It’s Monday, the day before Election Day 2022. I got out the vote early today, and by early, I mean 3:30am when I got up to go to work.
I have held many jobs in my life, but the industry I have spent the most time in is the installation of commercial office furnishings. I have installed cubicles from Denver, Colorado to Naples, Italy and many points in between. The trade has taken me into mom and pop shops, ultra-secure military posts, factories, call centers, and operating rooms. But today is the first time I had the privilege of delivering voting booth set ups. And it warmed my heart.
Conspiracy theories are seductive because they give simplified answers to the complex reasons why unexpected and unwanted outcomes happen. There are those who believe the previous election was swerved through massive corruption and data manipulation, others who state that systemic problems with the process work malignantly to deny the vote to minorities. Caustic mistrust plagues the system.
The people I encountered today served as a vaccine against the pandemic of demagoguery blaring through the broadcast waves and posted through anti-social media. Retired school principles who set up voting machines and locked them away in their delivery cages, custodians and volunteers who received their booths, teachers, parents, your neighbors. In short, the extraordinary ordinary people of We the People working to provide the principle means of our self-government.
Tomorrow, all across this great nation, we citizens will participate in our blood-bought privilege to make our wishes known in the voting booth. It is an act of faith in the structure of our republic and a process shepherded at the grass roots. May we never lose the wonder of it. Long live the Republic!
Life Stories
Firearms, Fear, and Mental Health
A bullet hole in your wall is never a good sign, unless you look at it right. Not acknowledging it is foolhardy, obsessing over it is debilitating. These sides of the teeter totter must be balanced when the hole is really there. What to do when it’s not…well, that’s what this is about.
Firecrackers and rifle rounds, these are the sounds of my childhood. In an early exercise of modifying childish behaviors, my mother had me light a full box of kitchen matches one at a time and let them burn down to my fingertips. It was supposed to cure me of playing with matches. I was three. My brother Eric, who was ten at the time, told me decades later that the look on my face said mom miscalculated. She didn’t cure me. She made me. I remain a functional pyromaniac to this day.
So, perhaps it’s not surprising that fear and firearms aren’t coupled in my psyche. What firearms I have, I own out of prudence, not paranoia. I’ve been on the wrong side of a gun (you can read about that here). I have also used firearms to procure food. For any who have not ventured into the woods and come out with meat to feed their families, you’ve missed something in life. Politicians and popular culture make apologetic room for the American firearm fascination with lip service to the sport of hunting. Watching children eat meat you harvested isn’t sport. It is a central reality of man stretching back for millennia. It is the same reality that caused men to take up arms and defend their home and person. Making it about the weapon misses the point.
Supporting the Second Amendment in its original frame calls for intellectual honesty regarding its consequences. Malice, negligence, and accidents are a reality. Years ago, I was in charge of a waste hauling operation that could see up to sixty trucks on the road at any given time. We functioned under the mandate of a zero-accident policy. The policy was understandable, admirable even. But there were those among us who held to the philosophy of it being possible. To be fair, it was possible—simply so. All I had to do was ground the fleet. No movement, no accidents. No guns, no death and maiming by firearms.
A bullet above my daughter’s headboard. Wounded sheetrock in my boy’s room. The former resulted from a neighbor in emotional distress and contemplating suicide. The later, a negligent discharge from a guest who knew better. Nobody died. I repeat, nobody died. This is where fear and mental health enter the picture.
The spirit of man is invested with the capacity, the drive even, to dream. We were created with the ability to see the impossible, to call out things that are not and strive to make them be. The same mechanism that got us to the moon lets us stress about near misses as if they were catastrophes.
In life, I’ve found stressing over non-events isn’t just a waste of energy, it’s also debilitating to mental health. A near miss is a near miss. Going into adrenal hyperdrive at that moment is understandable and desirable. Carrying the fight-or-flight past a reasonable calming period is self-destructive.
Worse than being wrapped in the trauma of a near miss is the upset over possible catastrophe when the near miss never happened. This is what happens when we imagine what someone might have done to or said about us and we get upset as if they did. Call it delusional trauma, pain caused by the ghosts of our own imagination. When we trade the wonder of imagining what could be for the fear and regret of what may have been, we are poorer for it.
Holes in walls, happened. People dead, didn’t. In both instances, my mind was fully capable—without any prompting from me—to envision a new reality in light of the non-event of catastrophic loss. I had a choice at that point. I could imagine the tragedy of a lost child and allow my limbic system to light up as if it had already happened or admit it didn’t happen and behave accordingly. One would leave me toxic, the other thankful. A bullet hole in your wall is never a good sign, unless you look at it right. The holes in my walls were evidence of God’s protection in grace in the face of the carelessness of others. When I think of them that way, I stay in a much healthier head space.
Cancer Survivor 2.0: Transitions
“You were dying.” I seem to get that a lot, and by “a lot” I mean more than once. Once is enough, right? The first time around, it revolved around the cancer itself.[1] This time, it had to do with the aftereffects of the treatment.[2] I was well out of the woods, the base-of-tongue tumor a good five-plus years in my life’s rearview mirror. But I wasn’t well. “Glad to see you made it in,” the doctor said when the test results came in. “Because looking at these numbers, I don’t know how you’re still walking around.”
“He’s been grumpier than usual,” Heidi, my wife, told the receptionist after I dropped the clipboard with the new patient form down on the counter in frustration and told Heidi she could fill it out. It was a rude, inexcusable, over-the-top reaction to her matter-of-fact observation that my handwriting was illegible. It was March 8, 2019. Grumpiness earned me a doctor’s visit. Hopefully, that says something about my regular demeanor.
Without controversy, 2020 has been crazy. But the crazy for me started well before the pandemic and violent protests of this historic year. In retrospect, the cause of my condition should have been obvious. All the symptoms lined up, I just never assembled them for the same crime. If I had, I might have agreed to see the endocrinologist when I could still manage to keep my cool.
Suspect No. 1: High Cholesterol
My previous employer offered yearly wellness checks, part of which was a basic blood test to measure cholesterol levels for heart disease risk. In June 2016, my total cholesterol level (TCL) was 311 mg/dL (less than 200 is the desired range). We made some adjustments to my diet, substantially decreasing the large daily dose of raw eggs that were a major component of my protein shakes. Two years later, my TCL had climbed to 390, nearly double the healthy range.
The result made no sense. From 2016 to 2018, I lost weight—two pounds, to be exact, but decrease is decrease. I carried 171 pounds on my 5’ 11” frame with considerable ease. It wasn’t the food, so I blamed cortisol, the body’s stress-response hormone implicated in high cholesterol levels. Not that I “felt” stressed, mind you. But my body has always been a faithful witness to what my soul ignores.
