love

Christmas Tears

December 19, 2014 by Nancy 20 Comments

What is it about this season that has us gazing at blurry Christmas lights as we fight back tears? Or digging through our purse for a tissue as we let them flow?

There are many reasons for the feelings that fall from our eyes this time of year. Many of them joyful. My granddaughter Amanda called to tell me, with great excitement in her voice, that she’s engaged! I’m truly happy for her, and at peace that her match with her fiancé Taylor is a God-ordained one, yet I cried off and on for about 24 hours. I can’t explain it; I just needed to cry. For the precious little girl she once was. For the beautiful, Godly woman she’s become. For the future she’s been given. For love.

To stem the tide of tears, my husband took me over to the Broadmoor Hotel, a very nice resort near us, to walk around the lake and see their Christmas decorations. That helped for a while, but we also browsed a specialty kitchen shop there and I happened to pick up a jar labeled: Southern Pecan Pie in a Jar. Jim took one look at me and knew the tears were going to flow yet again. “You can’t put Southern pecan pie in a jar!” I exclaimed, as a flood of memories of my mom’s pecan pie, served around her dining room table in Tennessee, washed over me—along with the realization that while I have her recipe, I’ll never taste her pecan pie again.

In fact, memories of loved ones who have gone before us stimulate many of the Christmas tears we shed. Last Christmas season I offered to take a dear, recently widowed woman in our church to a “remembrance service” the church held. During the service I saw her dabbing her eyes with her embroidered handkerchief and silently but foolishly gave myself a mental pat on the back for making the effort to bring her to the service. Yet afterwards, when I asked her what she thought of the experience, she said, “I think it made it worse.” So much for trying to comfort her. Sometimes we just have to cry, and for a time at least, little else helps.

Yet could it also be that our senses are more alive this time of year? Everywhere we look the world is aglow. Bright lights adorn church sanctuaries and gas stations alike. People are kinder. Faces of loved ones are dearer. Life is sweeter. It’s all just enough to make a grown woman cry. And the music! We can’t forget the music. Last Sunday our worship pastor invited a cellist to play with our praise band. The melodies of familiar carols never seemed so rich and uplifting, nor the words so meaningful. There I was, digging in my purse for that last tissue I knew was there some place.

“There is a sacredness in tears,” writes Washington Irving. “They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are the messengers of overwhelming grief, of deep contrition, and of unspeakable love.”

It’s the unspeakable love that has my Christmas tears flowing this year. Love for family. Love for friends. And the love that came down on Christmas. The love we read of in John 3:16: For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life. Unspeakable love indeed.

If you’re also feeling weepy this Christmas, let’s just watch Hallmark movies until we can’t cry another tear. Let the feelings flow into a sea of unspeakable love. Then our hearts and minds will be cleansed and ready for the New Year. Tissue, anyone?

Redefining Love

February 13, 2014 by Nancy 14 Comments

I remember the Valentine’s Day in elementary school I dumped all the valentines out of my construction-paper covered shoebox and counted them. When I realized I got the same number as everyone else in the class, no more and no less, the valentines lost their meaning.

“They had to give me these valentines,” I thought. “It doesn’t mean anyone really loves me.”

Maybe your kids will come home this week feeling less than loved because their bags of valentines were just like everyone else’s, or they didn’t receive all the valentines they wanted.

Psychologist Myrna Shure, Ph.D., professor of psychology at Hahnemann University in Philadelphia, urges parents to deal with such disappointments by helping children to talk about what they like about the valentine givers instead of the valentines, and to focus on the valentines they did get—not the ones they didn’t.

These are good suggestions, yet they overlook the opportunity parents in this situation have to teach kids three truths about love: First, love sometimes hurts. Second, love also heals. And third, there are many different kinds of love.

These truths are often obscured by the hype of Valentine’s Day. Each year Americans celebrate the holiday by sending over a billion cards and 60 to 70 million roses. All this emphasis on romance and the idealization of perfect relationships can lead children to believe falsely that love is all hearts and flowers.

Yet the young woman facing the break-up of a relationship or marriage knows love hurts. The parent whose child has taken a destructive path on the way to adulthood knows love hurts. The 80-year-old watching a beloved spouse slip into the fog of Alzheimer’s knows love hurts.

Children need to understand that love can hurt so they will learn to appreciate that love can also heal. A hug and a listening ear are signs of love’s healing power at work at any age. Kids need to experience both often.

They also need to learn to recognize the many different faces of love. Charlie Brown will return from the mailbox empty-handed if that little, curly red-haired girl rejects him again, but he will go home to a family that provides for him and a dog that accepts him just the way he is. He is loved.

The single man or woman whose friends call and want to get together is loved. So is the big sister whose little brother waits patiently by the door for her to get home from school so she can play with him.

We need to encourage our children to continue seeking and celebrating love in all forms, in spite of the pain it may bring, because of the incredible power it has to make life worth living.

Leo Buscaglia, in his book Living, Loving & Learning, writes, “I’m really convinced that if you were to define love, the only word big enough to engulf it all would be ‘life.’ Love is life in all of its aspects. And if you miss love, you miss life. Please don’t.”

This week our pastor reminded us of the greatest truth about love: Loving God first makes it possible for us to love ourselves and love others (Matthew 22:37). Tell the kids, and believe it yourself. Love is much bigger than Valentine’s Day.

