Silent Vigil

She has seen every Christmas morning in our house since the children were bouncing squiggles of excitement. 

She's watched our family and listened as we have lived our lives up to and following the Big Day - seen how we struggle to keep peace between ourselves, seen how we cope with upsets and setbacks, and endured our choice of TV programming. (After all, how many times can one watch "The Grinch that Stole Christmas"?)

Christmas 2012 treetopper - taken today

She is our Christmas angel tree-topper. Year after year she has presided over the good and the not-so-good. Constant and true, she has held her two lights up high for all who would look. Regardless of the quality of our decorating, she has provided the graceful piece de resistance, covering a multitude of patently untalented decorators' sins. 

Robed in colors of gold and crimson and white, she is a continual reminder of the original Reason for the Season... an object lesson of the constancy and the ever-watchful, ever-loving eye of the One whose birth we choose to celebrate at this time of year. Even when circumstances don't seem particularly joyful. Or joyful at all.

She was there the day that - because of a poorly balanced tree - our eldest bore the brunt of the imbalance and the tree fell on top of her. We were grateful our little girl was not hurt! Ever afterward, we took special care to completely balance the tree so that it was perfectly upright. 

She was there, keeping silent vigil, as our feeble gifts to one another ... in rich times and in poor ... reminded us that we were loved much, that there were people in this world who believed in us, who supported us and our dreams, who suffered with us as we grieved the physical absence of those greatly loved ones no longer among us. 

She listened every Christmas morning to each of us as we took a turn reading the Christmas story, transported back to the hills and caves around Bethlehem right along with us, and she heard us sing Happy Birthday Jesus as a family (a song that still brings tears to my eyes and a catch in my voice) ... right before opening our gifts. She has been witness to the oohs and ahs of surprise and wonder - and to our frantic scramble to dispose of the wrappings after all was said and done, the smells of cooking turkey, and the laughter and "happy tears" of friends and family as we shared each other's company. 

Tragedies and triumphs, joys and regrets, love expressed, memories made. She's seen it all for the last twenty-odd years. 

If she could talk... I wonder what she'd say.

Catching my breath

From the look of my blogger interface, it looks like folks are stopping by more often, which is good, because I've not been doing much writing - at least for me. 

Life can get busy. The urgent can crowd out the important. 

Appointments (dental, bank, and physio - mostly physio) have been occupying my thoughts and my schedule for the last two weeks. I've been trying to make a little extra money, so overtime has been in the picture; fortunately it has been offered to our group of late. I've been going "flat out," trying to pair my extra time at work with times that my husband has other commitments so that I don't sit at home and wait for him to come home. I've been pinging around trying to find new ways to bring in some more bacon - by trying my hand at some Internet sources of income. So far, I've made a total of a buck forty-eight, which falls just short of slave labor. Frustration and panic have been building. 

In the midst of all that, my body was sending me messages: slow down! I didn't listen. So it rebelled. I developed a recurring muscle tear in my lower abdomen, probably associated with my back problems ... and the extra weight of course. I guess that the tear in my belly would qualify as a hernia, I don't know; I know it's hard for me to take a full breath when I'm in certain positions. (And yes, I've thought about having it checked out - and no, I'm too chicken to have a doctor poke around down there!) Add to that a 24-hour 'thing' this past Monday where all my joints hurt and I spiked a fever, and it just added to my stress because I felt that I should be up and about. After all, I'm the primary bread-winner since hubby's retirement and the realities of that are weighing down on me more and more. 

So when i woke up this morning a lot earlier than what I would have liked, I had a choice: rail against my ebbing hormones or go with the situation and use it to take some time for me - to catch my breath, to use the skills I preach and actually practice them. Accept. Pray. Take care of myself. Set boundaries. Rest. 

Breathe.

Now there was a guy who knew how to relax!
My dear old Cody - God rest his soul.

Even if my mind is going in fifty different directions, forcing it to focus on one thing - this thing - allows me to stop long enough to catch my breath and see where I've been spinning my wheels and where I just don't need to waste my time. It helps me to think about what I really want at this stage in my life and how I can be kind to myself while trusting God to do what I can't do for myself. 

It's harder than it looks. ;) But I have a few examples I can look up to, and I am learning. I don't have to be do, do, doing all the time; being precedes doing. 

One of the side effects of spinning those wheels has been the way I have been interacting with some of my friends; I've been kind of a jerk at times. I hope that they know it's that drowning sensation talking - the feeling of being trapped, flailing around in fear with no way out. 

There is a way out, of course. I just haven't found it yet (I've been too busy flailing around!)  It's like what they told folks on a commercial many years ago in case they fell into the water ... don't splash around. Swim one, long stroke. Relax into it; you'll rise to the surface.  

I can trust God. I can accept what is. I can trust myself: my real self, not that frantic reactive person that pings from crisis to crisis. I'll figure it out, as long as I make it a point to look after myself. In so doing, I will have enough of the best of me to share with those who count: my family, my friends.

And maybe, just maybe, I'll have the courage to change what I can, and also to know my own limitations and stay within them. 

Breathe, Judy.

