Seattle, WA, Tuesday, December 28, 2010. 48 degrees, cloudy with rain showers.
These words from Pralm 31 describe our current condition and status: "In you, O Lord, have I taken refuge;
let me never be put to shame; deliver me in your righteousness. Incline your ear to me; make haste to deliver me. Be my strong rock, a castle to keep me safe, for you are my crag and my stronghold; for the sake of your Name, lead me and guide me. Take me out of the net that has been set for me, for you are my tower of strength. Into your hands I commend my spirit, for you have redeemed me, O Lord, O God of truth....I will rejoice and be glad because of your mercy; for you have seen my affliction; you know my distress....Have mercy on me, O Lord, for I am in trouble; my eye is consumed with sorrow, and also my throat and my belly. For my life is wasted with grief, and my years with sighing; my strength fails me because of affliction, and my bones are consumed....I have trusted in you, O Lord, I have said, "You are my God. My times are in your hand; rescue me from the hand of my adversary and from those things that afflict me. Make your face to shine upon your servant, and in your loving-kindness save me."
In the ancient liturgy, "Kyrie Eleiison", Lord Have Mercy! is repeated numerous times. Throughout both the Old and New Testaments God is described as the merciful One. Jesus exclaimed: "Blessed are the merciful, for they shall be shown mercy!" The theological significance of mercy is powerful. It is best understood when looking at Latin, French or Spanish. The origins of the term come form the Latin word, "misericordia". It is one of the most graphic and powerful images in all of Scripture. Misere, of course, speaks to the depth of suffering, pain and despair that all of us experience in this world. We live in a fallen and imperfect world that brings great affliction and death. Jesus insisted that the rain falls on the just and the unjust. Misfortune is not a direct result of sin and rebellion, but it may be a by-product of our choices. I do not know anyone who gets a free pass through life. After over 30 years of pastoral ministry, I have seen great suffering come upon both the righteous and unrighteous. The critical difference, however, is what suffering and affliction do to us. Do we turn away in anger and bitterness from the God of comfort, or do we run into the shelter of God's wings? The final part of "misericordia" is the key. "Corder", means to allign in a row or stack things together. It is where we get the term: "a cord of wood". In a spiritual context, "mercy" is God embracing us as tightly as possible in the midst of our greatest suffering and pain. When we beg, "Lord, have mercy!", we are invoking the eternal God to embrace our lives and misery within the shelter of His wings. We find a shelter in a time of storm, a haven of rest for our anxious fears. One of the greatest privileges any of us has to offer one another is showing mercy. The parable of the Good Samaritan perfectly illustrates the practical commandment to be merciful. As he passed along the road, the Samaritan saw the wounded man and "had mercy upon him." He interrupted his jouney, his schedule, his plans, his comfort zone and he showed mercy. He bandgaged his wounds, put him on his own donkey, took him to the nearest inn, fed and nursed him until his crisis had passed, and then left resources for his ongoing care so he would heal fully. There are times in our lives when we must intentionally choose to be merciful; to embrace someone else in their deep suffering and allow God to use us as an instrument of healing and hope. It is the greatest privilege and the greatest source of joy I know of. Truly, Jesus' words ring as true today as they did so long ago, "Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy."
We are back in Seattle after a wonderful Christmas with most of our family in Kelso, WA. My days are filled with tests, procedures and waiting. I noticed a "cowboy" sitting alone in the waiting area to get a blood test today and I felt led of the Spirit to go over and speak to him. His name is Jim and he is from Devils Lake, North Dakota. He has been treating his cancer for several years in Fargo, ND and at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN. He has come to the same place that I have; the only medical solution is a stem-cell transplant. Ironically, he also has the same mutation in his bone marrow DNA that I have, so he needs a stem-cell donor. His donor is from Germany. I don't exactly know how that all works, but today was his first day in Seattle and he looked like he needed a friend. He was dressed in his true cowboy working clothes, sweat-stained cowboy hat included. No one would sit even remotely near to him. I told him I had been born in Beach, ND, so we have an instant kinship. He is here all alone for the present. His wife will be coming out just before the transplant. I would guess they have a ranch and she is taking care of things back there until she absolutely needs to be in Seattle. I pray that God will put him in my path again. We would love to share God's loving care with him. Pray for Jim and his family.
It's curious how people treat those who appear different from themselves. My daughter, Cleo, and I were having lunch at Jacobi's in Walla Walla a couple of weeks ago. A midddle-aged couple were just finishing their meal a couple of tables to our left. They were facing us and the window behind us and I was sitting, as I always do, with my back to the corner. The woman seemed to be staring at us, in general, and at me, in particular. You can tell when someone keeps looking at you and I began to imagine all kinds of possible reasons for her seemingly rude behavior. One, she is wondering what a cute young thing like Cleo is doing with an obviously "older" man. Two, it's the boss, taking the secretary out to lunch. Three, that man is very sick and could collapse on the spot. I suspected it was #3. I had forgotten my ridiculous-looking coiffure and how pale I look with wrinkles and cancer eyes. For a second, I considered falling off of my chair in some state of mortal paroxysm, just to see her reaction, but I didn't want to ruin Cleo's lunch. I figured it was a good lesson for me to learn. Don't jump to conclusions concerning people's appearance. She and her partner didn't speak a word to each other throughout their time that they were there. Maybe they had just come from the Cancer Center themselves, and they were trying to come to grips with frightening news. I said a silent prayer for them and hope that God will give them grace and peace. As I arrived in the South of France, September, 1971, I needed all of the grace and peace that God could provide.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK, --AIX-EN-PROVENCE, FRANCE, September, 1971.
I finally got to New York City and met up with my sister Patsy and her husband Paul, and his city relations. I had a couple of days to spare before meeting up with all the rest of the American students bound for the Institute of American Universities in Aix-en-Provence. We used the time to good purpose and then it was time to meet at a hotel in Manhatten and take buses to JFK. We had a chartered flight directly to Marseille, France so we could skip the nightmare of Paris. We were given the address of our host family and directions on how to get to their home. Somehow, I got all my stuff to Fernand and Yvette's apartment building. This was to be my new home for the next 9 months. Fernand was a teacher in a Lycee and Yvette was a gypsy, literally. She was a descendant of some Gypsy tribe and lived a very unique lifestyle. She was small and cute and Bohemian to the core. One of her favorite past times was to sunbath with little or no clothing on the deck just off of the dining room. She had a live-in boyfriend, who rented one of the bedrooms. Two Hungarian girls rented another bedroom and I rented the third. Fernand slept in his study and Yvette slept on the couch. We lived on the 6th floor, no elevator, of course. You could only store a couple of things in the refrigerator and everyone was allocated one day a week to take a shower, please don't use too much hot water.
The first couple of days at the Institute were orientation and placement testing. Out of 200 students, 16 of us qualified for the "Honours Program". Only 4 of us would last beyond the first week of intensive French Education Boot Camp. We were being whipped into linguistic shape to directly enroll in the Universite Aix/Marseille, Faculte de Lettres, along with 20,000 French students. I was the only male in the Gang of Four. Betsy was the weakest student, but she was from Iowa, and so had an inferiority complex that drove her to overachieve and live up to her Country Club origins. Cindy was from Kalamazoo University in Michigan and was a complete free spirit. Her first goal was to put her current American boyfriend on the back burner and find a French guy to live with, and so learn everything about life in France. Regina, like her name implies, was the daughter of an American Ambasssador who had grown up in foreign countries most of her life and was truly aristocratic. She could speak French better than most French people and was a prodigy, academically. I could hold my own with all of them except Regina. We made a covenant to never speak a word of English with one another and so began our Boot Camp from Hell. I don't know about the rest of them, but I had to spend 16-20 hours a day attending classes and studying. It was brutal. French pedagogical practices are very simple. You motivate students through intimidation and public humiliation. Professors were extremely skilled at reducing students to shredded bloody pulp. You would do any amount of preparation and work to avoid being the object of a Professor's scorn and public ridicule. During those 6 weeks, I saw more tears and trauma than I had in 14 years in American educational institutions. One day, Betsy literally broke down sobbing during a feeble attempt at Explication de Texte. The Professor just sat there smoking his pipe, waiting for her to stop her hystrionics. She finally stopped crying and he simply said:'Continuez". Somehow she stumbled her way through the presentation and he bluntly commented that she had done better after her emotional outburst.
I had met two French guys during those first 6 weeks. One of them had a cousin coming to visit from Barcelona, Spain. I got to meet him and found out that he wasn't Spanish, entirely, but Catalonian. Specifically, he was a descendant of Viking invaders of Southern Spain centuries ago and had blond hair and blue eyes as genetic evidence. His family and clan were among the people who fought against Generalissimo Franco in the Civil War of the 1930s. He hated everything to do with Franco and his policies. He was a deeply spiritual and religious man who belonged to an outlawed Catholic Sect that met and worshipped in secret in their native, Catalonian, language. My Gang of Four would have a week break between Boot Camp and the beginning of the Academic year, so we arranged to take the bus to Barcelona and visit my new friend and his family. Little did I know how dangerous that trip could have been.
In 1971, Franco exercised total dictatorial power in Spain, enforced by his ubiquitous secret and public police force. As we walked around the streets of Barcelona, my friend warned me not to use any French words like "politique", which would arouse suspicion if overheard. You could almost feel the fear people felt when out in public, or in a crowd. We were caught on the edge of a riot one night and had to run as fast as we could to a safe house until the risk of being arrested had subsided. They worshipped in a hidden and secret chapel on the second floor of an ordinary looking apartment building. We met wonderful friends, young and old who treated us with true Christian Fellowship. I learned another chapter in the European History saga that we never bothered to consider when studying 20th century history. As is turned out, Franco's own son, who would succeed him following his death, had been educated in the modern world and chose to lead Spain into a democratic path. Without civil war or bloodshed, the dream of a free and just nation came about within 10 years of our visit. I only thank God that we were protected during our sojourn in that time and place. We returned to France and enrolled in the French University, eager to expand our knowledge of French culture and life. I found Christian Fellowship visiting various churches in the city, but I missed Kriss profoundly, and being out of communication with her was difficult. It would be a good test of the authenticity of our relationship and I wrote daily in a diary of my hopes and trust in God.
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Friday, December 24, 2010
CHRISTMAS EVE, 2010!
KELSO, WA, 45 DEGREES, CLOUDY, NO RAIN.
We finished another week of tests and procedures by noon on Thursday, the 23rd of December. We drove down to Kelso, WA to spend Christmas with our daughters, Hanna, Cleo, and Ella and their families, along with my sister Kathy and her friend Marilyn from Iowa. I am still having some side effects from the new medications, but they aren't as severe as they were earlier in the week. My body must be assimilating them better. Brother Tom came over to Seattle for a couple of days and we had a good time with him. I will be preaching at the Christmas Eve Service here at Hanna's church at 7 pm this evening. It will give her a little break, as she has to preach again on Sunday and does so much in her congregation. We will have to return to Seattle Sunday afternoon and fast from 8 pm on for a PET/CT scan early Monday morning. Next week will be full of more tests, clinical research data accumulation, infusions, multiple blood tests and a clinical consultation with my entire medical team on Wednesday. We are cleared to have a 4 day pass, something like the military, so we are now planning to return to Walla Walla December, 30th. I will probably preach at CPPC on January 2nd and return to Seattle that afternoon. It will definitely be the last opportunity I will have to be in the pulpit for some time. We need to attend to a couple of little things on the Farm and at the church that we didn't have time to do previously. It will be good to share in the sacrament of the Lord's Supper one last time before the transplant. In fact, due to the delaly of the Holidays, they have pushed back my actual Transplant date to 1/11/11. If that looks and sounds somewhat intriguing, it may mean nothing, or it may be symbolic of the promise of a medical and hopefully spiritual renaissance in my life. God doesn't do anything without some purpose, so I will accept the short delay with thanksgiving and ask you to remark your prayer lists and calendars for Jan. 11th for the transplant. Our son, Amos, will be arriving in Seattle on Wednesday, hopefully in time for our consultation with our medical team. He will come home with us and then leave for Colorado Springs after we return to Seattle.
Sheep and shepherds have a prominent place in all of Scripture. "The Lord is my Shepherd", defines God in a profound and practical manner. Domesticated sheep have "a will to die", to quote my mother-in-law, Anna Kwak. She and Kriss' father tried to manage a 300 ewe flock of sheep that literally pushed them to the brink of sanity and health. Sheep are totally dependent upon the care and constant vigilence of human shepherds. They are vulnerable to an amazing assortment of life threatening problems. Intestinal parasites, foot rot, gnats that bite them around the nose and mouth and infect them with horrible sores, birthing complications, attacks by dogs and other predators, being too hot or too cold, various infectious diseases as well as generic livestock maladies. You have to trim their feet several times a year; clip and shear their wool at least once a year, deworm them 3-4 times a year make sure their food is free of mold, fungus and contamination of any kind and literally live with them 24/7 during lambing season.
