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(c) 2012 Sherman Lambert
But first, let’s start at the beginning: April 19, 1995. For those of us not in Oklahoma City, our initial images came from our TV screens and newspaper pages. Pictures of chaos, rubble, flames, a small body cradled too late. I think our national innocence began to crumble on that day. We finally started to understand terrorism could happen here—and later realized that it could be homegrown by our own, not just by some mysterious “other” who hated us from afar.
Since this event occurred in my brother’s adopted hometown—where he has lived and worked for over 25 years—our family has had the chance to visit the site a few times over the years. My parents arrived for a planned visit during the days following the event when smoke and stunned grief obscured the blue skies of otherwise picture-perfect spring days. Our own family visited while the ground was still just a hole, surrounded by chain-link fences covered with teddy bears, flowers, notes, and the mourning of stunned nation. The finished memorial we observed years later barely covered that hole in the ground—if only in our minds.
There is something about spaces from where so many souls have departed at once or soon after. The ground becomes sacred. As author Madeleine L’Engle stated, “There is nothing so secular that it cannot be sacred, and that is one of the deepest messages of the Incarnation.” This space was not a memorial to evil intentions and actions, but to those who were lost or injured and those who banded together to make good out of what was intended to bring them to their knees. Though they fell to their knees, they also continued to look upward and to one another.
Even though the blood sacrifice alone of those who died consecrated the ground, the Memorial erected on that soil helps to retain a collective sense of hope.
While the Memorial moved me when I visited in the daylight, all I can say is you have to see it on a moonlit spring night, such as the night we visited. For a place built upon such darkness, the space glows with light.
Our group stood on the terrace in front of the Survivor Tree, looking down upon those lighted empty chairs and the reflecting pool which stretched from one end of time—before at 9:01—until another—after, 9:03. What lay in between we’d prefer not to remember.
However, on such a clear night, I easily heard the hooves of horse-drawn carriages rhythmically approaching the street beside the site. If memories have a soundtrack, mine that night was hearing a song from the Bradley Ellingboe “Requiem” my church choir sang at the Good Friday evening service last month. (The song is arranged from a George Herbert poem titled “Evensong” and can be heard in the church archival recording from April 6, 2012 7:00 p.m., starting around the listed times of 77:53 to 83:00.)
The musical arrangement begins with only rhythm—a rhythm that sounds to me like the relentless march of time and/or of death. The hooves that May night in Oklahoma City beat in a similar way and then the sounds stopped.
That’s how Time must have stopped for too many at 9:02 that bright morning—except they heard no warning march of hoofbeats.
None of us knows when those hooves march toward us. The best we can do is look to shine light on our own darkness and live well for those gone before us before our own days are spent.
The moon on a clear night and the sounds of hoofbeats only added to the power of a memorial that expresses so well both the loss of particular people on a particular day as well as the loss of our nation’s belief that ordinary people doing ordinary things could not be targets for some twisted agenda. Yet the site is also a powerful tribute to the resilience of a people who banded together to help one another and believe they could still find beauty in their collective tomorrows. Oh for me, that night’s beauty also shone light on what followed after darkness.
[To read the George Herbert poem, go to The English works of George Herbert: newly arranged and annotated and considered in relation to his life, Volume 3 (Google eBook), p. 391]
I’ve given up on easy sleep tonight, but still hope that a little keyboard time can reduce my impressions of my woes enough to bring about some sweeter dreams. You see, I’ve just had a bit of a revelation about my Wednesdays—something about them turns me into a Wednesday’s child, full of woe—woe and/or worry. Whatever is wrong in my life seems more powerful on Wednesdays lately.
The irony is that I start my Wednesdays in prayer with my fellow prayer partners in Moms in Prayer. The women and their prayers soothe me and yet some time later I become agitated. Perhaps just praying for my kids sets off my own self-reflection. I know my kids feel a little mystified as to why I continue to pray for them and why it would matter to me to join with others in prayer for them—and that alone makes me feel sad.