That Awkward Moment

My kids are really into Tumblr ... and their favorite thing to do is to read those posters that start "...that awkward moment when..."  I hear peals of giggles coming from them as they identify with commonly shared embarrassing experiences.  I've seen them spend an hour reading nothing but the awkward moment posters. 

The last little while I've been struggling with (albeit a mild version of) depression.  As word gets around my work place, or in my church, or among my friends, that I have been finding life a little overwhelming these days - I've noticed a change.  Not only in my own feelings, my energy level, and my motivation level - but also in the attitudes of others as they interact (or don't interact, which is more often the case) with me. It's kind of intriguing in a way.  

Perhaps people just don't want to run the risk that I will bleed all over them, so they avoid asking me how I am.  I understand that.  Perhaps they think that them talking to me will somehow add to my stress.  Maybe they're just uncomfortable with anyone who's in pain; it doesn't agree with their theology or their life philosophy. Maybe they are judging me.  After all, I've preached freedom from the chains of the past and living one day at a time.  And now this??   

Whatever the reason, there's a part of me that sits back and finds all this almost clinically peculiar.  I've spoken to one person who has suffered from depression for many years and it appears that this kind of reaction is not unique to my situation.  Hm.  Of course I wouldn't want people to fawn all over me and pity me. That is absolutely disgusting; it makes me cringe.

But there's another part of me crying out to be acknowledged, to know that I matter, to feel that nothing has changed in how they see me - in spite of what my eyes tell me.  Some people won't meet my gaze; they avert their eyes when they cross paths with me.  Their discomfort is palpable.  Others who used to approach me and chat, no longer do so.  If I want interaction, I have to go looking for it. I see the sidelong glances of people passing by as I chat with someone I've gone to see; I have to force myself not to wonder what they are thinking. The sense of isolation is very real.  

A rare few do brave the possibility of hearing "bad news" ... and stay in touch.  I am grateful for them and I try not to go into much detail when they ask me how I am.  I've taken to saying, (IF they ask me and IF they stay to hear the answer) "Taking one day at a time."  If they press: "I have good days and bad days.  Today is one of the ___ days." (insert adjective).  Otherwise I say, "Okay," or (if I know they won't bother to stop and talk), "Vertical." Most times I avert my eyes from them, too - preferring to alleviate their discomfort rather than my own.  

I wonder to myself if that's always been my problem.  Disappear.  Don't let the grownups see you.  I find it easier to try to analyze myself as if I was someone else.  It beats feeling some pretty unpleasant feelings.  Yet I know that I need to acknowledge those things and bring them out to the surface so they can be dealt with.  

My mental cogs chug away, on and on, endlessly, while I go about my daily routine, trying desperately to keep me on target without losing myself in the stories I must read to do my work.  Produce the next widget. Write it down, let them know I produced a widget.  Stay under the radar. Play it safe. Don't think of the widgets as real people with real lives, try not to let their stories move me...and die a little more inside every time I write down a number like it was just one more piece of meaningless data. Come home.  Eat.  Avoid making decisions; even "What's for dinner?" Vegetate in front of the TV or my computer. If I have a choice to go somewhere or not to go there, I don't go - tired of the judgment, weary of the well-meaning advice given by folks who want to fix it with trite slogans or pat answers. All I need is the inner assurance that they haven't abandoned me - which is all too rare; the down side is that I do end up isolating myself and not giving those who might show their support the chance to do so. 

But these folks are the exceptions - and they usually find a way to express their love, and they don't mind if I shed a few tears when they are so kind to me.  I wish - wistfully - that the other people would quit smothering me with platitudes or their own solutions ... or stories of what happened to Uncle Fred (theme: it could be worse) or how their Aunt Mary got help. It's not any other human being's job to fix me or snap me out of it.  That's God's job.  

This is my journey; nobody can walk it but me, as difficult as that is for some people to accept. (It's difficult for ME to accept too!) To those brave souls that continue share their presence and their love with me - without offering their opinions or judgment - I give in return all I am able to offer:  my profound gratitude.

Testimony with a twist

It's an age-old question.

Why do bad things happen to good people?

Well, if I knew the answer to that, I might be rich thousands of times over because that's how many tragedies happen to good people - every day.  We want it all to make sense.  We want it all to mean something.  We want someone to blame.

But the truth is, whether it's beyond our control or not, these things do happen.  The innocent suffer.  Babies die - by accident and sometimes, as hard as it is to imagine - by mistakes (fatal ones) made by relatives or friends - relatives or friends with varying motivations. Hard as it is to accept, the ones who DO die may just be the lucky ones.  Many children are wounded so badly inside their spirits that even as adults, they might never recover from the perfectionism or emotionlessness of their parents.

And the agony is still just as real for the relatives and friends who are to "blame" as it is for the ones who aren't.  Pain is pain.

Tragedies happen.  Floods, earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, fires, car crashes.  It doesn't mean that God isn't good.  They just happen.  They happen to bad people AND to good people.  It doesn't make the pain of loss any less real - no matter who you are or what you believe.

