World Down Syndrome Day

 

It's been quite a while since I've thought of that first day in 1976, when I learned what Down syndrome was for sure, the day the pediatrician at St. Joseph Hospital in Denver murmured the words "mongoloid" and "consider an institution" all in one sentence. My third child had just been born six weeks prematurely and all I wanted to do was thank God for this creature who was fearfully and wonderfully made, regardless of the labels or warnings about life ahead.

And that's what I did. I put on scrubs, mask, gloves, cap and footsies and entered the neonatal intensive care unit to meet Hannah, to slip my hand into the incubator where this scrawny, 3-lbs, 12 oz. infant grabbed hold of my pinky with all her might as if to say, "Nice to meet you, Dad!" At that moment, regardless of her condition, I knew God had not made a mistake. She was exactly who she was created to be.

And that's the way I learned about Down syndrome, from a loving daughter who to this day has never met a stranger, who has always "loved her neighbor," and who now, despite the miles between us, has never let go of my finger or my heart.

Happy World Down Syndrome Day, Hannah!

The Mormons Are Coming, The Mormons are Coming

-->

 

There they were—Mormon missionaries—heading toward my neighborhood, two clean-cut young men in their late teens or early 20s pedaling their bicycles two-by-two, white shirts and ties. I feel the dread of “Oh, I don’t want to have to mess with these guys today.” As I turn down my street leaving them in my rear-view mirror, I quickly forget about those two strangers on loan to God for a 2-year stint as ambassadors for Jesus Christ of the Ladder Day Saints, away from friends and family, school and home church, defending their faith and reaching out for converts door-to-door and drive-way to drive-way across western North Carolina and northern South Carolina. No, I don’t know all this background yet, not yet.

A few minutes later, safely at home, car in the driveway, I venture out to give our little shih tzu a short walk. Just as I leave the front door of our house, I spy them, walking just across the street turning up toward one of the houses on the opposite side. Seeing my chance, I quickly engage the dog into a trot heading away from the pair as quickly as possible. I turn right across a tiny park and into the woods along a hiking trail safely out of distance and sight of the dynamic duo. But even as I’m turning into the woods to avoid them, God sends his word to me: tell them they are not preaching the same Jesus that Paul preached. OK, Lord, I think, when I get the chance, that’s what I’ll do, but not today, right? I’m headed into the woods right now for a little doggy walk. But that’s a great idea. I’ll have to use that next time.

It only takes Mushu a short time to do his business and his tiny little legs take about 20 steps for each one of mine so about ten minutes later we’re behind my house on the hiking trail and I realize I can get safely into the house through the back yard without speaking to the Mormons. Inside the house, I again forget about them entirely and am off to do the next thing on my unwritten list of random household activities. Upon entering the garage to do exactly what I don’t recall, I spy a plastic ice cream container used to catch the overflow dripping from the hot water heater and its contents have turned putrid and stinky. I open the garage door and head out to dump the yucky contents in the bushes when I look straight-forward into the approaching smiles and direct eye contact of the two diligent disciples.

Now I’m sure they didn’t notice but I’m smiling on the inside, nodding my head as I look up into the air briefly to say, OK, God. You’re funny. I’m not getting out of this, am I? For a brief moment, I realize I could just look at them, throw the water away and walk back into the garage. They would be used to that. People ignore them all the time, especially men who just got home around dinnertime.

 

“So what are you up to this lovely afternoon?” one of them asks. I’m still thinking about feigning deafness or Alzheimer’s. “Well, I’m dumping this gunk that I’m afraid may have been contaminated by the exterminator. It smells really bad, see?”

“Yes, it does!” the other clean-cut college kid says. “We’re here as ambassadors in the name of Jesus Christ.” They both have very professional-looking name tags with the title Elder Brian or Robert Something-or-other of Jesus Christ of Ladder Day Saints.

“You know,” I start, “I lead a men’s Bible study at my church, and I wonder if you are familiar with one of the Apostle Paul’s warnings that if someone comes preaching another Jesus than the one Paul preached, or a different spirit than the Holy Spirit, or a different gospel than the one Paul preached…” Now I start to stutter a little because the verse ends, “Let them be accursed!” At least that’s the way King James has it and I’m thinking, maybe that’s a little too harsh as an opening salvo. So I say, “I probably shouldn’t have anything to do with them. I don’t think your Jesus is my Jesus.”

We talk on for more than a half an hour. I’m enjoying it. I’m thinking what great young men these are. So committed. Why was I trying so hard to avoid them? Jesus would not avoid them. He would love them. He would not cast the first stone. I think he might even weep for them because as sincere and self-assured as they were, they did not know Him, nor did they know their gospel was a different one, one full of promises but missing the Promise.

