Funerals and Weddings

My dad discovered my blog yesterday.  More like, he came to pester me while I was proof reading and recognized his own scribble handwriting on the screen.  Since then, he has been a bragging father sharing the url (which he still hasn't memorized) with his friends and colleagues.  He also printed yesterday's blog and made Mom read aloud it to my grandparents and sisters.  She almost made it all the way through, too.  However, all of this means I have to behave for the next few days while his friends investigate this site.  Sorry to disappoint but there will be no poop stories this week.  :-)

By the way, today my parents are celebrating their 24th wedding anniversary!

<>< Katie

The other day, I was standing in the church atrium with my favorite funeral director, Mark.  A wedding was about to take place, but we weren't there for the wedding.  We were loitering by the door.

"You know," Mark said, "there really is no difference between weddings and funerals.  I mean, there's a minister for both, and they're both an end.  The only difference is that one you're rolled in and the other you meander in."

I was kind of stunned by the pessimism in this statement, especially coming from someone as upbeat and fun-loving as Mark.  I feel the need to mention that he's happily married.  We kind of joked about it and moved on to joke about something else.

Later, I was thinking about our conversation again, and I realized he's right.  He failed to mention they both also involve crying and Mark greeting at the door.  In all seriousness, they are both an end.  But, at the same time, they are both a beginning.  A wedding is the beginning of a life together.  In the faith that Mark and I share, a funeral is the beginning of a new life, an eternal life.

It was only then that I realized Mark was not the first person to speak about weddings and funerals in the same way.  Jesus Himself did it.

In John 14, Jesus says, "Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in Me. In My Father's house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. You know the way to the place where I am going."

Sounds to me like heaven-talk.  Funeral words.  Yes, but it's more.  It's a cultural thing we miss, but His listeners would have been befuddled.  This was wedding talk.

Max Lucado writes, "We Westerners might miss the wedding images, but you can bet your sweet chuppah that Jesus' listeners didn't.  This was a groom-to-bride promise.  Upon receiving the permission of both families, the groom returned to the home of his father and build a home for his bride.  He 'prepared a place'" (Fearless 118).

Lucado goes on to explain that Jesus puts funerals and weddings on the same platform.  They share the same hope.  When walking down the aisle, the excitement felt by the pallbearers should be the same as that felt by the bride.

I have never planned a wedding.  Neither have I a planned a funeral.  I pray I get the participate in the former before the latter.  However, if that is not the case, will I face them both with the same hope-filled anticipation? 

Just some food for thought.

<>< Katie

One Year Ago Today

I don't think I'll ever forget my last night in Costa Rica.  I lived there for a month taking Spanish classes and living with a tico family.  My final night, a big group of us went out to dinner.  My host parents, my host aunt  and family, one of my classmates, and myself.  We went to a restaurant that serves all of the food on one plate and you kind of grab the food and eat it with your fingers.  Yeah, not a germ-o-phobe's favorite restaurant.  Top if off with the fact that I felt like crap and it was not a pleasant night.  (I blame the chloroquine...next time I might take my chances with malaria).  I tried to eat but really had no appetite.  To distract myself from the nausea on the ride back, I started making a mental list of all of the memories/ stories/ things I'd learned that I wanted to share with Sra. Wright, my high school Spanish teacher.  Learning a language is one of those things you remember learning every detail, at least for me.  There were so many things I wanted to talk to her about, so I decided I was going to make a list on the plane ride back.

When made it home safely (that's actually a big surprise), and I stood in the family room contemplating checking my email one last night or waiting until I got back to the States.  I decided to go for it.  It'd be quick and then I'd go to bed and pray I was feeling better in the morning.  Well, it wasn't as quick as I had wanted it to be.  In fact, I learned that on the plane I'd be writing a different letter to Sra. Wright.  One she would never receive.  She'd passed away two days earlier.

The plane ride back was a roller coaster.  Sitting behind me on the plane was not just a student from my high school but someone that graduated with me... took Spanish with me.  I asked him if he'd heard and he said, "Yeah, it's a bummer."  A woman dies and you say a bummer?  That's worse than when I told a professor I was in a car accident on a way to her event and she said bummer.

