Every once in a while you hear a story that changes you. It affects the things you think about, the choices you make. It pulls you out of your own little existence and elevates your perspective. Every once in a while, you get a glimpse into another family’s life that is so intimate, so personal, that you feel like a voyeur—yet you can’t tear your eyes away. There’s something there so intriguing, so real, that you have to stick around to see how it all ends. Every once in a while you are so drawn to the story that you become a small part of it.
I’ve been touched by such a story the past 14 months. It’s the story of a 13-year-old boy with one of the rarest forms of cancer. It’s the story of a family of nine, and how they choose to walk this very personal journey publicly. More than anything, it’s the story of real faith in a real God in the midst of real crisis.
These are real people, a family I have grown to know and love in the past year. I’ve known David, the dad, for a decade, but this year I’ve gotten to know his wife Renee. In attempting to help them, we’ve been blessed to get to know their youngest son, who has become one of Braden’s closest friends. And about a month ago, I got to meet Ian, the star of this story.
The story came to a climax yesterday morning when Ian died. But a good story never ends with the climax. It ends with the epilogue, defined as “a short section at the end of a literary work, sometimes detailing the fate of its characters.” There’s no wondering about Ian’s fate. We know exactly where he is, and it is a very happy ending (“beginning” is a more accurate word). But God is still writing the story of the rest of this family. I invite you to join with the hundreds—thousands, maybe—who are following it. If you start from the beginning (clicking on the headline of this entry will take you to their Caring Bridge site), expect to spend at least a day reading. And expect to be changed.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Sunday, April 19, 2009
If You Don't Get It, You're Not from a Small Town
Between the late 1800s and mid-1900s, both sides of my family tree took root in northeastern Colorado, in a one-stoplight town called Akron (yes, perpetually confused with its more famous namesake in Ohio). My parents met at Akron High School in the sixties. My dad’s parents owned the only clothing store in town, and my granddad served as the town mayor for years. My mom’s father ran the family business he married into, a grain elevator, while his wife taught music lessons. My parents married right out of high school and attempted to move away for a time, but family and farmland soon brought them back, allowing my brother and me six or seven years surrounded by grandparents, extended family, and small-town life. My dad was the high school football coach; my mom taught—you guessed it—piano lessons. Although we moved to Oklahoma by the time I started fifth grade, Akron was my home, too, just as it had been for my parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, and even one great-great grandparent who lived long enough to pose for a rare five-generation picture with my brother.
Our stint in Oklahoma was short lived, and I started eighth grade in another small town just 90 miles from Akron. I returned to Akron for long weekends, holidays, and large chunks of the summer. I went to football games there and attended their prom with a childhood friend. I cruised Main Street and drove 100-miles-an-hour down the single runway at the Akron airport late at night with a car full of Akron teenagers. Eight years later, the maid of honor in my wedding was the freckle-faced girl who came up to me the first day of kindergarten, at Akron Elementary, and asked if I wanted to be her best friend. (I took that commitment seriously!)
In the past twenty years, my trips to Akron have been limited mostly to funerals. I buried my dad and grandparents one by one, enduring the blazing heat, blowing snow, and tireless winds so common on the plains of Colorado. The cemetery sits on the west side of town, and a couple times a year, when the wind and the clouds are feeling cooperative, you can sort of make out the Rockies, a reminder that you’re actually still in Colorado.
I returned to that cemetery again last week, this time accompanied by a husband and four children of my own. The children said goodbye to their last great-grandparent, the only one any of them have ever known, the one who sent generous Christmas and birthday checks, signed simply, “Love, Great-Grandpa” in beautiful script. We learned that day that my grandpa—known only to me as a farmer, a golfer, and a lover of horse races—also loved poetry and opera. We learned that as a kid, the third-oldest of eleven children, he was instructed to sit out on the porch after dinner and wait for Jesus to return. When that didn’t happen, and when life threw its curveballs as life always does, my grandpa lost his way for a while. But death has a funny way of bringing us full circle, and my grandpa spent the last weeks of his life doing little besides waiting for Jesus. He’d wake up from a sound sleep and holler out, “When?! When am I gonna die already?” He was actually willing Jesus to come get him, and with his affairs in order and his goodbyes said, he got what he longed for. He died peacefully in his sleep last Wednesday at the age of 88.
Grandpa chose to be cremated, so there was no cemetery burial. Still, I wasn’t going to miss a chance to drive through the Akron Cemetery. After the service, my family trekked out there with my mom and my uncle and aunt from Los Angeles. There we experienced small-town life at its finest, chatting about the townsfolk, comparing burial plots, reminiscing, noting things like, “Wow! Aunt Kate’s been gone almost twenty years?” and remembering. I took pictures of my sweet little girls sitting on my dad’s headstone in their flowery Easter dresses. But mostly the kids ran wild, tumbling and hurdling over strangers’ graves, horrifying Kevin, who finds cemetery entertainment an anomaly. But this is Akron. This is what you do here. It’s what I grew up doing.
I love being from a small town.