And maybe such prayers just point out to me how little faith I seem to have in the power of my prayers these days. Same prayers, different weeks—still my heart breaks over what doesn’t seem to change. Intellectually I get that answered prayers don’t often happen when I choose—and that in time all may be well. Such is the human condition, right?
But my heart has frozen and doesn’t seem to have a lot of room for hope these days—especially not on Wednesdays. Oh, I go through the motions, find peace in small moments during Moms in Prayer and yoga class, yet when faced with my afternoon, I do not do a great job of fending off those woeful thoughts. Later, when the clock says it is time to leave for choir practice, I am not sure I can bear to sit so close to other people, nor muster enough focus to leave my thoughts behind so I can sing the words of faith. Yet go I do and, again, I find moments of peace even if they do not last see me through to sleep.
So the question is what can I do to resist becoming a Wednesday’s child? Just one more week and MIP breaks for summer. Will that alone make a difference? If so, does that mean such agitating prayers are really bad for me—or just something I need to experience on the way back to hope? Or should I change-up the rest of my routine so I am not home alone where I am too easily drawn into melancholic thoughts?
All I know is by the time I have “far to go” as Thursday’s child, I seem to have regained enough faith to go and go and go, which means something about Wednesday is driving me to woe. Just understanding that may be enough to help me to figure out how to change the pattern enough so that next time I become Wednesday’s child, instead of full of woe, I may be full of faith.
Don Quixote, his lance a little worse for the wear.
I was a twenty-year-old English/Spanish major taking classes in the study abroad program at the University of Valencia. All my courses were taught in Spanish—or castellano as the Valencianos called it. Of course, the professors spoke slower for all of us non-native speakers, but everything we read, wrote, and heard for our courses happened in Spanish.
As a literature student, I naturally gravitated toward Spanish literature courses. And, when in Spain? You’ve got to study Cervantes and his Don Quixote (Quijote). Oh, we learned much more about Cervantes than the tales of his man from La Mancha, but it was the Don himself who taught me the meaning of life.
You see, I had been on the archetypal youthful quest to discover the meaning of life for a few years now. I was Christian, but what did that mean about the meaning of life?
One day, right in Profesor Villalba’s class, I just knew. Oh, sure a beam of sunlight didn’t appear from nowhere and shine upon the notes I was taking. In fact, I think the day was one of the few really rainy and cloudy days I experienced during my stay in Valencia. Still, somehow I realized that the real meaning of life was the search. That if you thought you’d found all the answers—or stopped looking for them—then you were as good as dead, just like the Don. No more journey, no more purpose, no more life.
Don Quixote, dust and all.
But beyond that, I love that the Don sees the best in people, believes they are more than they are. Don’t you think that kind of belief is powerful enough to help people become more than they have been? I do—and I like to think that it’s just that kind of quixotic thinking our world needs more of now. By helping others see the possible in themselves, we make the impossible dream possible.
Of course, I get a little sappy when I start talking about this, but, hey, I’m still in love. Even after all these years, even though all my own dreams haven’t come true, I still believe in the search.
P.S. Even three very rough years after this blog post, I still believe . . .
(c) 2009 Christiana Lambert
And that also means that the human losses in our lives set up those gains that would come. If I hadn’t first experienced a miscarriage, I wouldn’t have the Christiana and Jackson that I know. If my grandparents hadn’t lost their firstborn son in a car accident, timing surely would have changed so that some other person who wasn’t my father would have been born instead. And, if my other grandparents hadn’t lost their firstborn to hydrocephaly, would any of the five children (and their descendants) who followed have been the same?
No, it would be too easy for us not to exist for it not to matter who we are. We are chosen. Of course, I believe God is the Master Planner, but I know many don’t. But even if I didn’t believe in the sovereign God, I, personally, would have a hard time believing that who we are and why we are here is simply random.
Just look at all your relatives and imagine them gone, either because someone didn’t meet someone else or because the family timing and order changed.
