It's a Providential Life

My family speaks movie.  When my siblings and I get together, we can have entire conversations comprised of little more than movie references strung together by a handful of original thoughts.  And, we’ve found, there are few conversations in life that can’t somehow be enhanced by an It’s a Wonderful Life movie reference.

True story—when the elder of my two-headed brothers got married, our younger two-headed brother toasted him with these words:

To my big brother Chaz, the richest man in town.

 They’re both a little bit off their nut.

A few years ago, my church threw a party for our pastor to celebrate his twenty-five years of service to our congregation. For the event, I wrote a skit entitled, It's a Providential Life. My brother (the elder two-headed one) made this sign which was carried back and forth across the stage as someone played, Buffalo Gals Won’t You Come Out Tonight? on the ukulele.

In the skit our pastor, portrayed by his son, found himself trapped at an elder’s meeting during which fine points of church order were being argued and debated in mind-numbingly excruciating detail.  At one point, the pastor’s character banged his head on the table and cried, “Sometimes I wish I’d never become a pastor!”

Of course, Clarence the angel appeared and showed him all the babies never baptized, the sermons never preached, the marriages not performed. We even caught a glimpse of his wife, pastor’s wife extraordinaire, living instead as an old maid. “Why, I’m not even Presbyterian!” she cried.

During the course of my daughter’s wedding, my dear pastor made reference to that skit and to that sign which continues to hang in his office. Speaking from the book of Ruth, he reminded my daughter and her new husband that God’s providence was, and remains, everywhere present in bringing them together and as they begin their new life together.

Ruth as he reminded us, found herself widowed and in poverty and gleaning in the fields of a man named Boaz. Boaz, as it turned out, was her near relative who became her husband and redeemer.  Later in scripture, we read that our true Redeemer, the Lord Jesus Christ descended from this man who just so happened to have a field where this impoverished widow gleaned.

My pastor emphasized these words:  as it turned out, and it just so happened. To the believer, he reminded us, there are no coincidences; all is Providence. According to the Westminster Shorter Catechism, God’s works of providence are defined as his most holy, wise, and powerful preserving and governing all his creatures, and all their actions, all of which is a fancy-schmancy way of saying, God's got this.

Since my daughter’s wedding, I have been thinking quite a bit about the holy, wise and powerful acts God used to bring us to that day. When my husband and I made the decision to adopt, it just so happened that I had a former roommate whose husband worked for Bethany Christian Services. After we were approved for adoption, our daughter’s birth mom read our file.

As it turned out, she chose our family because she wanted her baby to grow up in a family with other adopted children. It just so happened that my in-laws had adopted about twenty years earlier. We saw evidence that God’s plan in bringing our daughter to us had begun taking shape years before my husband and I even met.

When our daughter was young, we happened to hire a lovely young woman as a babysitter for her on a regular basis. That babysitter happened to grow up, go away to a small Christian college, and find a husband. They returned to live near us and, during the course of a seemingly random conversation, my husband offered a job to our babysitter’s young husband. Some years later, as it turned out, he became president of the alumni association at the small Christian college from which he had graduated. When our daughter was looking at colleges, he took her there for a visit and she fell in love with the place.

Shortly after arriving at college, our daughter met a young man who just so happened to live in an area in western Pennsylvania where my husband lived during high school. As it turned out, his family attended the very same church in which my husband had grown up. It just so happened that all our people knew his people.

(This happy providence, by the way, proved most useful when my daughter and her boyfriend began to date. I was able to warn him that my daughter’s grandparents continued to live on in legend in his family’s church and, should he ever even begin to formulate an inappropriate thought toward my daughter, the good people of that congregation would gladly pummel him--possibly even bludgeon him. He never really knew if I was just really, really funny or just plain crazy which, providentially, worked to my advantage.)

As it turned out, my husband and I realized we had already met the parents of this young man, having been introduced to them earlier that year at a fund-raising auction for a college ministry we support.  We learned that the boyfriend’s parents had met and married while attending the same small Christian college our daughter attended. As it turned out, his mother’s college roommate became a teacher in a small Christian school in New England. Last year, that former college roommate was my nephew’s teacher.