Suspect No. 2: Peripheral Neuropathy
I wear gloves in summer and make a point to push my legs to their limit because Cisplatin, the chemotherapy drug I was given as part of my cancer treatment, did a number on my nerves. Walking was difficult during the initial recovery phase. Cold hands and numbness in my feet persist. Chemocare.com lists peripheral neuropathy as a less common but serious side effect from the drug and notes that “neurologic effects may be irreversible.”[3] Nothing to see here, folks. Move along.
Suspect No. 3: Depression
Depressed? Who, me? No way.
I was sad. In early 2018, after seven accolade-filled years of managing the hauling operations for my former employer, they gave my post to someone better suited to their executive succession plan.
I was lonely. Work moved me from my central-hub office that I affectionately named The Fish Bowl, to an office in a practically abandoned suite at the back of the maintenance shop I called The Cave, where I toiled away—a manager on hold with only contracts to supervise.
I was grieving. My brother Eric passed away on New Year’s Day, 2019.
Suspect No. 4: Fatigue
As a hauling manager, I regularly worked 10 to 11-hour days, five days a week. When they changed my post and I became effectively a manager without portfolio for close to six months, I still put in over forty-five hours a week on average. In August of 2018, I began managing our main recycling facility. 55-hour work weeks were not uncommon. I walked five miles a day doing the job. Then came the weekend when I studied, preached, and wrote. Yep, I was tired. I had reason to be.
Suspect No. 5: Emotional Lability
I didn’t see this suspect, my family did. Emotional lability is the psychological term for rapid and often exaggerated changes in mood where strong feelings such as uncontrollable crying or heightened irritability—hello, grumpiness—occur. I wasn’t irritable. I was focused. And if I cried at the drop of a hat, it was because it reminded me of my brother. At least, that’s what I told myself. My family told me I was grumpy. It wasn’t until I was getting better that they told me I was dying on them.
It’s late August 2013, before the chemo, before the radiation. The professionals reviewed the treatment protocol with all its promises and potential pitfalls. I listened. Heidi took notes. The chance of the treatment not working was low, the possibility of coming through unscathed nil. We knew at the start that the radiation would bombard my thyroid gland on its mission to destroy the cancer cells on my tongue and in my lymph nodes. Once I could eat again, we folded in a natural thyroid supplement into my protein shakes. As the years ticked by, the level of supplementation increased. If I missed a dose, I had a sense of crashing. I should have stopped. Instead, I fell into my default of pushing through.
I pushed through projects. In March 2018, I published Wind, Water, and Fire, a book about the Holy Spirit. As soon as it launched, I began writing Love Everlasting: A Practical Theology of Time, which I published in March 2020. In the same time frame, I started writing Valley of Wolves, the sequel to Gypsy Spy.
I pushed through work. In August of 2018, I assumed active management of our community’s largest post-consumer recycling facility. I had managed a small materials recovery facility and transfer station in the early years of my waste management career. Taking on this plant was like going from a go-cart to a high-mileage Ferrari. The workers and machinery required direct attention. I jumped into the fray at full-throttle. The post was nominally an office job. I was the general manager of a multimillion-dollar operation. I wasn’t in the office much. Flesh and blood, metal and grease are more my style.
I pushed through play. I went on business trips; nice trips to San Diego and Orlando, company funded and wife accompanied. I attended writing conferences that we turned into family vacations. Slowing down is something I am still learning to do.
While preparing for this post, I came across a line of dialogue I had jotted down in my idea journal. It’s dated May 22, 2018. I didn’t assign a character to it and can’t be certain of its inspiration. Did I overhear someone say it? Did I read it somewhere else? Was it just part of one of those conversations that fictional players have a tendency to whisper in my head? Maybe it was just my Freudian slip showing.
“Too many folks hurry about like they was rushin’ to die.”
You think?
We met with the endocrinologist. He ordered the blood work and told us he would see us a couple of weeks after the results came in. I went in for the blood draw on the last Monday in March 2019. That Thursday, the 28th, held the typical whirlwind of activity during which I either ignored my cell phone or couldn’t hear it ring (recycling plants are noisy). I walked up to the main office and the receptionist told me I needed to call home—now. “The results are in,” Heidi said. “The doctor wants to see you today.” Today? What happened to two weeks?
I like to think of myself as brave, but let’s be honest. Once you’ve been a recipient of a deadly medical diagnosis, a busy doctor saying you need to come in immediately is terrifying. My boss’s face when I told him I had to go didn’t help much. He was still a bit traumatized from watching me go through treatment. “You gave us a pretty good scare there, Nik,” he told me once. For a reserved man, his confession exposed much. He looked at me wide-eyed. “Good luck.”
They led Heidi and me into the exam room. We knew our places. She sat in the chair. I perched on the exam table. We waited. We wondered. We prayed. The doctor came in, report in hand. He looked at it, he looked at me. “Glad to see you made it in. Because looking at these numbers,” he lifted the sheet of paper, “I don’t know how you’re still walking around.”
He had ordered a thyroid panel. They checked my blood for T3 (triiodothyronine) and T4 (thyroxine), which are produced by the thyroid and TSH (thyroid stimulating hormone) which is released by the pituitary gland when it thinks the thyroid needs some encouragement. My T3 and T4 levels were nowhere near the low end of the reference range. And my TSH?
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m still working over fifty hours a week. I probably walk five miles a day going through the different plants.”
“Well, let me put in perspective for you. Most of my patients, if their TSH level is at 10, are in my office demanding that I do something. At 12, they are barely functioning. Yours is at 72.75.”
Measured in microunits per milliliter, the sweet spot for the TSH level is 1.8. My pituitary gland was on overdrive trying to wake up my radiation exhausted thyroid. I was in full-blown hypothyroidism, symptoms of which include high cholesterol, peripheral neuropathy, depression, fatigue, emotional lability, and weight gain.
What, weight gain? Wait a minute! I was a full-grown male, average weight for my height with a body mass index of 24 which was thankfully inside the normal range. Funny how we can use one fact to deny that a part of us is dying.
“It was like it took everything for you just to hang on,” Heidi told me. “We were watching you. You were gray. You didn’t look well. You snapped at us. You were dying.” She got me to the doc. My mother was a nurse. Dodging medical diagnosis was a habit I learned early in life. Heidi saved mine. Again.
Medicine is a practice. Over the course of the next several months, the doctor increased the daily dosage level of my thyroid medicine. The good news: I was getting better. The bad news: the edge on my emotional lability took a while to dull. Generally diplomatic to a fault, I had become increasingly frank with my boss and with ownership. I jotted a note in my journal after a particularly trying meeting with them in early August 2019.
“The false satisfaction in blame never resolves the problem.”