After the theological jousting had gone back and forth with no clear victor in the mind of the other, I wish my visitors a good evening and they move on down the street. But I pray for them later that night and wonder if I had left an impression on them as they had on me.  And I thanked God that He made me show up for the battle whether I wanted to or not.

The Reason for the Season

So, it’s not an original thought to say the “reason for the season” is often an afterthought at Christmas (if we can even use that word at all). But witness the way people actually crave to ponder the meaning of the holidays (e.g. holy days) as in the most recent mob flash video (in California of all places) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vnt7euRF5Pg). It’s as if the Spirit within yearns to slow down, to find enough quiet to worship the newborn king. To rediscover the Son.

For those of you who have read this blog before, you know that I struggle with prayer, and I struggle with prayer because I struggle with life itself. My prayer too often reflects my inner turmoil instead of the peace it longs to release.

So you also know I have been broken by the difficult relationship with my only son. I just want you to know this: I have rediscovered my son. I cannot explain it other than it’s the answer to my anguished call. There have been no icebreaking moments, at least not that I can identify, but he is allowing me back into his life and it just feels so good. His heart has softened and I am so thankful.

The other day he texted me with a photo of a storm front moving in over the Front Range of the Rockies. It felt so good. We were back to talking about the weather.

I also heard through God’s wonderfully mysterious grapevine that Philip Yancey will be speaking this weekend at a church in Newtown, Connecticut. The one who wrote the book on prayer is seeking our prayers as he tries to find the words that might bring comfort or reason to the insanity and immense sorrow of recent events there. Please join him.

Penance

Someone wrote that "no good story ever starts with salad" meaning that most stupid, embarrassing and wish-it-would-never-have-happened events start with alcohol.

Today is Election Day 2012 and my daughter, an excellent blogger in her own right, challenged us to remember the teacher who had impacted us the most in American history or political science. For me it was Mr. Arnold, Bob Arnold, to be specific (I think) who taught a number of subjects at Golden High School back in the 60s. Mr. Arnold was a fiery red-head (aren't all red-heads fiery?) and somewhat ill-tempered if I recall and the class was a requirement for graduation, one I'd been putting off until my senior year, called Sociology. I hated Sociology. It was stupid. I already knew all this stuff. We argued about LBJ vs. Barry Goldwater. "In your heart, you know he's right...far right!" I was a right-wing, junior Republican, conservative, bomb 'em into oblivion kind of guy and he, Mr. Arnold, used to argue with me just to get me going, I think. In my final quarter I even got a C. Worst teacher I ever had. Stupid teacher!

By the following year I was a left-wing, draft-dodging, card-burning hippie who enjoyed the privilege of being able to imbibe in 3.2% malted beverages in more-than-ample quantities. On one of my visits to my hometown, on one such night of exercising that privilege in abundance with some other old mates, we drove to the school where I proceeded to lead the pack in breaking into the old temporary classroom where that stupid old teacher Mr. Arnold had his classroom. We turned over desks, dumped out textbooks to the floor, caused general mayhem and wrote "You're stupid, Mr. Arnold!" on the blackboard. I do remember being confused by the textbooks in the desks. Even back in those days, you took your textbooks with you. You didn't leave them in the desks.

Next week in the local paper the headline read, "Officials appalled by vandalism to special ed classroom." You know that feeling of dread mixed with shame that begins somewhere in your chest and begins its slow torturous climb up the neck, burning and reddening through your face until your head begins to throb and your mouth opens with a whisper, "Oh, ----!" It was one of those moments.

For those of you who know me, you know that my daughter Hannah was born with Down syndrome in 1976. I changed my career from regular education to the field of disabilities in 1982 and retired still in that field in 2009. I now am raising another daughter with cognitive disabilities. I've often wondered. Payback? Penance?

I'm sorry, Mr. Arnold. I was really stupid! But I voted today, Mr. Arnold. I've voted in every election since 1968. Thanks for challenging me, thanks for making me think, and thanks for the C. I deserved worse.

Keeping It Light

My dear childhood friend died a few weeks ago, not a young man at 65, but much too soon for those who loved him and shared in his life. For a number of years now he fought a brave battle with C. He never wanted to give Cancer a name. His wife asked me to speak at his memorial service, or to be more accurate, she hoped I would speak at his memorial service. They live in San Diego now and I live in South Carolina, so getting to our home town of Golden, Colorado would not be a quick, no-brain, inexpensive decision. But I knew Bobby would want me there; in fact I'm sure he would expect me to be there. This was one of those Nike moments: just do it.