Our stint in Oklahoma was short lived, and I started eighth grade in another small town just 90 miles from Akron. I returned to Akron for long weekends, holidays, and large chunks of the summer. I went to football games there and attended their prom with a childhood friend. I cruised Main Street and drove 100-miles-an-hour down the single runway at the Akron airport late at night with a car full of Akron teenagers. Eight years later, the maid of honor in my wedding was the freckle-faced girl who came up to me the first day of kindergarten, at Akron Elementary, and asked if I wanted to be her best friend. (I took that commitment seriously!)
In the past twenty years, my trips to Akron have been limited mostly to funerals. I buried my dad and grandparents one by one, enduring the blazing heat, blowing snow, and tireless winds so common on the plains of Colorado. The cemetery sits on the west side of town, and a couple times a year, when the wind and the clouds are feeling cooperative, you can sort of make out the Rockies, a reminder that you’re actually still in Colorado.
I returned to that cemetery again last week, this time accompanied by a husband and four children of my own. The children said goodbye to their last great-grandparent, the only one any of them have ever known, the one who sent generous Christmas and birthday checks, signed simply, “Love, Great-Grandpa” in beautiful script. We learned that day that my grandpa—known only to me as a farmer, a golfer, and a lover of horse races—also loved poetry and opera. We learned that as a kid, the third-oldest of eleven children, he was instructed to sit out on the porch after dinner and wait for Jesus to return. When that didn’t happen, and when life threw its curveballs as life always does, my grandpa lost his way for a while. But death has a funny way of bringing us full circle, and my grandpa spent the last weeks of his life doing little besides waiting for Jesus. He’d wake up from a sound sleep and holler out, “When?! When am I gonna die already?” He was actually willing Jesus to come get him, and with his affairs in order and his goodbyes said, he got what he longed for. He died peacefully in his sleep last Wednesday at the age of 88.
Grandpa chose to be cremated, so there was no cemetery burial. Still, I wasn’t going to miss a chance to drive through the Akron Cemetery. After the service, my family trekked out there with my mom and my uncle and aunt from Los Angeles. There we experienced small-town life at its finest, chatting about the townsfolk, comparing burial plots, reminiscing, noting things like, “Wow! Aunt Kate’s been gone almost twenty years?” and remembering. I took pictures of my sweet little girls sitting on my dad’s headstone in their flowery Easter dresses. But mostly the kids ran wild, tumbling and hurdling over strangers’ graves, horrifying Kevin, who finds cemetery entertainment an anomaly. But this is Akron. This is what you do here. It’s what I grew up doing.
I love being from a small town.
Monday, April 13, 2009
The Draw of Heaven
I love thinking about heaven, and I find myself doing more of it. Last week my mind was brought back to heaven by the death of my grandpa and my friend’s miscarriage, which happened within hours of each other. This man who had seen 88 years of living and this baby who never even tasted life on earth journeyed to heaven just before Easter, and I can’t help but wonder what they found there.
In his book God Is the Gospel, John Piper asks this interesting question:
“If you could have heaven, with no sickness, and with all the friends you ever had on earth, and all the food you ever liked, and all the leisure activities you ever enjoyed, and all the natural beauties you ever saw, all the physical pleasures you ever tasted, and no human conflict or any natural disasters, could you be satisfied with heaven, if Christ was not there?”
Sounds pretty appealing, doesn’t it? I’m looking forward to all of these things, especially the end to all the physical suffering that we experience here on earth. I am so aware of how frail our earthly bodies are, and I can’t wait for my upgrade. And yeah, I think about what the food will be like (please let there be Rice Krispies), the weather (80 degrees?), the smells (like my little girls’ freshly-washed hair, I imagine).
But when I think of my dad there, my grandparents, and especially my baby girl, I’m not thinking about all those things. I’m picturing them hanging out with Jesus. I don’t know what they’re doing exactly—singing? running? dancing? tossing a football?—but they’re radiant from soaking up His presence. It's all about Him.
I have to believe that heaven’s not just a better version of earth. I think it’s going to be wholly different, different because Jesus is not just my Lord or my Savior there, but my companion. I’m fuzzy on what, exactly, we’ll find encounter entering heaven, but I’m crystal clear on who we'll encounter—and that’s the part I love thinking about the most.
In his book God Is the Gospel, John Piper asks this interesting question:
“If you could have heaven, with no sickness, and with all the friends you ever had on earth, and all the food you ever liked, and all the leisure activities you ever enjoyed, and all the natural beauties you ever saw, all the physical pleasures you ever tasted, and no human conflict or any natural disasters, could you be satisfied with heaven, if Christ was not there?”
Sounds pretty appealing, doesn’t it? I’m looking forward to all of these things, especially the end to all the physical suffering that we experience here on earth. I am so aware of how frail our earthly bodies are, and I can’t wait for my upgrade. And yeah, I think about what the food will be like (please let there be Rice Krispies), the weather (80 degrees?), the smells (like my little girls’ freshly-washed hair, I imagine).