It all came to head a couple of weeks later during a staff meeting filled with brass in which I made statements and presented information that painted upper management into a corner. Speaking truth to power is never without risk. Doing it on edge can bring sudden life transitions.
After 12 years of a job I often described as “a joy ride,” my employer and I had an amicable parting of ways. I left the world of a thousand spinning plates to return to the trade of an office furniture installer—a hybrid of mix of carpenter, mechanic, assembly line worker, and logistician. It’s difficult to measure the load you are carrying until you put it down on the scale. I never fully appreciated the level of tension I was under until my employer released me. I breathe easier now.
I had blood work done at the end of August 2019. Treatment was working. My total cholesterol was down to 170, a 56% drop from its highwater mark and inside the normal range. My T3 and T4 levels were normal. My TSH was at 1.31, which made the doc happy happy. I was less grumpy. And my weight? Apparently, I was overweight at 171 pounds. When I was 18, fresh out of high school, I might have weighed 152 pounds soaking wet. I am fifty-five. In my current job, I walk about seven miles a day, some of it on my knees and much of it carrying or pushing freight. The hours are reasonable, the stress negligible. If I stick with eating five times a day, I manage to keep 150 pounds on my 5’ 11” frame.
If you had sat down with me seven years ago and on the tail of hearing from the medical professionals all the true horrors of the treatment I had signed on for and said, “After all this is done, you are going to be a better man than you were in your 20s.” I would have laughed. And cried. My thirty-year-old self was in much worse shape than the twenty-year-old version and I had added a lot of mileage since then. But my Father is the Creator of the heavens and the Earth. My God is the Redeemer. In His hands, nothing goes to waste. He makes all things good. He is the master of transition and transformation. Just keep holding His hand. Everything is going to be okay.
[1] In case you missed it, you can read about it in “Dealing with a Death Sentence.”
[2] I shared about my treatment experience in the post “Pizza Night: Milestone on Recovery Road.”
[3] http://chemocare.com/chemotherapy/drug-info/cisplatin.aspx accessed August 29, 2020.
Red
It has been a year
And still, I cannot speak.
The wound too raw,
The flesh too weak.
It is not hopeless grief,
But it is sorrow nonetheless.
When giants fall,
How is this midget to rest?
You taught me to walk,
Carried my weight
Across planes, through valleys,
Up hills and mountains
And over the oceans.
You saw me in the forge,
Tempered me in the waters.
You honed my edge,
And were ever my buckler.
Pilgrims we were together,
I now more than ever.
The mighty sleep,
The weak press on.
Tell our brothers
All they missed.
Tell our mother
She was truly blessed.
We wait for the removal
Of the torn veil,
When Heaven is all
And there be no hell.
Let us build houses
From everlasting wood,
And rejoice in the Savior
Who said we could.
Let us hike through
The healed land.
Let Larums roar,
Hand in hand.
My Top Ten Reads of 2018
Though writing occupied much of my time in 2018 (two book publications, sixty-eight blog posts, and 13,000 words into my next novel) I still managed to read through 37 books with a good mix of fiction and non-fiction covering diverse topics. How did I get through 37 tomes? I supplemented my regular reading with listening to audiobooks on my commute to work.
I would have preferred to provide the list in January instead of March, but this year got off on a difficult foot and I am still struggling to regain my stride. Below are my top ten of the bunch in the order I read or listened to them. Any that spark you interest is well worth your time to read.
Love Does: Discover a Secretly Incredible Life in an Ordinary World by Bob Goff
With story after story filled with Christ’s love and how transforming it is to actually follow Jesus instead of just stalking Him, this book is an inspiration and challenge all wrapped up in one. Its child’s-faith outlook stands on a firm biblical foundation. The author’s audacity to live as a change agent in response to God’s love has led him up an elevator hauling a 4×8-foot Valentine’s Day Card and down to the depths of dungeons to liberate incarcerated and enslaved children.
Profound statements abound throughout the work and Goff’s writing and observations gave my red pen a work out as I found myself underlining section after section. A couple of my favorites: “I used to be afraid of failing at something that really mattered to me, but now I’m more afraid of succeeding at things that don’t matter.” (p.25); and, “Love is a do thing. It’s an energy that has to be dissipated.” (p.48). Say yes and read this book!
The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible by Michael S. Heiser
Exciting, affirming, and challenging, Heiser’s work is both approachable and technical. An academic work superbly written and assembled for the general public, it offers compelling evidence to continually hold in mind the reality that we live in both a supernatural and material world. The epic tale of the revelation of God’s manifold wisdom through the church to the principalities and powers of the world is fleshed out in ways that are startling. The consistency of Scripture in presenting these ideas inspires awe for the Author of the Bible and appreciation for His human agents. As one who has consistently held to the idea that the Old Testament is the New Testament concealed and the New Testament is the Old Testament revealed, it is eye-opening to read a work that follows the precept that the Old Testament is what informs and supplies the New Testament writers with their ideas, theology, and metaphors.
Favorite quotes: “My conscience wouldn’t let me ignore my own Bible in order to retain the theology with which I was comfortable.”
“There’s no need to camouflage what the Hebrew text says. People shouldn’t be protected from the Bible.”
The Black Widow (audiobook) by Daniel Silva
I may need to actually read Daniel Silva! George Guidall’s performance was exquisite. Silva uses repetition to great effect. His description of Gideon standing with his hand to his chin, his head tilted slightly to the side becomes a refrain that makes you familiar with the character and comfortable with the writer. It is nearly poetic in its use.
(Spoiler Alert!)
The bad guy getting away and the entire operation not bringing any of the desired fruit was a letdown. It may be Silva’s attempt at realism. Regardless, the entire tale maintained suspense and the resolutions hinted at provided some satisfaction of closure. It was a great listen.
Fair Play: The Moral Dilemmas of Spying by James Olson
James Olson spent his entire career in the Directorate of Operations of the Central Intelligence Agency and is a former Chief of CIA Counterintelligence. His book is an excellent resource for those serious about the practical and ethical challenges inherent in espionage. Well written, informative, and full of insights from multiple sectors. The Spying 101 notes alone are worth the purchase price of the book. They contain a treasure trove for espionage writers and enthusiasts.
Shared Sorrows: A Gypsy Family Remembers the Holocaust by Toby Sonneman
I expected an informative read when I purchased this book. I received much more than I bargained for. Sonneman’s collaboration with Rosa Mettbach not only highlights the little known Great Devouring of the Gypsies under the Nazis, it also delves deeply into the burdens of bitterness, the betrayal of humanity, and the need for forgiveness. Studded throughout with exemplary scholarship, it retains its personal touch and avoids falling into dry academic “objectivity.”
Beautifully written, deeply personal, comprehensive, and unflinching in its description of the horrors of the Holocaust, it is a must read for those who want to learn about the Gypsy experience under the Nazi’s from the recollections of those who survived it.
