Unexpected Ministry Opportunities

Sometimes we get ministry opportunities in ways we're not expecting.

Recently while writing a magazine piece, I sent off a couple hundred old family slides to be scanned. Some of them were of me and Liz. She was Wife #2 (of 4) and we were married for three years. A young woman (I'll call her Susan) sent e-mail and asked what happened to Elizabeth and me. Why did we divorce?

The question really got me thinking. I didn't exactly know why. I wrote back:

“Liz and I loved each other dearly. Look at the looks in our eyes in those pictures! Even after we split up, we loved each other. We even got together and spent the night together once. It was lovely. I love her now. Always have. So why did we split?

“Dern! I don't know. We just couldn't get along. But that's not really a good reason if you love someone, is it? Neither of us was abusive. No drunken rages. No vicious arguments. We just couldn't get along.

“So why did Liz and I split?

“I guess 'cause I was an a**hole.”

And I clicked “Send” and didn't think too much about it. But Susan e-mailed me right back:

“Have you ever helped someone and not known it? You did today. I won't go into details, but through your experiences, you've opened my eyes to what's going on presently in my life and changed the perspective immensely. Thanks for being open with me.”

And it was so nice of Susan to say so!

And a dear friend from my former job let me know that her father just died. He'd had lung cancer.

I wrote her back and all I said was: “You did everything right.”

After Lois died, someone said that to me and it meant more than all the inane “She's in a better place” horsecrap. Or “She's sitting in the arms of Jesus.”

Yeah, yeah, I know. But death isn't about the dead, you know. I mean, they're out of the loop! It's about those of us left. We're the ones who are hurting.

Next time someone around you has a death of someone dear, just hug them and say, “You're going to be fine. You did everything right.”

Even if they didn't. Lie a little! It wouldn't kill you.

Political Short Take

I "happened" upon this verse in Micah today that resonates somehow in the current political arena. See if it fits:

"If a liar and a deceiver said, 'I will prophesy for you plenty of wine and beer,' he would be just the prophet for this people!"

For a quick historical perspective, it was Herbert Hoover in 1928 who said, "A chicken in every pot and a car in every garage."

Hmmm. And we know how that worked out.

Walk with the King today and be a blessing.

Nearly Saw Her Yesterday

I almost saw Lois yesterday.
Well, not really. I mean I know she's dead and all. I mean, for goodness' sake, I saw her die. But I nearly saw her anyway. We had the downstairs apartment here, with its own entrance. When I would come in from work, I'd walk down the wooden walkway to our door. I'd look through the glass, and there she'd be, looking like a million dollars, usually sitting in her chair reading something. Murder mysteries usually. Gosh, she loved them! She could get through one a day. Except of course yesterday she wasn't.
I mean, she's dead and all.
But still...
I always use the upstairs entrance now. But yesterday, I stopped. I looked at the back entrance and started slowly heading that way. I said out loud to myself, "Is this something you really need to be doing?"
It was.
I've gotten pretty good about corralling my imagination before I drift down one of the "black corridors of the mind" and get myself all nutty. You can do that if you're not careful and it's pretty upsetting. Sometimes messes me up all day. I have 5 or 6 pictures of us together that I really like and I've printed each one on 8 1/2 X 11 inch paper and they're in my sock drawer. Sometimes I'll just stand there and stare at one of them for the longest time. I'll really get lost in it. All kinds of emotions. Loss mainly. And regret. I think something inside of me says if I really let myself go, I can meld into the picture, reconnect with her, like an old movie where they do a dissolve and the couple is together again, holding hands and skipping along happily. It's kind of like that.
Except she's dead and all.
But yesterday, it seemed like it was okay to take a little side trip. Not too deep and not too black. I slowly walked along the walkway and was hyper aware of everything around me. The details of the wood, the plants growing next to it, the feel of the cool autumn air, the sounds of my shoes on the wood. I walked closer and felt that familiar feeling you get when you do something you've done many times before.
Except it wasn't really all that many times. We'd moved here in December of 2006. December 16. Beethoven's birthday! And 11 months later, she was gone. But many times, I'd walked along that wooden walkway and approached the door with the big window and had seen her sitting there.
I'd come in and give her a nice kiss and a big hug and call her my "Pretty Girl". Which she was. But not yesterday.
I mean she's dead and all.
It was still light outside and dark inside so there was a lot of reflection on the glass. I stood there for a long moment, staring through the glass, over toward the corner where she would have been sitting. And I just stood there. And thought. And looked. With the reflection like it was, I wasn't sure what I was looking at. It was as though if I stood there and stared long enough, I'd be able to make out details of what was inside.
I nearly saw her.