But when I think of my dad there, my grandparents, and especially my baby girl, I’m not thinking about all those things. I’m picturing them hanging out with Jesus. I don’t know what they’re doing exactly—singing? running? dancing? tossing a football?—but they’re radiant from soaking up His presence. It's all about Him.
I have to believe that heaven’s not just a better version of earth. I think it’s going to be wholly different, different because Jesus is not just my Lord or my Savior there, but my companion. I’m fuzzy on what, exactly, we’ll find encounter entering heaven, but I’m crystal clear on who we'll encounter—and that’s the part I love thinking about the most.
Monday, April 6, 2009
Nine Going on Nineteen
I’m not done with Francis Chan yet, but I digress for a bit with a more indulgent post. (Yeah, like all blogging’s not indulgent.)
This weekend, I took my son my to college. He was invited to a gifted-and-talented program at the university here in town, where he’ll spend the next six Saturday mornings learning about archeology, ancient Egypt, mummies, and the preservation of artifacts. Not exactly how I’d want to spend a Saturday, but he does school really well and has a new-found, Indiana Jones-inspired passion for archeology, so he couldn’t be happier. A few of my observations from our time on campus:
1. As much as I’ve always hoped my kids would go away to college, now that it’s not that far off, I’m thinking a university 10 minutes from our house is not such a bad thing.
2. Going to college in Southern California was one of my smarter moves. As I walked through the bitter cold and blowing snow to Braden’s building, I tried to remember if I ever wore a coat on either of my college campuses. Probably, but my college memories are mostly of shorts, flip-flops, and catnaps in the warm sunshine. In January.
3. God cares about our little personal interests. We found out about this class late in the game, and by the time I called to sign Braden up, the class and the waitlist were both full. I asked to be kept on the list anyway, and a week later, Braden somehow made it in. This is the boy who has checked out 20 books on ancient Egypt in the past month. Who offers classes to his sisters on how to make hieroglyphics. Who taught me what a Canopic jar was. (I could've lived without knowing that.) And God opened up a spot in this particular class just for him. How personal is that?
4. I’ve always prayed that at a young age, my kids would find out what they love and what they’re good at. Granted, Braden’s gone through phases where he loved Pooh Bear, Blue’s Clues, Spiderman, Star Wars, and bullwhips—and grew out of all but the last one. Who knows how long this archaeology thing will last? But today when I told him about my prayer, he said, “Well I really love this.” I am buoyed by the fact that he loves anything at this point beyond video games and antagonizing his sisters.
5. And finally, the obvious. I am old. I have become one of those old people who says (insert whiny voice), “I just can’t believe how fast the time is going.” This was never the case when I was young. I thought I’d be 14 for the rest of my life and was decidedly unhappy at that prospect. But now that I’ve got kids of my own, I understand what all those gray-haired people have been talking about. One day you’re tying their shoes, and the next you’re paying for an SAT course and applying for financial aid. It’s all going so fast. I love every bit of it, but it really is just too fast.
This weekend, I took my son my to college. He was invited to a gifted-and-talented program at the university here in town, where he’ll spend the next six Saturday mornings learning about archeology, ancient Egypt, mummies, and the preservation of artifacts. Not exactly how I’d want to spend a Saturday, but he does school really well and has a new-found, Indiana Jones-inspired passion for archeology, so he couldn’t be happier. A few of my observations from our time on campus:
1. As much as I’ve always hoped my kids would go away to college, now that it’s not that far off, I’m thinking a university 10 minutes from our house is not such a bad thing.
2. Going to college in Southern California was one of my smarter moves. As I walked through the bitter cold and blowing snow to Braden’s building, I tried to remember if I ever wore a coat on either of my college campuses. Probably, but my college memories are mostly of shorts, flip-flops, and catnaps in the warm sunshine. In January.
3. God cares about our little personal interests. We found out about this class late in the game, and by the time I called to sign Braden up, the class and the waitlist were both full. I asked to be kept on the list anyway, and a week later, Braden somehow made it in. This is the boy who has checked out 20 books on ancient Egypt in the past month. Who offers classes to his sisters on how to make hieroglyphics. Who taught me what a Canopic jar was. (I could've lived without knowing that.) And God opened up a spot in this particular class just for him. How personal is that?
4. I’ve always prayed that at a young age, my kids would find out what they love and what they’re good at. Granted, Braden’s gone through phases where he loved Pooh Bear, Blue’s Clues, Spiderman, Star Wars, and bullwhips—and grew out of all but the last one. Who knows how long this archaeology thing will last? But today when I told him about my prayer, he said, “Well I really love this.” I am buoyed by the fact that he loves anything at this point beyond video games and antagonizing his sisters.
5. And finally, the obvious. I am old. I have become one of those old people who says (insert whiny voice), “I just can’t believe how fast the time is going.” This was never the case when I was young. I thought I’d be 14 for the rest of my life and was decidedly unhappy at that prospect. But now that I’ve got kids of my own, I understand what all those gray-haired people have been talking about. One day you’re tying their shoes, and the next you’re paying for an SAT course and applying for financial aid. It’s all going so fast. I love every bit of it, but it really is just too fast.
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