Lee’s Lantana

August 1, 2013 by Nancy 26 Comments

The down side of volunteering with older adults, and getting to know and love them, is that the chances are pretty high you will also have to say goodbye to them in this earthly life and be separated from them for a while. Such was my loss when Lee (short for Leora Jane), one of the residents of an assisted living facility who faithfully attended my weekly Bible study for over two years, died suddenly this month.

I was on vacation when Lee died, but a friend who was filling in for me for the summer called to let me know. I was so glad to find out about a memorial service that was to be held for Lee and to be able to attend when we returned. There I learned so much more about her life than just the last few years spent in assisted living.

Lee loved sitting outside the facility in her wheelchair. Every Wednesday when I arrived, except on the most blustery of days, she would be by the front door. She always greeted me warmly. With her gray pixie haircut, bright blue eyes, and big smile it was a greeting I grew to love. “I’ll be back to get you!” I’d say as I rushed inside to set up for our gathering.

Once our time was over, I knew Lee couldn’t wait to get back outside, so I’d push her back to claim her spot by the front door. One day I noticed a huge pot of beautiful yellow flowers near her spot. “Oh, Lee, those are gorgeous. I’ve never seen them before. Do you know what they are?”

“I don’t,” she replied, “but I’ll find out for you.”

The next week the flowers were still there. Lee still didn’t know what they were, but she’d found out who to ask, so together we learned that the bright, yellow blossoms we both enjoyed so much were lantana. Lee, lantana and laughter, three things that will forever go together for me. The laughter came when I tried to maneuver Lee back out through the heavy front doors and would forget from week to week that taking her over the threshold backwards was the best way to keep from dumping her out! Fortunately I never did dump her, but my awkward wheelchair piloting gave us both some laughs. And we never parted without a hug, after which she would pat my hand and say, “Thank you. I love you.” And I would say, “I love you, too.”

The chaplain who led Lee’s memorial service did a wonderful job. We all got to share our favorite memories. I learned from her family that she hated raisins and wondered how many times I’d served her oatmeal raisin cookies in class. She never complained. The chaplain said, “Lee would want all of us leaving here today with a smile on our faces and a smile in our hearts,” and I knew that was true. I also knew she was now embracing eternal life joyfully, and was with the husband and son she had lost and grieved. Still the tears spilled down my face. I wasn’t crying for Lee, but for my own loss.

After the service, I decided to stop by Home Depot for a couple of things we needed for Saturday chores, in spite of being overdressed and needing to keep my sunglasses on to hide my red eyes and mascara smears. As I walked into the garden area I stopped in awe. Right before me were two very long rows of hanging baskets, all yellow lantana. I know they weren’t there earlier in the season.

It didn’t take me long to put two of the baskets in my cart, justifying that they could replace two that hadn’t done well in the summer heat. Now I get to look at yellow lantana from my office window every day and thank the Lord for my friend, Lee. They not only remind me of her, they remind me that love is always worth the risk, even when it hurts.

On Whitney Houston and True Love

March 15, 2012 by Nancy 2 Comments

My heart is aching over the loss of Whitney Houston and all those who aren’t able to fully embrace how loved they are. Instead they go looking for love in all the wrong places, often with disastrous results.

I guess what makes me both sad and hopeful about Whitney is that from the time she was a little girl she knew the love of God—the beautiful, unconditional love that will sustain us through anything. Even as an adult she comforted a concerned interviewer with the statement that she knew God loved her, and everything would be OK. This makes me sad because she knew the truth, and was led away from it anyway. It makes me hopeful because I believe that in the eternal sense, everything is OK with her. All is well with her soul.

So how did she manage to take her eyes off of the one true Source of love and fall into the trap of dependence on worthless substitutes? No one knows the whole story, but at least one telling chapter is her relationship with Bobby Brown. Like so many women before her, and I fear so many yet to come, it seems she was attracted to the bad boy in him and joined in the destructive habits he brought to the relationship. Smart women, dumb choices. We see it again and again, and it’s never pretty.

If only she could have stayed true to her “first love,” the God who created her and blessed her with a world-class talent. A dear friend recently loaned me the book The Life of the Beloved by Henri Nouwen. In it, this well-loved Catholic priest and well-read author writes a letter to a young Jewish friend who asks him to share what it means to have a spiritual life in a secular world.

“First of all, you have to keep unmasking the world about you for what it is: manipulative, controlling, power-hungry, and, in the long run, destructive,” Nouwen writes. “The world tells you many lies about who you are, and you simply have to be realistic enough to remind yourself of this. Every time you feel hurt, offended, or rejected, you have to dare to say to yourself: ‘These feelings, strong as they may be, are not telling me the truth about myself. The truth, even though I cannot feel it right now, is that I am the chosen child of God, precious in God’s eyes, called the Beloved from all eternity, and held safe in an everlasting embrace.’”

Evidently, Whitney Houston allowed the destructive forces of this world to temporarily win. But one of the most powerful songs she sang, “I Will Always Love You” by Dolly Parton, ironically tells the rest of the story. We can take comfort in knowing that because God said that to her, she now adds her amazing voice to heaven’s chorus of praise. The greatest love—the one true love—is hers at last.