Conjugate “to be” and be amazed. I am. You are. We are. They are. Wow.
(c) 2011 Christiana Lambert
The truth is this tradition has become more about spending time with the kids’ grandmother. Sherman’s mom is Grandma Pat to them—I’m glad that last year Christiana could continue the tradition and that this year Jackson can do so.
When we’re young, if we’re lucky enough to have active, healthy grandparents, we take for granted they will be able to remain active participants in our lives and in the family traditions. At least, I did. Only one of my grandparents had slipped into dementia and poor health before I graduated from high school. The other three continued on much as I had known them for many more years and by the time another grandparent disappeared into dementia, she was just short of her 90th birthday.
I want this to be a glad post, but realize it’s really more gloomy than glad. The thing is you never know how quickly an aging person’s health will change, either physically and/or mentally. You have to hold onto your shared traditions as long as you can because when both the people you have loved and the traditions are gone, you will miss them for the rest of your days.
My kids can barely remember my father, who became ill in 2001 and died in 2002, while they remain heartbroken over how they lost who my mother had been to them over a period of three years. By the time she died last year, she was nothing like the talkative, energetic grandma who had put them at the center of her life.
(c) 1997: Alex, Grandma Pat, Jackson, & Christiana
No, when it comes to people whom we love, we really do have to live by a carpe diem attitude. Dye those Easter eggs with them, make the holiday cookies, and sit with them at the table of your family celebrations. And, if those options don’t work anymore, just hold their hands and be in the moment with them.
Grandparents are gifts to us too soon gone. Giving thanks today for my grandparents Esther and Charles Ritter and Elva and Pat Lange, as well as for my parents Dick and Mae Lange.
Am also reminded that dying eggs means more than a treasured tradition—it is a symbol of new life in the glorious resurrection. Now that is a gift beyond all others . . .
(c) 2010 Christiana Lambert
But without Jesus’ death on the cross on this day we call good, then the rest of the story can’t happen. This act is the one that shows—not tells—that God so loved the world that he gave his only son.
I’d rather skip over to Easter and the resurrection but to understand the sacrifice, first I have to understand the loss. If church is only about praise and happy moments, then maybe it becomes too easy to believe God has forgotten me when I encounter my own losses.
There is something about the way the church sanctuary darkens that helps me comprehend what happened around a couple thousand years ago. And, if I’m still not getting the message, all I have to do is wait until the Christ candle is snuffed out and the Good Book slammed shut. It is finished, it is finished, and there is no more.
But there is more. Good Friday and the sounds from cellos and the words of loss and absence of light are really just the beginning of the story. Tune in on Easter morning and discover the rest of the story.
And that’s why I don’t hesitate to love this Friday.
P.S. Tonight, April 6, 2012, my son Jackson and I will both be singing with the Bethany Lutheran Chancel Choir, which is performing the Bradley Ellingboe “Requiem” as part of the Good Friday worship service. If you want to tune in to this part of the story from your home, then click on the livestreaming link on the Bethany Lutheran Church (Cherry Hills Village, CO) website at 7:00 p.m. MST. May you learn to love this Friday, too.
(c) 2012 Christiana Lambert, Copper Mountain, CO
This day, the Thursday of Holy Week, is Maundy Thursday. So despite my post-skiing fatigue, I went to church tonight—and managed to keep open my eyes.
What a sight each year to watch our church’s third-graders walk barefoot up the aisle. Although the little boys wear suit jackets and ties while the girls wear dresses to commemorate the first communion meals they will receive, first they come to get their feet washed. The ministers wash the children’s feet, just as Jesus washed the disciples’ feet. It’s another one of those “first shall be last and last shall be first” teaching moments. The ceremony never fails to bring tears to my eyes.
Jesus, as God’s son, had every right to be elevated, yet he stooped to wash the very dusty feet of those whom he loved. By performing a job normally reserved for servants and slaves, he chose to be lowly or undignified—the opposite of elevated.
