afterthoughts

I was trying to think of the right word to use. I wasn’t “surprised,” really, nor was I “thrilled.” That’s not the right word either.

It should have been obvious, the sheer number, if I had sat down to think about it ahead of time. But when over two hundred people showed up at the graveside service on the coolest fall morning we’d had last October, overcast with a biting wind, I knew Beau had been loved by many, by all who knew him.

Men, women, families, all dressed for mourning, and wearing black because it’s what Beau favored, gathered at the cemetery in Palmdale, first several knots of people talking quietly, remembering Beau, hugging, and then more came, joining the others until there were a hundred, then more, then over two-hundred. And the area was filled with people. Family from around the world, friends from across the nation, people joined with the purpose of remembering and honoring Beau.

It was a solemn, prayerful, difficult service with tears for the loss of someone so loved and tears for those left behind. Beau had made the world he lived in a better place, a place where he called everyone “Friend” and was always ready to help or was down for some fun and video games. He had a way about him, at first strong and tough, but at the same time gentle and kind, and he could draw you in because he cared. He loved. And everyone loved him.

It showed. It showed in his life and in his death. It showed at the cemetery and the memorial service after. It showed in the stories told by family and friends and in the love he had for his nephews and they for him. Beau’s love showed.

“Jesus replied: ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind… and love your neighbor as yourself.'” – Matthew 22: 37-39

We can learn from Beau, from a life shortened by illness yet lived fully, and fully loved. In the Bible the people asked Jesus what the greatest commandment is. His answer? Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind and love your neighbor as yourself. Simple: Love God, love people.

We’ll remember Beau. His legacy lives on in all of us. May we all remember to love, first loving God and then loving each other.

“Every man dies, not every man truly lives.” ~ Braveheart

Many times we pray and ask God for something and then expect an instant answer.  And many times He does offer a miraculous answer right away.  But many times He does not, and we wait.

While resting to recover from a medical procedure, I was watching a silly 1960s TV show called Gilligan’s Island about a group of people stranded on an undiscovered island in the Pacific ocean.  The seven eclectic castaways got into ridiculous situations on every episode and this was no exception.  

After falling from a coconut tree, Gilligan thought he had a broken nose.  The Professor kept telling him it wasn’t broken but he wouldn’t listen.  His sore, swollen nose looked awful and after a couple of days with no improvement Gilligan insisted he wanted surgery to fix it because he was sure his nose was broken.  Finally, all the castaways agreed to help him with his problem.  The women fashioned a dozen celebrity noses out of clay and told Gilligan to choose the one he wanted for his new nose.  The Professor would perform surgery.  The Skipper would assist with anesthesia.  Gilligan went to sleep for surgery and awoke with a bandage over his nose.  After five days the Professor removed the bandage and… Gilligan had his original nose, perfect, with no swelling or discoloration!  There had been no actual surgery since none was necessary.  Gilligan was disappointed he didn’t have a “new” celebrity nose, but realized his nose had not been broken after all and only needed time to heal and reduce swelling.

We sometimes want or need something — a better job, a newer car, a relationship breakthrough, a physical healing, or myriad other things.  We get impatient.  We’ve prayed and asked God.  We’ve asked others to pray.  And God has been silent.  Does He not hear our prayers?  Yes!  He hears and answers — every prayer.  But, like Gilligan, we grow impatient and take things into our own hands.  We don’t think God will answer or the answer isn’t coming fast enough or what someone else is telling us isn’t what we want to hear.  So we go to Plan B and try to help God.

God does not need our help. Sometimes He is gently urging us to wait.

God does not need our help.  Sometimes He is gently urging us to wait.  Maybe, like Gilligan, we need to wait five days (or more) to have the bandage removed so that we can see God was working in our lives all along.  It was our own impatience that put us through unnecessary worry and fret.  It isn’t easy to wait.  But sometimes waiting is the answer.

There is a group of people who are forgotten “essential workers” in the list of obvious workers which include hospital staff, emergency personnel, and teachers.  My husband is among these forgotten yet very much essential workers: bankers.

Most bank employees have worked in office, with little chance of working from home, and continued to take care of client’s needs.  If you’ve used an ATM, written a check, used a debit card, deposited money, or used myriad bank services, then you might not have noticed there has been no break in services in most cases aside from modified hours or social distancing protocols.

But for thousands, no millions, of business owners that have applied for and worked with a banker to receive a PPP (Payroll Protection Program) loan to sustain their small business during the pandemic, bank lenders have been as essential to keeping a small business alive as doctors with a life-saving treatment for a sick loved one.