I regretted not visiting Sra. Wright all of those times I'd visited my Alma Mater.  She'd asked about me, but I never made it down to see her.  I regretted not going in the one week I was home before leaving for Costa Rica.  (Again, I blame the chloroquine... nine weeks of nasty pink pills meant nine weeks of feeling nasty).  It helped me to know she hadn't been at school that day, but it didn't help much.  I regretted not emailing her to tell her I was still using my Spanish and going to Costa Rica to learn more.  I regretted not thanking her for taking the time to teach me.  I regretted not being able to look her in the eye the last time we spoke.  Her jaundice grossed me out.  I'd known she was sick, but I never knew she was that sick.  The word "cancer" was never shared, at least not with me.

I'll be honest, she was never my favorite teacher.  I was disappointed when I saw her name on my schedule for the fourth consecutive year.  In fact, there were many days I'd "Go to my locker" and get distracted by friends who had a free period; at least once a week I'd hear, "Katie, go back to Spanish."  However, even the teachers we don't always appreciate leave lasting impacts on our lives, especially when you see them every day for four years.

Earlier this week, my sister Christina asked me to explain the difference between "por" and "para."  I never get those two right, but I explained it to her the same way Sra. Wright explained it to me countless times.  In fact, one day in class the example we were doing was a post card written to a teacher years after Spanish class thanking the teacher for teaching the difference between por and para.  Sra Wright kind of laughed, "Please don't ever send me a post card thanking me for teaching you the difference between por and para.  Por and para can't be taught... they must just be learned."  That didn't stop her from trying.

The same idea didn't stop her from trying to teach us the difference between "ser" and "estar" either. Remembering this brought tears to my eyes.  She said, "Estar is used with changing things.  The soup is hot- estar.  Today I'm sad- estar.  The one I don't really understand is death.  To me, death isn't a temporary thing but the Spanish use estar."

Death isn't a temporary thing.  Life is the temporary thing.  How do we spend it?  Running a million miles an hour too busy to notice the little moments or investing in children and teaching them something they have the capabilities to use for the rest of their life?  Being too stuck up to laugh at yourself or stopping class to remark about the "delightful aroma" of fart in the room before leaving and locking your students in it?  Do you put up with their "Senora, how do you say (insert some super random word here like "lipgloss" or "headphones" or "@")" or do you cut off their fun?

Thank you, Sra. Wright, for taking the time to teach us the difference between "por" and "para" but, more importantly, thank you for taking the time to invest in us.  To show us we can do it even when we don't think it's possible.  In the words of the Celine Dion song sung at Sra. Wright's funeral, "You gave me wings and I could fly/ you touched my hand I could touch the sky/ I lost my faith you gave it back to me/ you said no star was out of reach... you saw the best there was in me..."

Muchas gracias.

<>< Katie

Baptist Easter

I was nervous about my first Easter in Baptist Country.  Come to find out, it was just me being a pessimist.  Big surprise.  I was wrong.  My Easter was very good!  Even if no one responded when I called, "He is risen!"

Sometimes when you live in a dorm room you forget what it's like to live in a house.  You forget what it's like to not be able to swipe your card and get a (maybe) hot meal but instead have a fully stocked pantry.
Lunch on Friday was a challenge.  I can't really call it "lunch."  A more accurate term may be: the massive amounts of bizarre food consumed around mid-day.  It was Good Friday, so I couldn't eat meat and I don't eat Ramen (so many college students live on Ramen noodles that it's my goal to graduate without eating them), Elizabeth can't cook anything except mac & cheese and there wasn't any, Jennifer only wanted cereal, and Emily only likes food that begins with the letter "c" and won't eat food that begins with "p."  Thus our lunch dilemma.  We ate: Ramen (not me), rice and cinnamon, cereal, cantaloupe, applesauce, pudding, and string cheese.  Don't tell Mrs. Mary.  :-)

When you live in a house you have to remember that the blurry red lights across the bedroom aren't just there to be annoying but to someone they reveal the time in the middle of the night...
Something you may not know about me: I am a bad bed partner.  I talk, I kick, I really hate sleeping on the top bunk without a safety bar because, well, I use the whole bed and sometimes more.  When I learned Elizabeth and I were going to be sharing a double bed for five nights I was scared... for her sake.  Even if I only kicked her once every night that would still leave five painful bruises on her legs.  As it turns out, I never kicked her but instead I took an elbow to the face in the middle of the night.  Thanks, friend.  She said it's because I stole the covers.  I told her if she would have asked nicely I would have given them back but nooooo she had to get violent on me.  :-)

In a home, everything has a place and the only thing out of place is Bananagrams, the most frequently played game in the house.
When I close my eyes to go to sleep at night, I see Bananagrams letters.  I'm kind of experiencing withdrawals being back on campus.  It's a word game kind of like Scrabble but better; we played for hours every day.  This is marvelous for word-lovers like me.  Not so great for the weird math-lovers like my future roommate Jennifer or friend Chris.  No one is still quite sure how Andy was able to play Bananagrams with one hand and look up spellings in the dictionary with the other.  Either way his "n comes after m" got really annoying... If you can't use a word in a sentence, define it, or spell it then you can't use it!