I came by my shepherding heritage starting with my paternal Grandfather, P.O. Peterson. He and a partner shipped into Dillon, Montana the first flock of commercial sheep in the early part of the 20th century and pioneered the sheep industry of Western North Dakota and Eastern Montana. There is a picture and an article about him in a museum in Dillon and I hope to see it some day. From the time I recognized a sheep from a shetland pony, I was surrounded by sheep and the shepherd life style. As we moved from life in town to our current Farm, we expanded our children's 4-H projects into a 100 ewe operation. We might have 200 lambs a year from those 100 ewes and without "free" labor from our 4 children, it would have been impossible to manage. We developped our own niche market for finished lamb. Patit Creek in Dayton, WA bought leg of lamb and lamb chops, monthly. The Homestead Restaurant in Walla Walla wanted all the lamb chops we could supply. The Odd Fellows Home in Walla Walla took all our shoulder roasts and stew meat. It was fairly do-able as long as we could process them at Hill Meats in Pendleton, OR. When they closed their processing facility, we had to take them to the University of Idaho in Moscow, ID to be processed and federally inspected and stamped. Shortly after that, our children began to graduate from High School and leave home. When they left, so did the sheep.
I learned so many amazing spiritual lessons about God and life working as a real shepherd, that I consider it one of the most significant parts of my pastoral training. Like God, shepherds hold the keys to life and death for their flock. Scripture bemoans the fate of the flocks under the care of negligent shepherds. It is a constant theme of the Old Testament Prophets. The sheep are scattered, the young are lost, the herd dwindles, disease and parasites torment them all and the land is impoverished. Under proper management, sheep are one of the best natural components to a balanced and healthy environment. They can help restore marginal and unproductive land to something of beauty and utility. If you have hilly ground, the tendency is for nutrients in the soil to slowly erode from the top of the hills to the valleys and dales below. Sheep will actually begin to reverse that process. They will, of course, graze on the lush grasses in the valleys and low ground. But, they love to ruminate and therefore deposit fertilizer on the tops of hills so they can see predators that may be approaching. They redistribute the nutrients from the botton lands to the hilltops and the entire eco-system is rebalanced. Lambing season is a time like no other. If shepherds are not totally vigilent, you can lose up to 50% of your lamb crop. You have to accept the reality that you will lose a certain % no matter how conscientious you are, but without constant attention, the pile of dead lambs around the barn shouts at your incompetence and inattention.
Ewes do something immediately after birthing that they never do at any other time in their lives. As they clean their newborns, they literally "sing" with joy over their offspring. It is a sound like no other I have ever heard. It is such a moving and mystical experience that you can't take yourself away. It is repeated in Scripture when the people of God would ask the Almighty: "Sing over me!" Celebrate our birth and rebirth as your children. Bond with us at our deepest need and never forget our scent. Hound of Heaven, never stop following your wandering lambs and carry us safely home. The power of that experience came home in a powerful way for another Pastor, Roger Robbenholt, in a gathering at which I had been invited to speak. I told them about the "song" of the ewes and he came up to me following the gathering and told me this story. He had been brought up in Minnesota on a farm that included sheep. His father was an angry and abusive man that brutilized the entire family physically and emotionally. Except, one season of the year, the beatings would annually cease and no one could figure out what caused the welcomed respite. They always hoped and dreamed it would last forever, but it never did. During my presentation about the singing of the ewes, he suddenly realized that his father's temporary transformation correlated precisely with the onset of lambing season. Something powerful and inspirational touched this brutal and broken man that made him human again. Somehow he knew that this song celebrating birth and life had the power to transform the heart.
It was no coincidence that it was to "poor shepherds, keeping watch over their flocks by night", that the Heralds appeared, praising God and singing songs of adoration and thanksgiving. They couldn't resist the announcement, or the music. and hurried to see if what they had been told was true or not. They came to Bethlehem and found Joseph and Mary and the newborn baby Jesus in a barn; the baby lying in a manger, a feed bunk. The miracle of birth, both physical and spiritual is the essence of Christmas. God making the ultimate sacrifice of coming to Earth to be the perfect "Good Shepherd" is what makes this season so important. There are many times in our lives when we ache to hear God singing over us; times of danger, times of despair, times of lonliness, times of indecision. I pray for all of us that we will find the time and the way to be still and hear God singing over us; a song of love, a song of hope, a song of promise, a song of peace. I know that on the 11th of January, when my daughter's stem cells begin to flow into my veins and heart and throughout my body, I will listen as hard as I can and I will hear God singing over me a song of life.
We finished another week of tests and procedures by noon on Thursday, the 23rd of December. We drove down to Kelso, WA to spend Christmas with our daughters, Hanna, Cleo, and Ella and their families, along with my sister Kathy and her friend Marilyn from Iowa. I am still having some side effects from the new medications, but they aren't as severe as they were earlier in the week. My body must be assimilating them better. Brother Tom came over to Seattle for a couple of days and we had a good time with him. I will be preaching at the Christmas Eve Service here at Hanna's church at 7 pm this evening. It will give her a little break, as she has to preach again on Sunday and does so much in her congregation. We will have to return to Seattle Sunday afternoon and fast from 8 pm on for a PET/CT scan early Monday morning. Next week will be full of more tests, clinical research data accumulation, infusions, multiple blood tests and a clinical consultation with my entire medical team on Wednesday. We are cleared to have a 4 day pass, something like the military, so we are now planning to return to Walla Walla December, 30th. I will probably preach at CPPC on January 2nd and return to Seattle that afternoon. It will definitely be the last opportunity I will have to be in the pulpit for some time. We need to attend to a couple of little things on the Farm and at the church that we didn't have time to do previously. It will be good to share in the sacrament of the Lord's Supper one last time before the transplant. In fact, due to the delaly of the Holidays, they have pushed back my actual Transplant date to 1/11/11. If that looks and sounds somewhat intriguing, it may mean nothing, or it may be symbolic of the promise of a medical and hopefully spiritual renaissance in my life. God doesn't do anything without some purpose, so I will accept the short delay with thanksgiving and ask you to remark your prayer lists and calendars for Jan. 11th for the transplant. Our son, Amos, will be arriving in Seattle on Wednesday, hopefully in time for our consultation with our medical team. He will come home with us and then leave for Colorado Springs after we return to Seattle.
Sheep and shepherds have a prominent place in all of Scripture. "The Lord is my Shepherd", defines God in a profound and practical manner. Domesticated sheep have "a will to die", to quote my mother-in-law, Anna Kwak. She and Kriss' father tried to manage a 300 ewe flock of sheep that literally pushed them to the brink of sanity and health. Sheep are totally dependent upon the care and constant vigilence of human shepherds. They are vulnerable to an amazing assortment of life threatening problems. Intestinal parasites, foot rot, gnats that bite them around the nose and mouth and infect them with horrible sores, birthing complications, attacks by dogs and other predators, being too hot or too cold, various infectious diseases as well as generic livestock maladies. You have to trim their feet several times a year; clip and shear their wool at least once a year, deworm them 3-4 times a year make sure their food is free of mold, fungus and contamination of any kind and literally live with them 24/7 during lambing season.
I came by my shepherding heritage starting with my paternal Grandfather, P.O. Peterson. He and a partner shipped into Dillon, Montana the first flock of commercial sheep in the early part of the 20th century and pioneered the sheep industry of Western North Dakota and Eastern Montana. There is a picture and an article about him in a museum in Dillon and I hope to see it some day. From the time I recognized a sheep from a shetland pony, I was surrounded by sheep and the shepherd life style. As we moved from life in town to our current Farm, we expanded our children's 4-H projects into a 100 ewe operation. We might have 200 lambs a year from those 100 ewes and without "free" labor from our 4 children, it would have been impossible to manage. We developped our own niche market for finished lamb. Patit Creek in Dayton, WA bought leg of lamb and lamb chops, monthly. The Homestead Restaurant in Walla Walla wanted all the lamb chops we could supply. The Odd Fellows Home in Walla Walla took all our shoulder roasts and stew meat. It was fairly do-able as long as we could process them at Hill Meats in Pendleton, OR. When they closed their processing facility, we had to take them to the University of Idaho in Moscow, ID to be processed and federally inspected and stamped. Shortly after that, our children began to graduate from High School and leave home. When they left, so did the sheep.
I learned so many amazing spiritual lessons about God and life working as a real shepherd, that I consider it one of the most significant parts of my pastoral training. Like God, shepherds hold the keys to life and death for their flock. Scripture bemoans the fate of the flocks under the care of negligent shepherds. It is a constant theme of the Old Testament Prophets. The sheep are scattered, the young are lost, the herd dwindles, disease and parasites torment them all and the land is impoverished. Under proper management, sheep are one of the best natural components to a balanced and healthy environment. They can help restore marginal and unproductive land to something of beauty and utility. If you have hilly ground, the tendency is for nutrients in the soil to slowly erode from the top of the hills to the valleys and dales below. Sheep will actually begin to reverse that process. They will, of course, graze on the lush grasses in the valleys and low ground. But, they love to ruminate and therefore deposit fertilizer on the tops of hills so they can see predators that may be approaching. They redistribute the nutrients from the botton lands to the hilltops and the entire eco-system is rebalanced. Lambing season is a time like no other. If shepherds are not totally vigilent, you can lose up to 50% of your lamb crop. You have to accept the reality that you will lose a certain % no matter how conscientious you are, but without constant attention, the pile of dead lambs around the barn shouts at your incompetence and inattention.
Ewes do something immediately after birthing that they never do at any other time in their lives. As they clean their newborns, they literally "sing" with joy over their offspring. It is a sound like no other I have ever heard. It is such a moving and mystical experience that you can't take yourself away. It is repeated in Scripture when the people of God would ask the Almighty: "Sing over me!" Celebrate our birth and rebirth as your children. Bond with us at our deepest need and never forget our scent. Hound of Heaven, never stop following your wandering lambs and carry us safely home. The power of that experience came home in a powerful way for another Pastor, Roger Robbenholt, in a gathering at which I had been invited to speak. I told them about the "song" of the ewes and he came up to me following the gathering and told me this story. He had been brought up in Minnesota on a farm that included sheep. His father was an angry and abusive man that brutilized the entire family physically and emotionally. Except, one season of the year, the beatings would annually cease and no one could figure out what caused the welcomed respite. They always hoped and dreamed it would last forever, but it never did. During my presentation about the singing of the ewes, he suddenly realized that his father's temporary transformation correlated precisely with the onset of lambing season. Something powerful and inspirational touched this brutal and broken man that made him human again. Somehow he knew that this song celebrating birth and life had the power to transform the heart.
It was no coincidence that it was to "poor shepherds, keeping watch over their flocks by night", that the Heralds appeared, praising God and singing songs of adoration and thanksgiving. They couldn't resist the announcement, or the music. and hurried to see if what they had been told was true or not. They came to Bethlehem and found Joseph and Mary and the newborn baby Jesus in a barn; the baby lying in a manger, a feed bunk. The miracle of birth, both physical and spiritual is the essence of Christmas. God making the ultimate sacrifice of coming to Earth to be the perfect "Good Shepherd" is what makes this season so important. There are many times in our lives when we ache to hear God singing over us; times of danger, times of despair, times of lonliness, times of indecision. I pray for all of us that we will find the time and the way to be still and hear God singing over us; a song of love, a song of hope, a song of promise, a song of peace. I know that on the 11th of January, when my daughter's stem cells begin to flow into my veins and heart and throughout my body, I will listen as hard as I can and I will hear God singing over me a song of life.
Monday, December 20, 2010
A JOURNEY OF A THOUSAND PILLS!
SEATTLE, WA. DECEMBER 20, 2010, 45 DEGREES RAIN AND CLOUDS.
We are fully into the pre-transplant process. Last Friday I had my bone-marrow biopsy plus a spinal-tap. The bone-marrow procedure went much better than last time, but no one gets off that easy. The spinal-tap was an adventure I'd rather forget. I stopped counting the number of times my PA attempted to get into the right place to remove some spinal fluid. On her last try, she was successful; a great relief for both of us. We went down to Kelso, WA with our daughter Hanna for the weekend. Saturday, we drove to Portland, OR to visit with daughters Cleo and Ella and son-in-law Chris. They are all doing well. We came back to Seattle Sunday afternoon and here we are again back at SCCA. I had to have a fasting blood draw the first thing this morning, 13 more vials of the good stuff. I wonder what they do with all of my blood. The Tech only needed three attempts to get enough blood today. I am looking forward to getting my Hickman Port installed so taking blood samples will get simpler.