Jesus knows that his time on this earth has come to an end, yet what does he do? He serves those who ought to be serving him as he nears his hour of need.
When he washed my feet, he elevated me forevermore, even in those times when my feet are firmly planted in the valleys, with those mountaintop experiences nothing but distant memories.
(c) 2010 Christiana Lambert
Since she watched me walk through my mother’s Alzheimer’s, she let me in on her news right away. I hope she sees me as a safe person who understands something of what she is going through. I don’t question her when I see tears in her eyes but let her decide if she wants to explain them.
Last night at church I ran into a woman I met in a grief support group last May. We know each other only because of our losses. She asked me if I had reached my mother’s anniversary date and then I asked about her anniversary, which is coming soon. The truth is I can only understand but a portion of her loss because she did not lose an elderly parent, but a son close in age to me.
Still, there is something about having walked through grief that opens our eyes to others’ pain—sometimes giving us insight into how others’ pain can be even greater than ours—which is something we so often doubt in the early hours of our own dark nights.
These days my bible study group is reading and thinking about the Beatitudes, through James C. Howell’s study, The Beatitudes For Today. This week we are studying “Blessed are those who mourn.” We wrestle with whether or not those words are about mourning deaths in our personal circles or if the mourning Jesus mentions is about grieving our sins or the harshness we see in this world or, who knows what else?
But the part of this lesson that speaks to me at this point in my life is that because I have suffered losses that I still mourn, I am able to see others’ losses. Might I be just another person my friend avoids in her time of loss if I hadn’t already taken the walk to the tomb?
It’s tough to feel blessed when in mourning, but then I look around at all the support I have received on this earth from other people and I know God has not forgotten me. Perhaps it is in my brokenness that I am learning to listen to other people’s stories instead of just telling my own.
I’m not so saintly that I’ll say I’m glad for my losses. However, I am grateful that at least they have grown me into a person who watches out for those who are also blessed in this way they never sought. I was blind, but now I see.
And that is a blessing in itself.
(c) 2011 Christiana Lambert
In short, I didn’t know if Christmas could happen in a living room where all those extra possessions had arrived at a time when everything in our home had to be out of reach and when my back’s condition lowered my already low ability to deal with the physical manifestation of my parents’ lifetimes.
The dust and I collected in that room where my spirit often felt trapped by my body’s limitations and those boxes. Add in the rollicking of two exuberant young dogs who brought in dirt from the great outdoors, and we had our own little Dust Bowl, right in our own home.
(c) 2011 Christiana Lambert
As determined as I had been to find the floors and table so we could decorate for Christmas—as well as move past this year—by December 23rd I had lost my commitment to finish with anything more than the most basic goal of a clean-enough house. After all, our Christmas tree stood lighted in the room even if I couldn’t imagine any ornaments would be truly safe in our house this year—perhaps that was decoration enough.
That’s when a not-so-little elf stepped in, inspired by the movie Elf.
While Sherman and I were out shopping, Christiana—the once-preschool-artist who used to make artwork from items snatched from the recycling bin—pulled out paper, scissors, and an X-Acto knife in order to create a festive yet puppy-friendly set of colorful decorations: chains, snowflakes, and cut-out ornaments such as candles, stars, and gingerbread men.
(c) 2011 Christiana Lambert
She cut, stapled, and hung. Sherman and I wrapped after our elf suggested we could still have presents out if we put them on top of the piano where our puppy, AKA Goat Boy, could not reach. Christiana made a skirt tree from paper to cover the tree stand, but we made do when we decorated the piano top.
Truth is traditional Christmas colors didn’t match the paper chains anyway. Other than grabbing a few more lights and some tinsel from our usual decorating boxes, we left everything else in the garage. No, the material on top of the piano came from leftover quilting projects—after a few snips with my mother’s pinking shears, we had a virtual rainbow of colors resting beneath the presents.