Tripping over the Truth: How the Metabolic Theory of Cancer is Overturning one of Medicine’s most Entrenched Paradigms by Travis Christofferson, MS
As a cancer—and a cancer treatment—survivor, this book was a revelation. Had I been told in my original consultations that chemotherapy came from an accidental exposure of sailors to mustard gas and what they wanted to put through my veins was mustard gas’s cousin, I may have investigated alternative therapies more thoroughly. But by then, I was hurting and scared.
Early in the 20th century, Otto Warburg developed a workable metabolic theory of cancer that has recently gained momentum as the chasers of singular, or even manageable, DNA mutation causers have run into dead end after dead end at the death of millions, the misery of millions more, and the cost of billions. Warburg’s succinct thesis is below. This book is the history of that insight and its promise and implications nearly one hundred years later. If you have cancer or have a loved one battling it, read this book before the mustard gas begins dripping into the veins.
“Cancer, above all diseases, has countless secondary causes. But even for cancer, there is only one prime cause. Summarized in a few words, the cause of cancer is the replacement of the respiration of oxygen in normal body cells by a fermentation of sugars.” Otto H. Warburg
Story Trumps Structure by Steven James
Steven James is a national bestselling novelist whose pulse-pounding thrillers continue to gain wide critical acclaim and a growing fan base.[1] I had the pleasure of attending a couple of his workshops at a writers’ conference. I would consider this book to be the text book for his presentations.
Encouraging and challenging, this unique how-to tome had me stretched from, “I can do this” to “why did I ever think I could write?” Enjoyable to read and a valuable reference manual, it will sit on my writer’s reference shelf with my Roy Peter Clark books, dictionaries, and style manuals. Thank you, Steven James, for generously sharing your tools of the trade!
Man Without a Face by Markus Wolf
The victors of war write different histories than the vanquished. Markus Wolf was a Cold Warrior par excellence who perforated the West with strategically placed agents for nearly 30 years. While our side’s modus operandi relied on buying treason, Wolf managed to recruit ideologues who believed in the Communist cause. He enjoyed a prime advantage in his career. He was a German spying on Germans. His biography adds flesh and blood to the dreary concrete of the GDR’s surveillance state. A professional intelligence officer even in revealing his own life, the book is a far cry from a tell-all tome. But what is told is well worth reading.
Enemies: A History of the FBI by Tim Weiner
Hoover’s FBI was first and foremost an intelligence gathering organization. His agents acquired information in the traditional espionage fashion: break ins, black bag jobs, and wire taps—lots of wire taps. J. Edgar Hoover hated Communists and Communism and considered them both to be the most pressing threats to the American way. He was willing to violate the rule of law to make sure that Moscow couldn’t gain traction in the United States. Enemies carries the reader from those early days to the tragedy of 9/11 and all the successes and failures along the way. Paced like a political thriller, Tim Weiner’s history of the FBI is a highly enjoyable and informative read.
The Midnight Line (audiobook) by Lee Child
Absolute mind candy and pure entertainment, but then …
I thought the writing almost simplistic, until I found out that Lee Child was actually the pen name for James D. Grant, a British novelist with a background in TV production. He nails Americanisms in his novels. What I first considered simplistic is actually minimalist. He allows the reader to fill in blanks. Small towns USA are his canvas. He paints in details at will. He uses repetition in his writing for rhythm to drive the story forward and it works. Want a great escape? Forget Tom Cruise. Read the real Jack Reacher.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Steven-James/e/B001IU0RQS, accessed March 23, 2019.
Closer than Cousins
“Did you turn out the lights when you left that place?” my brother Eric was fond of asking me. It was a standing gag between us. He is number four. I am number seven. Once I saw the light of day, they not only shut out the lights, they removed the mold. My mother could have no children after me.
Seven siblings would be the number of us for twenty-seven years. Then we lost John, the second born. Eric and I dug his grave together. Fifteen years later, Timothy would follow. He was number six. We had lost our second line bookends. A decade would pass before Michael, number three in the lineup, would enter his rest with our Lord. That left us at four. On New Year’s Day, 2019, Eric Larum ended his pilgrimage on this earth. The center sibling is gone. Now we are only three: the eldest and the youngest and the wonder woman in between.
In this world of broken lives and blended families, I suppose “were you close?” is a fair question to be asked when you tell a colleague that your brother died. Fair or not, I still stumbled in my answer. Was I close to my brother Eric? Too close to explain. Too close to discuss. Too tender to touch. Too raw to reach. Too painful to manage more than a subdued yes.
When we were growing up, the term “blended family” hadn’t been coined yet, which is fine because it falls far short of describing our reality. Gloria’s brood wasn’t blended. We were welded, fused together in the heat of fierce family love and tragedy. The seams and scars were all there, but they left no steps or halves in their wake. We were brothers and sister. Never mind that the older three called my father Uncle John. Never mind that the next two called my father Dad and their father Pop. Never mind that my closest cousins were my brother and sister and my oldest brothers had a different last name. Blood was blood. That was that.
Mom married young and had three sons: Ronald, John, and Michael. Her first marriage was short in number of years, but long considering the circumstances. All the boys were still under ten when she divorced her first husband. Then she met the Larums—Jim and John in particular. John noticed her first, but Jim was faster on his feet and got the first dance.
James Patrick Larum, the youngest brother of the Larum clan, was a gregarious soul by all accounts. Mother said he never met a stranger. I only know snippets of him, bits of stories told by his widow and siblings. He was the life of a party, the man to have on a hunt, the capable woodsman, a good dancer, a wise soul, a troubled soldier, a courageous man. He loved his wife. He loved his children, all five, even though only two of them were from his loins, Eric and Barbara.
Mom and Pop were only married for five years. Except for how it ended, from mother’s accounting I always gathered that they were happy years. On a camping trip near a lake, Jim drowned while rescuing Eric, then three, who had gone into the water to be with his older brothers. The tragedy left an indelible mark on the entire family, but I suspect it scarred Eric most of all.
Jim was the seventh of seven. My father, John Harold Larum, was number six. My Aunt Katy tells me that when my father announced he was going to marry Gloria, their brother’s widow; she asked him, “Why would you marry her?” “Because I saw her first,” he said.
They wed in my Uncle Glennon’s church. They had two boys, Timothy and me. Mom’s second Larum marriage lasted three times and change longer than the first. My father died when I was thirteen. To my oldest brothers, dad would always be Uncle John. For Eric, Barbara, Timothy, and me, he was always Dad. Pop was the name reserved for Jim.
