kindness would edge in. It surprised me every time. Only in those surrendered hours was I able to lean on the Father like I should have done all along.
This fighting, stubborn-standing, breaking and finally surrendering was an ugly process that I knew I needed to leave behind. I just had no idea how. And admitting I wasn’t strong enough always felt like a defeat. Admitting felt like quitting on a responsibility.
One night I took a walk alone on the acreage of the rural campus. I was in the middle of yet again trying to think my way out of the place I’d been. Suddenly I clearly heard the Father say to my spirit, “I love you.” My heart’s fleeting response might as well have said, “Love you too, now let me get back to work.” Walking on, I heard the persistent, “I love you,” two more times. The third finally halted my mind and I allowed the thread to pull. I felt Him say, “I love you, I have always loved you. There was never a moment of your life when my love for you was diminished and there never will be.”
Now I had long owned the fact of this statement. The math of it was filed away in my head right next to that story about the floating ax head and an out of context James 2:20. But the tenderness of this truth was gaining new ground. As His thoughts unwound inside of me, they wove through all my toilsome shame and regret.
A newly close, living knowledge of His kindness worked its way backwards into my memory. Every monument of failure that stood up out of my brief history was toppled by this declaration of His constancy. I surrendered to it. I gave up the lie of my own strength. I felt Him there with me, in the Texan air, His hands on my shoulders, speaking new life to the heart of a son.
The weeks and months that followed brought a lightness of heart that I could hardly remember ever having before. Joy was no longer something that surprised me; I carried it with me. Working towards excellence was no longer about trying to deserve something, it was a gift to the One who loves me without fail. That year I learned that my need for Him could never be answered by my own striving. I learned something else too, something just as important:
Repentance: quitting on sin and walking in the opposite direction, is an absolute requirement. Throughout our lives there will be times when the Holy Spirit will bring a pressure to bear on our hearts, drawing us aside for a serious talk. But that interaction is not the whole of our lives as sons and daughters. Not even close. It’s so easy especially for young Christians to think that their early encounters with the Father are all there is. I believe that some of us get stuck in a rut where we only know how to interact with the Father on the grounds of brokenness and repentance.
I don’t think He wants us to just come to him out of desperation. He wants us to come to Him out of joy.
What if we stopped putting our need for God only in the context of our moral failings? Might we need Him for a much deeper and older reason?
Try this on: if mankind had never sinned, we would still need Him. Not because we are wretched but because He is our Father; we are His sons and daughters.
It’s not our brokenness or even our depravity that first causes us to need Him. Need has to do with our smallness in comparison to Him, it mightn’t have a thing to do with sin.
I want to lean into Him every day. Like Joshua, I want to be the man who never left the tent. I want to be strong because He is strong, not because I’ve held up under the lonely pressure. That stubborn part of me needs to hear, again and again, that it’s ok to just lean on God.
It’s ok to need Him.
We have permission to admit that we’re not strong enough. We were never meant to be strong all by ourselves. It’s ok to lean on Him. It’s ok to sit and be with Him, no agenda, no work to be done. Just be with Him. It’s ok.
This photo was taken at Mount St. Helens and is our brother in law sitting near a 35 year old log mat left from the damage from the eruption of 1980.
There is this place we can visit to remember. Two names are etched on a square stone and their short life is measured in hours. There is a promise written on the stone, a promise that we will be with our sweet Joshua Paul and Kaleb Stephen one day. We don’t visit this place often; the first and most recent time we visited was 6 years ago to take our children to see where their brothers’ earthly bodies are buried. We choose to keep the memory alive in their minds with framed photos of our boys’ tiny faces and shared stories of the hours their brothers were held by us.
But sometimes it’s important to visit the place that reminds me of how broken my heart was (for what seemed like eternity) because when I remember the brokenness, I get to remember the way my Father put it back together.I also get to remember the conversations I had with my Father following the boys’ loss. Specifically one conversation we had for many years. I know He remembers it because he answered it.
I asked him for miracles.
On this past July 4th, after many years of praying that familiar prayer, I saw this side of my Father. Our 7 year old daughter Gracelyn was riding on a flat bed trailer in in our local Independence Day Parade. She was sitting on top of the hay bales on the float and was passing out candy with the other kids. Then she impulsively decided to get off of the float and in one quick instant her foot caught under the tire and the tire drove on top of her leg and up over her hip. Paul heard her scream and picked her up and ran a few blocks to the fire station where she was eventually life flighted to the hospital and underwent surgery for a broken upper femur.
The mere recounting of the story void of the miracles our Father performed doesn’t do it justice. I’ll tell it again.
As the float began to turn a corner, about a minute before the accident, two of our friends separately felt that they needed to pray for the safety of the float and those riding on it. And when our sweet girl decided to step off and her foot caught under the tire, the driver felt a very small check to stop the vehicle even before people began screaming for him to to do so. If he would have driven any further up her small leg, she could have suffered life long injuries – or worse. Once Gracelyn arrived at the ER and was admitted for surgery, we found out through a friend who works at the hospital that we had one of the best surgeons in the area performing this difficult surgery on a type of break uncommon for children.
You see, it’s important to add to our stories where we see our Father walking and touching and healing. Even if that story doesn’t end where we want it to end.
I see my Father walking in the hospital room as Paul and I said goodbye to our boys and weeping with us. I see my Father sitting with me in my garden as I talked with him all day long those months after losing Joshua and Kaleb.
I see my Father walking amongst the laughter and warm summer sun of that 4th of July Parade and once he sees my little girl want to step off the float, he tells our friends to pray. I see Him walking to the driver’s side of the car and telling the driver to stop.
There is another place, a place I can see. It’s a scar on my little girl’s leg where the surgeon cut her open and screwed a plate to her femur. It’s a scar that says “I see my Father here.” I see it often. I get to see it when my little girl runs and jumps. I see it when she is snuggled on my bed in her nightgown while I read a bedtime story. And when I see her rubbing it or looking at it I say, “What does that scar mean?” And she says, “Jesus saved me.”
Shouldn’t that be what we say at the end of all our stories?
I took the kids to Joshua & Kaleb’s grave today where we made daisy chains (their little sister’s idea) and I told more of their big brother’s story to them.
We live in Oregon, whose beaches, mountains and deserts we relish as often as we can. We have three kiddos. They have two brothers who have gone to be with their greater Father. We spend our time serving as elders in our local fellowship, pastoring worship leaders, working as photographers, backpacking, and writing right here.
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I love you Paul.