Saturday Morning Musings

Looking forward to a heavenly revival with Grandmother White one of these days. No rush. She was about as sophisticated as a bullwhip -- which she knew how to use. Once drove a wagon train. Half Choctaw. (Makes me an eighth.) Tough as they come! And I absolutely loved her. And she loved me. Our idea of a fancy dessert was eating in her kitchen having white rice with sugar sprinkled over it. White sugar. Yum yum!

Re-uniting with our now-dead spouses in heaven. Jesus said (quoting from Luke 20) that there wouldn't be any marriage in heaven. "...in the resurrection from the dead will neither marry nor be given in marriage." So where does that leave, you know, uh, intimacy? Way beyond my poor mind's ability to encompass it all.

Gasoline prices have dropped here in Tennessee by $1.25 a gallon in the past month. How come we don't scream and act a fool with the same fervor as when the price goes up? Grandmother White used to say, "He'd kick if he was playin' football!"

Had an eye exam yesterday. Bloody spot in my right eye. Scary-looking but harmless. Just a little break in the conjunctiva. Told me to use some lubricating drops. But she says I have a little cataract development in each eye. Nothing serious right now. Explains why I'm having a hard time reading the captions in the comic strip "Get Fuzzy" in the ever-shrinking Nashville newspaper, The Tennessean. They've just shaved off two inches of width. Great business model; taking away the very thing their core readers need: larger type. But maybe they're trying to run us off so there'll be more for younger readers. Waitwait! There ARE no younger readers. Oh sure. So just run off the only readers you do have. Makes sense.

Maxim Magazine is moving part of its operation to the Nashville area. Pondered what its presence in Middle Tennessee might offer to those of us in the creative community. Looked at the magazine carefully. Not exactly a walk with Jesus. Don't think I'd want to breathe the same air with them for any period of time.

All the more convinced that there's a future for me in stock photography and travel writing. I put together a 20-image portfolio, enabled me to look at my work from a perspective apart from time, and saw some good, marketable images. For sure good. Not sure about marketable. Thus a seminar in February at the Santa Fe Photographic Workshops. Been wanting to do that for almost 10 years. Finally able to afford it.

My plan is to earn a living from stock photography and writing travel articles. Travel for a month, back home in Nashville for two, out again for a month. And so on. The two months home would be used to re-establish contact with my church family, to write articles based on my research overseas, and to get images out to the stock agencies. Lofty goal. But stranger things have happened. Like becoming a TV news anchor when I was 50 with no prior experience.

Economy worries. Dave Ramsey has an interesting take on what for some has become a source of huge angst: "...you’re going to fix the economy because your personal economy is up to you. It's not Washington's job to fix what's going on with you. If you are waiting on Washington to change something, you've got a long wait! You’re going to give yourself money as a result of your hard work and persistence. Waiting for money to be taken from others and given to you is a spirit of envy, and it's wrong."

I'm keeping that in mind as I watch the news.

Staying between the White Lines

The message that was on my heart this morning when I awoke was forgiveness. The theme of my inspirational speeches (I'm talking like I'm already doing them!) is "living between the white lines". That term came from conversations I had with myself last year when my wife was slowly dying of lung cancer and I was coming home from work. As I drove along the Interstate, I let my mind wander down some dark tunnels and I started crying. My eyes were so full of tears, I could barely see the highway. So I shouted out loud to myself, “COME BACK! Stay here in the present. Just keep the car between the white lines.” And it worked!

