The Glorious Muddle

glimpses of grace in the messiness of life

April 7, 2022

Life Returns

Image by kie-ker from Pixabay

Every morning, I see that more blades of grass have pushed against the hard crust of dirt overnight, casting aside the lids of their temporary coffins. Tiny buds, like goosebumps on the arms of trees, begin to blossom, turning the trees into seas of white or pink or purple. Daffodils laugh as their bright yellow trumpets dance.

Once again, spring stubbornly thrusts itself upon the world, ready or not, transforming dull brown into a riot of color. The blades and blooms rise, as they do every spring, and my spirits rise with them. Against all odds, life returns.

Every sense comes alive again with spring. I hear the buzz of bees working tirelessly to gather pollen. Songbirds trill their melodies. The perfume of flowers hangs heavy in the air. I feel the breeze whisper against my face.

This winter has been especially long and difficult for me. Grief does that. Caregiving does that, too. The war in Ukraine reminds me how frail the world is. At times, it felt like winter would never end. Like spring would never come.

We had my Dad’s memorial service on March 20. It was beautiful, honest, and honoring. We remembered his life—deeply flawed but deeply loved. After it ended, I thought about Mom being safe and well-loved in her new home. I realized I’m ready to return to life again.

Slowly, I’ve been shaking off the gloom of winter and taking my first steps back into the world, testing to see if my new freedom is real. Steve and I took a road trip to the far western corner of our state last weekend. And there were no emergency phone caregiving calls. I was uncertain we could really get away, but we did. And it was glorious.

I imagine the blooms and blades with the same apprehension. Their heads appear on the surface, eager to be greeted by the sun’s caress. Even the soft rain feels nourishing. But sometimes the high winds blast or the bitter cold reminds them winter still has another hurrah left.

There are times I prefer the cold, when gloomy days feel right. All I want to do is sit in my window seat with my fuzzy afghan, a good book, and a cup of hot cocoa. To be quiet. To think and remember, alone. There’s nothing wrong with that. In fact, it can be therapeutic.

Some seasons are like that. Hibernation has a purpose. There are times we need to turn inward for our own survival.

As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it. (Isaiah 55:10-11)

But we aren’t meant to stay hidden away. At some point, it’s time to get up and take the next step. Nobody can tell you when it’s your time. Only you know that. I know my time is now. Whenever I do return to the world, I am always glad.

Spring can be invigorating. It marks the end of one season, the beginning of another.

The spring weather beckons me outside. To a world filled with hope. One brimming with life. A world of triumph over the dark and dreary.

In just ten days, we will remember when the bleakest winter ever gave way to the greatest hope. To life reborn, made more joyful because of the darkness. To the most victorious triumph over the grave.

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March 9, 2022

Why Historical Fiction Matters (at this time in history)

Image by Nick115 from Pixabay

I love period piece movies and I’d rather read fiction any day over nonfiction. But I have many friends who turn up their noses at made-up stories. They want something serious, they say. They don’t want fluff. They want to learn something, to be provoked to think, inspired to act.

Fiction can do that, I say. Especially historical fiction. And especially right now.

Stories set in the past can resonate with readers today.

What does historical fiction do?

Like all fiction, historical fiction provides escape. You can do a little time travel into the past. Sometimes to a place far away. A setting that is richer and more nuanced than what you read in the often-dry history books.

By shedding light on little-known moments in history, it can expose truth in a softer, more palatable way than nonfiction.

It brings underrepresented or oppressed people to life, instilling empathy in us for the plight of the characters in the story; that empathy can spread to real people in our present lives.

When properly researched, historical fiction can educate us. We learn from stories of the past so we will never forget.

Historical fiction gives history a voice.

Ruta Sepetys, historical fiction author, writes: “When the survivors are gone we must not let the truth disappear with them. Please, give them a voice.”

That has never felt more important to me than now.

Sophie Pinkham writes in The New York Review that historical fiction can “comment on the present by way of the past.”

Historical fiction offers a way of writing between the lines. The attentive reader notices parallels and patterns, silent gestures toward the tyranny and absurdity of the moment of writing: after all, history repeats itself.