People fail financially.  Abysmally.  They don't mean to - but it happens.  Things get out of control.  Debts rise.  People - smart people, people of faith - buy into the idea that in order to make money you have to spend money.  The turn-around will happen, the break-even will occur and then everything else will be gravy.  

But it doesn't happen - for one reason or another (does it matter whose fault it is?)  And they have a choice: mortgage their children's future, or declare bankruptcy.

It's a tough decision.  We chose bankruptcy.  

We know the embarrassment and shame of failure.  

We also know the horrible feeling of trusting we were in a safe place with our brothers and sisters in the Lord - only to be judged and ostracized by some of the very people who only a few weeks previous were singing in complete abandon beside us.  The judgment came from a place of faulty belief: the belief that Christians should never fail financially.  (Oh yeah, like we really set out to do that.  NOT!)  In fact - it's the "flip side" of the prosperity gospel, the 'name it and claim it' doctrine (also known as the 'blab it and grab it' idea).  The basic belief is that God wants His people to prosper just because they're His.  The prosperity people take it to the extreme: diamond rings, fancy cars, 7-figure bank accounts.  But the idea has trickled down to those who would deny subscribing to that belief - because I've heard it said that it's a "poor testimony" to fail financially. To me it's the same belief - just a matter of degree.  

I'm inclined to think that financial failure is not a poor testimony.  To be sure - it's not desirable.  But it's not a poor testimony - it's life.  

I think that it is something that God will use to help someone else who has to go through such a thing.  We understand the feelings of despair and of uselessness.  Only recently God set up a conversation with someone who was so incredibly crushed by this stigma associated with his own financial failure that he felt like - well, like dung. And through our experience he was able to see that life does go on. 

If we hadn't gone through that and been able to talk to this fellow, it's possible he could have even considered suicide.  That happens too - because of the condemnation doled out by those to whom money (i.e., having enough of it) is a sign of divine favour.  Poppycock! 


Oh, to be sure, financial tragedy like that hurts - believe me - in ways I can't fully describe.  And it matters not whether losing our shirt happens because of the greed of others or the inability to control the monster when it gets out of the bag.  But I think that when Jesus said that people would know us by our love for each other, perhaps He should have put a proviso in there - "...as long as they can pay their bills."  Hm? no??  Oh... 

If we have to be the means by which other people decide whether He is trustworthy - by our success at staying out of crushing debt or of nothing bad ever happening to us - then He's not much of a God is He?

If we believe that God has to rely solely on His people to uphold His reputation in the world as to whether He is good, then who do we believe is God after all - Him?  or us?

Nativity Debunked

When I was a child, my mom had this little chintzy nativity scene that showed Joseph and  Mary beaming down on Jesus, who was beaming blissfully lying scantily draped with cloths in strategic places, on His back in a wooden manger.  The whole scene was bathed in the glow of a comet-like star, shining upon the inside of a wooden barn with a thatch roof.  It was replete with the requisite camel, donkey, cow and sheep, and adorned by richly clad shepherds and angels and wise men, oh my.

Bunk.  No halos.  No music. No glamour.

Historians paint a different picture of the "stable" in which Jesus was born, and the Bible leaves clues that fill in the rest of the story.

The stable was not in a barn.  It was in a cave.  People who had cows in that region often kept them in nearby caves away from any rain that might fall and where they would be easy to corner and milk in the morning.  

Jesus was wrapped in swaddling clothes.  These were strips of cloth that were tightly wrapped around the child's entire body with only his head sticking out. They did this to make sure his arms and legs grew straight; it was a common belief (probably fueled by the incidence of rickets).   The manger was not made of wood.  It was most likely a hollowed-out boulder.  When Jesus was wrapped in the swaddling bands and placed in that manger, it looked like He was prepared for burial... a mummy in a tomb.

The shepherds only looked after the sheep in the hills outside Bethlehem in the few months prior to Passover.  It was their job to watch over the Passover lambs, not only for the feast but also to watch for the one lamb that would be the sacrifice that year: perfect, with no blemishes.  Shepherds were considered the riff-raff of society.  They lived in the outdoors and would most certainly not have had clean clothes or smelled like a rose either.  Not likely anyone trusted them; after all, they were paid out of the temple treasury.  

Their arrival at the stable might have caused some concern to Joseph and Mary as they saw them approach.  As they heard the remarkable story of angels shouting the praises of God in the skies outside the town, and of the sign they were told to look for - their fears subsided.  

The wise men (and nowhere does it say there were only three; in fact, there were probably so many of them that their procession caused no small stir in Jerusalem when they arrived and asked to see the newborn King) did not show up that night.  In fact, it was over a year before they showed up.  The star that led them there had shown up in the far east - and they knew to go to Israel.  Naturally they assumed that it would be the capital where they would find the Child.  We know that they took over a year to get to Jerusalem because of Herod's reaction when he asked them what time the star appeared and then, when they didn't show up to report on Jesus' whereabouts, he had every child under the age of two years old killed.  

Talk about paranoid.  He was well known for being afraid of being knifed in his sleep or poisoned by members of his own family. He was very serious about any threat to his "throne".