When you live on campus sometimes you forget driving can actually be faster than walking...
Since I wasn't home for Easter, some traditions had to be broken... like sitting in a dark closet for three hours on Friday afternoon to commemorate Jesus' time on the cross.  One tradition I refused to sacrifice was the Good Friday Service of Darkness.  It's an incredibly powerful service for Jesus reflecting on the seven things He said from the cross.  I forced Chris, Andy, and Elizabeth into funeral clothes and to the Lutheran church down the road (not to be confused with the funeral home).  We were teasing about the five cars outside and all of us leaving wearing black; people were going to start calling asking who died.  Jesus did.  Well, we walked into church and the first person we saw was wearing bright green scrubs.  Another person was wearing an Easter bonnet.  And there we were all dressed in black... So maybe this Lutheran church is a bit different than mine.  My three Baptist friends were good sports about it, though.

When you live in a house you forget that in some places of the world there are commitments before 8am.
Including Elizabeth and her two sisters, Andy, and me there were five of us fighting for one bathroom.  We were really expecting this to be a huge problem Easter morning, but it actually wasn't too bad!  For the first time in years we made it to the Sonrise service on time!  I'd never been to a Sonrise service, so it was a cool experience to stand in the parking lot and put flowers on the cross.  It a beautiful tradition and it works in Baptist Country, but it wouldn't work in place where a white Easter is feasible.

When you live in a house you have real dishes and nice china, too.
This Easter was the first holiday without my family.  I handled it a lot better than I anticipated... until Mrs. Mary asked me to set the table and handed me a set of plates.  The china pattern was the exact same as my mom's.  Our also rarely-used good china was being placed around a rarely used dining room table 900 miles away where, according to an earlier text from my sister, a place had been set for me.  I think I'm going to be late...

All in all, my Easter was great!

Care for some quotes for good measure?
Emily: What's the lowest note you can sing?
Andy: Um... I think a seven.
Emily: Will you do it?

Andy walks in carrying a heap of blankets
Elizabeth: What's that?
Andy: My gardening utensils.

Jennifer: Will you hold my Nerds? And don't tell me I am what I eat!

Elizabeth: I feel like a limp noodle!

Andy: Emily, can I put this pig in your speed bump?

<>< Katie

Tragedy for Steven Curtis Chapman's family

Steven Curtis Chapman's youngest daughter, Maria, was killed in a traffic accident in her driveway last night. See http://stevencurtischapman.com/.

The Chapman family had celebrating Emily's engagement.
They had been celebrating Caleb's high school graduation.
And now they're planning a funeral for their five year old.

In 1999, Steven wrote "With Hope" for a different five year old who died in a tragic traffic accident.

"This is not at all
How we thought it was supposed to be.
We had to many plans for you.
We had so many dreams.
And now you've gone away,
And left us with the memories of your smile.
And nothing we can say,
And nothing we can do,
Can take away the pain,
the pain of losing you, but...

"We can cry with hope.
We can say good-bye with hope
'Cause we know our goodbye is not the end, oh no.
And we can grieve with hope
'Cause we believe with hope
(There's a place by God's grace)
There's a place where we'll see your face again.
We'll see your face again.

And never have I known
Anything so hard to understand.
And never have I questioned more,
The wisdom of God's plan.
But through the cloud of tears,
I see the Father's smile and say well done.
And I imagine you
Where you wanted most to be
Seeing all your dreams come true
'Cause now you're home
And now you're Free...

We have this hope as an anchor
'Cause we believe that everything
God promised us is true

We wait with hope
And we ache with hope
We hold on with hope
We let go with home."

Prayers!
<>< Katie

"Brothers, we do not want you to be ignorant about those who fall asleep, or grieve like the rest of men, who have no hope. We believe that Jesus died and rose again so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in Him." 1 Thessalonians 4:13-14