The thing that triggered my thinking is a high school reunion this coming weekend. Fifty years since we graduated from Ardmore High School in Ardmore, Oklahoma. I imagined standing up in front of the room at the dinner Saturday night and saying:

"Fifty years ago, when we knew each other, some of us were socially awkward. Or arrogant. Or afraid. Or, in a few cases, downright mean. Well, most of us have gotten over that. We've matured or mellowed or in some cases gotten religion.

“But some of the people who knew us 'back then' have not gotten over the old hurts, the snubs, the ridicule. I just invite all of us now to sweep aside the bamboo curtain that keeps us trapped in the past. Let's pull that curtain back and take look at who's here right now, right in front of us.

“You may be in for a huge and wonderful surprise!”

Walk with the King today and be a blessing.

KEEP THE CAR BETWEEN THE WHITE LINES! GOD LIVES IN THE PRESENT.

I'm Baaaaack!

Grieving is a little like flies around an outhouse. Buzzing around, not really causing any harm but being an annoyance.
I awoke this morning to a new day. My daily routine is to walk out into the front yard to pick up the newspaper (the funnies await!) and look around and say, "Thank you, Lord, for a new day. Help me seize this day to your honor."
And so I shall.
In the midst of last night's funk, I did get some productive work done. I'm applying to the Santa Fe Workshops. They have many workshops but the one that interests me is on the subject of stock photography -- how to shoot it and how to sell it. Among the requirements is submitting 20 images. In the process of going over my photography, I found some very nice images. It's interesting to look at it as a single body of work, peering over the shoulder of time as though somebody else did it.
Pretty nice stuff! I could actually make it as a stock photographer and travel photographer/writer. Oh yeah, I know, every guy my age has the same idea.
But I've actually got the chops to do it!
So I printed out 20 prints last night.
Good exercise. Cleared my head; revived my spirits. A new day awaits.
Boogie on!

Where Do I Go with These Emotions?

I want my Lois!
I want my Snookie-Pie!
I want my baby!

We're exactly three weeks away from the first anniversary of Lois' death.
I was at Walgreens just now and on the house music system, I heard, “Only love can break a heart.”

I got a tear in my eye, choked up a little.

Yes, her love inhabited me for 25 years. She loved me completely, even when I was being a stupid jerk.

And now that she's gone, there's a gaping wound, a resounding emptiness in my soul.

Last year – about this very time – when Lois was in the hospice center and before I brought her home to finish out her days here in familiar surroundings, the very nice hospice doctor took me aside and asked, “And how are you doing?” I think she asked because I appeared pretty calm and peaceful.

I wasn't.

I told her, “I feel like I want to go somewhere and get away from this.”
She was so kind, so understanding. She said very sweetly, “Well that's certainly an option. But I think you might miss something very special if you did.”
She was right, of course, and I didn't.

But where am I supposed to go with all that's building up in me now? It's stuck in my throat. I've had laryngitis for two days. And it's nothing physical. No fever, no soreness.

All emotions.

Dear Lord, where am I supposed to go with this?

In the old days, I really would go away from the emotion. But now, I want to stay awake for this surgery. I want to feel it, taste it, touch it, inhabit it.

But it hurts so! When does this end? It's a fish hook in my heart. It's been nearly a year and the pain is raw again, like someone poked their finger into an old wound.
My friend Walt wrote me this afternoon.

“One thing you and I share is the knowledge that all our pain and grief only exists because the marriages we had were so strong and fulfilling and based on deep, abiding love on all the different levels, from the loftiest to the most animal.”
He's exactly right! He and I were blessed with very special marriages, very special women.