No, by the time the sages gave their gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh, the little family was living in a house in Bethlehem, no longer in a stable (after all, the census was done and the population of Bethlehem had gone back to normal).  Scripture tells us that when the magi got to the house (not the stable) where He was staying, they gave their gifts.  

These lavish gifts would hold them in good stead in Egypt, for what good would the skills of a carpenter do in Egypt, where the only trade that paid anything at all was that of stone-mason?

Two or three years in Egypt.  And when the time came for them to return to Israel, they finally returned to Nazareth, with Jesus and probably at least one younger sibling in tow.  And Nazarene tongues which wagged six years previous started wagging all over again.  We might be tempted to think of the nativity and the early life of Jesus as somehow sheltered, protected, with angels "ahh-ing" all over the place.  But Jesus and His family knew poverty, pain, persecution, and peril from the word go.

God saw fit to allow it ... so that He could relate to our pain and rejection, our hardships, our feelings ... as one of us. 

How far He will go -

The most amazing miracles that happened during our time of want, during the bankruptcy, the court case, and the time when we were paying off the court fine, happened where it counts most: on the inside.

We learned to depend on God - yes. Out of necessity. We saw some financial miracles happen during that time and since - yes. God knows our needs; that's not in question. But the biggest miracles can't be measured in a measuring cup or by dollar signs. These are the ones that happen in the heart. One of the biggest ones that happened - and perhaps one of the major reasons we had to go through all that - was in relation to my attitude toward my husband's mother.

What I'm about to say might sound harsh, but at the time before we went into bankruptcy it is really how I thought, what I truly believed about her.

I thought she was evil. Not the "Hannibal Lecter" kind of evil. More like the Hitler kind - the kind that really believed it was doing what it was doing for the greater good.

She had bipolar disorder. It is a horrible mental illness caused (in large part) by an inability of the body to extract lithium, a mineral salt, from foods like spinach, lettuce, leafy greens, etc. It meant that she had extreme highs and lows of mood - it used to be called manic-depressive psychosis. Sometimes, yes, it seemed as though she had lost touch with reality.

She took medication for it but she hated what it did to her: weight gain, kidney problems. She would sometimes flush it down the toilet when she was feeling on top of the world. Her better self knew it was not good to stop taking her medication, so usually she remembered that she had to take it. Without it - she was ... scary. Even with it, she still had highs and lows that were far more pronounced than most people's. When she was on a manic phase, she'd talk and talk and talk. Her mouth got her into more trouble. Indiscretion was her chief enemy then - she'd tell anybody anything, her deepest darkest secrets - or ours. When she was depressed - she'd talk and talk and talk - but this time it would be in bitterness, resentment, and frustration over her lot in life. Sometimes it was hard to tell if she was on one phase or the other.

As with most people with a chronic and overwhelming condition, sometimes she excused her erratic behavior with her condition. "I can't help it. It's just the way I am."

I got so sick of hearing her say that.

It seemed - to me - that she would lay awake at night thinking up ways to screw up our lives. Then after only 2 hours of sleep, she'd get out of bed at 5:30 a.m., (there should only be one 5:30 in a day and it's not the morning) call us - no - call my husband up on the phone and refuse to talk to me but only to him. Not even hello. "Is my SON there." I lost count of the times he would just lay in bed with the phone propped up against his ear, mumbling "mfff" into the pillow as she droned on and on incessantly about how hard her life was, how nobody appreciated her, how it was so difficult to have a handicapped child (whom she depersonalized by calling her "a Glenda" - like this: "You don't know what it is like to have a Glenda..."), how her husband never told her he loved her, etc., etc. Once she'd carried on her monologue for 45 minutes or more and the night's sleep had been thoroughly ruined for both of us, she'd hang up ... and the next morning it would start all over again.

That's when we got the answering machine. One with a 30-second cutoff.

Resentment built up in me as the years went by and she made no effort to change. She'd say horrible things, usually about her daughter, and when we'd confront her about them, it was, "I never said that. I would NEVER say that!!" But she did. And always, "It's my condition."

She'd do things for us, and then expect us to return the favor. At least that was how it seemed. I believed there were always strings attached to whatever she did. I began looking for ways to avoid being around her. My husband had learned long ago to just let her talk - she would only get worse if he contributed to the "conversation" by injecting some truth or confronting her about how indiscreet she could be about our own lives in front of complete strangers, and being an extreme extrovert as well as having bipolar disorder.

I remember distinctly my breaking point. I was having breakfast at a local restaurant with my family - my husband and my two small children. We were in a secluded spot so as to be away from view to people coming into the restaurant; we wanted this to be "our time." The door opened and in they walked. She got within line of sight and made a bee-line for us while her husband sat at the table across the room from us. I knew that she would sit down right next to us and monopolize our time, this one time when we just wanted to be the four of us. How dare she!

I felt trapped. I felt like this was our last bastion, and she had ruined it.

I lost it. I was curt, clipped, and very rude to her. After about ten minutes of my downright nasty attitude and my inexcusable behavior, she went back to her table to sit with her husband. She was perplexed. I was still fuming.

My husband was silent for a few minutes. Then he spoke; his voice sounded hurt, bewildered. "Why did you do that? She didn't do anything to you just now. All she did was she happened to come into the same place you were in. She didn't know you were going to be here. What in the world is wrong with you?"