For better or worse, fathers impart identity. Growing up, much was made of Timothy looking like my father. I never thought I favored him much in appearance, however much I mirrored him in heart. I am my father’s son, no doubt. But Tim was the one that most looked like him. Folks at times would think us twins. I never saw it that way. Tim looked like Dad. Everybody said so. Me? I looked like … well, I always thought I looked like Eric.
I remember the day I proudly presented my first driver’s license to my mother. When a child looks or acts like a living parent, recognition of the fact usually elicits endearment or positive commentary. When the parent is dead, the child’s resemblance touches a different emotional core. It’s difficult to avoid the spook factor. I handed Mom my license. She looked at the picture and then at me. She paled, brushed by an unexpected specter. “You look like Jim,” she said. I was used to her reactions, negative and positive, when I behaved like my father. It was a familiar dance, spook factor and all. But reminding her of the husband she buried before she married my father proved too spooky even for her.
Were Eric and I close? Mom thought I looked like Pop, a man who drowned and subsequently made my birth possible. Eric’s tragedy, my legacy. We were cousins like few others. We were brothers from the same mother.
Father’s impart identity, siblings stamp character. Hugs and blows, heart-shares and arguments shape and augment the wet clay. The farther down one is in the birth order, the more one is shaped by siblings than parents. I am the youngest of seven. Eric was number four, square in the middle, pivot man between two fathers and three older brothers and granted by God to play the lead out man for the other three Larum kids.
When I started kindergarten, it was Eric who walked me there. I was five, he was twelve. He wasn’t insensitive to my needs or age, but he didn’t allow his sensitivity to impact his stride. He would walk me there, but I had to keep up. My normal walking pace remains fast to this day, forty-eight years later.
I recall a night when I was fifteen walking home from work after closing the kitchen down near the midnight hour. Out of the dark and some distance behind, a voice bellowed my name. It was my brother Timothy hoofing his way home from parts unknown. The street was poorly lit and I had been nearly two blocks ahead of him. “How did you know it was me?” I asked him. He laughed. “Brother, I would know that walk anywhere.” How close were Eric and I? He gave me my walk.
When I was six and Eric was thirteen, we walked from Michigan to New York to catch a plane to Spain. Mom and Dad were with us, as were Timothy and Barbara. We hiked for three weeks at least. Memory tells me my pack weighed twenty pounds. Not too bad for a six-year-old, but Eric’s pack held the canned goods. He was always Big Brother.
He left home not long after our return from Spain in 1976. I was eleven. He was eighteen. I wouldn’t see him again for another five years. The occasion of our reunion was my brother Timothy’s high school graduation in San Jose, California. My mother, step-father, and I had ridden the road from Arkansas to be there.
A lot happens to an eleven-year-old’s body in five years. Last Eric had seen me, I didn’t reach his shoulders. Now he looked up at me, sixteen and filling out. He smiled. We hugged. He held me out at arm’s length, a hand on the side of each of my shoulders, open-palmed. “Well, you may be taller than me now,” he said and lifted me off my feet, “but I’m still your big brother.” It was never in doubt. To this day I remain amazed by his feat. Men who can do don’t brag. Eric was never a braggart.
He came back to Arkansas for a short stint when I was in my senior year of high school. He joined me and my buds on my best friend’s farm for a bon fire evening. Eric was seven when I was born. At twenty-four, he had no qualms about hanging out with his baby brother. Years couldn’t estrange us. He was perfectly content with extended periods of solitude and equally comfortable in a crowd of people. He never had to be the center of attention. But he was hard to miss. When we arrived at the site, my high school friends and I gathered branches and twigs for the fire. Eric came out of the woods with a tree trunk across his back. If you wanted a real bon fire, Eric was the Viking to invite.
I moved to Virginia. I met Heidi. We married and had children. Born on the Pacific coast, I was now making a life on the Atlantic seaboard. My siblings and I were scattered, but I was the outlier hanging on the eastern edge of America. I landed a contract to install office furniture overseas and invited Eric out to join me. We assembled desks by the hundreds in Naples, Italy. We climbed Vesuvius, walked on the ancient streets of Pompeii, and sipped cappuccinos together in Capri. We built cubicles together in Rota, Spain and pool tables at Oceana Naval Base in Virginia Beach.
We ended up working together for nearly five years. He lived with us, sharing a room with my older boys. In some ways, they were reliving my childhood. I gained a love of reading, crafting, and working through osmosis from my brother. My sons would soak it in from their uncle.
Working with Eric was poetry in motion, a sibling synergy I will treasure all of my days. Each anticipated the other’s moves. We could communicate with a glance, pass tools and material to each other like a dance, swap whole jokes with just a punch line, and roar together in shared joy as the rest of the crew just shook their heads. He used to tell me his friends in Spain always wondered how he could have worked for his younger brother. “I tell them I loved working with you. It was no problem for me. At work, you were the boss. At home, I was the older brother.” Proud men put on airs. Eric was a humble soul. He poured out love.
With the exception of my brother John, all my children have had the blessing of knowing their uncles and aunt. But they grew up with their Tío Eric. I was very young when my family left California, still young when I moved away from home base. My sons and daughters were somewhat isolated from my side of the family until Eric came. Through him, they would taste their grandmother’s cooking, hear their great-grandfather’s laughter, sense their forefather’s craft. He widened their context. He was a gift to us all.
A decade into his life with us in Virginia, he reconnected with the love of his youth, Marisa Mateu. Theirs is a love story written by the hand of God. Eric was always rugged, on the edge of the wild. He pitched a tent once to camp out for the night on a plot of land he and my brother Timothy were buying in Arkansas. He left the camp site six months later. Marisa tamed the lone wolf with love. They had been sweethearts as teenagers, lost contact for thirty years, and reunited through a series of events that began with one of my employees, moved through my best friend in grade school, and culminated with their marriage in 2007. After Jesus, Marisa was the best thing that ever happened to my brother.
Eric lived the last years of his life in Spain, the country that was always home for us. He and Marisa made it possible for my wife and children to see where I grew up and walk the streets I ran on as a child. As a married man with seven children, I am seldom lonely. But being able to be over there with them and my brother made me forever less alone than I was. Eric had a knack for giving gifts that kept on giving.
I have gone long. Eric would say, “Too many notes, Mozart.” I disagree. Were I able to write an entire opera, it would not be enough.
How close were Eric and I? Closer than cousins is an understatement. We shared the womb. We shared a room. We lived together as children and adults. We worshipped together. We worked together. We walked together. “Close” is insufficient to describe the nearness of heart. He was one of the very few people on earth who knew me inside out, forward and back, warts and all, and loved me still.
We both had US passports, but our citizenship is in heaven. He is there with our fathers, our mother, and our brothers in the presence of our Lord. I find comfort in the sure hope that the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, will come and transform this body to be like His glorious body and I will embrace my brother again. Thanks be to God for His unspeakable gift.
