Spiritual Autobiography

My father's father was Catholic.  My grandmother was a protestant.  When grandmother would get the kids in Sunday school, a priest would come by and convince my grandfather to pull them out.  Couldn't have the kids going to a protestant Sunday school.

Then my dad went off to save the world in World War II, got shot out of the sky, captured, and spent some time in a German POW camp.  There was a Presbyterian minister in that prison, and although he never talked about it much, I think that was when my dad became a Christian.  I tell you this story so that I can contrast my childhood with the childhood of my parents.

We grew up in a household that was religiously unified.  My mom converted from Catholicism so that we could all go to church together.  Some of my earliest memories of from vacation Bible School and Sunday School.

My mom married a good man.  That probably wasn't as easy as it sounds.  Her mother married a guy, had a baby with him, and then the guy vanished.  Took a powder.  No one ever knew what became of him.  So what does she do next?  She marries my grandfather, the drunk.  So what does her oldest daughter, my aunt, who I never met do?  With these awful examples of men in her life?  She marries a guy who ends up in prison.

For some reason, if you try and marry the exact opposite of mom or dad, you frequently end up married to some sort of a clone of that person.  I don't know why this is so, but it is.  But somehow, my mom escaped that trap.  She married my dad.

So this was my childhood:  I had a better life than either of my parents did when they were growing up.  Really, you can't ask for more than that.  As a matter of fact, I'm not even sure if you can ask for that much.  What a remarkable thing they did.  They gave us more than they ever received.  My mom came out of that toxic family and made a better life for her children.

I can't find the words to tell you how proud I am of her.

Did we have some "issues?"  Yes.  All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.  We will all have some issues.  Look at my kids.  They grew up thinking their father was a cannibal (that was a joke, honest!).  I wish my mom and I could have resolved our issues before she died, but it was not to be.

But then I got a glimpse of her in heaven.  Not a real, literal glimpse, but one day as I was praying, I got this sense from God of who she had become, of the person that I would be reunited with some day.  And you know what, she has leapfrogged past me again.  When we just started our relationship, she was the all powerful, all knowing mother and I was a little blood of protoplasm pooping in my diapers.  The years went by and I caught up to her.  I became an adult.  But before that happened, she was the one who took care of me and taught me everything.  She was my mom.

And then I sort of got the feeling that I had passed her up somewhere along the way.  I felt like I was more mature than she was, more whole than she was.  But I always knew that if this was so, it was only because she had given me a better childhood than the one she got from her parents.

And then she was gone.  And as I was praying I got this sense of my mom.  All of the pain that used to be inside of her is gone.  She is a being of pure light and deep wisdom.  Every broken place inside of her is healed and she has become perfect in the presence of God.  She had leapfrogged over me again.  When I arrive at the place where she now lives I will have so much to learn, so much to understand.  And there will be my mom, ready to teach me again.  And I don't think we'll even have to say a word about the "issues."  I think we will just hug and we will both understand.

This world is full of pain and suffering because this world is full of sin.  Sin pains and scars us all.  Sin warps our development as human beings made in the image of God.  But in the end, all things will be made right and all of God's children will be made perfectly whole.  I am so looking forward to that.

Spiritual Autobiography

So my mom was the queen of darkness; a witch on wheels!

Well, not exactly.  Here's the rest of the story as Paul Harvey like to say.  My mom was the product of an alcoholic father and a mother who was some kind of a mess.  What was wrong with Grandma?  Well, I'm told that when I was born, she was so mad at me that she pretty much ignored me for a couple of years.  My sin?  My mom and dad already had a son.  I was supposed to be a girl.  Well, nobody told me about it.  You can't fulfill these expectations if someone doesn't yell at your mother's stomach while you are in the womb and explain to you what gender you are supposed to be!

I don't remember grandma ever being mean to me.  I think she got over it by the time I was old enough to notice.  But how bent do you have to be not to go crazy about the birth of a grandchild, even if she turns out to be a little stud-muffin such as myself?

