Book Ends

Death book-ended the week. Her friend and my friend. Different environments; her friend lived in the high desert. Mine, the Santa Monica mountains. Cancer and conversation a common connection. The spouse and I encircled in their Venn diagrams; chapters and lines.

There are simple straight metal bookends. Grandma owned a set of small, white, marble Roman pillars. There are flat ones designed by pragmatists and stone carvings that adorn the works they silently guard. Some slide and some are immovable. Marking off beginnings, middles and ends.

“In sin my mother conceived me,” begins one story. Starts and stops aren’t always in our control. But between the bookends; volumes are. Life coaches will tell you that book-ending the day helps you focus on achieving a goal. Funny thing though; goals aren’t the end. They are steppingstones.

Bookends hold books in place; words, ideas, terse aphorisms, stirring Annie Dillard descriptions (‘of hope laid bare’). Bookends are little tchotchkes with a hard and tight embrace around the mystery of expression.

Death does that—it should. Gets you to think about living and dying and story sandwiched between the two. The struggle; hammering out life, goal to goal, story to story—between the bookends.

“The words of the wise prod us to live well. They’re like nails hammered home, holding life together.”

Loss And Overcoming: Rethinking Story

I’m reconsidering what it means to live a good story.  Dream and fame; couch and comfort, a nice city in a picketed community---the image in my head.  I’m on this road now where I’m paying attention to different stories.  A married couple in their twenties face the wife’s massive brain stem stroke; a popular preacher faces the death of a five-year-old daughter from sudden asthma attack (one day here, next day gone); the teen dives into shallow water leaving her a quadriplegic.  The good story isn’t in the loss.  The good story is in the overcoming.

I don’t know if it’s the age I’m at or the age I’m living in but all around me people are facing difficult personal trials.  Friends with cancer, parents with cancer and children with cancer startle me at every turn.  I can easily name friends that live in pain from the moment their feet hit the floor in the morning until their muscles settle down under the sheets at night.  On top of that friends face income issues and aging parent issues.  All of these bring with them unique battles for spiritual perspective; prayers for peace in the midst of soul-shaking storms.  Some simply endure while others pursue the best of stories in less than perfect circumstances.

Life is a process of re-calibrating.  I just reviewed some previous blog posts.  There is a honing and sharpening of my perspective and my direction; sharpening the point of life while it pushes in to sharpen me.  I say sharpen but life pushes in with tremendous pressure.  God does whatever sharpening He wants.  I try to submit and learn.

Good story isn’t the perfect life.  It’s the unexpected kidney punch life gives.  It’s how the hero deals with the unforeseen circumstances—character forged in the journey.  Finally, it’s God’s grace we see in the overcoming.  As MercyMe sings; “like a hero who takes the stage when we're on the edge of our seats saying it's too late, well let me introduce you to grace, grace God's grace.”

They Know Drama

“…Dad who was by then an energetic orthopedic surgeon, always a rocket right out of bed even after a night of surgery…woke up slurring his speech, unable to move his left side, and trapped in bed. He was having a stroke.” So writes Ted King about how ‘Ted’s parents taught him to succeed in cycling.’* The point of the story is that he learned more about perseverance and success by watching his parents struggle through his dad’s brain injury than by cycling with them (which he rarely did). The best stories are often the toughest to hear.

That rather scares me. My wife and I are praying to live a good story. To some I expect that means money and comfort. God seems to have the same motto as TNT, “We know drama.” Seems the good stories have some character desperately at the end of their rope. The rope frays, stretches and just as it’s about to break and send our hero into the abyss God steps in. Personally I’m much more comfortable with the riches and comfort story.

Life is like that. If we had to choose between the story we’re given and “What’s behind door #2,” we’d pick door number two every time. In reality the wife and I choose to trust the Author and rejoice in the story. You know what? That edginess makes getting out of bed an adventure.

*The Best Lesson by Ted King, Bicycling Magazine, Nov. 2012