Senior Discount
I should be grateful. After all, I’ve spent most of my life leveraging the fact that I’ve generally been thought to be older than I am. My mother used to say that I was born old. In my early teens, this was both and advantage and a danger. Suffice it to say that passing for twenty-one when you are fourteen can tempt a young man into territories that actually require twenty-one years of maturity.
Being thought older wasn’t simply a subjective sense of the world’s reaction to me, though that does play into it a bit. I went through a fairly rough patch when I was sixteen (see reference above about a fourteen year old running in young adult circles). My mother worked as a nurse for nearly forty years. She was highly attentive to our physical ailments (so attentive, in fact, that my siblings and I developed the habit of hiding symptoms to avoid her ready needle and syringe). On this occasion, she decided to take steps regarding my mental health. She sent me to a psychologist. He and I chatted. He gave me a battery of personality tests. We met again. “I graphed the results of your tests,” he said, showing me the graph. “You a perfectly normal for a man in his thirties.” He didn’t even crack a smile when he said it. Just the facts, man.
I was in my mid to late twenties when I took my first serious stab at self-employment. Though mowing lawns as a young boy and cleaning windows as an early teen were important lessons in enterprise for me, the concern I entered in my twenties was an entrée into the real world of business. I was closing major deals on a consistent basis and running large projects all over town. I had a birthday. My top customer asked me how old I was. I confessed to just turning twenty-six. “Twenty-six?” he said, incredulous and a bit shaken. “You mean I’ve been doing business with a kid this whole time?” Yep, kind of the story of my life.
I am the youngest of seven children. For most of my life, I’ve kept company with people who are substantially older than I am. For most of my life, I have been “the kid” in the room. Life has shifted. I am learning to walk in new shoes.
I remember when my wife and I met with my ear, nose, and throat oncologist for the first time. After examining me and letting me know I was at stage IV—no worries, I made it through—he went through the treatment protocol. I let him know I was on board. On the way out of the examining room, he reassured me that I had made the right decision. “If you were my father,” he said, “I would be giving you the same treatment.” Okay, he was a young doctor, but he wasn’t that young! I pegged him to be in his mid to late thirties at least.
“His father?” I remember saying to my wife as we walked to the car. “How old does he think I am?”
I am growing used to not being the kid in the room anymore. My eldest will soon be thirty-one. In and of itself, that doesn’t make me old. I have a dear friend who tells me old is when you take your son to the Social Security office to file for his retirement benefits. I am certainly not there, but I am well on the road.
The other night, I took three of my younger kids out to the movies. Two of them are legal adults. They each bought their tickets in turn. When I got to the counter, I was fully prepared to pay the man the full $8.80 admission fee. Imagine my surprise when I only had to pay five dollars and change. I looked at my receipt. It said “Senior.” He hadn’t even asked for ID.
I should have been grateful. After all, I’ve spent most of my life leveraging the fact that I’ve come across older than I am. But I sat through the previews and stewed a while. I am fifty-three, I reasoned, maybe I qualified on my own merits.
When I got home, curiosity got the best of me. I did a search for the senior discount age for Cinemark theaters. According to their FAQ page, anyone 62 years old or older qualifies. All I can say is that it’s not my age, folks, it’s the mileage.
Cancer Five Years Gone
According to babycenter.com, Victoria is the 26th most popular baby name for girls in 2018 so far (#45 overall) and Victor rings in at 214th place for boys. I did a search for the name “Survivor” and received the following pop-up message:
“Sorry, we didn’t find any names that match your criteria.”
Are you surprised? I didn’t think so. After all, have you ever met someone named Survivor? Me neither. The implication of “survivor” is a death narrowly avoided. Victors win; survivors only manage to make it out alive.
I am a cancer survivor. Admitting it is always sobering. Absent intervention, I would have been a statistic, a digit added to the death toll.
In the early months and years after my treatment was complete, I struggled with the “survivor” handle. I wanted to be a cancer victor, not a cancer victim. I eventually had to admit the validity of confessing that I was indeed a cancer survivor. I had made it through the fight, but at a cost. The admission still humbles me, leaves me feeling vulnerable and weak. But admitting weakness is a component of true humility. And humility is strengthens character.
My character is always in need of strengthening.
October 7, 2013 was the day I received my last dose of radiation for base of tongue cancer that had metastasized to the lymph nodes in my throat. The pain didn’t end on that day nor did the disease—the former was waxing, the latter waning—but I chose it as my touchstone because it is the easiest mile marker to read. After treatment, no one wants to say you’re cured. “In remission” is the preferred term. I like it less than “survivor.”
Five years ago I hung the plastic mask that held me down to the radiation table as a trophy on my office wall. I kept it there as I struggled through the severe pain of internal x-ray burns and the queasiness of radiation poisoning as a reminder that God had brought me through and would yet deliver me.
Today, it all seems like a memory from someone else’s life. As I type this, I am eating my dinner—a tasty combo of beef strips, mashed potatoes, and riced cauliflower—and am compelled to remember that not long ago I despaired of ever eating solid food again or of being able to taste any flavors beyond bland and sparky. Memory of the battle is my antidote for ungratefulness. I fail to dose myself far too frequently.
I am not the same man I was before the disease. In many ways, this is a good thing. Compared to the blessings I’ve received in this extended lease of my earthly life, the losses to the cancer and its treatment are minimal. Surviving has benefits to live for.
If you happen to be a cancer survivor like me, I would like to encourage you with a bit of etymology. The word “survive” comes to us from the Late Latin word supervivere, literally to “over live.” I prefer to cast the term another way. We aren’t just survivors, we are Super Alive—alive to grace, alive to the wonder of each new day, alive to love, and alive to give thanks for all we once took for granted.
And Then There Were Four
I am the youngest of seven children born under three marriages, but comprising only two constellations of siblings: Russell and Larum. I was perhaps six months old when my eldest brother Ronald went off to Vietnam. That should give you some sense of the remoteness the baby in the family can feel toward his oldest siblings. But ours was far from a normal family. “Blended” wouldn’t do it justice, so I leave that tale for another day.
Six boys and one girl, which means that both mom and sis were strong women in a way that could put to shame many a man I have known. Mom buried three husbands and two sons. I am very grateful she was already home to greet the latest departure. On Friday, September 29, 2017, Michael, my third-oldest brother, went home to be with his Lord and enjoy a family reunion I can only hope for. And then there were four.