And grandpa?  I don't know where to start.  Apparently, he was omniscient.  He knew everything.  He was never wrong.  And he was ready to argue about it to the point of death.  I remember visiting him back during the Arab oil embargo in the early 70's.  He had it all figured out.  All of the refineries in Chicago were connected by secret tunnels.  The whole oil shortage thing was a plot to drive up the price of gas.  The federal inspectors would go to the Standard Oil refinery, and they wouldn't find any oil there.  Do you know why?  Because the Standard Oil people saw them coming and opened up their secret valves and sent all the oil to the Shell Oil Refinery.  Then the federal inspectors would go to the Shell Oil Refinery and they would find no oil there!  Can you guess where they sent the oil?  Can you?

He really believed whatever came out of his mouth and he was willing to argue about it, loudly and angrily, at the drop of a hat.  Visits with grandpa largely consisted of biting your tongue.

Here's a great story.  Mom was a "latch key" kid.  That meant both her parents worked and she had to let herself into the house when she came home.  This was very unusual back then, unless your dad was a drunk who was liable to blow the whole paycheck before he ever made it home.  Under those circumstances, the mother had better go out and find a job.

So here is my mom as a little girl arriving home after school.  Only she doesn't have to unlock the door.  The door is already unlocked.  There are strangers in her house.  They are measuring the windows for new curtains.  Grandpa lost the house the night before in a poker game. 

My grandma died when I was in the fourth grade.  A few years later grandpa called.  He wanted the money.  Grandma had saved up some money.  $20,000 as I remember it.  That would be worth about $100,000 today.  Mom had the money.  Her instructions from her mother were simple.  See that her dad got the interest from the money, but never let him touch the principle.  My mom was the only surviving child, and my grandmother meant for her to have that money.

But Grandpa wanted it.  And my mom had to make a decision.  She could keep the money or she could keep the relationship with her father.  This was way before my dad started earning big money.  We weren't poor, but we definitely weren't rich.

They sent him a check.  Things like that make a big impression on a little boy.

Fast forward a few years into the future.  Grandpa is remarried, and he is starting to drink again.  He is being a tad abusive to the new wife.  The new wife calls mom.  Grandpa had been put in a sanitarium when he was young because he had TB.  He had horrible memories about the place.  So mom, doing what she thought was right, told her dad that he had to get back on the wagon or they would put him somewhere until he got dried out.  He got back on the wagon.  But he never forgot.

Fast forward a few more years.  Grandpa is dying of cancer.  His wife is my mother's step mom.  There are things in the trailer they lived in that belonged to my grandmother that she would like to have.  And there was the little matter of $20,000.  Grandfather, on his death bed, tells mom that he has made on of his wife's sons the executor of the estate.  After he is dead, she is to so see him and he will tell her about all the arrangements.

So she hangs around for a couple of days after the funeral, only no one is contacting her or talking to her about a will.  So she goes to see the guy who grandpa said was the executor and the guy looks at her like she's from Mars.  He has no idea about Grandfather's will.  No one has ever talked to him about it.

She finally finds the attorney.  There is no mention of her in the will.  She will never get into the trailer to get her mother's things.  Her father, as he departed this life, set her up to be humiliated.  He rejected her after she had faithfully gone to visit him and put up with him year after year.  In his dying moments, he reached out to leave a permanent emotional scar on the only child he ever had.

I preached at my grandfather's funeral.  I didn't know about the little poison pill he had left for my mom, or I maybe wouldn't have been willing to do it.  At the visitation, whenever I would wander by my Grandfather's friends, they would hush up, like they weren't that comfortable being that close to me.  Then I finally figured it out, from a few words I managed to overhear.  These were the men who had worked with my grandfather on the railroad for years.  Drinking buddies, probably.  And all they wanted to do was tell "Ceil was a moron stories" and laugh at the dear departed.  That was grandpas name, Cecil.  And his cronies came together at his visitation to mock him.

So maybe this gives us a little perspective on my mommy?

To be continued . . .

Spiritual Autobiography

There's this one story I have to tell you about my mom.  It sort of sums the whole thing up.  Obviously, we weren't raising her grandchildren right.  We weren't afraid enough.  There was so much to be afraid of and she had no idea why we weren't more afraid.

So mom and dad are down to visit us and I'm putting some burgers on the Weber Kettle.  Mom is seated behind me on the porch swing.  And little Joy is toddling around nearby in her diapers.  And I am pointing at the fresh, pink, ground meat as I put it on the fire and telling your cousin, "See, you must always be a good girl, Joy, or you'll be burgers!"