I opened my mouth - but nothing came out. I was without excuse. I had been wrong to attack her like that, and I knew it. And it was at that point that I knew that whatever her motivations were, I was the one with the problem. It bothered me - all that day.

I wanted everything to be all right. I wanted to feel what I knew I SHOULD feel for her. But I couldn't get past the hate, the hurt, the preconceived notions. I couldn't get past all the horrible things she had said to both of us, about us, about her own daughter - in front of her, no less. I could see it was ripping me apart to hold onto this. But I couldn't bring myself to be open to seeing her in a different light.

God put His finger right on that very thing that made me squirm. I wanted to do what He wanted me to do. But I just couldn't bring myself to do it. However - because of how important my relationship with HIM was, I was willing to be made willing... and so I prayed, "Lord, whatever it takes - I want to be willing to let this go."

Within a few months, we sat in a bankruptcy trustee's office.

God had to let everything be taken from us. The pain was so deep, He had to start from scratch so that I could see how wrong I had been regarding my beliefs about her.

The woman I thought was so evil turned out to be one of my - our - strongest allies. The other ally we had was her daughter Glenda, who had been in our corner from the get-go (see my August 3, 2010 post.) My mother-in-law took it upon herself to buy about 50 to 60 dollars' worth of groceries (meat, no less) for us every week - and she kept it up throughout the bankruptcy period. She knew we could never pay her back. She didn't care. She never once asked for anything in return. That spoke volumes to me. She didn't know she was preaching that kind of sermon to me. She just lived it. At every turn, she never ceased to amaze me.

During that nine months and beyond, I had a lot of humble pie to eat, and I ate it alone - nobody knew. Even as we had to deal with the court case and the fine, she stood solidly behind us and refused to believe what the paper said, refused to believe that my husband intended to defraud the government, and kept on just giving and giving. Even when Glenda died in 1999, she kept her heart open to us, and as we helped her go through Glenda's things in the weeks after the funeral, she gave to us out of those items things that she believed would be special to us. And at last, when she realized that we could finally accept financial help, she took what little she had and made sure that we would be provided for in such a way that we knew we didn't ever have to pay her back.

I remember an incident that happened shortly before she passed away that illustrated to me just how much my thinking had changed - in fact, it shocked me when I thought about it afterward.

She'd already had the first heart attack. I had been to her house where there was a meeting going on between the members of the family to decide "what to do with Mom." I heard the words, "institutional care." I was told to leave, just take the children and go - I wasn't part of this decision. That stung. But I left and decided to go to the hospital to see the person they were all talking about. I found myself strangely looking forward to seeing her.

She was so glad to see me, as I knew she would be. I remember seeing a half-eaten meal on her tray. It wasn't like her not to eat. Anyway, I told her ... and I meant it ... that I liked to come and see her because she was always so pleased to see me. Then I said that I had just been at the house and was made to feel like I wasn't welcome there, that nobody wanted me around.

She fixed her gaze on me. There was fire in her eyes. "Well - that's THEIR loss," she snapped.

I was speechless. I didn't know what to say - and I doubt if I could have said anything at all even if I had tried. The last hurdle was gone. I knew that she had been generous all those times because ... she was just generous; giving was her way. And when she wondered why I treated her so badly after all she had done for us, it wasn't a guilt trip. She really was befuddled by it. In those moments, as the children played quietly at the foot of her hospital bed and the clock ticked in the background, I knew I had been so very wrong. So very wrong.

I reached out for her hand. She took it and squeezed it. "Will you do something for me?" she asked. "Will you make sure that that son of mine comes in here to see me? I miss him." I told her I would be able to bring him in, on the coming Monday evening.

She had a second heart attack in the hospital on Monday afternoon, the day I was to bring my husband in to see her, and she passed away before they could revive her.

And I grieved. I grieved for all of the lost time I had wasted being angry with her, all of the special times we could have had if she had been around longer, now that I'd just figured it all out. The resentments had fizzled and disappeared. Love and forgiveness reigned; in fact, it had already happened without me realizing it.

And when I realized (a few days later) just how generous she was, and just what great lengths God went to in order to answer my prayer ...

I sobbed.

Crime and Punishment - and God's Grace

".... to pay to the court the sum of fifteen thousand, two hundred eighty four dollars and sixteen cents, the equivalent of back taxes owed plus penalties and interest accrued during said time, to be paid to the court within two years."

Crack! went the gavel.

So it was official. My husband now had a criminal record. Huh. The lawyer motioned to us to follow him to an adjacent room.

We were still reeling anyway because he told us that his opponent had agreed not to mention where my husband worked, so as to keep that organization's name from becoming tarnished. He'd not kept his promise. We knew that this would hit the paper because our newspaper published court cases in the Saturday edition in a column we liked to call "Voyeur's Alley." The media would eat this up.

Anyway, we followed the man to the little room off the courtroom and he explained how the fine was going to work. "Don't worry about the time limit. The court will allow you to ask for an extension, six months at a time of course." We nodded. He told us where to send the fine payments and shook our hands. "I know that this is hard," he said. "But all things considered, I think it turned out well."