There's no getting around it. Death is serious business. I was very close to it once myself after a heart attack, twelve minutes of CPR and seven jolts of electric shock. That was early 2008, just a few months before Bobby told me about his cancer. We talked about the fragility of life and its preciousness, our wives, our children, our grandchildren. Then last year when his cancer returned after a period of dormancy, he called to ask the number of another friend, a pastor with a healing ministry. Eventually, they met up in an I-25 truck stop in Loveland, Colorado, and there in front of a cafe full of truckers, Bobby bowed his head and asked Jesus to save him. He was ready now, booked and ticketed when necessary, for his eternal home. And then they joined in prayer for healing.

Bobby called me right away and told me he had trusted Christ as his savior, that he was born again and that he was healed from cancer. He called it by name. He said he was reading Psalm 91 each and every day. After that day we wrote back and forth a couple of times and talked on the phone a few more. At first Bobby said he felt better than he had in months but then the weight started falling off, his appetite declined and the doctor told him the cancer had spread. But he didn't waiver about his faith. He called me Brother.

So, was he healed? From cancer...no. The physical body, the shell, the corruptible flesh, it failed, as it always eventually does. But from the body of sin and death...Yes! By His stripes...yes. Forevermore. To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord!

"Death, where is thy sting? Where is thy victory?"

So when Bobby's wife wrote me about speaking at his memorial service, she said she hoped to "keep it light." She said it twice. I'm sure after watching her husband of more than 45 years in his final valiant days, after making arrangements, after the phone calls, after reading the cards, after it all, she is ready for some celebration, some laughs, some smiles, some hugs, some joy.

And me? I'm ready now too. That Bobby, he was a funny guy.

666

Revelation 13:18
"This calls for wisdom. Let the person who has insight calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man. That number is 666."


The first time I heard about 666 was in high school. My dad's cousin, whom I referred to at the time as a bible fanatic, had self-published numerous pamphlets and booklets on the prophetic books of Daniel and Revelation, the impending Russian invasion of the Middle East and the coming oil crisis-- all pretty much a bummer for a young lad about ready to graduate. He, among others, believed that Social Security was mixed in somewhere and I began to envision a world I really hoped to avoid.

I mostly figured 666 would not be "literal." But I worried a little when the license plates for my dad's red VW bug arrived--RA 666. And when one of my first checking accounts had 666 in the middle of the account number, I made the bank change it. I'm sure the banker thought I was nuts.

But now, today, as I was reviewing the stats for the number of "hits" my blog has received, you guessed it: 666 hits!

So, please, anyone, anybody! Read this post and get me out of a heap of trouble!

Wrestling with God

I have been negligent in keeping up with the intent of this blog, to "continue" through Yancey's prayer journal notebook. After just returning from a monumental two-week Heritage Tour to China with Paula and the girls and with so much to say about that, I am forcing myself to come back to topic and wrestle with the topic of prayer again. In China, I prayed, I mean some very intensive prayers, like when JaneGrace was lost for 45 minutes in a city the size of Los Angeles, but the topic today is wrestling with God in prayer.

We know from Scripture that Jacob wrestled through the night with the Lord in what is described as a literal physical match of epic proportions and it ended in an apparent standoff, even though Jacob would walk with a limp from then on. So, if I catch the implication, one could spend the night in fervent prayer, wrestling with the Father who says elsewhere he wants to give us the desires of our hearts, and end up feeling like he hasn't heard a word you've said. Or he just wants to wrestle; he doesn't want to talk. Either way, I end up feeling beaten up in the process and hobble into the next event.

So it has been with my most recent wrestling match with God. Some months ago, I was nominated to become an elder at our church in South Carolina. Prior to moving from Colorado, I'd been an elder before. (See Lookout Below!) The review process has been extensive, from a series of meetings on church doctrine, biblical qualifications, and church history, to an indepth introspection. It's within that "introspection" that I've been wrestling with God. God, more than anyone else, knows who I am, my faults, my errors, my selfishness, my sinfulness (I wonder how long I could keep going here). He knows that people have always viewed me as a leader, from kindergarten through the job where I retired as executive director. It would seem only natural that I accept this calling to become an elder at our newly-adopted home church.

Except for this: I've been asking God for six months to show me that he wants me to do this. Since I can think of hundreds of reasons not to, I've been waiting for him to drop the trump card and clear up the matter once and for all. Yesterday the pastor asked one last time if I were ready to accept the position, and so I asked God one more time. Show me this is what you want me to do!

Silence.

So I re-read the self-assessment that I was supposed to have submitted a few months ago, a self-assessment designed to help me determine 1) if this was the right season in my life, 2) that I was clearly hearing God's call and 3) that I met the qualifications for leadership in the Bible. When I mulled over the answers I'd written a few months ago and weighed it against the Great Silence, I sent an answer to the pastor that I would not be moving forward with the process.

I woke up with no regrets but, "Ouch!" My hip sure is sore this morning.