Following our first consultation with Dr. Storb, we were given two additional prescriptions in addition to what I'm already taking. TRIMETHOPRIM/SULFA is a combination of two antibiotics used to treat a wide variety of bacterial infections and also to prevent and treat a certain type of pneumonia. In my case, they are using it as a preventative for any pneumonia I may develop in the aftermath of my transplant. The second new drug is a bit more colorful. URSODIOL, as its name suggests, originally came from Black Bear bile. I suspect the Black Bear Union lobbied to stop using real bears for this purpose and so they created a synthetic substitute. It is a preventative to limit liver damage during transplant recovery and is also used to prevent gallstones. In my warped imagination, I can visualize a bile bank that provided income for urban Black Bears, much like people sell plasma and platelets today. That may contribute to the virtual total absence of Black Bears on our city streets. Where is the cartoonist Gary Larsen when we need him? This is the perfect theme for one of his great cartoons. Remember, the real reason dinosaurs went extinct; a picture of a group of chain-smoking dinosaurs hanging around the water cooler.
The biggest challenge isn't taking the 6 extra pills every day, it is coping with the additional side effects on top of those I already have from my current meds. Both of these new drugs contribute to nausea, vomiting, diarhea, loss of appetite, headache, mental mood changes etc. You wonder if it wouldn't be just as easy to treat the disease, but that's a negative attitude, probably caused by my two new meds. Tomorrow, December 21, sister Kathy and friend Marilyn arrive from Des Moines, Iowa and brother Tom is driving over from the Yakima Valley. We have another consultation with Dr. Storb and PA Kristen Kindsvogel Wednesday morning, so they will all likely attend that with us. Cleo is also in the greater Seattle area this week, so we may let her know about the appointment, as well. She likes to ask tough questions of the Medical community and is also our designated recorder. They might have to find a larger consultation room if all of these good people show up. After tests on Thursday, we plan to rendezvous with all of the family back at daughter Hanna's in Kelso for Christmas celebrations. If I am feeling up to it, Hanna asked me to preach at their Christmas Eve service Friday night. I do not have much energy right now and can't predict if that will improve before Friday. I'm hoping that these side effects will lessen as my body adjusts to them. I would appreciate your prayers in that regard and also for the numerous tests that seem to go on and on.
Being in Seattle for such a long period of time seems almost impossible some days. Spending Christmas and New Year's in a strange place and home makes it all feel somewhat surrealistic. Kriss did bring along an artificial tree that changes colors on the tips of the limbs constantly. It is something we put in our living room at home, so it brings some homeyness to us. Time can either go by quickly or really drag, depending on the number of appointments and procedures I have scheduled. I'm supposed to avoid large crowds and potentially exposing myself to bad bugs, so I don't go to the malls or other places with lots of people. We are praying for God to continue to use this time in our lives for His glory. We ran into Chris and Janice Anderson early last week. Her melynoma is in remission and they were leaving for Southern California for several weeks. Given the clouds and rain here right now, I would love to be in a warm place with some sunshine. Thank you all for your prayers and encouragement. We would never make it through all of this alone.
WAPATO, WA TO AIX-EN-PROVENCE, FRANCE, August, 1971
I was excited to leave home and begin my adventure of studying abroad in France. I decided to take the train from WA state back to the Midwest and visit relatives along the way. My first stop was with brother Earl and his wife Jeannine in Bozman, Montana. It was a fairly uneventful visit until Jeannine pointed out that sister Kathy and I had opportunities the older siblings didn't have and how I should somehow make up for that inequality within the family. I didn't really know what she meant or expected me to do about all that. I'm sure that I didn't react very maturely, particularly when she pointed out that because of our coming into the world, older siblings suffered deprivation and hunger. There wasn't anything I could do about my parents prior reproductive decisions, so I went to bed and left town as soon as I could get on the train. The next stop was to meet up with brother Charles in Fargo, North Dakota.
Charlie was a County Extension Agent in West-Central Minnesota and was going to be in the Fargo area, so we arranged to have him pick me up at the train depot. On the overnight ride from Montana, I vaguely remember a Priest getting on the train in Medora, North Dakota. He sat a few rows behind me and when we got to Fargo at 3:00 am, he was getting off, as well. He offered to help me carry some of my many bags and suggested we get a room together just around the corner. Now I was half asleep and pretty disoriented, but I still felt it wasn't the best idea, so I refused. He simiply kept walking down the platform with some of my luggage and with no one else in sight, I followed my bags into a dive around the corner from the Depot. He had obviously been there before, because he threw a $5 dollar bill on the counter, signed his name, took a key for a room on the second floor and went upstairs. I kept protesting that I wasn't that tired, didn't think I could sleep anyway; all to no avail. The room was next to the flashing neon sign "HOTEL", and I knew it must have been a nightmare and I would wake up soon. There was no bathroom in our "room", so the Priest
walked down the hall to the restroom. This was my chance to escape, so I grabbed all of my stuff and started down the hallway to the staircase. He came out of the restroom before I could get to the staircase and gave me this cock and bull story about how ungrateful I was and that he should be the one to be afraid, given the state of American youth in that day. UNBELIEVABLY, I went back into the room and rationalized that maybe God had put this guy in my path for some spiritual purpose. WRONG. I started out by asking him about his Parish in Medora and he laughed mockingly and said he was a bartender in Medora and only dressed this way as a spoof on the clientel. In the midst of our conversation, he stripped naked and said he was going to bed. Now, I'm in serious prayer and questionning my own sanity and safety.
I made some boundary decisions about what I would do if he did ......! I know it's almost beyond belief, but I took off my shoes, kept all my clothes on and laid down on top of the covers next to the defrocked phony Priest. He feigned sleep almost immediately and I vowed if he moved in my direction I was gone. The strobe light effect of the neon sign alerted me to his arm flying through the air to grab me around the shoulders. I simultaneously slipped off the bed and into a chair and started tying my shoelaces as fast as I could. A very unpleasant voice demanded: "Where the hell do you think you're going?" and I yelled something to the effect that I didn't care what he thought, but I was leaving. He tried to get up and stop me from running down the stairs, but being bare-naked, he couldn't be seen chasing me down the streets of Fargo, North Dakota in his birthday suit. I was shaking like a leaf and didn't want to even think of the possible disaster I had just escaped. I found the door to the depot waiting room open and spent the rest of the night thanking God for keeping me safe, in spite of my stupidity. I vowed to never again allow anyone, even someone dressed like a Priest, make off with my luggage and put me in such a vulnerable position.
Charlie, et. al. arrived mid-morning to get me at the Depot. After some small talk, I thought I would tell him about the adventure of the previous night. Now Charlie had been in the Marines and had seen alot of the world, both good and bad. He was incredulous at my naiveity and stupidity. When I had finished the whole story, he looked at me and said: "You don't stand a chance with the whores of Paris!" Fortunately, I wasn't even going through Paris on my way to Aix-en-Provence. Besides, I was gaining a very rapid education in street smarts and by the grace of God, I survived my night in Fargo, North Dakota. It was on to New York City to meet sister Patsy and her husband Paul. The journey out of the United States was only rivalled by my jouney back 3 1/2 months later.
We are fully into the pre-transplant process. Last Friday I had my bone-marrow biopsy plus a spinal-tap. The bone-marrow procedure went much better than last time, but no one gets off that easy. The spinal-tap was an adventure I'd rather forget. I stopped counting the number of times my PA attempted to get into the right place to remove some spinal fluid. On her last try, she was successful; a great relief for both of us. We went down to Kelso, WA with our daughter Hanna for the weekend. Saturday, we drove to Portland, OR to visit with daughters Cleo and Ella and son-in-law Chris. They are all doing well. We came back to Seattle Sunday afternoon and here we are again back at SCCA. I had to have a fasting blood draw the first thing this morning, 13 more vials of the good stuff. I wonder what they do with all of my blood. The Tech only needed three attempts to get enough blood today. I am looking forward to getting my Hickman Port installed so taking blood samples will get simpler.
Following our first consultation with Dr. Storb, we were given two additional prescriptions in addition to what I'm already taking. TRIMETHOPRIM/SULFA is a combination of two antibiotics used to treat a wide variety of bacterial infections and also to prevent and treat a certain type of pneumonia. In my case, they are using it as a preventative for any pneumonia I may develop in the aftermath of my transplant. The second new drug is a bit more colorful. URSODIOL, as its name suggests, originally came from Black Bear bile. I suspect the Black Bear Union lobbied to stop using real bears for this purpose and so they created a synthetic substitute. It is a preventative to limit liver damage during transplant recovery and is also used to prevent gallstones. In my warped imagination, I can visualize a bile bank that provided income for urban Black Bears, much like people sell plasma and platelets today. That may contribute to the virtual total absence of Black Bears on our city streets. Where is the cartoonist Gary Larsen when we need him? This is the perfect theme for one of his great cartoons. Remember, the real reason dinosaurs went extinct; a picture of a group of chain-smoking dinosaurs hanging around the water cooler.
The biggest challenge isn't taking the 6 extra pills every day, it is coping with the additional side effects on top of those I already have from my current meds. Both of these new drugs contribute to nausea, vomiting, diarhea, loss of appetite, headache, mental mood changes etc. You wonder if it wouldn't be just as easy to treat the disease, but that's a negative attitude, probably caused by my two new meds. Tomorrow, December 21, sister Kathy and friend Marilyn arrive from Des Moines, Iowa and brother Tom is driving over from the Yakima Valley. We have another consultation with Dr. Storb and PA Kristen Kindsvogel Wednesday morning, so they will all likely attend that with us. Cleo is also in the greater Seattle area this week, so we may let her know about the appointment, as well. She likes to ask tough questions of the Medical community and is also our designated recorder. They might have to find a larger consultation room if all of these good people show up. After tests on Thursday, we plan to rendezvous with all of the family back at daughter Hanna's in Kelso for Christmas celebrations. If I am feeling up to it, Hanna asked me to preach at their Christmas Eve service Friday night. I do not have much energy right now and can't predict if that will improve before Friday. I'm hoping that these side effects will lessen as my body adjusts to them. I would appreciate your prayers in that regard and also for the numerous tests that seem to go on and on.
Being in Seattle for such a long period of time seems almost impossible some days. Spending Christmas and New Year's in a strange place and home makes it all feel somewhat surrealistic. Kriss did bring along an artificial tree that changes colors on the tips of the limbs constantly. It is something we put in our living room at home, so it brings some homeyness to us. Time can either go by quickly or really drag, depending on the number of appointments and procedures I have scheduled. I'm supposed to avoid large crowds and potentially exposing myself to bad bugs, so I don't go to the malls or other places with lots of people. We are praying for God to continue to use this time in our lives for His glory. We ran into Chris and Janice Anderson early last week. Her melynoma is in remission and they were leaving for Southern California for several weeks. Given the clouds and rain here right now, I would love to be in a warm place with some sunshine. Thank you all for your prayers and encouragement. We would never make it through all of this alone.
WAPATO, WA TO AIX-EN-PROVENCE, FRANCE, August, 1971
I was excited to leave home and begin my adventure of studying abroad in France. I decided to take the train from WA state back to the Midwest and visit relatives along the way. My first stop was with brother Earl and his wife Jeannine in Bozman, Montana. It was a fairly uneventful visit until Jeannine pointed out that sister Kathy and I had opportunities the older siblings didn't have and how I should somehow make up for that inequality within the family. I didn't really know what she meant or expected me to do about all that. I'm sure that I didn't react very maturely, particularly when she pointed out that because of our coming into the world, older siblings suffered deprivation and hunger. There wasn't anything I could do about my parents prior reproductive decisions, so I went to bed and left town as soon as I could get on the train. The next stop was to meet up with brother Charles in Fargo, North Dakota.
Charlie was a County Extension Agent in West-Central Minnesota and was going to be in the Fargo area, so we arranged to have him pick me up at the train depot. On the overnight ride from Montana, I vaguely remember a Priest getting on the train in Medora, North Dakota. He sat a few rows behind me and when we got to Fargo at 3:00 am, he was getting off, as well. He offered to help me carry some of my many bags and suggested we get a room together just around the corner. Now I was half asleep and pretty disoriented, but I still felt it wasn't the best idea, so I refused. He simiply kept walking down the platform with some of my luggage and with no one else in sight, I followed my bags into a dive around the corner from the Depot. He had obviously been there before, because he threw a $5 dollar bill on the counter, signed his name, took a key for a room on the second floor and went upstairs. I kept protesting that I wasn't that tired, didn't think I could sleep anyway; all to no avail. The room was next to the flashing neon sign "HOTEL", and I knew it must have been a nightmare and I would wake up soon. There was no bathroom in our "room", so the Priest
walked down the hall to the restroom. This was my chance to escape, so I grabbed all of my stuff and started down the hallway to the staircase. He came out of the restroom before I could get to the staircase and gave me this cock and bull story about how ungrateful I was and that he should be the one to be afraid, given the state of American youth in that day. UNBELIEVABLY, I went back into the room and rationalized that maybe God had put this guy in my path for some spiritual purpose. WRONG. I started out by asking him about his Parish in Medora and he laughed mockingly and said he was a bartender in Medora and only dressed this way as a spoof on the clientel. In the midst of our conversation, he stripped naked and said he was going to bed. Now, I'm in serious prayer and questionning my own sanity and safety.