And that's all well and good. But what am I supposed to do with this feeling? I feel it in my chest. A weight. If happiness is a “lightness”, then this is a “heaviness”.
I am reminded of the old church hymn, “Take it to the Lord in prayer.”

I'm taking it to you, Lord!

Please take it away.

Lois went away but the love for her, the yearning for her, did not. We were together for over 9,000 days. Nine thousand memories. No, make that 100,000. No, more like a million. They flood over me, they cover me like an avalanche. They bury me. They cloak me.

They caress me, even now.

Those Good Days

Back a little over a year ago, when Lois was lingering and there was some hope she might survive the lung cancer, I got some huge encouragement from an old newspaper buddy in California, Walt Wiley, whose wife had died about a year earlier. Here's a portion of our e-mail:

"Walter,

Rather than focus on the small chance of survival that the doctors quote, I'm focusing on the celebration we will have when Lois is fully recovered and can run and play again.

"Meanwhile, I'm appreciating the small things. This morning (Sunday) we have the house to ourselves. Jan and Debbie have gone to Knoxville -- 200 miles away -- to pick up a car. Lois and I sat in the sunny dining room and had breakfast, read the funnies together, commented on developments in the news, occasionally debated points that we differ on.

"You know, Walter, it's those small moments that really define a relationship. And when Lois was in the hospital earlier this week, that was what I missed most. There's something about discussing things with her that makes them real. If I've been out taking pictures or if I'm reading an article about Germany, talking about it with Lois makes it concrete.

"I pray the Lord will bless me with Lois in my life for many years to come.

I am not willing to let her go!!!

James"

And then Walter responded, in part:

"I sometimes think that those good days are our little mortal glimpse at eternity."

Amen! What a true pal Walter is! That one line gave me such comfort at the time. And it continues now.

As a coda, I remember an interchange a few months later as Lois and I drove to New Jersey to her stepfather's funeral. I held her hand in mine as we drove along Interstate 81 in Virginia and told her, "I wonder if I hold on to your hand tightly enough, God won't take you from me."

She responded, "Sometimes you have to let go."

It's a bitch. I'm approaching the one-year anniversary of her death. It's a bitch!

I'm a wreck but I pretend not to be.

In the Zone . . .

When I'm shooting pictures, I get into an altered state. “In the zone.” Here now. All my senses are attuned, fully focused on what's going on around me, feeling no pain, free of worries and distractions, in a place where there is no yesterday to regret and no tomorrow to dread. Only the present.
It must be like the high that athletes talk about. Or jazz musicians, tuned in to a force outside themselves. Or hunters, when their senses are sharpened to the sounds and smells of the quarry.
But my quarry is not animals. It's human emotion. An unexpected smile, a look, a tear in the eye.
I'm not really a wedding photographer. I'm a photographer who sometimes shoots weddings. For me, there is no more pleasurable, intense experience than being on a shoot. Even better, a multi-day shoot. I was shooting for five days in Honduras back in August and it was absolutely electric!
I shot a wedding Saturday, a good friend from my TV days. I woke up Saturday morning a little groggy and worried that I wouldn't have the energy to buzz around and get the shots I needed.
I did! As soon as I got there and raised the camera to my eye, my brain shifted gears.
I've used the term “between the white lines”, describing a time last year when I was driving home from work and Lois was dying and I was a menace to safety on the Interstate because I was crying so much. “Just keep the car between the white lines!” I ordered myself.
A friend in Texas -- Richard Johnson -- wrote that his grandfather told him the same thing but used these words: “Boy, just keep the wagon between the fence posts.”
Amen!
I would say, BE HERE! Be in the present because that's where God resides. That's where He speaks to us. And I don't want to miss it.
I absolutely believe that God directs my photography when I'm shooting an unplanned, spontaneous event. He gives me gentle nudges, a “hint” or a “hunch” to go and stand in a certain place, to swing the lens around at a particular instant.
And for those who are not photographers, God speaks to you in the same way. But we can't hear Him if we're busy “twittering” or playing computer games with our cell phones or chattering mindlessly.
Lois and I were great that way. At night, we'd sit around the breakfast table in the kitchen reading, saying nothing for long periods of time, soaking up the presence of each other. After a half hour, I'd look up and say, “Too much chitter-chatter!” And she'd smile.