History often repeats itself. But does it have to?

It sure seems that way, especially given the events the world has witnessed since 24 February.

Someone witty (not Mark Twain as commonly thought) once said: “History never repeats itself, but it often rhymes.”

Usually anything to do with the repetition of history comes with a warning. We must remember history so we will never let it happen again.

But is all history bad? Isn’t that the equivalent of throwing the baby out with the bath water?

I say, Don’t let history repeat itself, except when it should.

I can’t stop thinking about Ukraine. Although I returned “home” many years ago, my heart has never really left Eastern Europe. Its people are in my blood. I saw firsthand what people endured as a result of oppression, and now I watch, helpless, as it begins all over again.

We’ve all seen echoes of Hitler’s September 1939 invasion of Poland in Putin’s vicious attacks in Ukraine.

Several people have mentioned to me that they’ve picked up my books again to reread; both the fictional One Degree of Freedom and nonfictional We Wait You are timely right now. In those pages, they have learned about the effects of oppression, deprivation, fear, isolation, and intimidation on a nation. I’m glad, but I hope they will find other truths in my books.

Find the virtuous lessons of history that need to be, and are being, repeated.

Lessons of courage. Of unfaltering faith. Of loyalty. Of generosity in the midst of need.

Lessons learned today from 59-year-old men and young fathers returning from safe refuge to join their countrymen in battle.

From people spending their nights in bomb shelters singing, praying, and worshipping.

From neighboring countries opening their arms and hearts and homes to refugees. Friends tell me, “It could have been us.”

A friend of mine posted on Facebook that she prays the Russian army will lay down their arms. Some may say that’s magical thinking. I say, Why not? It’s happened before.

On 22 December 1989, after days of battle with hundreds of innocent unarmed Romanian people gunned down, something happened that nobody can explain. Of one accord, the Romanian army turned their guns and their tanks and started aiming at the Securitate. They switched allegiance. Quickly, the people were victorious. God intervened; the revolution came to a swift, yet costly, end.

Could it be happening again? Probably you’ve read accounts coming from within Ukraine. Rockets being shot out of the sky and never reaching their targets. Russian tanks running out of gas. Enemy soldiers asking locals for bread and directions. The Russian army has been amazed at the might of the much smaller Ukrainian forces.

Ukrainian people have asked their global family to join them in prayer when the fighting is most intense (2-4 am Ukrainian time, 7-9 pm EST).

With the world praying, should we be surprised? Maybe history–good history–is repeating itself. I hope so!

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February 22, 2022

The Weight of Loss

All that remains of my father’s life is found in two cardboard boxes. Is that all his life is reduced to: two small boxes, one new, one weathered over time? Yesterday, I went to the funeral home to pick up his death certificate (cause: multiple system failure, dementia) and the second of the two boxes. I was surprised when I went to lift it.

I never knew ashes were so heavy. It was not filled with dust bunnies. No soft ashes I could blow away with one puff. These ashes have substance. The funeral home calls them cremains. Cremated remains. Probably I should adopt this term. No, on second thought, it’s too cutesy. It makes me think of craisins. I’ll stick with ashes.

A couple weeks ago, my husband and I drove up the mountain to spend a final sweet day at the long-term care home that took such great care of Dad. We thanked and hugged and cried with the nurses. I had already told them we wanted to donate most of his things to the residents: all of Dad’s clothes, his talking Bible, his stuffed cat that purred, and the lift chair he loved so much. In exchange, they filled up his shoebox–one shoebox–with everything I told them I wanted to keep.

A little photo album I put together that Dad often looked at. His Bible. Several special greeting cards. A book of WWII fighter planes. Some laminated cartoons. (Dad loved cartoons. One of them is bittersweet now. It shows Earl Pickles congratulating himself on setting a new record. He says, “Every day I beat my previous record for the number of consecutive days I’ve stayed alive.”)

Four cheap frames with photos of his most loved ones, ones he loved imperfectly (don’t we all?) but loved nonetheless.