I made some boundary decisions about what I would do if he did ......! I know it's almost beyond belief, but I took off my shoes, kept all my clothes on and laid down on top of the covers next to the defrocked phony Priest. He feigned sleep almost immediately and I vowed if he moved in my direction I was gone. The strobe light effect of the neon sign alerted me to his arm flying through the air to grab me around the shoulders. I simultaneously slipped off the bed and into a chair and started tying my shoelaces as fast as I could. A very unpleasant voice demanded: "Where the hell do you think you're going?" and I yelled something to the effect that I didn't care what he thought, but I was leaving. He tried to get up and stop me from running down the stairs, but being bare-naked, he couldn't be seen chasing me down the streets of Fargo, North Dakota in his birthday suit. I was shaking like a leaf and didn't want to even think of the possible disaster I had just escaped. I found the door to the depot waiting room open and spent the rest of the night thanking God for keeping me safe, in spite of my stupidity. I vowed to never again allow anyone, even someone dressed like a Priest, make off with my luggage and put me in such a vulnerable position.
Charlie, et. al. arrived mid-morning to get me at the Depot. After some small talk, I thought I would tell him about the adventure of the previous night. Now Charlie had been in the Marines and had seen alot of the world, both good and bad. He was incredulous at my naiveity and stupidity. When I had finished the whole story, he looked at me and said: "You don't stand a chance with the whores of Paris!" Fortunately, I wasn't even going through Paris on my way to Aix-en-Provence. Besides, I was gaining a very rapid education in street smarts and by the grace of God, I survived my night in Fargo, North Dakota. It was on to New York City to meet sister Patsy and her husband Paul. The journey out of the United States was only rivalled by my jouney back 3 1/2 months later.
Thursday, December 16, 2010
WE'RE BAAAACK!
Seattle WA, 12/16/2010 52 degrees, partly sunny.
It seems like the movie Ground Hog Day. Bill Murray is a low-life television reporter who is either blessed or cursed with the chance to keep repeating the same day until he gets it right. It leads him through all the emotions of life from despair to delight. He eventually finds redemption in knowing exactly what other people need and meets those needs in a joyful and humble fashion. Of course, he falls in love with his co-star and gets to start a new life with all the knowledge of his past mistakes plus a companion to share it with. We are in the process of doing all the preliminary testing and evaluations that we just did in August/September. We were hoping to be able to use the results of the previous procedures, but they have to be within 30 days of transplant and so it's deja-vu all over again, to quote Yogi Berra. We can tell already that we have benefited from our previous experience here at SCCA. Our present attending Physician, Dr. Storb was born in Essen, Germany and came to the USA years ago. He was at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center before the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance even existed. His name is listed on many of the research studies that we have given permission to participate in and provide information for. He had to admit that my particular combination of Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma that has transformed from small - cell follicular, combined with Myelo-Displastic Syndrome is strikingly unique. They are confident that their treatment plan will address all three of my life-threatening issues; Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma, Myelo-Displastic Sundrome and possible Graft vs Host disease. We spent over an hour with Dr. Storb and another RN today going over all the schedule and details. It was refreshing to be able to ask any question we wanted and know that we were talking to a man who has both the knowledge and practical experience to answer our questions. We will have a final consultation with Dr. Storb and the team after all the test results have been tabulated. That will happen around the 27th of December. That will be the day of decision. We will have to make that crucial decision to go ahead with the transplant, or find another path. If all the results look encouraging, we will choose to go forward. January 5th is still the transplant date. Our donor, our daughter Hanna, will start harvesting stem cells on the 4th of January and finish up on the 5th, just in time for me to receive them.
The process of eliminating my old, deficient and diseased stem cells and immune system sounds more like science fiction than the medical procedures we are familiar with. Essentially, they hope to replace my entire immune system with my daughter's. It will take about two years for that process to be completed. There are many many dangerous twists and turns along that journey. Graft vs. Host disease, organ failure, fatal infections and recurrence of my cancer are just the most obvious ones. Yet, it also holds the possibility of curing my cancer, eliminating my Myelo-Displastic Syndrome and giving me not only a new 35 year old immune system, but a new blood type as well. Dr. Storb jokingly suggested that I would know when Hanna's immune system had taken control over my body when I started having a compulsive desire to go shopping, heh, heh, heh. In fact, I will have a female chromosomal make up to my bone marrow and stem cells. I told Kriss that I would probably become a much better husband and father. With all those wonderful new genetics, I can't imagine that I won't be a better listener and friend. God finds a way to work all things together for good for those who love Him and are called according to His purposes, Romans 8:28.
I can't help but think of our spiritual condition in relation to my anticipated medical transformation. We all have a diseased and deficient human nature that has been compromised by rebellion and sin. The wages, or inevitable consequence of that sinful nature is physical and spiritual death. Christmas is the celebration of God providing a donor for all of us in the infant baby Jesus. John the Baptist would recognize his true identity and mission when he declared: "Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!" Jesus is our corporate and individual transplant donor. He insisted that unless we consumed his flesh and ingested his blood, we could never share in his eternal life and joy. Everytime we share in the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, Communion, the Eucharist, we receive another dose of God's life-giving grace in Christ. Take eat, this is the Body of Christ; take and drink, this is the blood of Jesus that transforms us and makes us a new creation. Just as it will take months, even years, to fully see Hanna's immune system take control of my body, so it takes a lifetime of trust and obedience to see Christ more fully in control of our lives. As we celebrate God's invasion of our planet in the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, may we reflect on the outrageous depth of God's love and mercy. There was and is no other way to fully transform the human soul and condition. Just as it will take a life-risking transplant to save my physical life, so God has already provided the means and power to transform our spiritual beings. May this eternal and precious gift be the first one we open and embrace in this Season of Gifts and Celebration.
SUMMER OF 1971, YAKIMA VALLEY, WASINGTON STATE
I had met my wife Kriss during my Senior year of High School. We were both involved in Youth For Christ ministries in different High Schools and during my Freshman year in College, I was the Youth For Christ leader of Kriss' YFC club at White Swan High School on the Yakama Indian Reservation. Kriss was my right hand student leader and the most devoted and dedicated christian woman I had ever met. There was strictly no fraternization in any romantic or relational level between leaders and students, so we both felt a freedom to just be christian friends. In fact, Kriss became my very best friend and I could talk to her about anything, including the struggles I had in relationship with other females. She was a wonderful listener and loved me as a brother in Christ. We both appreciated what God was doing in each other's life and it was a great foundation for a life-long relationship.
After she graduated from High School, Kriss accepted the job as the Office Manager for the Youth For Christ Office in Yakima, WA. She continued to help me with the White Swan Youth for Christ Club and we became even more acquainted. When things finally went south with a former "friend", Kriss became more than a colleague and we eventually began to "date" and think about a life together in service to God. I can honestly say that our relatioinship was more old country than the 70's television show. We ultimately came to the conclusion that God could use us more fully and effectively if we were married and in full time ministry than if we were single or married to other people. Certainly, I was more superficially attracted to her for her amazing beauty and charm, but she would have to admit that the most attractive thing about me was my love for and commitment to Christ. We would be engaged before I left for France in August of 1971, but the months we spent prior to that were unforgettable.
It all started the night of the Wapato High School Graduation of the Class of 1971. One of my Young Life Campaigner guys was graduating and he went to the graduation parties and met Del. Del's brother was also graduating and he had brought a sachel full of drugs from Miami, Florida to show the country bumpkins how to party like they did in Miami. Needless to say, Del overdosed to the point of probably needing to be hospitalized, but he didn't want to get busted, so my friend Luis stayed with him all night and shared the love of God with him. Whenever Del would resist or reject Luis' words, he felt like his body was melting and about to die. During the course of that crazy night, he accepted Christ as his saviour and hope. Luis called me early the next morning and told me part of the story and demanded I come over to his house and take this guy off of his hands and show him what to do next in his Christian life. What an amazing three months were to ensue. Del was like a creature from another planet. Being a Cuban refugee as a child, he had grown up in Miami learning English, survival in the city and a street slang I had no knowledge of. The moment I met him, he introduced himself and said, "Man, I'm glad to meet ya, Luis told me you'd help me get my s### together." I had no good idea what that meant to either of us, but I agreed to take him off of Luis' hands and I took him home to meet my mother.
Del was the incarnation of Eddy Haskell on Leave it to Beaver. As soon as he got around adults his language magically changed into the most respectful and grammatically correct imagineable. He could charm the wool off of a sheep and my mother thought he was wonderful. She would take him places in her car and give him canned fruit whenever he asked for it and I couldn't believe what we were getting into. For the next couple of weeks Del, Kriss and I went through the Bible talking about what it meant to follow Jesus and trying to prepare him to return to Miami and all the temptations he had left behind. We took him to the airport in Yakima and prayed for him to be strong and faithful. I honestly, didn't expect to ever see him again. How wrong I was! As it turned out, one of his friends met him at the airport in Miami with lots of drugs and he immediately said: "Forget it , man, I got God in my life." His old buddies didn't take him seriously, at first. But after a few days, they could see something different about Del and when he decided to come back to Washington State, they all decided to join him and try to find what he had found in the great Northwest.
The couple of weeks Del was gone back to Florida, Kriss and I started picking cherries together. She would get up about 4 am and make lunch for both of us and then come and pick me up in Wapato so we could get to the orchards before 6 am. There is no better way to discover someone else's true character than picking fruit together. One kindness I did exhibit to her, however, was that I would top the trees and leave the lower limbs for her to pick. Chilvary lives even in a cherry orchard. When Del called and told us when to meet him back at the airport in Yakima, we weren't sure what it all meant. But we felt God calling us to do all we could to help him become the best disciple of Christ that he could be. We just didn't know about all the rest of his Miami Mafia that was on its way to our doorstep. He told us some of his friends "might" come to visit, but we were in no way prepared for the Exodus. Tom and Ralph arrived by plane in a couple of days. Others hitchhiked or took buses. One guy got arrested in Wyoming, mostly for having long hair. After a couple of days in the county jail and some minor league police physicality, he was dropped off outside the city limits and strongly encouraged to never cross Wyoming State borders again. They did give him a free haircut, however. We prayed long and hard about what to do with such an insane group of messed up teenagers.
God called us to love them and teach them how to pick cherries. They bought an old juckheap of a car for $50, mostly because it had a loud sound system. It smoked like a steam locomotive and when you went around a corner too fast either of the back doors would fly open. They rented a dump of a house on the North, meaning bad side of Yakima, and we found some furniture and sleeping bags and set up housekeeping. They had almost all played sports together in High School back in Miami and so everyday in the orchards was intensively competitve. They simply refused to believe that a short little punk like me could out work them in the orchard. I had two overwhelming advantages. One was experience and the other was discipline. I had a strict schedule of filling a bucket of cherries every 15 minutes or 4 an hour. If I got ahead of my schedule, I would take a couple minutes break, drink some water or have a snack. It wasn't long before they labelled me with the nickname, "Speedfreak", because they couldn't accept the reality that I could out work them if I wasn't taking some drug like Speed. Try as they did, none of them could ever keep up with me picking fruit, but they certainly liked Kriss and all the food she would bring with us to work.
By day we went out to find picking jobs. By night we drug them to Bible studies at the House of Elijah, House of Ruth or some Christian Coffee House, which actually served real coffee and provided very local live 'Christian' music. The problem was that we couldn't keep track of all of them all of the time. When we showed up before 6 am to roust them out of their sleeping bags to go to work, we never knew just exactly who else might be in that sleeping bag. We had to encourage many young females to look elsewhere for companionship, and it wasn't appreciated by the guys. I had nightmares about the Yakima Herald Republic featuring a front page article about the Youth Minister who had gotten messed up with a bunch of pot-heads from Miami. In the initial weeks, drugs were commonly used, but rarely in our presence. Del led the charge to get off and out of the drug culture, but these were his buddies and it took several weeks before I felt comfortable that we weren't going to all get arrested some weekend.
By the grace of God, they all began to change. They stopped complaining about going to Bible Studies and listening to 'Christian' music at the Coffee House. When Kriss and I announced that we were engaged to be married, they gave her a hard time for settling for such a loser and vowed that any number of them would make her a much better match, not necessarily husband, however. She knew how to handle them by then, but they were all quite smitten with her and Del never fully got over her. You never know what pearls you might find in the unlikliest of places. Del would graduate from College, Seminary, and Graduate School with a Ph. D. in clinical Psychology. He would marry a missionary's daughter from South America and become one of the country's foremost therapists for Federal Agencies. Ralph would become an Executive for Eastern Airlines and a strong christian leader back in Miami. Tom would eventually become an ordained minister back in Florida and serve God faithfully. I lost track of many of the rest, but Del assured me that all of them were transformed in some significant way from their adventure the Summer of 1971. I learned a lot of new words that I could never repeat in polite company and how powerful God's love could be to change hearts and lives. I began to stop judging people so quickly for their outward appearances and try to see them with the eyes of Christ. What they could be in Jesus became my focus, not what they were today. I would bid them and Kriss a fond farewell in late August and embark on a cross country Oddysey of my own on my way to Provence, light, lavender and liberty.