 ~~ bank lenders have been as essential to keeping a small business alive as doctors with a life-saving treatment for a sick loved one ~~

I can’t speak for the work load of all bankers, but I can tell you that last April my husband worked 15-hour days, seven days per week processing hundreds of PPP loans for clients who were anxious and worried about how they would be able to continue to pay their employees and cover other bills during the uncertainty of the beginning of the pandemic.  He left for work early, came home for a quick sandwich midday and a quick dinner each evening, and worked into the night, after which he would fall into bed exhausted and begin again the next day.  All this was in addition to his “normal” daily work. To say the stress and workload were a nightmare would be an understatement.  

And now the Second Round of PPP has begun with more long hours, weekends and holidays spent working, and understated stress.  My husband does this difficult work not only because it’s his job, but also because he cares about the business owners who, nearly ten months later, still struggle and need an injection of funds to keep their business alive.  The service he and his colleagues offer is lifeblood to businesses that have been forced to cut hours, change how they operate, or even close completely during the pandemic.

Gratitude and kudos to all essential workers and, especially now, to my husband and other bankers who are doing what they can to help, advise, and sustain businesses that are the backbone of our nation.  Thank you.

With Fall approaching, I’ve been thinking of my sweet mother-in-love and what a blessing she was to me and to our family.  She had an amazing ability to turn “stuff” into art.  I’ve never met anyone with the artistic talent and creative thinking she had.  She could take some fabric, beads, and thread and turn it into a fabulous costume.  She was a dancer, painter, quilter, and artist.  My children all have inherited her creativity and she lives on in their talent.

She began belly dancing in 1981, a hobby she enjoyed the rest of her life.  Sewing beautiful costumes was part of the fun for her and she made many in different colors and styles, sewing beads or coins or metallic trims on them.  In the late 80s she made all the costumes, designed and built stage sets, and directed and produced a community stage production of “Cleopatra.”  It was amazing.

She also enjoyed creating things with the grandkids.  She was able to turn cereal boxes, toilet paper tubes, bits of this and broken pieces of that into an award-winning haunted house complete with working light.  Each brick and shingle was painstakingly hand painted, and the spooky trees were hand made.  We helped her enter the haunted house into the county fair.  Not surprisingly she won two ribbons for her effort.  I don’t know who was more proud — her or us.

I think of my life in the same way; it is filled with odds and ends, discards, broken stuff,  bits and pieces.  Thankfully, God is the great recycler and everyday He challenges and changes me.  His grace and guidance are turning me into a work of art.  Yes,  I’m a work in progress.  But if I allow it, He will mold me into the woman of God he wants me to be.

Isaiah 64:8  But now, O LORD, You are our Father, we are the clay, and You our potter;  All of us are the work of Your hand.

Forty-five years ago.

Sunday marked 45 years since August 11, 1974, when the man I call Husband asked me to marry him.

We’ve always remembered August 11th as a special, private date and talked about how our lives were changed after that day.  We were married the following April, so young and so in love, and terribly oblivious to what Marriage would look like and how to share a life together and how personal that sharing would be.  We might have been cautioned of our ages and the realities of relationships and marriage, but it would not have mattered. Love does that to you. Young love cancels common sense.

Looking back from Forty-five, it’s easy to think of saying or doing differently.  Hindsight always has perfect vision.  Mistakes?  Yes, there are many and a few I would like a re-do on, but the mistakes have come with their own lessons. Even if I had the power to change things now, would I?  Every bump in the road of life that has bruised us or taught us something has been worth its pain in the teaching of it.  

Remembering Forty-five is a gift.  We have a history and the shared life and memories are more than I could have imagined in 1974.  Home, children, grandchildren, travels, jobs, ministry:  all are a blending of we two, him and me.  That is the mixture of our one life.  Of us.

August 11, 2019, my answer is still:  Yes.

Song of Solomon 1:2
Kiss me and kiss me again, for your love is sweeter than wine.

When thinking of someone who has influenced your life, you may consider a celebrity, or a religious or political figure. Or perhaps a close friend or family member might immediately come to mind. The choice usually has something to do with self-improvement or finding an exceptional role model. But how often does someone think of a child as having life-changing influence on their life?  A child can tiptoe quietly into your heart and make an impact on your life when you least expect it. That is what “Michael” did in my life.

Many years ago I was given a task so daunting my first impression was to toss in the towel and wonder if I was up to the challenge. When first given the assignment of working one-on-one with Michael, I questioned my ability to teach and his ability to learn. At age ten, his meager reading and math skills were that of a six-year-old first-grader, even though his mental capacity was considered “near normal.”  He had been labeled “less than” and “stupid” by a family who didn’t know how to deal with a child who longed for love and attention but attempted to gain both by acting out and refusing to do his school work.  How he had made it through five years of school and into the fifth grade still baffles me.  He was allowed to pass without knowing the basics and now here he was, sitting at a table waiting for me.