Grief is heavy. It has a weight to it like the ashes. Substance. It bows us down, holds us in place, keeps us immobile for a while. But love? Love is light. Love rises. It floats like hope.

It’s a paradox that there is a weight to emptiness. If you remove a stone from a sack, the sack feels lighter. But if you remove a person from a life, the weight becomes heavier, the load harder to carry. The absence of someone has a presence that colors everything.

Dad died one month ago today. Some of the weight has already been lifted off me. I miss him, but I started grieving his loss 14 months earlier, when his vascular dementia began. Dementia is a long, hard grief. Each day since his death grows easier, although memories can sneak into unexpected moments and stab my heart afresh. Friends keep telling me to “take care of myself.” They’re preaching to the choir. I know I need to do this. But how can I?

Slowly, my life is returning; my equilibrium is balancing. But I can’t fully attend to my needs yet. Who else was going to clean out my parents’ apartment in nine days and hold a huge estate sale? Or plan the memorial service and gather the photos? Or spend hours on phone appointment after phone appointment, filling out form after form, still unfinished.

My brother helps as much as he can; he came to help my mother adjust to her new long-term care facility in the first fresh weeks of grief. But he’s not here. I am.

Yes, the weight of losing a loved one is heavy. But ashes are not all that remain of a life. Those two boxes are not all that will last from my Dad’s life.

When I open the lid of the shoebox, I see what remains. It’s not found in the cremains. It’s found in the people in his treasured photos. My father’s most loved people. His wife. His two children. His three grandchildren. Four great-grandchildren (only one of which he had met).

If his life hadn’t been, we wouldn’t be. His life lives on in us. We are what remain.

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January 27, 2022

Look! He’s Moving Now!

Wesley Gardiner Richardson, my dad, passed peacefully from this world to his eternal home today. He was born January 10, 1933 in Philadelphia. As a child, he lived across the street from Patti Patton (my Mom) in Prospect Park, PA.

The day the war ended, he flashed her signals with his flashlight from his attic bedroom. His family moved to Chicago and Detroit before moving back to the same house in Prospect Park to finish out high school, where his Latin teacher made him promise to never take another foreign language again.

He always loved cars and trains and anything mechanical, especially if it moved. He enlisted in the Air Force after a year at business school, married my Mom, and served in Greenland during the Korean War.

He was in Greenland when my brother Kurt was born, but was out of the service when I came along. We lived in Oxford, Maryland and later moved to Harmony, Maryland. Dad had a difficult childhood with an alcoholic father, which affected him greatly. But his life was transformed later (still with his characteristic gruffness intact), after his kids were grown, when he gave his life to Jesus.

Dad worked as a mechanic and then a truck driver. He loved tinkering with stuff or driving on the open road, content with solitude most of the time. He had a dry sense of humor, was always generous and hard-working, and showed his love best by asking how our cars were doing or slipping us a $20 bill. Whenever we’d come home to visit, Dad would pick up our suitcases and say, “What do you have in there? Your rock collection?” When the time came to leave and we’d say when we were coming back, Dad would say, “Thanks for the warning.”

Three of the happiest moments in his life came when his three grandchildren, Alex, Mark, and Lisa, were born. Dad quickly made cement steppingstones for each of them with their names and birthdates recorded. And he talked my Mom into uprooting from Delaware and moving to Arizona to be near them.

Dad wasn’t a big talker, so the words he spoke were especially significant. When I boarded the plane for Eastern Europe to move there, not even knowing which country I would live in, both my parents let me go and entrusted me to God’s care. That could not have been easy; the times were tumultuous. Dad said, “There’s no safer place for you to be than where God wants you.” The first time I returned on furlough, Dad met me at the airport with a box of peppermint patties and a clock he made by hand, shaped like a piece of bread with “Bine aţi venit” written on it. He’d called the Romanian Embassy to find out how to say “Welcome home.” When I married Steve, Dad had one piece of advice for me, summed up in one word: “Bend.”