It seems like the movie Ground Hog Day. Bill Murray is a low-life television reporter who is either blessed or cursed with the chance to keep repeating the same day until he gets it right. It leads him through all the emotions of life from despair to delight. He eventually finds redemption in knowing exactly what other people need and meets those needs in a joyful and humble fashion. Of course, he falls in love with his co-star and gets to start a new life with all the knowledge of his past mistakes plus a companion to share it with. We are in the process of doing all the preliminary testing and evaluations that we just did in August/September. We were hoping to be able to use the results of the previous procedures, but they have to be within 30 days of transplant and so it's deja-vu all over again, to quote Yogi Berra. We can tell already that we have benefited from our previous experience here at SCCA. Our present attending Physician, Dr. Storb was born in Essen, Germany and came to the USA years ago. He was at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center before the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance even existed. His name is listed on many of the research studies that we have given permission to participate in and provide information for. He had to admit that my particular combination of Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma that has transformed from small - cell follicular, combined with Myelo-Displastic Syndrome is strikingly unique. They are confident that their treatment plan will address all three of my life-threatening issues; Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma, Myelo-Displastic Sundrome and possible Graft vs Host disease. We spent over an hour with Dr. Storb and another RN today going over all the schedule and details. It was refreshing to be able to ask any question we wanted and know that we were talking to a man who has both the knowledge and practical experience to answer our questions. We will have a final consultation with Dr. Storb and the team after all the test results have been tabulated. That will happen around the 27th of December. That will be the day of decision. We will have to make that crucial decision to go ahead with the transplant, or find another path. If all the results look encouraging, we will choose to go forward. January 5th is still the transplant date. Our donor, our daughter Hanna, will start harvesting stem cells on the 4th of January and finish up on the 5th, just in time for me to receive them.
The process of eliminating my old, deficient and diseased stem cells and immune system sounds more like science fiction than the medical procedures we are familiar with. Essentially, they hope to replace my entire immune system with my daughter's. It will take about two years for that process to be completed. There are many many dangerous twists and turns along that journey. Graft vs. Host disease, organ failure, fatal infections and recurrence of my cancer are just the most obvious ones. Yet, it also holds the possibility of curing my cancer, eliminating my Myelo-Displastic Syndrome and giving me not only a new 35 year old immune system, but a new blood type as well. Dr. Storb jokingly suggested that I would know when Hanna's immune system had taken control over my body when I started having a compulsive desire to go shopping, heh, heh, heh. In fact, I will have a female chromosomal make up to my bone marrow and stem cells. I told Kriss that I would probably become a much better husband and father. With all those wonderful new genetics, I can't imagine that I won't be a better listener and friend. God finds a way to work all things together for good for those who love Him and are called according to His purposes, Romans 8:28.
I can't help but think of our spiritual condition in relation to my anticipated medical transformation. We all have a diseased and deficient human nature that has been compromised by rebellion and sin. The wages, or inevitable consequence of that sinful nature is physical and spiritual death. Christmas is the celebration of God providing a donor for all of us in the infant baby Jesus. John the Baptist would recognize his true identity and mission when he declared: "Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!" Jesus is our corporate and individual transplant donor. He insisted that unless we consumed his flesh and ingested his blood, we could never share in his eternal life and joy. Everytime we share in the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, Communion, the Eucharist, we receive another dose of God's life-giving grace in Christ. Take eat, this is the Body of Christ; take and drink, this is the blood of Jesus that transforms us and makes us a new creation. Just as it will take months, even years, to fully see Hanna's immune system take control of my body, so it takes a lifetime of trust and obedience to see Christ more fully in control of our lives. As we celebrate God's invasion of our planet in the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, may we reflect on the outrageous depth of God's love and mercy. There was and is no other way to fully transform the human soul and condition. Just as it will take a life-risking transplant to save my physical life, so God has already provided the means and power to transform our spiritual beings. May this eternal and precious gift be the first one we open and embrace in this Season of Gifts and Celebration.
SUMMER OF 1971, YAKIMA VALLEY, WASINGTON STATE
I had met my wife Kriss during my Senior year of High School. We were both involved in Youth For Christ ministries in different High Schools and during my Freshman year in College, I was the Youth For Christ leader of Kriss' YFC club at White Swan High School on the Yakama Indian Reservation. Kriss was my right hand student leader and the most devoted and dedicated christian woman I had ever met. There was strictly no fraternization in any romantic or relational level between leaders and students, so we both felt a freedom to just be christian friends. In fact, Kriss became my very best friend and I could talk to her about anything, including the struggles I had in relationship with other females. She was a wonderful listener and loved me as a brother in Christ. We both appreciated what God was doing in each other's life and it was a great foundation for a life-long relationship.
After she graduated from High School, Kriss accepted the job as the Office Manager for the Youth For Christ Office in Yakima, WA. She continued to help me with the White Swan Youth for Christ Club and we became even more acquainted. When things finally went south with a former "friend", Kriss became more than a colleague and we eventually began to "date" and think about a life together in service to God. I can honestly say that our relatioinship was more old country than the 70's television show. We ultimately came to the conclusion that God could use us more fully and effectively if we were married and in full time ministry than if we were single or married to other people. Certainly, I was more superficially attracted to her for her amazing beauty and charm, but she would have to admit that the most attractive thing about me was my love for and commitment to Christ. We would be engaged before I left for France in August of 1971, but the months we spent prior to that were unforgettable.
It all started the night of the Wapato High School Graduation of the Class of 1971. One of my Young Life Campaigner guys was graduating and he went to the graduation parties and met Del. Del's brother was also graduating and he had brought a sachel full of drugs from Miami, Florida to show the country bumpkins how to party like they did in Miami. Needless to say, Del overdosed to the point of probably needing to be hospitalized, but he didn't want to get busted, so my friend Luis stayed with him all night and shared the love of God with him. Whenever Del would resist or reject Luis' words, he felt like his body was melting and about to die. During the course of that crazy night, he accepted Christ as his saviour and hope. Luis called me early the next morning and told me part of the story and demanded I come over to his house and take this guy off of his hands and show him what to do next in his Christian life. What an amazing three months were to ensue. Del was like a creature from another planet. Being a Cuban refugee as a child, he had grown up in Miami learning English, survival in the city and a street slang I had no knowledge of. The moment I met him, he introduced himself and said, "Man, I'm glad to meet ya, Luis told me you'd help me get my s### together." I had no good idea what that meant to either of us, but I agreed to take him off of Luis' hands and I took him home to meet my mother.
Del was the incarnation of Eddy Haskell on Leave it to Beaver. As soon as he got around adults his language magically changed into the most respectful and grammatically correct imagineable. He could charm the wool off of a sheep and my mother thought he was wonderful. She would take him places in her car and give him canned fruit whenever he asked for it and I couldn't believe what we were getting into. For the next couple of weeks Del, Kriss and I went through the Bible talking about what it meant to follow Jesus and trying to prepare him to return to Miami and all the temptations he had left behind. We took him to the airport in Yakima and prayed for him to be strong and faithful. I honestly, didn't expect to ever see him again. How wrong I was! As it turned out, one of his friends met him at the airport in Miami with lots of drugs and he immediately said: "Forget it , man, I got God in my life." His old buddies didn't take him seriously, at first. But after a few days, they could see something different about Del and when he decided to come back to Washington State, they all decided to join him and try to find what he had found in the great Northwest.
The couple of weeks Del was gone back to Florida, Kriss and I started picking cherries together. She would get up about 4 am and make lunch for both of us and then come and pick me up in Wapato so we could get to the orchards before 6 am. There is no better way to discover someone else's true character than picking fruit together. One kindness I did exhibit to her, however, was that I would top the trees and leave the lower limbs for her to pick. Chilvary lives even in a cherry orchard. When Del called and told us when to meet him back at the airport in Yakima, we weren't sure what it all meant. But we felt God calling us to do all we could to help him become the best disciple of Christ that he could be. We just didn't know about all the rest of his Miami Mafia that was on its way to our doorstep. He told us some of his friends "might" come to visit, but we were in no way prepared for the Exodus. Tom and Ralph arrived by plane in a couple of days. Others hitchhiked or took buses. One guy got arrested in Wyoming, mostly for having long hair. After a couple of days in the county jail and some minor league police physicality, he was dropped off outside the city limits and strongly encouraged to never cross Wyoming State borders again. They did give him a free haircut, however. We prayed long and hard about what to do with such an insane group of messed up teenagers.
God called us to love them and teach them how to pick cherries. They bought an old juckheap of a car for $50, mostly because it had a loud sound system. It smoked like a steam locomotive and when you went around a corner too fast either of the back doors would fly open. They rented a dump of a house on the North, meaning bad side of Yakima, and we found some furniture and sleeping bags and set up housekeeping. They had almost all played sports together in High School back in Miami and so everyday in the orchards was intensively competitve. They simply refused to believe that a short little punk like me could out work them in the orchard. I had two overwhelming advantages. One was experience and the other was discipline. I had a strict schedule of filling a bucket of cherries every 15 minutes or 4 an hour. If I got ahead of my schedule, I would take a couple minutes break, drink some water or have a snack. It wasn't long before they labelled me with the nickname, "Speedfreak", because they couldn't accept the reality that I could out work them if I wasn't taking some drug like Speed. Try as they did, none of them could ever keep up with me picking fruit, but they certainly liked Kriss and all the food she would bring with us to work.
By day we went out to find picking jobs. By night we drug them to Bible studies at the House of Elijah, House of Ruth or some Christian Coffee House, which actually served real coffee and provided very local live 'Christian' music. The problem was that we couldn't keep track of all of them all of the time. When we showed up before 6 am to roust them out of their sleeping bags to go to work, we never knew just exactly who else might be in that sleeping bag. We had to encourage many young females to look elsewhere for companionship, and it wasn't appreciated by the guys. I had nightmares about the Yakima Herald Republic featuring a front page article about the Youth Minister who had gotten messed up with a bunch of pot-heads from Miami. In the initial weeks, drugs were commonly used, but rarely in our presence. Del led the charge to get off and out of the drug culture, but these were his buddies and it took several weeks before I felt comfortable that we weren't going to all get arrested some weekend.
By the grace of God, they all began to change. They stopped complaining about going to Bible Studies and listening to 'Christian' music at the Coffee House. When Kriss and I announced that we were engaged to be married, they gave her a hard time for settling for such a loser and vowed that any number of them would make her a much better match, not necessarily husband, however. She knew how to handle them by then, but they were all quite smitten with her and Del never fully got over her. You never know what pearls you might find in the unlikliest of places. Del would graduate from College, Seminary, and Graduate School with a Ph. D. in clinical Psychology. He would marry a missionary's daughter from South America and become one of the country's foremost therapists for Federal Agencies. Ralph would become an Executive for Eastern Airlines and a strong christian leader back in Miami. Tom would eventually become an ordained minister back in Florida and serve God faithfully. I lost track of many of the rest, but Del assured me that all of them were transformed in some significant way from their adventure the Summer of 1971. I learned a lot of new words that I could never repeat in polite company and how powerful God's love could be to change hearts and lives. I began to stop judging people so quickly for their outward appearances and try to see them with the eyes of Christ. What they could be in Jesus became my focus, not what they were today. I would bid them and Kriss a fond farewell in late August and embark on a cross country Oddysey of my own on my way to Provence, light, lavender and liberty.
Monday, December 13, 2010
A WILLING JONAH - OUR OWN VERSION OF NINEVEH!
DECEMBER 13TH, 2010 WALLA WALLA, WA, 55 DEGREES, OVERCAST,
We have lived in cities during our married life. Aix-en Provence, France; Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada; Pasadena, California. It's not like we can't live in an urban setting, we just choose not to. Today we leave our ranch and home and begin the trek to Seattle and the Cancer Care Alliance. We will meet up with daughter Ella and her husband Christopher in Portland, Oregon for dinner along with daughter Hanna. We will spend the night with Hanna at her place in Kelso, WA and proceed on to Seattle on Tuesday with appointments scheduled at SCCA (Seattle Cancer Care Alliance) beginning around 11 AM on Wednesday. I describe Seattle as Nineveh, not because it is such a sinful place, but because we feel like this decision somehow has God's overriding imprint and we are just along for the ride. There are things we are to do there in ministry with others and there are things we are supposed to learn while we are there from others. It is very difficult to leave one's home and spiritual family of over 32 years and be gone for up to 4 months with a medical challenge that is both life threatening and life saving. We will have to redo all the pre-transplant testing in the coming weeks and the transplant itself is scheduled for January 5, 2011.