One would think that having six siblings would minimize the intense sense of loss somewhat. But it doesn’t. Seven is the full set. Anyone missing leaves us less. I felt this first at the news of my brother John’s death in 1992. He was only forty-three; I was nearly twenty-eight and already overly familiar with the process of grief having lost my father when I was thirteen. As I recall it, I was deep into a construction project with my son Nikolai—a toddling two-year-old who loved stacking the blocks up into imaginary castles almost as much as I did—when I received the news. I was totally unprepared for my reaction: shock, sorrow, and relief. Relief? Yes, relief. I suppose it is time to introduce you to my brother John.
John was my mother’s second son. She was a recently minted nineteen-year-old when she had him. Though young, the drama of life had already swept her into a tale that would ultimately rival any soap opera and still surprises audiences when I tell it. John was the only boy among us with black hair. “You don’t look like the rest of them,” folks would often say. “If I only had a dollar for every time I’ve heard that,” was his frequent reply. The rest of us boys were redheads. Barbara stood out because she was the girl. John, well, John was different.
All my siblings are charming, but I admit I am biased. John was charming in a way that would make women who knew better swoon. Handsome, athletic, driven, brilliant and armed at an early age with a sociopathic lack of conscience, John was an exhilarating and dangerous roller coaster to ride. As life would have it, he was the older sibling who showed up on the scene to “help” my mother when my father was dying of emphysema and lung cancer. “Help” meant that he was there to engage and challenge his teenaged baby brothers, Timothy and Nikolas (that’s me on the right—people often confused us even though our names only share two letters), who were the last left at home. And “help” is in quotes because his move to Arkansas from California wasn’t motivated by any sense of obligation or altruism. Narcotics officers were hot on his tail and he thought it best to let his California market fade away in his rearview mirror.
John taught us all the things older brothers shouldn’t teach their younger siblings and a few that they absolutely should. The shoulds ran the range from expanding my literary horizons to knowing how to put my fist through wood if necessary. The should-not’s I won’t list, except for this one: if you want to score a million dollars, don’t try stealing it from one guy; instead, find a way to con a million people out of a buck. That was John, the consummate conman.
Our last conversation was a godsend. We must have talked on the phone for nearly two hours. I laughed so hard I couldn’t cry anymore. “I finally got your number from Mother, but she still wouldn’t give me your address,” he said. I laughed. “John, you know I love you. I simply can’t afford you.” He laughed. Good times. He died of an overdose not long after that call. It was like having a chunk of my heart pulled out. I was sad he was gone and relieved that the danger had passed.
2007 was a monumental year for me. In June of that year, I began a new career in waste management. After nearly twenty years working in the installation and warehousing side of the commercial office furnishings industry, I landed a job managing a materials recovery facility. Essentially, I went from opening cardboard boxes to recycling them. I knew next to nothing about waste hauling and even less about running a processing facility. Fourteen-hour days were not uncommon and the commute simply added to the load. It was about midday on a Thursday when my wife called me with the news. There was no easy way to say it. My brother Timothy had passed away the night before. I have never been a big Halloween fan. His death on October 31, 2007, didn’t improve my opinion of the day any.
Classic me, I tried to keep working. I think I was able to function for about an hour and half before I admitted to myself the impossibility of it. I had to go home. Tim was my Irish twin. He was No. 6 to my No. 7, the only other biological child of my father. I should have been prepared for my reaction to the news: shock, sorrow, and ultimately relief. Relief? Yes, relief. Please let me explain.
Timothy wasn’t dangerous like John. As far as I know, he never ran a con in his life. He loved his family, cherished our mother, and adored his daughter. He was physically talented and fearless. I see cliffs as something to climb. He climbed cliffs to find higher ground to dive from. I learned to fight for self-preservation. He liked to fight for fun. I had to teach myself how to laugh out loud. His laughter could always shake the room and was more infectious than Ebola. Though some may disagree, I believe my head outweighs my heart. His heart was always bigger than his head.
Timothy taught me to dance, got me hooked on restaurant work, and had a way of talking me into schemes I should have known better to avoid—like driving him and his best friend to a party because mom never said I couldn’t take the car, never mind that I was only fourteen and unlicensed. In many ways, ours was a case of classic sibling rivalry. But our conflicts were always tempered with an abiding affection for each other. Being last in line, we experienced the most together. It was a treasure trove of memories none of the other siblings had in common. News of his death was like taking a .45-slug to the chest. The hole is still there.
My last conversation with him was a godsend. I was at work checking on one of our auxiliary warehouses when he called me on my cell phone. He was distraught over many things. He had recently been assaulted at a gas station by a group of thugs who felt he had cut them off on the highway. The experience had left him humbled and profoundly shaken. Our brother Eric, with whom we were both very close, had moved back to Spain. To make matters worse, the Spain we had grown up in no longer existed. Prone to nostalgia, the physical loss of the country he grew up in left his identity somewhat adrift. Last but not least, his little girl was going to be a legal adult and the chances of her deciding to move out to him were slim to none. There was really ever only one salve for our wounds: Jesus.
As I spoke with Timothy, we encouraged one another in our faith. I believe I helped him define his distress and in doing so, brought some relief. If the above leads you to believe that the conversation was sad and somber because of its content, then I can only surmise that the reader hasn’t spent much personal time in the company of Larums. That is not our way. There are few traumas that we can’t laugh our way through. Aside from the usual jocularity, the joy of this conversation was in the shared hearts of brothers who truly knew each other.
Timothy worked hard and played harder. He died of a heroin overdose. Mother said he must have been shocked to come to and see Jesus. She believed as I do that the high was his aim, not suicide. He was only forty-four years old.
Hard as John was to live with, Mother never fully recovered from his death. Timothy was the only honest-to-goodness mamma’s boy among us. I feared she would sink in the sorrow of his passing and never return to us. She proved me wrong. She was always surprising like that. I had been casting about in my mind for how to broach the subject of God’s mercy in Timothy’s exit with her. She kindly beat me to the punch. “Sad as I am,” she said, “I am thankful he went that way. Maybe God allowed it to save us all from something worse. What if he had gotten into an accident drunk behind the wheel and killed someone? He wouldn’t have been able to live with that. I think God was merciful to us.” That is what I mean by relief.
My earliest memory of Timothy and Michael is the same. Ron and Mike were playing catch with Tim in the living room of our California home. Timothy was the ball and he was having a blast. Having older brothers over six feet tall when you are a toddler is like having your own personal amusement park. If Timothy wasn’t an adrenalin junkie at birth, he certainly was one by the age of three.
My next memory of Michael was of him working on our mother’s car. It was an Opel coupe. I recall coming out of the house and walking down the driveway just in time to see him reach under the hood, pick the engine up, and set it down on the ground. Did I mention that Michael was big? Some people don’t believe in giants. I grew up with them.