Just a few days before the wedding, my daughter received a message from her brother-in-law to be, asking if she had an Uncle Andy. As it turns out, the two were sitting only a few feet away from each other at a conference, having just learned they worked for the same company.

Uncle Andy, by the way, is the younger two-headed brother.

You see people; it really is a providential life.

This is a slightly edited post from the archives. Linking in community today with Jennifer and KD:

Sausage and Peppers and Rock and Roll

(Taking advantage of the summer to do summery things. Re-posting a slightly edited piece from the archives)

Remember when parents used tell their kids to turn off the rock and roll music?

Back in the day when I attended Baptist Youth Camp, one of the speakers called on the young people from my church to reject rock and roll as the devil's music. We were told to gather our collections of records, bring them to church, and throw them into a bonfire. Begrudgingly, I sacrificed my copy of The Partridge Family album, thus protecting my soul from being led down the road to perdition by Keith Partridge. Eventually I backslid, and the music of The Eagles, Steely Dan, REO Speedwagon, Boston, The Cars, and Styx formed the soundtrack to my youth.

Last fall when I saw that Dennis DeYoung, former member of Styx, was playing at a local harvest fair my first thought was, “Oh, how the mighty have fallen!” Then I thought, “I wonder if teenage son would be interested in driving to the fair, eating some unhealthy but oh-so-delicious fair food for dinner, and then going to the concert?”

Instead of telling my son to turn off the music, I decided to drag him along with me for an evening of classic rock.  I had seen a PBS special featuring Dennis DeYoung and knew that, in addition to having written many hit songs for Styx, the guy had some mad keyboard skills. Because music is one of teenage son’s love languages and the keyboard is his instrument, I thought he might be willing risk the embarrassment of being seen in public with his gray-haired mother in order to see an aging rock star perform live.

After filling up on sausage and peppers, corn dogs, and soft-serve ice cream, son and I settled onto the fairground’s bleachers and watched as roadies set up equipment and performed sound checks. Son was intrigued, fascinated by watching people who obviously knew what they were doing and who were very good at performing their craft.

The stage lights dimmed and out walked Dennis DeYoung, sporting the standard-issue white sneakers worn by AARP members on bus tours throughout national parks. I admit, I was more than a little afraid to hear him sing. The long-haired rock star I remembered from my youth is now a sixty-three year old, white-haired man.

Once he launched into The Grand Illusion, however, I realized my fear was unfounded. At age sixty-three, Dennis DeYoung has a voice that is strong and clear and more in tune than most American Idol finalists or Taylor Swift, even on a good day. Man, can he sing.

And his keyboard skills? His fingers moved in directions and at speeds which hardly seemed human. I glanced over at teenage son and saw that he was smiling big. He didn’t even seem to mind that I was singing along to the music. All the words. Out loud. In public.

When introducing Babe, the most popular song Styx recorded, Mr. DeYoung introduced his back-up singer who also just so happens to be his wife of forty years. The two had been high school sweethearts who married, traveled together on the road, and stayed married despite a career within the rock music world. DeYoung told the crowd he had written the song as a personal gift for his wife, that is, until his record company heard it and told him it had to go on the record. It turns out that demand was a good call by the record label. Every girl on the hall in my freshman dorm used to go weak in the knees whenever it played.

I have no idea about Dennis DeYoung’s worldview; nor about what motivates him to remain married to his childhood sweetheart over the long haul. I do know I was privileged to witness a man doing what he was put on this earth to do—write and sing and play music--while honoring his marriage vows.

And on a perfect autumn-like evening, the scent of fried foods hanging heavy in the air, I received the gift of connecting with my son while listening to the devil’s music.

Flannery Was Right--A Good Man Is Hard To Find

This week, Faith Barista has asked us to share our thoughts on the topic, "What I Wish Someone Told Me About Dating."  This is an edited re-post of an earlier piece I'd written.

There is a group of beautiful, godly young women in my church who take seriously the words from Titus 2.  These young ladies seek out wisdom from the older women in the congregation, and sometimes I think they mistake my full head of gray hair for wisdom.  Whether because of my hair or the fact that I’ve been married to the beloved Swede for more than twenty-five years, they invited me to meet with them. They wanted to know about male/female relationships and about marriage. Their questions were honest and simple and sweet; they were holy. But I think the unstated question most wanted to ask was this, “How do I find a godly man to marry?”