And mom is like having a cow.  "You can't tell her things like that!  She understands more than you know!  You'll ruin her!"

But I can't help myself.  I'm on a roll.  "You see this burger, Joy?  This is almost the last part of what is left of your older brother Ralph.  He got on my nerves, so I made him into burgers!" 

And this absolutely adorable little tyke is looking at her daddy with eyes of love, drooling and having absolutely no idea what I'm talking about.  And I'm expecting mom to erupt like Mt. Vesuvius behind me on the swing.  And suddenly I hear this chocking sound.  And I turn around, and my mom is madder than a wet hen.  The only problem is, I've managed to crack her up.  She is laughing so hard, and trying not to show it, that I thought she was gonna fall off the swing.

Incidentally, you can ask your cousins about the cousin you never got to meat, er, I mean meet; their older brother Ralph.  They will roll their eyes and tell you that the subject of Ralph was liable to come up any time dad was doing burgers on the Weber Kettle.  That Ralph was one amazing kid.  Tons of meat on that sucker.  He lasted for years.

I have no idea how come my kids turned out so well, but I think it was maybe because of their mother . . .

To be continued . . .    

Spiritual Autobiography

Back to mommy.  I eventually ended up going to Prairie.  I ended up working in a very small church, with a very small salary (let's face it, we were poor), and frankly, our relationship never got healed back up.  Here was the thing.  She needed me to be something I wasn't so that she could feel okay about herself.  I needed to be in a "respectable" upper middle class lifestyle.  She knew that I could have easily pulled it off, but I didn't do it.  So she became very, very angry at me.

The only problem was, she couldn't admit to herself that she was angry at me.  So we could never really resolve the problem.  She died with it unresolved. 

How can I even begin to tell you about my mom?  Maybe this will give you a little sense of what she was like.  The very first time she met you aunt, my future wife, can you guess what the first words out of her mouth were?  I had been engaged to another woman named Nancy earlier in my life (the one God told me to date).  She was like Miss America pretty and she had my mom and dad wrapped around her little finger.  And yes, she was a wonderful woman in every way.  Not a thing in the world wrong with her or anything like that.

So what are the first words, the very first words out of her mouth when she meets the young lady who is soon to become her daughter-in-law?  "You aren't as pretty as the other Nancy."  I kid you not.

Now we had just begun dating.  We were just started, you understand.  Neither one of us realized how quickly things were going to develop between us.  As far as we both knew, we were just dating.  And within five minutes of making the first comment my dear old mom is inquiring about the possibility of grandchildren appearing on the scene.  And no, I'm not making this up!

There was a time, years later, when I thought we were going to turn the corner.  I thought I was going to regain the golden child status, if only for awhile.  None of my other siblings were even married, and your aunt and I (fanfare and trumpets, please) produced a grandchild?  Not only that, we had two of them!  Before anyone else had even one of them.  Surely the depth of her disappointment in me would dissipate that the sunshine of her approval would once again shine on me.

Didn't happen.  She loved those grandkids, but the kids themselves became a source of struggle.  Here is an example of what would happen.  Mom would watch the Today show.  They would tell her that eggs were bad.  She would call us.  We had to promise to cut down to the recommended number of eggs/week for her grandkids.  And we wouldn't agree to do it.  And she would be mad at us.

Do you have any idea how many different things the Today show would give you to be scared about over the course of a given month?  And the thing is, one month they'd tell you that the new research said something was bad for you.  And then six months later they would take it back.

So we weren't raising the grandkids right.  I wouldn't quit working at this tiny little church that simply wasn't growing.  She was mad at me but she couldn't admit to herself that she was mad at me because I was her beloved son, so how could she be mad at me?  And I would go driving up to visit her and dad and the closer I got to Rockford, IL, the more TUMS I would eat.  I would gobble them down like popcorn.

I thought about ending the relationship.  I didn't want to, but it was tearing me up so badly.  But I couldn't do it.  My dad is such a great guy.  There was no way I could deny him access to his only grandchildren.  So I sucked it up, kept gobbling TUMS, and hung in there.

To be continued . . .