Getting and Spending

"Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers."
During the short time I was a TV pitchman on the QVC shopping channel, that sentiment from Wordsworth kept resonating in my mind: the futility of getting and spending. And I think the viewers heard it telepathically because I certainly was not a very successful peddler of gee-gaws and jimcracks.
Lois was always the cheery one at Christmas, buying gifts for everyone. I was the Scrooge. "Why do we need to buy things for people that they don't really need with money we don't really have?"
We are all now in the process of looking at what's really important. Not just us but the entire world. Awesome thought. Scary thought.
A few years ago, I spent some time with a family in Poland and I was struck by the family connection. The Hidjik family shared a car with their neighbor. Shared a car! Can you believe it? It was parked in a garage a block away and they had to WALK to get to it.
Astounding.
I saw families on Sunday with picnic baskets walking down to the river bottom for a Sunday lunch together. TOGETHER! Caramba!
A few things we can do without and still have healthy, happy lives:
- Cable TV. Instead of paying $100-plus a month, put up an antenna. It's free! Poor people have been doing that for years. Back when I was on TV, I was always recognized more in the poor neighborhoods. The rich folks didn't watch that much free TV and they didn't know me from Adam's house cat.
- High-speed internet. Internet service providers have been sticking it to us for another $100 a month. They may magically find a way to do the same thing cheaper.
- Cosmetic surgery. Let nature take its course!
- A new car. It's a lot cheaper to maintain the old one. And with cars easily getting 100,000 miles, another 100,000 isn't out of the question. Ought to be a boom time for garage mechanics. But a bust time for manufacturers.
- Education. Wouldn't it be lovely to see our children get educated? Be able to read? Diagram a sentence? Know the capitals of the United States? We're spending billions on things having little to do with education. ESL. Special ed. Piffle! What about the basics? The basics may be all we can afford. And that ain't bad.
- Extras on cell phones. What about actually speaking to people? I wouldn't see cell phones going away but I'd sure see us cutting back on some of the frills.
- Big houses. Those McMansions out in the suburbs. What's going to happen to them when their owners have to move out and into small apartments? Believe me, life WILL go on.
- When we take European vacations, stay in the room with a bathroom down the hall. It won't kill you. I've been doing it for years.
- Cook at home instead of eating out or heating up frozen dinners.
- Drink water out of the faucet. The water is safe. This is not a third-world country!
We've got our "wants" and "needs" sort of scrambled together.
I think some unscrambling is ahead.
My calendar has a German sentence for each day. Today's is, "Das ist Wahnsinn." Which translates as, "This is insanity."
Maybe not. Maybe this is sanity. We just didn't expect it to look like this.
Rejoice!

The Only Thing We Have to Fear . . .