Were I to have answered that question honestly, I’d have had to have said, “I haven’t got the foggiest idea.”

I certainly couldn’t point them to my own experience because, according to most popular Christian authors writing authoritatively on the subject, I had clearly gone about it all wrong. As a young girl, I knew my King James told me not to be unequally yoked, but I took one look at the young men in my church’s youth group and knew there was nothing for me there. Not that any were interested, mind you. So I dated a few guys in high school about whom, if I stood back far enough and squinted my eyes, I could tell myself that although some may not have actually been Christians, I could see how someday they might be and thus convince myself that I wasn’t truly backslidden.

Then there were the blind dates. I’ve lost count of the times well-intentioned friends tried to fix me up with acquaintances using this description, “You’ll like him. He’s tall.” Having reached the Amazonian height of five-eleven by the sixth grade, it became important to me to find a young man I could look up to. Literally. Even if he had disgusting personal habits or was an axe murder. Just so long as he was tall.

There is a prominent voice in the homeschooling community who articulates a very convincing argument that courtship is God’s only way of finding a spouse. Normally, whenever I hear a speaker or author advocating anything he or she has written as being God’s way of doing anything, I clap my hands over my ears and run screaming from the room. This writer, however, is highly intelligent and puts forward a very compelling argument, and I guess I was seduced into thinking he was smarter than I was. So the first time a young man expressed interest in spending time with our baby girl, the Swede and I resolved to follow this author’s advice as neatly detailed on two pages of his book, including ample white space and margins.

Problem was, the young man and his parents--good people who were also trying to be faithful followers of Christ--hadn’t read the book. They thought we were nuts. And, real life, and particularly male/female relationships tend to be messy and not easily defined by words on two pages of a book, especially with white space and margins. Trust me, the experience wasn’t pretty.

My in-laws celebrated fifty years of marriage this past December, having told their parents they wanted to marry during Dad’s graduate school vacation, two days before Christmas. My grandparents eloped across the Pennsylvania state line. Other godly, intelligent, hard-working, faithful couples I know married while still students and without a job in sight.

So how did I find the beloved Swede? I like to say that he blindsided me. While I was busy scanning the horizon for tall men who weren’t axe murders, he emerged from a group of mutual friends and asked me out. It’s probably closer to the truth to say that God threw him at me, as if to say, “Here. You obviously don’t know what you’re doing. Here is a good, good man--better than you deserve.  My gift to you.”

And I think that really is my answer to those young ladies who were gracious enough to listen to my ramblings about life and relationships and marriage. You don’t find a good man. Sometimes God throws one at you.  Sometimes you trip over him.  Sometimes like Anne Shirley and Gilbert Blythe, he's been there all along.  However you find the love of your life, remember--he’s a gift. And I treasure mine.

And he really, really likes my gray hair.

It's a Providential Life

My family speaks movie.  When my siblings and I get together, we can have entire conversations comprised of little more than movie references strung together by a handful of original thoughts.  And, we’ve found, there are few circumstances in life that can’t somehow be made to resolve to an It’s a Wonderful Life movie reference.

True story—when the elder of my two-headed brothers got married, our younger two-headed brother toasted him with these words:

To my big brother Chaz, the richest man in town.

 They’re both a little bit off their nut.

A few years ago, my church threw a party for our pastor to celebrate his twenty-five years of service to our congregation.  For the event, I wrote a skit entitled, “It’s a Providential Life.”  My brother (the elder two-headed one) made this sign which was carried back and forth across the stage as someone played, Buffalo Gals Won’t You Come Out Tonight? on the ukulele.

In the skit, our pastor (portrayed by his son) found himself trapped at an elder’s meeting during which fine points of church order were being argued and debated in mind-numbingly excruciating detail.  At one point, the pastor’s character banged his head on the table and cried, “Sometimes I wish I’d never become a pastor!”

Of course, Clarence the angel appeared and showed him all the babies never baptized, the sermons never preached, the marriages not performed.  We even caught a glimpse of his wife, pastor’s wife extraordinaire, living instead as an old maid.  “Why, I’m not even Presbyterian!” she cried.

