Ancestors

“Behind me are all my ancestors giving me strength. Life passed through them until it reached me. And in honor of them, I will live it fully.” —Bert Hellinger

I love this sentiment…that I’m the inheritor of a continuous stream of life coursing through countless others, a force which ultimately connects us all, if we only go back far enough.

Who were the humans before me from whom I inherited my very existence? I don’t know them, yet I still know something about them.

I know that they were people of deep faith, fleeing their Germanic homeland from persecution as Mennonite conscientious objectors, first to Russia and then to America. They were hard-working, introducing hard red winter wheat to the American prairie, transforming it into the bread basket of the world.

They were optimistic, trusting all of their hope and limited resources to a months-long voyage toward a new life in a new land, knowing they would never again see their families or birthplaces left behind in England and Ireland.

They were risk-takers, bundling my great-grandfather—then a newborn infant—into their wagon as they raced to stake a claim in Oklahoma’s Great Land Rush in 1889.

They were fun-loving, as evidenced by my Great-Grandpa “Red” Kelley’s ability to dance an Irish jig and his children’s love of laughter. Many of his great-great-great grandchildren also share his red hair.

They were all obviously resilient. Simply surviving this hard life and raising children to adulthood is evidence of that.

What do I owe them? I owe them survival, just as they managed. I owe them protection of the life I inherited from them in the form of raising my children. And I honor them by displaying the same traits they demonstrated which allowed me to exist at all. I will, indeed, live my life fully.

Broken

This two inch tall figurine is one of my most treasured possessions. She’s part of a miniature nativity made by my late grandmother during a relatively brief ceramics phase in retirement. As you can see, she’s seen better days. About 25 years ago, I was placing her on my mantle, and somehow she slipped, shattering as she crashed onto the tile floor below. There were so many pieces that my immediate thought was my nativity would be Mary-less for the rest of my life.

But I’m stubborn, and my grandmother was one of my dearest friends as I grew into adulthood, so I painstakingly retrieved each piece I could find, no matter how small. I spent more than an hour reconstructing a tiny 3D puzzle. I was beyond blessed that the Madonna’s face was untouched. I glued the pieces of her shattered body together best I could, and she has graced her place of honor next to her Savior for decades since. Unless you take her in your hand and study her in the light, you’d never know looking at the traditional scene that she’d been broken.

Her metaphor couldn’t be clearer: an innocent girl allowing her body and her life to be broken in an act of utter faith. Her path wasn’t easy, from the beginning to its tragic and triumphant end. Yet she endured.

I can’t understand her life or her struggles, but I can feel hope from her humanness and her sacrifice. Her obedience to a larger Cause gave birth to a beacon of Love and Hope that shines brightly two millennia later. Life may be hard and short, but she gave us reason to believe that perhaps our brokenness can be a purpose unto itself.

“For behold, henceforth all generations will call me blessed.” —Luke 1:48

How clean are your steel toes?

I’ve worked in manufacturing businesses nearly all of my career, most of it in the food industry. I love food plants; it’s fascinating to see how things are made. I’m amazed at the creative ways engineers have found to efficiently process and package chicken nuggets and canned pet food and bags of flour. It’s a marvel.

My team plays a support role. We work in the office and collect money and pay bills and provide data to the teams actually running the plants. Most of the time we stay in the office to get our work done. Sometimes we go out to the plant floor. When we do, we suit up with PPE like everyone else, including safety goggles and steel toe boots.

I once worked with a guy who regularly challenged his team with a question: how clean are your steel toes? His simple question was a powerful leadership lesson, that to truly support the business, you need to know the business, and you can’t learn the business from behind your desk. You have to see the challenges first hand to know how to help solve them. And you have to build relationships out on the floor, to show that you care enough to go out where it’s loud and dirty and there’s no air conditioning. You have to get your boots dirty.

One of the reasons I like food businesses is the practical, down-to-earth culture that goes with it. As I learned in the meat-packing business, it’s hard to be pretentious when you’ve got blood on your boots. There are a lot of industries like that: unglamorous but essential businesses providing the critical products and services for our everyday lives, like my friend who merchandises industrial plumbing products, or an attorney friend who works at a quirky egg company with a mission to “advance happiness,” or another who leads strategy for a global farm implement company. We know that the value is created in the fields, on the farms, and on the plant floor. It’s important to regularly challenge ourselves, “how clean are my steel toes?”