An imposing six-and-a-half feet tall, Michael was a gearhead and a consummate prankster. When Charles Manson was going helter-skelter, Michael was knocking on the neighbors’ doors and keeling over with a toy knife protruding from his chest, his white t-shirt smeared with ketchup. I don’t know if he ever encountered an engine he didn’t think needed to come apart. He worked as a lumberjack, married young, had two children, and ultimately found his way to being employed by IBM. My grease monkey, lumberjack, giant of a brother wound up being an executive in a high-tech computer company. Folks who may consider me to be loud and perhaps a bit obnoxious have little appreciation for the din of brilliance I grew up under. As the baby, I had to be persistent to be heard. If that didn’t work, I got louder.
Our last conversation was a godsend. Michael suffered a catastrophic stroke early in 2012. We were unsure at the time if he would survive it. He did, but not entirely. Strokes have a way of removing restraint on certain aspects of personality. Certain aspects of Michael’s personality were in continual need of restraint. His wife and children were heroic in his care, but not without a price. Eventually, my nephew Matthew had to set Michael’s phone to receive only. I had not called him in some time. My sister Barbara reached out to me to let me know Michael really wanted to hear from me. Were it not for her, I would have missed the opportunity.
I am ashamed to say that I never ventured out to California to see him in the nursing home. At first I was dealing with enough fires on the home front. But ultimately, it boiled down to plain selfishness. Selfishness and fear. I had made my way through cancer. I was weary of digging holes. I didn’t possess the courage to see him that way. I kept my distance. I’m the baby, gotta love me.
I called Michael and we had a beautiful talk. He reminisced about his last visit to Virginia. I had taken my two oldest boys, Nikolai and Gavin, to play disc golf with my brother Eric. While we were chatting in the park, an old geezer who looked like a slightly run over Mark Twain shuffled his way to us and started talking to the boys. It was all I could do to keep a straight face. Michael had them going a good while before he stood up to his imposing full height and removed his Billy Bob teeth to reveal himself. We still laugh about it. The kids were so impressed that my wife bought Billy Bob teeth for all to wear when they met the new dentist. The gag worked great. Thanks, Michael!
We talked about that epic day in the park, about the time he came to my church, about the grace of God, about the love of family. In his bed, paralyzed from the waist down and a good chunk of his brain missing, Michael talked with me as a loving, older brother. He asked about my life, about my kids, about my plans. How does someone love like that? Here I was, almost put out to call him. There he was, laid low in a nursing home loving on his baby brother. It leaves me undone.
He wrestled with survival, unsure of whether he wanted to stay or go. When the news came, the feelings were familiar: sorrow and relief. His suffering was over. His time had come. Mom had a party in heaven, I am sure.
I know our times are in His hands. I believe in the imminent return of Jesus Christ and hope to experience having my mortality swallowed up by life. But if that doesn’t happen in my lifetime, I know that my corruption will put on incorruption. All that being said, if I go before He comes the only one I want feeling any relief is the Devil. I want to be full of years and in a good old age. I want to be in the same shape as Moses, whose eye wasn’t dim nor his natural force abated.
Rest in peace, my brothers. The days of our reunion will by far outweigh the days of our lives.
Alive
Simple things should be celebrated; things like breathing. I am continually disappointed by how quickly I lose gratefulness for the mundane. I wake up. I stretch. I drink water without pain and think only of my thirst. I shuffle to my bathroom and manage to brush my teeth without fouling the sink with last night’s dinner and don’t give it a second thought. I met Jesus at my bathroom sink. He’s still there, I just forget to say hello far too often.
I celebrated my fifty-second birthday not long ago, marking another year in overtime since someone called the last quarter. Forty-seven has been the major mile marker on my road of life since I was thirteen. My father never made it to forty-eight. They carried him out of the house on a sheet twenty days before Christmas in 1978. It wasn’t until I reached 47 that I realized how young my father was when he passed away and began to sense a tinge of living on borrowed time. Then, in my forty-ninth year, I was informed that I had cancer already at Stage IV.
Beating dad’s longevity by two short years seemed a small accomplishment in the face of that diagnosis. My youngest hadn’t yet reached the age I was when I lost my father. I certainly didn’t want him or my other children to go through what I did as a child. I know firsthand what widowhood did to my mother. I couldn’t bear the thought of such a burden on my wife. So I decided to submit to the chemo and walk through the fires of radiation to see my way through. That’s when I met Jesus at my bathroom sink.
I’ve been a dedicate student of the Bible most of my life. In more than three decades of study, I had developed a fairly woven tapestry of theology. All of that went away at teeth brushing time. I would pray to the Lord not to throw up and then when I did, I would thank Him for carrying me through. I was especially thankful for the mornings I didn’t have to brush my teeth twice. When life is under that type of stress, one becomes thankful for the simple things in life. Each day is horrible, but you’re glad for it because it’s a day you’ve overcome. Redemption is another day closer. Sorrow only lasts for the night.
I get stressed out now. I worry. Will we triumph over the termites? Can I get my budget done on time? Will I parent well and help my children be successful? Are my brakes making noise, or is it just my imagination? Will folks at church get offended at me? Will we win that bid? What if I get fired? Silly stuff, really, because I’m alive. Every time I breathe without thankfulness, temporary pressures take on the form of titan troubles. He carried me through the fire, what is that in the face of a business budget or bad brakes? I am cancer free, thank God, but I need to remember the character that chemo taught me.
I do things now I wouldn’t have done three years ago; things like going to a hip-hop concert with my kids on St. Patrick’s Day. “Honey,” my wife asked, “you want to go to a Toby Mac concert with your kids?” Sure, why not? I’m alive, aren’t I? If they’re going to have fun, I’m going to join them in the experience. I hadn’t been to a pop music venue since 1979. Five minutes into the show, I remembered why. Hip hop isn’t really my thing. Through most of the sets, the visuals on the big screens were more a distraction from the music than they were an enhancement to the show. I say “most” because I was grateful for them when Matt Maher performed.
There I was, a recently minted fifty-two year old with his teenage and twenty something kids suffering through songs I didn’t know and words I couldn’t make out but glad my kids were enjoying themselves. Then, in the middle of the bedlam a worship service broke out. Matt Maher had taken the stage. Lyrics were on the screen and the songs had a melody I could follow. I came out to be with my children and have fun. I didn’t expect to wind up in tears.
“Amen, Amen
I’m alive, I’m alive
Because He lives
Amen, Amen
Let my song join the one that never endsBecause He lives
I can face tomorrow
Because He lives
Every fear is gone
I know He holds my life my future in His hands”
(“I’m Alive Because He Lives” by Matt Maher)
As I sang this song, I was overwhelmed with thankfulness. I’m alive. I’ve marked another year. My children are not orphans, my wife not a widow. I am the wealthiest man I know. And I am so because He lives. Simple things should be celebrated; things like breathing, even at a hip hop concert.
larumland 