During the course of my daughter’s wedding, my dear pastor made reference to that skit and that sign which continues to hang in his office.  Speaking from the book of Ruth, he reminded my daughter and her new husband that God’s providence was, and remains, everywhere present in bringing them together and as they begin their new life together.

Ruth as he reminded us, found herself widowed and in poverty and gleaning in the fields of a man named Boaz.  Boaz, as it turned out, was her near relative who became her husband and redeemer.  Later in scripture, we read that our true Redeemer, the Lord Jesus Christ descended from this man who just so happened to have a field where this impoverished widow gleaned.

My pastor emphasized these words:  as it turned out, and it just so happened.  To the believer, he reminded us, there are no coincidences; all is providence.  According to the Westminster Shorter Catechism, God’s works of providence are defined as his most holy, wise, and powerful preserving and governing all his creatures, and all their actions, all of which is a fancy-schmancy way of saying, God's got this.  These are words I need to be reminded of over and over again in this year I've named Believe.

Since my daughter’s wedding, I have been thinking quite a bit about the holy, wise and powerful acts God used to bring us to that day.  When my husband and I made the decision to adopt, it just so happened that I had a former roommate whose husband worked for Bethany Christian Services.  After we were approved for adoption, our daughter’s birth mom read our file.  As it turned out, she chose our family because she wanted her baby to grow up in a family with other adopted children.  It just so happened that my in-laws had adopted about twenty years earlier.  We saw evidence of God’s plan in bringing our daughter to us having taken shape years before my husband and I ever even met.

When our daughter was young, we happened to hire a lovely young woman as a babysitter for her on a regular basis.  That babysitter happened to grow up, go away to a small Christian college, and find a husband.  They returned to live near us and, during the course of a seemingly random conversation, my husband offered a job to our babysitter’s young husband.  Some years later, as it turned out, he became president of the alumni association at the small Christian college from which he had graduated.   When our daughter was looking at colleges, he took her there for a visit and she fell in love with the place.

Shortly after arriving at college, our daughter met a young man who just so happened to live in an area in western Pennsylvania where my husband lived during high school.  As it turned out, his family attended the very same church in which my husband had grown up.  It just so happened that all our people knew his people.

(This happy providence, by the way, proved quite useful when my daughter and her boyfriend began dating.  I was able to warn him that my daughter’s grandparents continued to live on in legend in his family’s church and, should he ever even begin to formulate an inappropriate thought toward my daughter, the good people of that congregation would gladly pummel him.  Possibly even bludgeon him.  He never really knew if I was just really, really funny or just plain crazy which, providentially, worked to my advantage.)

As it turned out, my husband and I realized we had already met the parents of this young man, having been introduced to them earlier that year at a fund-raising auction for a college ministry we support.   We learned that the boyfriend’s parents had met and married while attending the same small Christian college our daughter attended.  As it turned out, his mother’s college roommate became a teacher in a small Christian school in New England.  Last year, that former college roommate was my nephew’s teacher.

Just a few days before the wedding, my daughter received a message from her brother-in-law to be, asking if she had an Uncle Andy.  As it turns out, the two were sitting only a few feet away from each other at a conference, having just learned they worked for the same company.

Uncle Andy, by the way, is the younger two-headed brother.

You see people; it really is a providential life.

Telling my stories over at emily's place, once again:





And joining Faith Barista at her Thursday jam:

Giving Thanks, Wedding Week Edition

No lace, Mrs. Bennett!  I beg of you!

So my baby girl is getting married this Saturday and I'm up to my eyeballs in lace and wedding programs and travel logistics.

I'm not even going to pretend I can think in complete sentences.  So I'm just going to give thanks, because I've got so very much for which to be grateful:

708.  Electricity!   And light!  And heat!

709.  Getting the letter we’ve been waiting for.

710.  Continuing to learn to trust in the waiting.

711.  Son being a blessing to friend.

712.  Bride and groom arriving home safely!

713.  Son and friends practicing music, filling my home with joy.

714.  Giggling girls in my basement.

715.  Childhood friends that become bridesmaids.

716.  Who want to come over and who ask my husband to cook for them.

717.  Loving them as if they were my own.

718.  Ethel working her magic, transforming the church for daughter’s wedding.

Pictures.  Soon.  I promise.  Gonna go rock that mother-of-the-bride thing.