One of the things I will miss the most is the ministry with our first guest family in the Wasser House back here in College Place. Allen has lung cancer, complicated with a tumor that has spread and wrapped itself around his spinal column. He lives in LaGrande, Oregon with his fiance, Pauline and their blended family of 5 children. They are expecting their first child together in March. We bought and remodeled the Wasser House in order to house cancer patients and their families while they are receiving cancer treatment here in Walla Walla. It is no coincidence that Allen is our first guest. A plaque in the living room comes from Haggai 2:9, it reads: "The glory of this present house will be greater than the glory of the former house," says the Lord Almighty, "and in this place I will grant peace." Allen, like so many people accepted Christ as his savior when he was younger. But life and the spiritual powers of darkness have a way of isolating and alienating us from our first love for God and we slowly grow cold and indifferent to the things of God. The lowest point was last April when Pauline miscarried their baby and her brother-in-law, Allen's best friend, died. Weeks later, Allen was diagnosed with cancer and life seemed hardly worth living. He was tempted to just give up and give in to the disease and die. Pauline reminded him he had 11 reasons not to give up; she and her five children, an older step-daughter from a previous marriage and the three young children from his friend who had died who looked to him for a father figure, plus his unborn child she is carrying at this time. He decided to fight the cancer. That is how it came about that Allen and I were sitting almost next to each other, Wednesday, November 17th at St. Mary's Cancer Center here in Walla Walla, WA, both of us receiving chemo. We overheard them talking about staying at a place called the Wasser House and after a while, Kriss and I introduced ourselves and told them that we would be their hosts and show them how to get to the house and show them around.
From the first minute they entered the house they were overwhelmed with the beauty and simplicity of this home of love. Hundreds of willing hands have toiled countless hours to transform this derelict tenement dwelling into a sanctuary of hospitality. My friend, Frederick Buechner writes in his book, WISHFUL THINKING, about what it means to be "Holy": "Only God is holy, just as only people are human. God's holiness is his Godness. To speak of anything else as holy is to say that it has something of God's mark upon it. Times, places, things, and people can all be holy, and when they are, they are usually not hard to recognize.
One holy place I know is a workshop attached to a barn. There is a wood-burning stove in it made out of an oil drum. There is a workbench, dark and dented, with shallow, crammed drawers behind one of which a cat lives. There is a girlie calendar on the wall, plus various lengths of chain and rope, shovels and rakes of different sizes and shapes, some worn-out jackets and caps on pegs, an electric clock that doesn't keep time. On the workbench are two small plug-in radios both of which have serious things wrong with them. There are several metal boxes full of wrenches, and a bench saw. There are a couple of chairs with rungs missing. There is an old yellow bulldozer with its tracks caked with mud parked against one wall. The place smells mainly of engine oil and smoke-both wood smoke and pipe smoke. The windows are small, and even on bright days what light there is comes through mainly in window-sized patches on the floor.
I have no idea why this place is holy, but you can tell it is the moment you set foot in it if you have an eye for that kind of thing. For reasons known only to God, it is one of the places he uses for sending his love to the world through." I have no doubt that the Wasser House is already one of the places God is sending his love to this world. Allen has rededicated his life to Christ and daily feels Jesus's presence whenever he walks into the House. I visit him there almost daily and we talk about life, cancer treatments and his hopes and dreams for his family. He is committed to following Jesus faithfully the rest of his days and showing his expanding family the hope and power of God's love. He has been overwhelmed by God's unconditional love as manifested by the people of our congregation. I have never seen such a spiritual and emotional transformation in all my years as a pastor. This is the essence of evangelism, the sharing of the "Good News" of God's love and salvation through authentic and sacrificial love. I can see God making this brother in Christ into a new creation before my eyes. I never leave Allen's presence without tears in my eyes. The tears are not about the life and death medical battle we are both facing. They are tears of unbelievable joy in seeing God use our humble, yet sincere hands and hearts to make an eternal difference in this family, to the Glory of God. I know others in our congregation will step in and continue to nurture and befriend Allen and his family. God's work isn't dependent on my presence, but I will miss the privilege of being an instrument of God's love in Allen's life.
Pastors and theologians are constantly analyzing and attempting to define "the Church". For the most part, I feel it is futile and a waste of time. Jesus called his followers to do two things; love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind and strength and your neighbor as yourself. When we come even close to obeying both of those commandments, we are truly the Body of Christ, the ecclesia/the church. I have stopped going to pastoral conferences because almost everyone there seems miserable and angry at the people they are called to serve. They whine and complain about the lack of passion and authenticity among their parishioners and then go out in the evening with fellow clergy and drown their sorrows with a pint or two. If one speaks out in praise and celebration of the blessings of God and the joy of serving with amazingly gracious and Christlike people, they look at you like you couldn't possibly be telling the truth and ignore you completely. Following Christ is essentially pretty simple. You either trust and obey or you don't. The apostle Paul calls us to love deeply and joyfully. In this Advent Season, may we all find the time to simply love and enjoy the abundant blessings God has given. Most of the time they are living within your own walls or family unit. Slow down long enough to embrace those that God has put in your circle of love.
Yakima Valley Community College, Fall of 1970.
My second year of College started like the first, but it ended dramatically differently. I was still involved in Middle School and High School ministries, but now the complication of "relationships" took hold. There is no manual to easily navigate these winding twists and turns of the heart. Scripture gives us bold moral guidelines, but there are so many subtle choices you have to make on a daily basis that is gets more and more confusing. Romantic love is an intoxicant and people act out those emotions in foolish and sometimes dangerous ways. I thought I had found the love of my life, even my mother approved. But we were both too young and immature to understand the gift of another person's heart. We ended up causing each other more pain and suffering than I could ever have imagined. Whatever feelings we had for each other were consumed in the flames of perceived rejection and abandonment. By the grace of God we both survived the ordeal, but there were emotional scars and pain that we both carried for years.
I was slowly weaning myself away from my relatively comfortable life of living with my Mother and working in ministries that were known and safe. I had to make some major decisions about the coming years of education and I felt God's call to go to France and study in a French University in Aix-en-Provence. I applied to Institute for American Universities located in that city and was accepted. They had a Honor's Program that sent students directly to the Universite Aix/Marseille and I was hopeful that I would qualify, and I did. In the Spring of my last year at YVC I turned out for the tennis team and earned a spot on the team. Many of my fellow teammates were guys that I had competed against when I played for Wapato High School, so it felt like a real team. We had a very successful season. Mr. Shearer, the legendary coach was in his final few years and he taught us a lot about tennis and life. I found out rather quickly that athletes were treated differently than ordinary students. All our tennis shoes, socks, uniforms and letterman jackets were provided free of charge. All our travel expenses were covered and we lacked for nothing. They even sewed our names into the pocket of our letterman jackets and I still have mine to this day. I remember playing Central Washington University in Ellensburg one day. We swept every single match. Their coach was the legendary Dean Nicholson, both tennis and basketball coach. He took all of us aside after the match and offered any of us who would be interested a scholarship to come to CWU and play tennis for him. Most of the guys took him up on his offer and in the coming couple of years they won the NAIA national championships. I was headed to France, so I told him I couldn't take him up on his offer, but it would have been fun.
I remembered the disappointment I felt when I left Wapato High School and wasn't eligible to play tennis at Eishenhower High School. I never forgot the scripture where Jesus promised that anyone who sacrifices anything of value in order to serve Him would one day receive back that same opportunity not only in heaven, but in this life as well. I felt that God had given me back the opportunity to play competitive tennis that second year at YVC. It was a spiritual lesson that I was to see played out over and over again in my life and ministry. You simply can't out give Yehovah Jireh/God who provides. Whether it is tithing 10% of your income, dedicating time and talents to God's service or sacrificially giving of yourself in love and compassion, God's blessings seem to overflow into and through obedient hands. I heard someone teach about how blood vessels don't have any way of being provided nutrition except by drawing sustenance from the blood that flows through them. In the same way, God nourishes us abundantly as we serve as a vessel of his love and gifts. Once we stop that flow, we become stagnant and in our attempt to hoard what we have, we risk losing it all. The parable of the Talents has always inspired me to remember that everything, EVERYTHING, we have is a gift from God. One day we will be asked to account for what we have done with all those blessings and what rejoicing there will be when we lay those talents at Jesus' feet.
I finished my studies at YVC and began the craziest summer I could ever have imagined. God has a way of stretching us to our limits so that we have no choice but to trust more fully in Jesus. The summer of 1972 would make an amazing movie, I can hardly believe we survived it all.
We have lived in cities during our married life. Aix-en Provence, France; Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada; Pasadena, California. It's not like we can't live in an urban setting, we just choose not to. Today we leave our ranch and home and begin the trek to Seattle and the Cancer Care Alliance. We will meet up with daughter Ella and her husband Christopher in Portland, Oregon for dinner along with daughter Hanna. We will spend the night with Hanna at her place in Kelso, WA and proceed on to Seattle on Tuesday with appointments scheduled at SCCA (Seattle Cancer Care Alliance) beginning around 11 AM on Wednesday. I describe Seattle as Nineveh, not because it is such a sinful place, but because we feel like this decision somehow has God's overriding imprint and we are just along for the ride. There are things we are to do there in ministry with others and there are things we are supposed to learn while we are there from others. It is very difficult to leave one's home and spiritual family of over 32 years and be gone for up to 4 months with a medical challenge that is both life threatening and life saving. We will have to redo all the pre-transplant testing in the coming weeks and the transplant itself is scheduled for January 5, 2011.
One of the things I will miss the most is the ministry with our first guest family in the Wasser House back here in College Place. Allen has lung cancer, complicated with a tumor that has spread and wrapped itself around his spinal column. He lives in LaGrande, Oregon with his fiance, Pauline and their blended family of 5 children. They are expecting their first child together in March. We bought and remodeled the Wasser House in order to house cancer patients and their families while they are receiving cancer treatment here in Walla Walla. It is no coincidence that Allen is our first guest. A plaque in the living room comes from Haggai 2:9, it reads: "The glory of this present house will be greater than the glory of the former house," says the Lord Almighty, "and in this place I will grant peace." Allen, like so many people accepted Christ as his savior when he was younger. But life and the spiritual powers of darkness have a way of isolating and alienating us from our first love for God and we slowly grow cold and indifferent to the things of God. The lowest point was last April when Pauline miscarried their baby and her brother-in-law, Allen's best friend, died. Weeks later, Allen was diagnosed with cancer and life seemed hardly worth living. He was tempted to just give up and give in to the disease and die. Pauline reminded him he had 11 reasons not to give up; she and her five children, an older step-daughter from a previous marriage and the three young children from his friend who had died who looked to him for a father figure, plus his unborn child she is carrying at this time. He decided to fight the cancer. That is how it came about that Allen and I were sitting almost next to each other, Wednesday, November 17th at St. Mary's Cancer Center here in Walla Walla, WA, both of us receiving chemo. We overheard them talking about staying at a place called the Wasser House and after a while, Kriss and I introduced ourselves and told them that we would be their hosts and show them how to get to the house and show them around.
From the first minute they entered the house they were overwhelmed with the beauty and simplicity of this home of love. Hundreds of willing hands have toiled countless hours to transform this derelict tenement dwelling into a sanctuary of hospitality. My friend, Frederick Buechner writes in his book, WISHFUL THINKING, about what it means to be "Holy": "Only God is holy, just as only people are human. God's holiness is his Godness. To speak of anything else as holy is to say that it has something of God's mark upon it. Times, places, things, and people can all be holy, and when they are, they are usually not hard to recognize.
One holy place I know is a workshop attached to a barn. There is a wood-burning stove in it made out of an oil drum. There is a workbench, dark and dented, with shallow, crammed drawers behind one of which a cat lives. There is a girlie calendar on the wall, plus various lengths of chain and rope, shovels and rakes of different sizes and shapes, some worn-out jackets and caps on pegs, an electric clock that doesn't keep time. On the workbench are two small plug-in radios both of which have serious things wrong with them. There are several metal boxes full of wrenches, and a bench saw. There are a couple of chairs with rungs missing. There is an old yellow bulldozer with its tracks caked with mud parked against one wall. The place smells mainly of engine oil and smoke-both wood smoke and pipe smoke. The windows are small, and even on bright days what light there is comes through mainly in window-sized patches on the floor.
I have no idea why this place is holy, but you can tell it is the moment you set foot in it if you have an eye for that kind of thing. For reasons known only to God, it is one of the places he uses for sending his love to the world through." I have no doubt that the Wasser House is already one of the places God is sending his love to this world. Allen has rededicated his life to Christ and daily feels Jesus's presence whenever he walks into the House. I visit him there almost daily and we talk about life, cancer treatments and his hopes and dreams for his family. He is committed to following Jesus faithfully the rest of his days and showing his expanding family the hope and power of God's love. He has been overwhelmed by God's unconditional love as manifested by the people of our congregation. I have never seen such a spiritual and emotional transformation in all my years as a pastor. This is the essence of evangelism, the sharing of the "Good News" of God's love and salvation through authentic and sacrificial love. I can see God making this brother in Christ into a new creation before my eyes. I never leave Allen's presence without tears in my eyes. The tears are not about the life and death medical battle we are both facing. They are tears of unbelievable joy in seeing God use our humble, yet sincere hands and hearts to make an eternal difference in this family, to the Glory of God. I know others in our congregation will step in and continue to nurture and befriend Allen and his family. God's work isn't dependent on my presence, but I will miss the privilege of being an instrument of God's love in Allen's life.