(c) 2011 Christiana Lambert
The tropical transformation continued once again during the daytime hours of Christmas Eve.
Our traditional “winter wonderland” the kids make on top of the piano that suggests skiing and sledding and a White Christmas? Well, instead we put down purple material and Jackson and Christiana created the scene with various colorful toys. Blue bears, dragons, Pokey, dinosaurs, and Kermit—oh my?
(c) 2011 Christiana Lambert
But with the lights twinkling amidst all the color, and other elves doing more basic cleaning and preparations, I soldiered on and got that table cleared—a few days after the longest night of the year, but just in time for the brightest night of the year. Upon that table we set out multi-colored Fiestaware instead of matching china and crystal, said our prayers, and then toasted—to what had been and to what was still to come.
Without the helpful push for Christmas spirit in our home, I might not have opened up to the Christmas story and the Spirit celebrated later that night in our church. Sometimes, when our faith is on the shelf, God has to send human hands to remind us of light on this earth before we can see the True Light.
(c) 2011 Christiana Lambert
(c) 2009 Christiana Lambert
This is one of those years when I can’t talk myself into seeing the happy endings—or at least the unhappy endings that lead to deeper understanding and long-term happier endings. No matter what I said about wanting to be done with talking about unhappy topics, I am not. I can’t will myself to come up with the neat and happy moral of the story that will tie up a less-than-hope-filled post.
Although I’m feeling a bit like George Bailey on the bridge, I’m not looking to jump into the river. No, I just want to take that suitcase I bought with happy travels in mind—and run—anywhere that isn’t where I’ve been.
You see, I know God is hearing my prayers, but I’m having a hard time saying them. The good thing about God is He hears the prayers that have sunk so deep within us that we can’t even use our voices to speak them—they become so much a part of us that they rise from our very pores.
If nothing else, perhaps He’ll send me a bumbling Clarence to show me a better path than the one I am on.
Sometimes no amount of research or any continued pursuit for new solutions can fix a problem. And you especially can’t make someone else choose to see the hope in their situation if they prefer to see only loss.
You’re probably thinking I must be talking about myself, right? See, that’s the irony, isn’t it? So easy to see how to solve someone else’s problem, but then you look in the mirror and realize that maybe you’re so busy trying to solve someone else’s problem because it makes it easy not to be responsible for solving your own problems.
The years of trying to help others with celiac disease, dementia, depression, and ADD have taken their toll on me. I’m fresh out of perky solutions that are always met with a big “but”—because after all I have no idea how bad it is for someone else.
Well, the truth is they don’t know how bad it has been for me to watch them suffer. If I could, I would wave a magic wand and remove the problem. Would be much better than searching for other possible solutions that will never be good enough because the only solution the person really wants is to wake up completely healed.
They also don’t know how much I’ve suffered watching them refuse to consider anything but Plan A when I would fight to find them Plan B through Plan Infinity to aid in their movements forward. This week I realize I’m done being the pep squad. All that energy spent helping those who at this point won’t help themselves is making me feel like a failure. I know I am not—I tried, as God is my witness, I tried. Maybe I tried so hard that they didn’t think they needed to do so. But in the end all any of us really can do is help ourselves.
And during all those times of caregiving, I did not help myself. In some ways it’s just not possible to take care of yourself in the midst of others’ crises, but in other ways you have to be careful not to see any results as the only proof that what you did mattered. Some problems can’t be fixed despite anyone’s best efforts.
And so, I need a Clarence to come show me how I helped even if I could not beat back the demons of the diseases. I need to know that without me this place would have become a Potterville. Maybe I have a bit of a savior complex, but, by God, I’d like to know that sacrificing my potential trips around the world made some difference to others.
But short of that, the only thing I can control is the direction of my own footsteps in the future. A future where I stop trying to find solutions for everyone else and start looking for my own regardless of who is coming along with me on the trip.
Clarence, are you ready to earn your wings? Then help me climb down from this bridge so I can pack my suitcase for the trip of my lifetime.
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