“Jesus came into this world not as a philosopher or a general but as a carpenter. All work matters to God.” —Timothy Keller

Anticipation

I hate cold, yet the first day of winter is one of my favorite days of the year. The reason it’s one of my favorites is the same reason that studies show that our favorite day of the week is not Saturday, as you might think, but Friday, as we anticipate the coming weekend. By the same logic, Sunday is our least favorite day as we dread the inevitable Monday. Anticipation is also why I used to dread the first day of summer when we lived in Minnesota, as it heralded the beginning of shorter days and the inescapable Arctic winter which was coming too soon.

To me, the first day of winter represents hope…hope that spring will eventually arrive, welcome and renewing, just when we need it most. In the northern hemisphere, the winter solstice also occurs just before the day that Christians celebrates their holiest of days, a day representing ultimate Hope. This year’s winter solstice also brings a rare gift, coming at the end of one of the most difficult years in memory—the first appearance of the Star of Bethlehem since 1226. An hour after sunset in the southwestern sky, Jupiter and Saturn will nearly perfectly align from the Earth’s perspective, creating a bright double planet. The next time we’ll see this spectacle again will be March 15, 2080. I don’t expect to still be around to witness that one.

So on Monday evening just after 5:00, we’ll drive out into the country and stake out a clear spot, unobscured by trees and city lights, and watch for a sight unseen on Earth since 14 years after Galileo invented his first telescope. We’ll celebrate what this Christmas Star symbolizes and anticipate the beginning of longer days and the return of spring. And we’ll feel hope that the cold and darkness of this year will, at last, end.

“Well,” said Pooh, “what I like best,” and then he had to stop and think. Because although Eating Honey was a very good thing to do, there was a moment just before you began to eat it which was better than when you were, but he didn’t know what it was called.” —A. A. Milne

Home for the Holidays

Six years ago, I promised I’d never again take being home with my family for granted. But then, of course, I did. I’d spent months in the hospital with a child in critical condition. When a miracle sent us home for good just before Thanksgiving, it felt like heaven just to eat dinner together and sleep in our own beds. It was bliss.

But that was long ago. Until this morning, when a fellow histio/cancer mom posted that though their Thanksgiving this year would be small, at least they were home, unlike last year which they spent in the hospital. I’d nearly forgotten how huge a gift that is.

It’s easy this quarantine Thanksgiving to feel sorry for ourselves…that we can’t be with everyone we love, that we can’t travel, that things aren’t normal…to miss what we don’t have. But the very spirit of Thanksgiving is, of course, about what we do have. I, for one, had two of my kids with me, taking a walk downtown on a 73 degree day, and feasting on a scrumptious stir fry and rice. We put up the Christmas tree and fixed a screen door and rocking chair and made cinnamon rolls. We weren’t in the hospital – we were home…home for the holidays. Wishing you and yours a safe and peaceful holiday at home.

“And I, I look at you…and I’m home.” —Dory

The Farmhouse

My daughters and I rang in the new year of 2019 in a tiny apartment in Dublin. We eagerly ushered out a year from hell and celebrated a fresh start. We were sure the new year would be better…it was difficult to imagine how it could be worse. Our optimism lasted just two weeks.

A week after we returned from lively Ireland and sobering Dachau, I was called to a sudden meeting at the Home Office. Just before I left, a colleague asked if I knew who was getting laid off that day. I told her I was out of the loop but would try to find out. When I stepped into the meeting room and saw my boss, his boss, and HR sitting there, I immediately knew part of the answer to my colleague’s question.

I got my house on the market within two weeks, and when it sold quickly, I rented a house near downtown Bentonville to get us through the school year. The century old farmhouse had been added on to multiple times, and not terribly well. The owner told me he did much of the work himself, including laying the travertine kitchen floor, fractured in multiple places from an improperly prepared surface; the too-short and too-shallow kitchen bar under which bar stools couldn’t fit; and the light blue and spring green powder and utility rooms, each of which had just enough neon in them to keep you awake. But the house was available for the six weeks we needed it, and, most importantly, he let us bring our three dogs.

The redeeming quality of the quirky farmhouse was its location: one block off the Bentonville square. For six glorious weeks, we explored the creekside walking paths past the thousands of tulips near the courthouse, exploding in wave after wave of cascading colors; strolled down to the trendy market for specialty groceries for dinner; enjoyed live music on Friday evenings and the farmer’s market on Saturday mornings; and popped down for ice cream at the original Walton five-and-dime, or one special Saturday, raced to The Wooden Spoon food truck for pie just before they closed. I admired the neighbor’s blooming lilacs from my exercise bike just inside the open garage door, barely resisting the urge to sneak over at 2 a.m. to steal a sprig to bring the smell into the house. We had a blast.