We nodded again. We exited the building in a daze.

Within a few days, we sat across from the bankruptcy trustee, as it was nearing the end of our nine month process. He told us, "You've handled your finances in an exemplary fashion and in the last nine months I've been able to collect over four thousand dollars from you, and that will be divided among your creditors. I am recommending that you be discharged fully from the bankruptcy process. You won't have to make any more payments to me after ... the end of June, two weeks from today." It was kind of like an anti-climax with all the other things that had been happening. We were relieved of course - but still...

And then it was Saturday. The story of the court case hit "Voyeur's Alley" in the local paper. "XXXX Employee convicted for tax fraud" - oh great - a headliner.

And then we found out who our friends were.

My husband's father disowned him. He believed everything - at face value - that was in the paper. No questions; immediate judgment. That really hurt.

His mother, on the other hand, maintained contact... even though she couldn't quite figure out the difference between the bankruptcy and the court fine. She thought it was all the same thing. For a while she even kept giving us meat from the grocery store (see last blog entry). We had to tell her (out of conscience) that she didn't need to do that anymore.

I remember that first day after the paper ran my husband's "story." We used to sit in the back of the church so the kids could play without disturbing anyone. We were back there when one of the pillars of the church walked by in back of us. He rarely spoke anyway - but he took the time to come over and squeeze my husband on the shoulder before going to his seat. That meant a lot to us. No words were spoken. But it was obvious he didn't believe the spin on everything he read in the paper.

Over the next few days I fielded phone calls from various people, people we knew and I never expected to hear from ever again. This one fellow called, one whose Bible study my husband had attended for years. "I know your husband well, and he would never knowingly do what they said he did," he said. "And I know those folks at RevCan. They were using him as a scapegoat and they chose him solely because you guys couldn't fight back. I just wanted you to know that my wife and I are in your corner. We're praying for you."

When I hung up from that call, my throat had a lump in it that felt like the size of an orange. As I remember that incident, lo and behold, there's that lump again! Bless you Albert, wherever you are.

Since the bankruptcy was discharged, and the fine loomed, it was time for me to seriously think about getting a job. The kids were old enough to be in school and daycare - so I started casting around for a job. I found one as a bookkeeper for a while, then as a technical support person at a local internet support call centre. While I was there, I got a call from someone in "Staffing" at what was then called the Canada Customs and Revenue Agency. My name had come up next on an eligibility list I'd forgotten about. Huh? Guess where I ended up working on and off for a couple of years? - at Revenue Canada!! HA! The irony! The timing!

All through that time period, I was whittling away at the court fine while paying day care charges, and my husband paid as much as he could on the fine after the regular bills were paid. Still, it wasn't coming down as fast as we wanted it to - and we had to ask for a couple of six-month extensions. We were nearing the end of the second six-month extension and screwing up enough courage to approach the court (hat in hand, so to speak) to ask for yet another, when something happened.

To let you understand how all of this came about, I have to back up just a few months. My mother-in-law called me one March morning when I was in between projects at the Tax Department (oh, that still makes me laugh...) and she asked me to once again explain to her the difference between the bankruptcy and the court fine. I told her again. She said finally, "So, you used to not be able to take gifts of money, and now you can?" I said yes, that was right. "Oh...I thought -" and she went on and on about how it all happened at the same time and it was so confusing. I let her talk.

Okay now - fast forward to the end of the second six-month extension; it was early August. Basically put, there were some serious health problems with my mother-in-law. She would forget she took medication, then overdose. That kind of thing. It landed her in the hospital with a heart attack. She wasn't herself - she was having to be told when to eat, what pills to take, etc. She recognized people, but she just wasn't ... right somehow. Anyway, to make a long story short, she passed away.

In the midst of grief, we got a phone call from her lawyer. About a week after she and I had talked in March, she had gone to her lawyer and updated her will. She'd made my husband the executor, and redistributed her assets to account for a death in the family (see my August 3, 2010 post).

After all the dust settled from her estate, which included her own father's annuity to be liquidated on her passing, there was just enough money willed to us and also from executor's fees - for us to pay off the rest of the court fine, which at that point was some five thousand dollars.

Just like that.

We viewed it as the gift she had wanted to give to us for such a long time and couldn't.

Her final gift. We were - and are - so grateful.

Miracles in the midst of want

I mentioned in my last entry that not all Christians judged us for our financial failure.

Some of them loved us through it, supported us with prayer and with kind words.

Still others went the extra mile and were willing to be God's provision for us as and whenever He led them to do that. It always turned out to be the perfect timing.

One day, about half-way through that nine months, I noticed that less and less of my clothes were fitting me. That was because we could only afford starches and high-fat meats. "Lord," I prayed. "I only have a couple of outfits left. I need some clothes, but I can't afford to go buy any, not even at the second-hand stores." Within two days, one person (I still don't know who) left a garbage bag on our back step filled with clothes... nice ones. Most of them fit me, and what didn't fit me, fit my oldest girl so she could hand down some of her clothes to her younger sister.