Pastors and theologians are constantly analyzing and attempting to define "the Church". For the most part, I feel it is futile and a waste of time. Jesus called his followers to do two things; love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind and strength and your neighbor as yourself. When we come even close to obeying both of those commandments, we are truly the Body of Christ, the ecclesia/the church. I have stopped going to pastoral conferences because almost everyone there seems miserable and angry at the people they are called to serve. They whine and complain about the lack of passion and authenticity among their parishioners and then go out in the evening with fellow clergy and drown their sorrows with a pint or two. If one speaks out in praise and celebration of the blessings of God and the joy of serving with amazingly gracious and Christlike people, they look at you like you couldn't possibly be telling the truth and ignore you completely. Following Christ is essentially pretty simple. You either trust and obey or you don't. The apostle Paul calls us to love deeply and joyfully. In this Advent Season, may we all find the time to simply love and enjoy the abundant blessings God has given. Most of the time they are living within your own walls or family unit. Slow down long enough to embrace those that God has put in your circle of love.
Yakima Valley Community College, Fall of 1970.
My second year of College started like the first, but it ended dramatically differently. I was still involved in Middle School and High School ministries, but now the complication of "relationships" took hold. There is no manual to easily navigate these winding twists and turns of the heart. Scripture gives us bold moral guidelines, but there are so many subtle choices you have to make on a daily basis that is gets more and more confusing. Romantic love is an intoxicant and people act out those emotions in foolish and sometimes dangerous ways. I thought I had found the love of my life, even my mother approved. But we were both too young and immature to understand the gift of another person's heart. We ended up causing each other more pain and suffering than I could ever have imagined. Whatever feelings we had for each other were consumed in the flames of perceived rejection and abandonment. By the grace of God we both survived the ordeal, but there were emotional scars and pain that we both carried for years.
I was slowly weaning myself away from my relatively comfortable life of living with my Mother and working in ministries that were known and safe. I had to make some major decisions about the coming years of education and I felt God's call to go to France and study in a French University in Aix-en-Provence. I applied to Institute for American Universities located in that city and was accepted. They had a Honor's Program that sent students directly to the Universite Aix/Marseille and I was hopeful that I would qualify, and I did. In the Spring of my last year at YVC I turned out for the tennis team and earned a spot on the team. Many of my fellow teammates were guys that I had competed against when I played for Wapato High School, so it felt like a real team. We had a very successful season. Mr. Shearer, the legendary coach was in his final few years and he taught us a lot about tennis and life. I found out rather quickly that athletes were treated differently than ordinary students. All our tennis shoes, socks, uniforms and letterman jackets were provided free of charge. All our travel expenses were covered and we lacked for nothing. They even sewed our names into the pocket of our letterman jackets and I still have mine to this day. I remember playing Central Washington University in Ellensburg one day. We swept every single match. Their coach was the legendary Dean Nicholson, both tennis and basketball coach. He took all of us aside after the match and offered any of us who would be interested a scholarship to come to CWU and play tennis for him. Most of the guys took him up on his offer and in the coming couple of years they won the NAIA national championships. I was headed to France, so I told him I couldn't take him up on his offer, but it would have been fun.
I remembered the disappointment I felt when I left Wapato High School and wasn't eligible to play tennis at Eishenhower High School. I never forgot the scripture where Jesus promised that anyone who sacrifices anything of value in order to serve Him would one day receive back that same opportunity not only in heaven, but in this life as well. I felt that God had given me back the opportunity to play competitive tennis that second year at YVC. It was a spiritual lesson that I was to see played out over and over again in my life and ministry. You simply can't out give Yehovah Jireh/God who provides. Whether it is tithing 10% of your income, dedicating time and talents to God's service or sacrificially giving of yourself in love and compassion, God's blessings seem to overflow into and through obedient hands. I heard someone teach about how blood vessels don't have any way of being provided nutrition except by drawing sustenance from the blood that flows through them. In the same way, God nourishes us abundantly as we serve as a vessel of his love and gifts. Once we stop that flow, we become stagnant and in our attempt to hoard what we have, we risk losing it all. The parable of the Talents has always inspired me to remember that everything, EVERYTHING, we have is a gift from God. One day we will be asked to account for what we have done with all those blessings and what rejoicing there will be when we lay those talents at Jesus' feet.
I finished my studies at YVC and began the craziest summer I could ever have imagined. God has a way of stretching us to our limits so that we have no choice but to trust more fully in Jesus. The summer of 1972 would make an amazing movie, I can hardly believe we survived it all.
Monday, December 6, 2010
"QUI AUDET ADIPISCITUR" - "ONLY THE DARING CAN SUCCEED"
December 6th, 2010; Walla Walla, WA 35 degrees, partly sunny, snow almost gone.
When I was accepted into the Ph. D. program in Historical Theology at Fuller Theological Seminary in 1978, I had to pass 5 language examinations. In order to do research in the original languages, one had to show competency in French, German, New Testament Greek, Old Testament Hebrew and Latin. I passed all of the first four in the Spring of 1978 and was planning to study Latin while I was back in Washington State the Fall of 1978. God had other plans for our ministry and family and I accepted the position of interim pastor here at College Place Presbyterian beginning Labor Day Weekend, 1978. We accepted the call of the congregation in April of 1979 to be the ordained pastor and my Latin studies were put on hold. Since I am going to be in semi-seclusion in Seattle for the next 4 months, I decided it would be a good time to dust off my Latin textbooks and use this time productively. A friend of mine grew up going to the Roman Catholic Church when they still used the Latin Mass, so he is journeying with me on the via escolara, path of learning. The title of this blog, QUI AUDET ADIPISCITUR, is not only a good methodology when playing pinochle, but is relevant to my health adventure as well.
Our new Physician's Assistant, Lisa, called from Seattle this afternoon with a lot of questions and some detailed information about the upcoming stem-cell transplant. It appears that I am going to have to repeat all of the pre-transplant testing that I did in September. I was really hoping that they could just use the results of the earlier tests, but she said that they had to be within 30 days of the transplant. Maybe I can have them put me under general anesthesia for the bone marrow extraction. I still have bruises on my hips from the last procedure. Knowing exactly what to expect isn't a positive benefit in this case. I'll need to have my teeth cleaned this week before we go and then have all the dental exams all over again in Seattle. It seems like overkill, but they want to make sure that I haven't developed some new condition that would put the transplant at risk. Better cautious than sorry, I guess. We will arrive back in Seattle on the 14th of December and start appointments and procedures the 15th. I will have to go to the U of W Medical Center and have a Hickman Port installed the first few days that we are there. They have blood tests almost daily and it took 4 different technicians 11 stabs in both arms to get enough blood one day. I came walking out with wraps all over my arms and Kriss was shocked at the sight. I guess the saying is true: AB ASINO LANAM, you can't get wool from an ass, or blood from a Peterson, it seems. Dr. Hickman who pioneered this particular port, received a Nobel Prize in Medicine for this and many other advances he helped create while working at the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance. We are feeling God's peace as we prepare to leave home and undertake this risky, but potentially life restoring transplant. It appears that our oldest daughter, Hanna, will be the donor. She is an ordained Presbyterian minister and serves a parish in Kelso, WA, around 125 miles south of Seattle. She has the most flexible schedule and lives the closest, as well. She will have to arrive the same time as we do on the 15th and be there for three days straight. Then she will have to return on the 30th of December and start injections to manufacture surplus stem-cells. They will harvest them on the 4th and 5th of January and I am scheduled for the transplant on the 5th of January. I would appreciate it if you would mark your calendars for those dates and keep us in your prayers during this time. I will have to be within 15 minutes of the SCCA for the next 100 days, at a minimum. They might give me a longer leash after day 80, but Lisa said not to count on it. If I develop any fever or other signs of infection, they will put me into the U of W Medical Center in isolation until things stabilize. Some patients never have to be hospitalized and they get through the whole process as an out-patient. It appears that I will have plenty of time to keep us with this blog and learn Latin to boot. We'll see if my good intentions will translate into reality. Wednesday we have our first Latin exam. Paying for lunch is the practical result of failure on this exam. I am studying conscientiously to make sure I don't fall short. It's good to have deadlines to make sure things just don't get put on the back burner. I'll let you know how things turn out and who gets stuck with the tab for lunch.
We are getting serious about finishing all the tasks we need to do here on the farm. We have some work to do with the cattle and some hay we bought to get hauled to our home place. We have enough time to get it all done if the weather holds and we don't have another cold snap with lots of snow. We delivered some hay to a customer today, so they will be in good shape until February. Cleo will be here on the farm when we leave, but she will need help feeding the animals and calving the mother cows. Kriss may have to come home sometime in January to oversee the calving. It isn't usually that difficult, but it can be the difference between life and death if things go badly. We have four first-calf heifers to calve, so they need some extra looking after. We don't keep any breeding stock that has a history of calving problems. It just isn't worth it in the long run. Calving ease is a trait that we value a great deal and we select both sires and dams that will give us the least amount of problems at this time of year. We have a new bull for this breeding cycle and so we will see whether his offspring are the appropriate size and have the vigor we expect at birth. Genetics are critical in a cattle operation. We bought a bull from a breeder that looked great, but about 1/2 of his offspring had deformed feet and ankles at birth. We had to fabricate splints and it took them several months to get their feet straightened out. Needless to say, that bull didn't last over one year on our place. Fortunately, McDonald's is always in need of quality hamburger.
It will be very different not to be home for Christmas. We will have most of our famly with us either in Seattle or Kelso, but we will only have a couple of days free from tests and procedures. I have a feeling that we will appreciate the Christmas story even more this year. Mary and Joseph probably didn't want to go to Bethlehem, to essentially sign up with the Roman version of the IRS, either. They were faced with the medical crisis of childbirth while they were in a strange town. God was faithful to them and that birth was the beginning of new life for all of us. It is an inspiring and spiritual reality to think that our eldest daughter will give back the opportunity for life that we gave to her over 30 years ago. On the day of my rebirth, January 5th, 2011, I pray that God will give us all a spiritual renaissance that will create a deeper and stronger passion for serving the Prince of Peace. May God bless all of you for your love and concern that overwhelms our hearts and gives us courage and hope. In the summer of 1970 I began a season of spiritual challenges that would disrupt my previous life, just as this medical challenge is disrupting my present life.
Wapato, WA Summer of 1970!
I went back to Windy Point Farms for my second summer of employment. I wasn't a rookie anymore and so they expected more from me. I did all the things I had done the summer before, plus new responsibilities in the packing shed and warehouse. In the winter and spring prior to that summer, I had worked on Saturdays and school breaks in order to make a few extra dollars for college and transportation. One job that was memorable, was blossum thinning Early Red Haven Peaches. This variety of Peach produces such a plethora of blossums that if they were left on the tree, you would have a million walnut sized peaches on every tree. I'm sure that they now have chemicals that they just spray on the trees to eliminate excess blossums, but in the olden days, we had to manually strip probably 75% of the blossums, one twig at a time. It was tedium to the max. To approach a fully grown peach tree 12 feet tall and 15 feet across and realize that you had to thin every single branch and twig was almost unbearable. The miracle of that effort was twofold. First, in order to keep one's sanity, the human mind simply goes into a state of robot-like repetition. You don't think about each blossum, you develop a technique that just does the same thing over and over. It releases the creative side of your brain and I can remember having the most amazingly profound and wonderful insights I had ever had in my life. I had nothing to compare it with, but I would have to guess it was something like what people claimed drugs might do. I remember coming to deeper insights about God, life and self that were thrilling. The only problem was that I was stuck up in a peach tree on a ladder and by the time I got home so I could write down these profound truths, I couldn't remember them so well. It may be why Ghandi and wise women of all ages have done repetitive work with their hands while listening to and advising others. If you get stuck intellectually or rationally, do something boringly repetitive and you might be surprised what fresh insights pop into your consciousness. The second miracle of our efforts, was the tantalizing wonder of a tree ripened Early Red Haven Peach hanging from a branch at 6 am, still cool and fresh from the summer night. Delt Clark Sr. used to say that Early Red Havens were just 90 days, ditch water and peach fuzz, but I have never tasted anything so delicious before or since.