The farmhouse was a wonderful bridge between a closing chapter and an unknown new one. Though we had literally no idea what was next for us, our temporary home provided a sense of adventure facing into the unknown. I’ve learned from public records that the owner has since sold it for 15 times the amount he paid for it 30 years ago…we can never go back. I don’t think I’d want to. I’m content to look back fondly on the role the little house had in preparing me for the happy ending that did, finally, come.

“I wanted a perfect ending. Now I’ve learned, the hard way, that some poems don’t rhyme, and some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what’s going to happen next.” —Gilda Radner

Looking Back

Looking back, I could say that I wasted a big part of my life.

Or, looking back, I can be grateful that I gained the three loves of my life.

Looking back, I could say that I didn’t deserve the way it ended.

Or, looking back, I can say that I’m lucky to have known love.

Looking back, I could lament my scars.

Or, looking back, I can be grateful for the strength I’ve developed.

On any given day, the bad things that have happened in my life creep into my thoughts more easily than the good. Yet, as time passes and heals, I can now easily summon the good in response. Both coexist, in my past and in my psyche, interwoven like a braid. I’ve accepted that life is inevitably both, and that without the bad, I wouldn’t have the good. I wouldn’t have found the peace the struggle led to. I make my peace with both.

“Do not be ashamed of the wars your soul has fought to save itself.” —Isra al-Thibeh

Gratitude

I’ve written about this crooked little dogwood before, how on a whim I saved it from destruction, and how it rewarded me with a stunning spring beauty pageant just outside my living room window. Apparently, the little tree isn’t done expressing its gratitude.

As fall colors gradually took over the gorgeous Virginia forests that we inhabit, I’d noticed my Dr. Seuss tree beginning to turn. But I didn’t expect to be literally stopped in my tracks one morning by a perfectly white-framed explosion of red. The tree’s 45-degree spine, formed by neglect and abuse, means that its breathtaking displays are presented to a singular audience: my one living room window. For several weeks in the spring and now several more in the fall, we are treated to an art show more magnificent than any human could create, right from our living room. It’s soul-quenching.

Twice a year the tree reminds me of the capriciousness of countless decisions we make every single day. Most don’t reverberate beyond that moment; a few do, either for good or bad. Some provide lessons; for others, the only lesson is that sometimes there is no lesson, only luck. My Dr. Seuss dogwood is a bit of both. Luck put him outside my window. A moment of hope saved him. I’m still pondering what he has to teach me.

“You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from.” —Cormac McCarthy

Imagine

Imagine…our leaders uniting in a wartime-like mobilization, bringing our considerable resources to bear and rallying us to work together to protect our neighbors, ourselves, and our economy against a microscopic enemy.

Imagine…when innocent victims die of violence, regardless of the circumstances, those in a position of power using their megaphones to heal and work toward justice and reconciliation.

Imagine…those elected to serve using their megaphones to build, and not torch, the bridges between us.

As we rush headlong this week toward a turning point as a nation, one way or another, I’m hopeful that we can tap into the spirit we felt after 9/11, and when Muhammed Ali lit the Olympic torch in Atlanta with Parkinson’s-shaking hands, and when we put a man on the moon. We can do better. We’ve done better. Our kids deserve better. We owe those who came before us and who gave all to come together and earn what they fought for. It’s time.

“You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one.” —John Lennon

Letting Go

I wouldn’t have believed this just a few years ago. Who chooses to hold on to negative emotions or memories? Turns out, I believe, many of us do.

We hold on to the status quo…whether good or bad…because it’s what we know. Letting go means releasing our grip on the familiar. It means facing into the unknown and taking that terrifying first step. It’s knowing that once we’ve gone the first mile down the road, it will be forever too late to go back. What was will go on without us, and even if we find our way back, it will never again be fully ours.

I admire my Irish ancestors, who 150 years ago boarded a ship for a months-long journey knowing some wouldn’t survive. Those who did had no idea what awaited them on the other side. Their one certainty was they would never again see their family or home. But they went anyway, out of a sense of adventure or desperation or a hope for a better life. Whatever the reason, they were brave to let go of everything familiar.

Though on a scale much smaller than my ancestors, I, too, have let go of much the last few years…some of it easy, some of it not. The shock was how hard it was letting go of unhealthy patterns I didn’t even realize I had. Once ripped away, I realized some had provided their own dysfunctional comfort zones. The gut-wrenching upheaval presented me the extraordinary gift of starting clean. I would now be more afraid of going back than going forward. There is peace in letting go, and there is quiet adventure from facing your sail into the wind.

“Courage doesn’t happen when you have all the answers. It happens when you are ready to face the questions you have been avoiding your whole life.” –Shannon L. Alder