We didn't talk much about our problems, but there were those whose lives were affected directly, people we had to tell. Among those were members of our extended family. We got varying reactions from them, everything from hand-wringing worry from those who knew what it was to be in want, to something similar to "Let them eat cake" from those who had no clue what financial distress even looked like.

It just about drove my mother-in-law crazy that she couldn't write us a check for a hundred dollars and make everything okay for us. She even wanted to open a bank account for us. We told her that any extra money that anyone gave us would be confiscated by the bankruptcy trustee to pay the creditors with. She wanted US to benefit, not the people we owed. So every week, she would send her husband over to our house to drop off about three grocery bags of meat. Chicken legs or thighs, pork chops, lean hamburger, whole chickens. Sometimes even the occasional package of steak. She didn't get much in the run of a month; she called it "mad money." That she would spend her own money on us - just blew me away.

We never went without. There were times, the day before my husband's payday, that we had to rummage through the couch cushions for change. He'd go down the street with his head down - he was looking for coins people dropped. But with the generosity of some of God's saints, and His miraculous provision, our family never went hungry.

The first God-miracle we noticed though, came when the trustee sent an appraiser to look at our house, to see if it could be sold to pay the creditors. He made his assessment, looked at our mortgage, which we'd added to about five years previous in order to finish the basement, and told us that if the house were sold, there wouldn't be enough equity left over to pay the realty fees AND have enough to pay some to the creditors. So we got to keep the house.

A particularly trying time came when the tax department, who had been auditing my husband's taxes, decided to press charges for tax evasion. They knew full well that he couldn't fight the tax department in his situation of bankruptcy. He had made some errors in judgment about two years previous, based on lack of information about tax changes, and they decided he would be a great object lesson to anyone who wanted to have a home business and do their own taxes. Anyway, we had no extra money for a lawyer. The court date came, and the judge called his name. He stood up and the judge said, "Where is your lawyer?" He said he didn't have any. "Get one, and be back here in two weeks."

We found a lawyer willing to take our case but he charged a fee of $600. It was an enormous sum of money for a cash-only budget. It certainly wasn't an approved expense. However, my husband went to the trustee and told him the situation. Finally, after much pleading and arm-twisting, the trustee said, "Well, there's the third pay period this month. Out of that, you pay the mortgage and the lawyer. We get the rest." What about groceries, my husband asked. "No. The mortgage, and the lawyer. Nothing else."

When I heard this news, I was overcome with worry. No grocery money for two whole weeks?? How would we survive? How could anyone survive?

I needed help - some message from God to know what to do.

God was punching down the clay. Jeremiah 17 says that the clay was marred in the hand of the potter, so He made it again another vessel, as it seemed good to the potter to make it. That's what was happening.

In desperation I opened the Scriptures. "Please tell me what to do, Lord. We are so in need of Your guidance." Somehow I remembered the story of the widow who was financially destitute. Her children were going to be sold into slavery to pay her debts. And she went to the prophet to ask him what to do. Of course this is the story of the widow's cruse of oil that didn't run out until she had enough oil to sell to pay her debts. But there was a part of the story that had escaped me... until it jumped off the pages of the Bible at me. When she explained her predicament, the prophet said, "What do you have in the house?"

I stopped. What did I have in the house? Well, now. I didn't know exactly.
"Find out," said a little voice in my head. Or was it my heart?

I decided to do an inventory. I went through the fridge and the cupboards, and put together a menu plan for 14 days' worth of breakfast, lunch, supper, and snacks. It amazed me that the little bit of food in the house would last that long. We actually had enough food. I discovered that if handled right, one pound of hamburger could stretch for three meals for two adults and two children. The only thing we had to buy in that 2 weeks was one container of milk. The loose change paid for that.

God had provided; there was no other explanation for it!!

The court did impose a fine, by the way, near the end of our bankruptcy period. It was substantial - and the bankruptcy laws didn't allow for that debt to be erased since it was imposed by the court system. In a way it felt as though we'd gotten out of one mess and into another.

But God wasn't finished with His miracles yet.

Bankrupt!

I was talking to a friend of mine today about how we know that God will provide for our needs ... but what exactly ARE our needs?

"Oh God, I really NEED a Porsche."

We might laugh at that kind of prayer. But it shows how deeply ingrained our western culture is and how it has seeped into the church.

What do we mean when we say that God will provide for our needs? Does it mean that we'll never, ever, not in a hundred years, go without? Is there room in our theology for a God who would allow a Christian to suffer want?

Is it ever God's will for a Christian to declare bankruptcy? There now, I've said it. The B word.

It's not something that is all that easy to do in Canada. In the States, declare bankruptcy and within six months you have at least some credit rating back. But in Canada, it's a very grueling process. You have to list all your assets and liabilities, then your bi-weekly (or monthly) income and expenses, itemize it, have a bankruptcy trustee go over each one and allow or disallow each one. The debts are forgiven in the sense that you don't ever have to pay the creditors back - at least not all of it. They are prohibited from calling you up to demand payment. That in itself is a great relief.