I continued to take fruit to Yakima for distribution to the poor. I took one family under my arm that I had met while doing some tutoring for the Yakima Public Schools. They lived near the Fairgrounds in Yakima and there were 3-4 kids in elementary school. I would drive from Wapato early Sunday morning to pick them up so they could go to Sunday School and Church with me. I always took them out for lunch on our way back home. That might have been their biggest motivation in coming, but I felt it was worth the effort. Other people took notice of the effort and they began to slip me a few dollars once in a while to help with the cost of lunch. I had known poverty as a child, but this was a poverty of the spirit, as well as the pocketbook. We made sure they had newer clothing and healthy food to eat, but I couldn't do anything about the cockroaches, except make sure they didn't relocate back to my own home in Wapato. I don't know what eventually happened to that family. I pray that the time we spent together planted a seed of faith and a reminder that God loves them and people care, however imperfectly their efforts.
The biggest challenge occurring in my life at this time was relational. I simply had had no healthy models of interpersonal relationships to follow in my formative years. I wandered through the maze of friendships and courtship creating heartache and emotional bruises for myself and others that went deep and were tragically lasting. It is the greatest source of regret and sense of failure that I feel to this day. One byproduct of this wandering in the dating wilderness was the exposure of deeper emotional flaws within my being that I had to painfully face and work through. I had absorbed and internalized all the words and curses that I had ever heard from family members, especially those from my father. Deep down I felt that I was "worthless as a tit on a boar", "stupid", "incapable of doing anything", and unworthy of the love of others. I could accept the concept of God's love for me since God was perfect and showed a perfect love for us. However, people weren't perfect and since I fundamentally thought I was "ugly and unlovable", I interpreted their affection for me as pity and ungenuine. I will never forget a scream therapy session in the front seat of my 1961 Chevrolet pickup truck on a street in Yakima with a friend screaming at me that "You are not ugly!", and me screaming back over and over, "I'm ugly, I'm ugly"! Eventually, out of sheer exhaustion, I had heard enough repetitions of the words; "You are not ugly!", to begin to accept the possibility that I was worthy of another human beings love and care without cynical doubts. It was God's way of beginning to create some sense of appropriate self worth and dignity that is a life long process for all of us. I guess one of the nicknames I was saddled with by older siblings; "flea" had stuck with me. I felt like I was essentially a bloodsucking parasite that you would just as soon squish with your shoe and be rid of, than a person of value and worth. In the coming months, my scream therapy partner would approach my mother and ask for some money to buy me some new clothes, so I didn't walk around looking like a minature Ronald McDonald. I had no sense of clothing or personal appearance. We went shopping and for the first time in my life, I could look in the mirror and think I was acceptable, even halfway pleasant to look at. I began to attack my acne with a vengeance and God's love slowly began to work its way outward from my heart to my hands. The summer passed quickly and I approached my second year of College with a more complex life, that now included the challenge of deepening friendships and all the baggage that would entail.
When I was accepted into the Ph. D. program in Historical Theology at Fuller Theological Seminary in 1978, I had to pass 5 language examinations. In order to do research in the original languages, one had to show competency in French, German, New Testament Greek, Old Testament Hebrew and Latin. I passed all of the first four in the Spring of 1978 and was planning to study Latin while I was back in Washington State the Fall of 1978. God had other plans for our ministry and family and I accepted the position of interim pastor here at College Place Presbyterian beginning Labor Day Weekend, 1978. We accepted the call of the congregation in April of 1979 to be the ordained pastor and my Latin studies were put on hold. Since I am going to be in semi-seclusion in Seattle for the next 4 months, I decided it would be a good time to dust off my Latin textbooks and use this time productively. A friend of mine grew up going to the Roman Catholic Church when they still used the Latin Mass, so he is journeying with me on the via escolara, path of learning. The title of this blog, QUI AUDET ADIPISCITUR, is not only a good methodology when playing pinochle, but is relevant to my health adventure as well.
Our new Physician's Assistant, Lisa, called from Seattle this afternoon with a lot of questions and some detailed information about the upcoming stem-cell transplant. It appears that I am going to have to repeat all of the pre-transplant testing that I did in September. I was really hoping that they could just use the results of the earlier tests, but she said that they had to be within 30 days of the transplant. Maybe I can have them put me under general anesthesia for the bone marrow extraction. I still have bruises on my hips from the last procedure. Knowing exactly what to expect isn't a positive benefit in this case. I'll need to have my teeth cleaned this week before we go and then have all the dental exams all over again in Seattle. It seems like overkill, but they want to make sure that I haven't developed some new condition that would put the transplant at risk. Better cautious than sorry, I guess. We will arrive back in Seattle on the 14th of December and start appointments and procedures the 15th. I will have to go to the U of W Medical Center and have a Hickman Port installed the first few days that we are there. They have blood tests almost daily and it took 4 different technicians 11 stabs in both arms to get enough blood one day. I came walking out with wraps all over my arms and Kriss was shocked at the sight. I guess the saying is true: AB ASINO LANAM, you can't get wool from an ass, or blood from a Peterson, it seems. Dr. Hickman who pioneered this particular port, received a Nobel Prize in Medicine for this and many other advances he helped create while working at the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance. We are feeling God's peace as we prepare to leave home and undertake this risky, but potentially life restoring transplant. It appears that our oldest daughter, Hanna, will be the donor. She is an ordained Presbyterian minister and serves a parish in Kelso, WA, around 125 miles south of Seattle. She has the most flexible schedule and lives the closest, as well. She will have to arrive the same time as we do on the 15th and be there for three days straight. Then she will have to return on the 30th of December and start injections to manufacture surplus stem-cells. They will harvest them on the 4th and 5th of January and I am scheduled for the transplant on the 5th of January. I would appreciate it if you would mark your calendars for those dates and keep us in your prayers during this time. I will have to be within 15 minutes of the SCCA for the next 100 days, at a minimum. They might give me a longer leash after day 80, but Lisa said not to count on it. If I develop any fever or other signs of infection, they will put me into the U of W Medical Center in isolation until things stabilize. Some patients never have to be hospitalized and they get through the whole process as an out-patient. It appears that I will have plenty of time to keep us with this blog and learn Latin to boot. We'll see if my good intentions will translate into reality. Wednesday we have our first Latin exam. Paying for lunch is the practical result of failure on this exam. I am studying conscientiously to make sure I don't fall short. It's good to have deadlines to make sure things just don't get put on the back burner. I'll let you know how things turn out and who gets stuck with the tab for lunch.
We are getting serious about finishing all the tasks we need to do here on the farm. We have some work to do with the cattle and some hay we bought to get hauled to our home place. We have enough time to get it all done if the weather holds and we don't have another cold snap with lots of snow. We delivered some hay to a customer today, so they will be in good shape until February. Cleo will be here on the farm when we leave, but she will need help feeding the animals and calving the mother cows. Kriss may have to come home sometime in January to oversee the calving. It isn't usually that difficult, but it can be the difference between life and death if things go badly. We have four first-calf heifers to calve, so they need some extra looking after. We don't keep any breeding stock that has a history of calving problems. It just isn't worth it in the long run. Calving ease is a trait that we value a great deal and we select both sires and dams that will give us the least amount of problems at this time of year. We have a new bull for this breeding cycle and so we will see whether his offspring are the appropriate size and have the vigor we expect at birth. Genetics are critical in a cattle operation. We bought a bull from a breeder that looked great, but about 1/2 of his offspring had deformed feet and ankles at birth. We had to fabricate splints and it took them several months to get their feet straightened out. Needless to say, that bull didn't last over one year on our place. Fortunately, McDonald's is always in need of quality hamburger.
It will be very different not to be home for Christmas. We will have most of our famly with us either in Seattle or Kelso, but we will only have a couple of days free from tests and procedures. I have a feeling that we will appreciate the Christmas story even more this year. Mary and Joseph probably didn't want to go to Bethlehem, to essentially sign up with the Roman version of the IRS, either. They were faced with the medical crisis of childbirth while they were in a strange town. God was faithful to them and that birth was the beginning of new life for all of us. It is an inspiring and spiritual reality to think that our eldest daughter will give back the opportunity for life that we gave to her over 30 years ago. On the day of my rebirth, January 5th, 2011, I pray that God will give us all a spiritual renaissance that will create a deeper and stronger passion for serving the Prince of Peace. May God bless all of you for your love and concern that overwhelms our hearts and gives us courage and hope. In the summer of 1970 I began a season of spiritual challenges that would disrupt my previous life, just as this medical challenge is disrupting my present life.
Wapato, WA Summer of 1970!
I went back to Windy Point Farms for my second summer of employment. I wasn't a rookie anymore and so they expected more from me. I did all the things I had done the summer before, plus new responsibilities in the packing shed and warehouse. In the winter and spring prior to that summer, I had worked on Saturdays and school breaks in order to make a few extra dollars for college and transportation. One job that was memorable, was blossum thinning Early Red Haven Peaches. This variety of Peach produces such a plethora of blossums that if they were left on the tree, you would have a million walnut sized peaches on every tree. I'm sure that they now have chemicals that they just spray on the trees to eliminate excess blossums, but in the olden days, we had to manually strip probably 75% of the blossums, one twig at a time. It was tedium to the max. To approach a fully grown peach tree 12 feet tall and 15 feet across and realize that you had to thin every single branch and twig was almost unbearable. The miracle of that effort was twofold. First, in order to keep one's sanity, the human mind simply goes into a state of robot-like repetition. You don't think about each blossum, you develop a technique that just does the same thing over and over. It releases the creative side of your brain and I can remember having the most amazingly profound and wonderful insights I had ever had in my life. I had nothing to compare it with, but I would have to guess it was something like what people claimed drugs might do. I remember coming to deeper insights about God, life and self that were thrilling. The only problem was that I was stuck up in a peach tree on a ladder and by the time I got home so I could write down these profound truths, I couldn't remember them so well. It may be why Ghandi and wise women of all ages have done repetitive work with their hands while listening to and advising others. If you get stuck intellectually or rationally, do something boringly repetitive and you might be surprised what fresh insights pop into your consciousness. The second miracle of our efforts, was the tantalizing wonder of a tree ripened Early Red Haven Peach hanging from a branch at 6 am, still cool and fresh from the summer night. Delt Clark Sr. used to say that Early Red Havens were just 90 days, ditch water and peach fuzz, but I have never tasted anything so delicious before or since.
I continued to take fruit to Yakima for distribution to the poor. I took one family under my arm that I had met while doing some tutoring for the Yakima Public Schools. They lived near the Fairgrounds in Yakima and there were 3-4 kids in elementary school. I would drive from Wapato early Sunday morning to pick them up so they could go to Sunday School and Church with me. I always took them out for lunch on our way back home. That might have been their biggest motivation in coming, but I felt it was worth the effort. Other people took notice of the effort and they began to slip me a few dollars once in a while to help with the cost of lunch. I had known poverty as a child, but this was a poverty of the spirit, as well as the pocketbook. We made sure they had newer clothing and healthy food to eat, but I couldn't do anything about the cockroaches, except make sure they didn't relocate back to my own home in Wapato. I don't know what eventually happened to that family. I pray that the time we spent together planted a seed of faith and a reminder that God loves them and people care, however imperfectly their efforts.
The biggest challenge occurring in my life at this time was relational. I simply had had no healthy models of interpersonal relationships to follow in my formative years. I wandered through the maze of friendships and courtship creating heartache and emotional bruises for myself and others that went deep and were tragically lasting. It is the greatest source of regret and sense of failure that I feel to this day. One byproduct of this wandering in the dating wilderness was the exposure of deeper emotional flaws within my being that I had to painfully face and work through. I had absorbed and internalized all the words and curses that I had ever heard from family members, especially those from my father. Deep down I felt that I was "worthless as a tit on a boar", "stupid", "incapable of doing anything", and unworthy of the love of others. I could accept the concept of God's love for me since God was perfect and showed a perfect love for us. However, people weren't perfect and since I fundamentally thought I was "ugly and unlovable", I interpreted their affection for me as pity and ungenuine. I will never forget a scream therapy session in the front seat of my 1961 Chevrolet pickup truck on a street in Yakima with a friend screaming at me that "You are not ugly!", and me screaming back over and over, "I'm ugly, I'm ugly"! Eventually, out of sheer exhaustion, I had heard enough repetitions of the words; "You are not ugly!", to begin to accept the possibility that I was worthy of another human beings love and care without cynical doubts. It was God's way of beginning to create some sense of appropriate self worth and dignity that is a life long process for all of us. I guess one of the nicknames I was saddled with by older siblings; "flea" had stuck with me. I felt like I was essentially a bloodsucking parasite that you would just as soon squish with your shoe and be rid of, than a person of value and worth. In the coming months, my scream therapy partner would approach my mother and ask for some money to buy me some new clothes, so I didn't walk around looking like a minature Ronald McDonald. I had no sense of clothing or personal appearance. We went shopping and for the first time in my life, I could look in the mirror and think I was acceptable, even halfway pleasant to look at. I began to attack my acne with a vengeance and God's love slowly began to work its way outward from my heart to my hands. The summer passed quickly and I approached my second year of College with a more complex life, that now included the challenge of deepening friendships and all the baggage that would entail.
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