jana's three dresses

Thank you Lisa-Jo Baker for another great word. Five Minute Friday works like this: Write for 5 minutes. No stopping. No editing. Today’s word is: Song. I am meeting up for Five Minute Fridays. Join me here.

SONG

Go:

Song. We sing a lot in our house. I always know my littlest is in a good mood when he is singing. He remembers lyrics to songs like it is nobody’s business. Causes me to be very careful about what I have playing on the radio.

My mother used to say the same thing about me. “Jana, I always know things are well with you when you are humming or singing a tune.” I often don’t even realize I am singing. But, that is certainly true, I often have a song in my head on my lips and I find myself singing as I walk through the grocery store or even, embarrassingly enough, while I am in the bathroom stall. Oops!

I didn’t sing for a really long time. After my brother’s death, my songs ran dry. I couldn’t find the joy within that would naturally spill over into song. I would attend church, listen to the music, but just couldn’t will myself to participate. It almost hurt to listen. I longed to sing, but the “thing”, whatever that is inside that makes me want to sing, just wasn’t there. It didn’t exist for a very long time.

How did I find my song again? I have no idea, really. Some way, some how as I began to verbalize the true me inside, the broken, hurt, pain-filled me – as I verbalized that – spoke it out of me, confessed to my reality, the song began to come back.

I heard my mother say one day – many years after my brother’s death, “Jana, I find reassurance in your song. I know that all is right with your soul, because you are singing again.”

I get it. I understand. I read my littlest one like that, too.

STOP

newly purposed,

jana

Stop fighting.

Give yourself permission to rest in the darkness of your pain. God will find you there. And, when He does, let your stillness be His invitation to enter your soul.

newly purposed,

jana

A memory flashes before me this morning as I sit down to catch up on correspondence.

My five-year-old self sitting at the kitchen table, clumsily clutching a pen over an ever-shifiting paper.

Thank you Cards. 

Dear Grandma, Thank you for the new doll. She is pretty. I love her a lot. Love, Jana 

Check.

Next.

My mother was very disciplined about having us write thank you notes to friends and family. I remember Saturday mornings sitting at the table getting this “chore” done while my friends played outside. Such drudgery at the time.

Sometime later, a note would arrive for me from my Grandmothers’ thanking me for my Thank You Notes. They would often compliment me on my beautiful handwriting or thoughtful remembrance of them. Bound together in a dusty shoe box, I now treasure their notes like they once treasured mine.

I never told my mom this {I don’t recall anyway}, but I actually learned to enjoy writing thank you notes. My quipped three sentences, quickly turned into pages of script. I sharpened my handwriting and my writing voice. I took pleasure in painting pictures on the page as I described my family’s adventures. We moved often, lived out of the country some. Penning those letters and notes connected me with them across the miles.

I am reminded of the many scenes from Jane Austin novels as the heroine sits erect at a dark-stained roll-top desk, pen in hand. With a flushed face, she writes of her adventures and mishaps. I felt like that heroine sometimes.

My son recently received a thank you note following his friend’s birthday party. He seemed surprised that other children have to write thank you notes, too. I chuckled to myself. Maybe next time he won’t moan and groan when it is his turn to write his thanks.

I also just received a hand written invitation to a lunch party. Beautiful script from a 76-year-old friend. She had sent an email to “save the date”, but still believed it necessary to send a hand written note as well. I was humbled by the tradition of that one act. My grandmothers would have approved.

I am glad to see that the art of hand written notes is not yet lost.

I have many to write today, but am looking forward once again to putting pen to paper. I hope to craft a few sentences that will capture my appreciation and admiration for these people for whom I have come to love.

Putting pen to paper one thought at a time,

jana

“The worst part of holding the memories is not the pain. It’s the loneliness of it. Memories need to be shared.” The Giver, Lois Lowry, 1993.

I want to share a secret with you. A secret that I have been holding some time now. This secret, if you cherish it and remember it when caring for others’ sorrows, has the power to heal. It has the power to give healing to others who have suffered the loss of a loved one.

Here is the Secret…

Ask them to share their memories of the person they are grieving.

Ask them to tell you one of their favorite things about their loved one.

What memory makes them laugh?

What memory makes them cry?

What memory do they cherish most?

You will bear witness.

Listening to their story as they share this memory with you, will bring light to places in their soul where darkness has gathered for far too long.

My loneliest experience since my brother’s death has been the realization that he took our shared memories with him. No one holds them with me now. I am the sole bearer of memories we shared in our childhood, of our parents, of our times together as a family of four.

This loneliness is unlike one I have ever felt before. I don’t ache for companionship, or a friendly telephone call, or someone to remember me in a special way. No, this loneliness is deep…deep in my core – an ache to be remembered as I was before.

An ache to be known as a child, a teenager, a sojourner in our life as missionaries. Corry was there for most of it. No one…no one…shares our memories but he and I. For that I am deeply sad, and at times the loneliness seeps in and paralyzes me.

It is so difficult to explain. Those of you who have been there, understand.

It wasn’t until I read the words above in Lois Lowry’s book The Giver that I found the words to capture what my heart was trying to say.

Memories are meant to be shared.

Why is that?

Why?

I think of the ancient Old Testament texts where Moses and the prophets recount the memories of generations past – evidence of God’s soveriegnty and presence through the ages. They recount and list the events that transpired from one generation to the next asking everyone to remember.

Rituals.

Celebrations.

Dates memorialized.

All in an attempt to remember and share those memories with one another. There is a reason for it.

Galatians 6:2 states, “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ”.

There is a greater purpose. We share memories because that is what we are called to do. Absence of shared memories produces loneliness. We fulfill the law of Christ when we share our burdens with one another.

And, for some, the burdens are memories of times past.

Blessings anew this day,

jana 

I dreamt of being a mother from the day I understood the concept.

Sunday mornings my father would preach the sermon while I squirmed in my seat. At his closing, my mom would release me from the pew.

I would run to the nursery, thrilled to have a few minutes with the babies before their moms came to pick them up.

I was 5-years-old.

What I didn’t realize then, but know now is that I had certain instincts about babies at a very early age. I knew how to hold them, soothe them, put them to sleep, feed them. I was confident and felt completely at ease with a baby in my care.

I remember once soothing a baby to sleep whose mother was exhausted from trying – I was 9.

I am drawn to babies like a magnet. My face lights up, my heart melts. I yearn to hold them and enjoy them and treasure them.

I recently visited a dear friend of mine who had just given birth to her third child. I drew such delight and sense of purpose from loving on her son and on her. She allowed me to comfort him, rock him, put him to sleep – to take that task from her for the time I was with her. To give her respite from the minute by minute demands of motherhood. I couldn’t have been more grateful to have that time to love on her through her infant son.

For some, I recognize these instincts do not come naturally. For others, the desire to be a mother is nonexistant. And, for many the desire is unfulfilled bringing with it lost dreams and heartache.

Then, there are those who have lost a child – whose pain is beyond comprehension.

This Mother’s Day, I am aware that I will not assume that all women I greet are mothers nor that all women have happy feelings or memories this day. There are many who will avoid the malls, the restaurants, the places where families gather in order to avoid their deep pain and sense of loss.

I can’t possibly understand what a life of infertility feels like, or what it is like to lose a child. But, I can ask God to give me compassion towards those who do. To see with His eyes and to love with His heart.

Sensitize me, oh Lord, to the needs of your children. Make me compassionate as you are compassionate. Be with those this Mother’s Day who carry a heavy heart and do not rejoice in today’s celebrations. Amen.

Happy Mother’s Day,

jana