This may be the best thing that’s happened for us since the Great Depression.
What?
Are you nuts?
You just don’t understand!
You're naive!
You smoked too much dope in the '70s.
Anybody hear our parents or grandparents talk about the Great Depression? The main thing I remember my Mother's saying is, “Times were hard. But we had each other.”
Hmmm. “Each other.” Do we have each other now?
Well, we’ve got a hi-def TV in every bedroom.
We’ve got a car for every man, woman and child in America.
We’ve all got an iPhone, a Bluetooth and a pair of the latest sneakers.
And we've got enough blubber to carry us through half the winter.
But do we have each other?
Wellllll... Not so much.
Look, there’s always something to worry about. Anybody who's worked in the news business knows it's really the “gloom and doom” business.
I have one of those Bibles with really wide margins so you can take notes. In mine, I’ve occasionally jotted down some major event that was going on at the time that had me worried. The time in 1998 when I got crossways with the local newspaper gossip columnist and worried myself silly about getting fired.
I didn’t.
Then there was the autumn of ’06 when it looked like we might lose our house. I worried and worried and worried.
We lost the house. But God provided. All the worry was really unnecessary.
There was the autumn of ’07 when I worried about losing my wife to lung cancer.
I did. And I survived.
You talk about worrying!! Loss of spouse is about as intense as it gets!
And I survived. And so will you.
Whatevertheheck happens with the world's economy, you will survive.
What I'm about to say is going to sound like heresy: we needed some mid course correction. When you've got too much stuff for too long a time, you start thinking goofy thoughts. Like stuff is important. And that you're responsible for your getting the stuff. “Me! Me! Me! I did it!!! I'm Master of the Universe.”
Proverbs 30:8-9 makes an excellent point: “Give me neither poverty nor riches, but give me only my daily bread. Otherwise, I may have too much and disown you and say, 'Who is the Lord?' Or I may become poor and steal and so dishonor the name of my God.”
We've done some of both of those, haven't we?
Well, it's about time to stop. And I believe it's going to stop. Real soon. I believe we're at the dawn of a worldwide revival. It's cloaked in an economic collapse. And it's not going to be pretty. But it's going to break us out of prison.
There is an entire generation that only knows holding out their pudgy little hands to the big daddy. The boss. The parent.
Another government program.
A new president is going to make it alllllll better!
Riiiiiiiight!
We're about to discover that all that ain't worth a “bucket of warm spit”, to quote former Vice President Cactus Jack Garner.
Get ready for some big changes. We're about to get to the point where God is all we got left.
And that ain't bad.

Anniversary Imminent

About this time a year ago, I took Lois to the emergency room for the last time. Visits to the e-r had been a regular thing as her health weakened. Lung cancer just sucks the very life out of you. We had just returned from New Jersey where she attended the funeral of her stepfather Ed. Although she didn't say so, I think she mainly wanted to say goodbye to her mother Elsie. And Elsie knew that too. The trip was physically difficult for Lois. I drove the 18 hours from Nashville to Whiting, New Jersey in two days, stopping in Roanoke for the night. I took out the rear seats in the mini-van and got an inflatable mattress so she'd be comfortable. She slept a lot. The morphine made her pretty groggy. One of my most poignant memories of Lois was when we were on the Pennsylvania Turnpike heading toward New Jersey. I held her hand as she dozed. She roused up a little and I said, “I wonder if I held your hand tightly enough, maybe God wouldn't take you from me.”

She looked over at me with her beautiful – but tired -- blue eyes and said, “Sometimes you just have to let go.”

And that's what I've been doing the past 11 months. And “letting go” may not look like some people expect it to look. I'm wearing my wedding ring again. And wearing her wedding ring on a chain around my neck. I'm not so much holding on to the past but I'm celebrating her presence in my life. You know how she was: Beautiful. Sassy. Passionate. Opinionated. Loving. And a true Proverbs 31 woman. As I wrote in her obituary, “Charm is deceptive and beauty is fleeting; but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.”

I'm not wandering around in a depressed haze. I'm living life. Thanking God each morning for a bright new day, a day full of possibilities, a day to honor Him. Some days I do a better job than others. You will recall that I ain't no holy joe. I like my earthy references. I like women. But I try my best each morning to prepare myself. I call it my spiritual breakfast.

After I got her home and into home hospice care, I went back to work. But it wasn't easy. I remember driving home on the Interstate, my eyes filling up with tears, knowing that at any time she would be gone. Forever. Sometimes I'd let myself wander down those dark tunnels of the mind. I'd stop myself, blink away the tears and say out loud, “Come back! Get here! Just keep the car between the white lines.”

And that has become my mantra. Stay in the present. Keep the car between the white lines. God lives in the present. And if I want to hear His voice, I need to be present.

As my friend Agnes in Germany says at the end of her e-mails: “Hoping that you enjoy life and that there is always sun in your heart."