But for nine months, every expense is scrutinized, and every last cent that isn't spent on necessary (and approved) items is given to the bankruptcy trustee to be distributed to the creditors at the end of the nine months. If you've kept your nose clean, at the end of that period, the bankruptcy is "discharged" and you don't have to report to the trustee anymore. So that means there is a little more money at the end of the month.

However, that's not the end. Your credit rating is absolutely ruined. And it stays ruined for years. YEARS. Seven years, to be exact. And then you have to start from scratch.

The whole process is designed to make a person think very hard before committing to that kind of step. And it's also designed to teach people who have not managed their money well, HOW to follow a budget.

The mechanics aside - what is the will of God in this matter of a Christian declaring personal bankruptcy??

The truth is - I really don't know for sure. All I know is what we went through.

We had tried to operate a business. "Spend money to make money," we were told. So we got a fax machine, and spent money on faxes and on long-distance telephone calls to grow our contact network. We got lots of good contacts - but no sales. More and more money disappeared into the phone bill. We were spending some $700 a month in long-distance alone. This went on for quite a while. We borrowed to pay the bills, and we borrowed to pay the loans we got to pay the bills. The debt was crushing us. We felt like failures. We were stressed out all the time wondering where the next meal was coming from, or who would call us next asking for a payment.

In desperation, we went to the Orderly Payment of Debt (OPD) office. They looked at the debt load and (bless them, they didn't laugh) told us that if we went for OPD, we would be mortgaging our children's future for the next 30 years. They advised us to declare personal bankruptcy.

That period of time was the most wrenching of our lives up until that point. We were dealing with the possibility of being stigmatized by the very people who claimed to care about and love us - as long as we measured up to their expectations, we found out. The internal struggle, the pain of daily wondering when it would all fall apart around our ears - early on in the mortgage with no assets to call our own - we agonized about this decision.

And that's when we got a first-hand dose of "Christian love and concern." When I mentioned to one person that we were having significant financial problems and we didn't know what to do, she said, "Well, THAT's not speaking in faith...."

OUCH. And then she started telling me that she knew how I felt, how she and her husband were struggling to have enough money at the end of the month, and how God always made sure that they were able to pay the bills, yada, yada, yada.... She just didn't understand that it wasn't like someone could write us a check for a thousand dollars and fix everything. We needed over fifty times that amount just to make things manageable.

Another lady called me on the phone every day. She assured me that she and her husband were praying for us, that they were believing for a miracle. "Did you get your miracle yet?" was her first question, every time.

Finally, we knew it was time to declare bankruptcy when we sat across from a loans officer at a finance company to take out our second loan to buy groceries.

So, that week we decided to go to the trustee and declare bankruptcy. Although the initial setup was a difficult experience to say the least, the trustee looked at us at the end of the meeting, and said, "None of your creditors is allowed to demand payment of this debt ... ever again." For me it was like a two-ton weight fell off my shoulders.

And the next day the phone rang. It was this lady again. "Did you get your miracle?" she asked. "Yes," I said. She was excited and wanted to hear all about it. "God used us declaring bankruptcy to erase all of our debt," I told her. She stammered, cleared her throat, and made some excuse to hang up.

She never called again.

OUCH again.

We learned not to let anyone know about our predicament unless we had to. It was our experience that nobody wanted to hear anything about financial difficulty in the life of a Christian unless it was already resolved. It was a taboo subject, and fodder for criticism and judgment from many in the church. It went against some people's theology, a theology started by Wall Street and legitimized in the Christian community by such charismatic folks as Kenneth Copeland, Oral Roberts, and Robert Schuller.

I'll tell you what I think. I think that God can use ANYTHING for His purposes. I think that in some cases (not all) it IS God's will for a Christian to declare personal bankruptcy. It's not something a Christian would enter into willy-nilly. Going that route is not without a whole lot of heart-rending soul-searching and prayer.

I also think that Christians need to cultivate a response to the shocking news that someone has failed financially (or for that matter, morally), a response that isn't based on snap judgments, but on a desire to understand. Not a desire to understand the mechanics of the failure or to comprehend whose fault it was, but to really hear the heartache and the shame that is behind such an admission... and to focus on THAT rather than whether it's right or wrong.

God taught us so very much through the bankruptcy. He showed us just how powerless we were to get out of this mess on our own, and that was an object lesson to us of the spiritual predicament that ALL of us are in - unable in our wildest dreams to have a relationship with a holy God based on our own merits. When our debts were forgiven, we got a true picture of forgiveness - we never had to wonder whether this company or that company would come after us for payment. We knew they never would. "Just as if we'd never owed," was the perfect illustration of the Christian concept of Justification by Faith.

We did learn how to live within our means. Cutting up the credit cards, living on cash only, was a huge adjustment but we learned how to do it. It made life so much easier after we were discharged from the bankruptcy and nobody would give us any credit for years afterward. And we resolved never to get into a debt we couldn't pay back - ever again.

And there were so many experiences where God really came through for us and met our everyday needs through the kindness and the generosity of His people - for not ALL people in the church judged us. Some of them actually loved us... and showed us they loved us. God Himself worked a couple of really amazing miracles of provision along the way.

I think I'll save those miracles for another post.