Reality Check, with Rodgers and Hammerstein

This morning I couldn't get to church. I'd made it a personal goal, and couldn't meet it. :-P Post-surgery issue made that impossible, and I sniffled to Jonathan over the Internet about my frustration.


A few minutes later I restated my situation, ending a med-induced pity-party. 


" I did StupidCancer in a 3-BR cottage with one bathroom. Whenever I had surgeries, I had to dress all my wounds in my room, share a bathroom with two or three boys, and had nowhere to really rest. The front yard had a view of the underwear of the redneck rebels next door, and the back yard had a great view of the airport -- which was cool when the Jenny was flying but no so much on quiet days. I now have a dining room where we made many birthday memories together, a backyard where doves gather and chimes soothe, and a beautiful place to rest.This might hurt, but it's not cancer and it's not permanent..." and sniffling, I mustered up resolve and a smile and courage. 


My stalwart soldier-contractor, who survived living in a train-car and tents and other minimal surroundings in the war zones of Afghanistan for four years, nodded in agreement, and encouraged me to persevere. 


After we signed off, I watched The Sound of Music. A million memories flooded me as those opening scenes of the Alps lead to Maria twirling on a hilltop. My sisters and I tuning in every year to it on CBS; my dad getting irritated at the romanticization of Nazism; a youth telling me in recent months that her parents never let them watch the end of it because they didn't want them to be scared.

Really? Have we gotten to a point where we make things so soft for our kids that they can't handle history without a happy ending? In two generations we've gone from kids who went without butter during WWII during rationing, to kids who are coddled and cradled from Anything Bad. Oye.

Sometimes there are no happy endings on this earth. Often, there are no happy endings.

A year ago, my friend Mark did his best to look after me, getting my decrepit minivan fixed by his body-shop owning neighbor -- and also trying to fix me up with the neighbor. Having fallen in love with Jon some months earlier, I declined the fix-up with the guy HA but promised Mark I would see about getting the van to him.

Mark had routine surgery the next day, and with a huge abscess in his abdomen, succumbed to sepsis. We will always mourn his sudden departure from us. Always. We don't get over loss, just move along with it in the background.

My cousin Mitch, who rivals Mark as the Nicest Guy Ever, lost his home to flames in Colorado two weeks ago. They'll move to another home, but not without dealing with his wife's breast cancer, and without most of their worldly possessions, which are now swirling around as an ash heap where people once lived and loved.

My elder cousin, Howard, had tears in his eyes upon learning of the Colorado fire. His home burned to the ground during his freshman year of high school, and at 84 years old, it still made him remember the loss. We never forget.

Loss scares us, jolts us from our comfy lives, makes us wonder what we did to deserve this, makes us strong and weaker all at once.

At some point, we need to build a bridge over loss and GET OVER IT, the bridge, not the loss, as best we can.

Loss is part of the human experience.

Think globally about loss. In Howard's lifetime, 6 million Jews were exterminated, 1600 Catholic priests, and countless others who opposed the Third Reich; there have been three major wars, 30 years of threat of nuclear war, and now an invisible war which mostly takes the lives of women, children, and American soldiers while a terse group of ideologists press their own extreme agenda.

Over history, life has been often been brutal.

In the book of Genesis, just after the Creation  murder occurs. Cain bludgeoned Abel over a matter of wheat. ( Incredibly! The first brothers ever in history, created by God through the First couple in Eden,whose parents walked with God. How could that happen???)

In the 1500's, the Catholics murdered the Calvinists by the thousands for seeking a different path. By the thousands. For thinking differently.

Black people were bought and sold as slaves not but 170 years ago, and lynched regularly down here in the South -- until just a few years ago. A neighboring community has an active chapter of the KKK. Want their website? It's full of Bible verses backing their ideology.

Women still suffer at the hands of extreme religious men, private parts mutilated to preclude any pleasure during marital relations, not to mention a host of other horrific indignities. Today. Not in history. Today.

Can we turn off that movie at that point? I bet those mutilated women wish they could, but they can't.

We are spoiled comfy children here in America, even with all the nonsense going on in our national arena.Yes, we have blessings in our lives, and good days and wonderful people are to be cherished and loved. 


Awful things still happen. We cannot change that or avoid it or turn off the movie.

This life is not about us, our opinions, our feelings, our needs and wants -- and yet it is. God created this world for us because He loves us, but we are only on a temporary pass. Home is yet to come.

Jesus spelled it out.

" You will have trouble on this earth. But take heart, for I have overcome the world." John 16:33

Mortal life is going to have the balance of human experience. Bliss, sorrow, gain, loss, plenty, and need. When the time comes we will leave this place and go on to where no tears are shed. Until then, we need to know, embrace, accept suffering. It's what makes us more like Christ. maybe not Christ-like, since we have not one iota of His grace or mercy, and we hang on to our hurts wishing we could have a re-do. Suffering is a chance to offer your WHOLE life up to heaven. Not just praise songs and happy worship and fervent prayers that all will be okay, even turning off movies so our comfy lives have no prickly moments.

Jesus suffered. Suffering is part of the birth experience. Suffering is part of the death experience. Balance.

The end of  "the movie about Jesus", was the Crucifixion and then the Resurrection. If we skip the Crucifixion and go straight to Easter Sunday, we reduce the Messiah to a rabbi, a teacher, an evocative poet. The Crucifixion was the ultimate Suffering. Christ took it on for us, so we could get through the sufferings of this life and onward to heaven. It's gonna hurt. No question.

Pain is part of our human experience. Pain was part of Christ's human death. He chose to go through it to save all of us after we leave this life... and if we turn off the movie to skip the Bad parts, we miss out on His purpose for us.


Know that you are Loved no matter what happens to you on this beautiful planet, because more glory awaits. 


Be brave. Watch the end, and wait for the sequel.