More than eleven years ago, my father had a stroke which made him unable to drive. The man who loved being on the road now had a life confined to a chair in a small apartment. For the last year, he’s suffered from vascular dementia. It’s been one of the biggest honors of my life to walk beside him on this hard path, and we have shared some sweet moments I will treasure forever. Before he came down with dementia, he told me a joke: The best thing about having dementia is you can hide your own Easter eggs.

In July, we placed him in a wonderful home for memory care, up in the North Carolina mountains. It was an adjustment at first, but then Dad would say, “I have a lot of friends here.” And he did. When he went to the ICU in November, the nurses lined up to cheer and cry when he was wheeled back in. They truly loved him and I will always be thankful to them for that.

His last car ride was me driving him up the mountain to his new home. He kept saying, “Wow!” at every curve as he saw a new stunning green view with the blue hills as a backdrop. Oh, the sights he is seeing now!

Dad’s years of suffering are finished and we are grateful for that. Now his faith has been made sight and he is whole and healed and filled with joy in the presence of Christ, all the rough places vanished. I will miss him. The last time I saw him, we were talking about the home Jesus has prepared for him. He said he’s ready to go there. I said, “Before you know it, we’ll be there, too.” I look forward to that day.

In Arizona, Dad’s pastor asked a group of men what they want people to say at their funeral, hoping for something profoundly spiritual. My dad answered, “Look! He’s moving!” That is classic Wesley.

A friend of mine reminded me that he IS moving now. More than moving, he is now able to leap as though he has hinds’ feet on high places.

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December 19, 2021

Finding Our Way Home

One year after my Dad started his steep decline into dementia, Mom is now repeating what he used to say, almost word for word. “Where am I? I want to go home. This isn’t my home.” Early this morning, the maintenance guys at her complex called me. They found Mom scratching “anyone ever home?” on her car window*. (*Don’t worry. We hold the keys to her car.)

The longing for home is innate within all of us. Our search for home can take our whole lives. This season of Christmas tends to intensify that longing, leaving many of us feeling empty. Whatever “home” is, we realize we don’t have it.

What is that we long for? And why does the holiday season awaken those often-suppressed yearnings, perhaps bringing comforting nostalgia to some, but often deep sadness to others?

When I think of home, I picture a cozy scene, a Hallmark moment, with loving, laughing people (and often a pet) gathered in front of a fireplace. Although feel-good scenes like that were not common my whole life, I’m fortunate to have enough warm memories to recall when I want to picture my happy place.

Image thanks to S. Wloczyk2 from Pixabay

Home brings a feeling of love, intimacy, security. A place where we are known and understood and valued. Somewhere we can relax our guard and be ourselves, without judgment or censure.

It also conveys a sense of permanence. I belong here and I’ll always belong with these people, in this community. They are part of me and I am part of them and nothing can change that.

So how do we get there? How do we find our way to a home like that?

Dad, before we placed him in his long-term care home, would often ask, “Can you take me home now?” He asked this whether he was in the ER or in the apartment he’d shared with my Mom for more than ten years. In the hospital, my answer came easy. I’d tell him the staff were preparing a better place for him.

My words echoed in my mind. Preparing a better place? I wasn’t the first one to say that.

I’d tell Dad, “Here’s the best news: Jesus is preparing the BEST place ever for you.”

My father didn’t know the way to the bathroom or what state or decade he was in. But I assured him, when the time comes, he will know the way to that best place. He’ll find his way home. And the sweetest, strongest hand will be offered to lead him home.

Isn’t that what Christmas is all about? Jesus came to earth as a baby to make a new home here, with us, to dwell among us, to dwell in our hearts if we believe. He lived a short, sinless life; he lived to die. And now? Now he is preparing a home for us in heaven, where we will dwell with him forever.

One of the last things Jesus said to his disciples is recorded in John 14:1-6:

“Do not let your heart be troubled; believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father’s house are many dwelling places; if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you. If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself, that where I am, there you may be also. And you know the way where I am going.”

Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going, how do we know the way?”

Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father except through Me.”

This Christmas season, I’m reminded that Jesus left his forever home, with God in heaven, to come to earth so that we might find our way home. Immanuel. God with us.