Michael and I began working slowly, patiently, repetitively. His ability to read, even basic words, was stilted and deliberate. His math skills were scanty and buried beneath a protective covering of what little self-worth he still possessed. He was my only student and, day by day, very slowly, we practiced the three most important aspects of elementary education: reading, writing, and arithmetic.

And I began to see improvement.

The more Michael improved, the more self-confidence he gained. The more self-confidence he gained, the more eager he was to learn. His improvement rate changed from negligible progress to an exciting leaps-and-bounds evolution of not only his academics, but his sense of worth and confidence. Michael never gave up.  He learned that he could succeed.  Even when frustrated with a word we had read over and over, even when discouraged because of a simple addition problem, Michael never gave up.

Michael was not an extraordinary child. He did not qualify for the Gifted and Talented Education program. At the end of the school year he wasn’t quite ready for grade-level work, but he was close to catching up. He had changed — from a child who was a “problem” to a child who was succeeding, who was accomplishing, and who was taking great effort to learn. When you see a child make up his mind — a child who has to beat the odds to succeed, a child who keeps trying even when it seems useless — it changes your perspective on life. It changed mine.

Many people have influenced my life, and some probably should be recognized for their part in my personal growth. However, none come to mind as quickly as Michael, who in the ten months I worked one-on-one with him made me realize that nothing is impossible if you set your mind to it, if you reach for the highest mark, and if you don’t ever give up.

Sometimes life takes twists and turns that have surprising endings.

Early on a recent morning my husband, Kirk, and our eight-year-old grandson were fishing in the Eastern Sierra Nevada mountains. They had left before breakfast in order to get a good fishing spot in a place they’d had good luck before. When they arrived, they found several other fishermen there, but soon after, the others left and my two loves had the spot all to themselves.

After fishing for a few minutes, Kirk noticed that one of the prior fishermen had left a backpack behind. He looked inside for identification but found none; however, the backpack was full of expensive fishing bait and supplies — and the owner was long gone. My husband’s plan was to leave it where it was and hope the owner would return for it.

Kirk and our grandson fished for a couple hours, made a catch, and decided they were hungry for breakfast.  It was our last morning of vacation and we needed to pack up to make the long drive home. Kirk gathered up his fishing vest and the two fishers carried their poles back to the car, then returned to our motel where we packed the car and left.

About two hours into our drive we took a short detour to one last fishing spot. It’s always nice to stretch your legs after riding in the car. And if you can drop your fishing line in the water at the same time it’s even better. That was the plan until Kirk looked for his pocket-sized tackle box so he could put a different lure on our grandson’s pole. Normally the little yellow box would be in the front pocket of Kirk’s fishing vest. It was filled with all his favorite “Go-To” lures, hooks, split shot and other necessities. But it was missing. And so was his second, smaller pocket-size box.

Realizing he had left both his small vest-sized tackle boxes on a rock at Grant Lake earlier that morning, Kirk was sick and disappointed. We were too far away to drive back, and the chances of the tackle boxes still being there were slim. The irony of Kirk having forgotten his tackle after finding a backpack belonging to someone else and choosing to leave it for the owner was not lost on us. But after thinking about his own loss for a while, Kirk hoped someone who really needed it would be the one to find it.

The next day we took our grandson home for his birthday party and while the children were celebrating and playing games we sat with the other grandparents and chatted. The subject of the lost tackle boxes came up. Our son-in-law’s father, Dave, said that because he’s also a fisherman he could understand how disappointing Kirk’s loss was, and that he had a small gift for Kirk, from one fisherman to another. The gift was something he’d had for fifty years but no longer used or needed. The gift was an almost-identical yellow pocket tackle box to which Dave had added one lure “to get Kirk started” again.

My eyes filled with tears as I witnessed a selfless, touching act of kindness between two men who share a love of fishing and a love of family. A sad situation had a surprising and happy ending.

John Lennon once said, “Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans.”

And when it happens, it happens quickly and we don’t always notice, or take time to notice. Sometimes we have to digest what just happened; other times we just keep on going without stopping to think, act, or feel.

Sometimes when life happens, I don’t know what to think or do or say until later after my mind has a chance to relax and clear, and then I might have an understanding, a clever comeback, or a smart response. An afterthought, or rather something I thought of after.

That’s what you’ll find here. Some afterthoughts, some before thoughts, some random thoughts.

My thoughts.