A lament for home and humanity

When we put our house in Michigan up for sale last week the one thing I didn't anticipate was the bitter sting of rejection. We would never say that our home was perfect, but there is no denying that it is lovely, even after three years of a rental occupancy. Apparently, though, the majority of prospective buyers have no "scope for the imagination," as Anne of Green Gables would say, and can only see what is before them. They see the scuffs and marks in paint (which may not be a color they like), the kitchen floor that needs repair because of a dishwasher leak we've just discovered, the few loose outlets and missing towel racks, the massive furniture of the tenant that dwarfs each room, the scum left in a sink that hasn't been scrubbed down, and the carpets that need to be cleaned. To the uninspired buyer, it doesn't make any difference that as soon as the tenant moves out, all of these defects will be fixed. Prospective buyers also see the cracks in the walls of our unfinished basement and unfortunately they don't have a civil engineer with them (reason #152 why I married Kraig) to let them know this is typical for Michigan basements, and that there are no structural issues, nor are there leaks or mold. Little consideration is given to the solid roof, the energy-saving windows, three-year-old sink faucet and dishwasher, or the two-year-old microwave and stove. New water heater? Who cares? The furniture takes up too much space and the tenant's packing boxes are beside the front door. This house "does not show well."

I feel like crying a bit--or fuming.

I think of the home we bought in Texas last year, and all of its idiosyncrasies. It has a lot more work that needs to be done than our Michigan home will ever need, but I love it. We are friends with the woman who grew up in that house, and I learned about her parents building it, and a little about their lives there. Neighbors speak of the previous owners with fondness, and we reap the pecans from the trees planted by them. There are so many stories we will never know, but it is a home that was consecrated by love. It is also full to the brim with potential, and in our first year there we have already stocked it with new stories. Rooms are slowly given a fresh coat of paint, windows will be replaced, kitchens and bathrooms updated. It will take time, but in the process we will live and love and work, and sometimes pull our hair out with frustration. This is life. Homes require work.

When I look at our home in Michigan, I see its lovely qualities and all of the layers of memories.

I see the way the light pours through the many windows even on gray January days.

I admire the sunset through the kitchen window, and the view of my neighbor Barb's gorgeous perennial garden through the bay window in the dining area.

I remember Keren and Ev playing on the floor in the kitchen while we worked to get the house move-in ready in the winter of 2008. The only room in the house that didn't need paint and carpet was the kitchen, so that became the safe zone while we worked. Clare, at two, helped paint...a little! I remember writing Philippians 4:6-8 on our plywood floors before the new carpet was laid and believing every word of it even in the struggles. I still hold those words close.

I remember family parties.

I remember our final Christmas there with Keren, when Jon was just beginning to be a new family dream.

I remember the cold, snowy January day when my sister Carrie watched Clare and Ev and I rushed Keren to the hospital, not knowing she would never come back to that home. I remember the house full of family and friends surrounding us with so much love in those months that followed, and the dance between pain and joy as we grieved Keren, but laughed over Clare and Ev's antics, and looked forward to Jon's arrival.

Keren's dogwood

I remember bringing Jon home and the joy of watching him grow and seeing the new shape that our family took with all of its complexity.

I remember the pleasure we had in forming our vegetable garden, and how each spring our neighbor, Barb, would hand me some perennials and say, "I'm splitting these, so feel free to plant them. They bloom at such-and-such point in the summer."

I remember the first days of school for each kid, the playdates with friends, and the neighborhood tribe of kids that played around our court and through our backyards.

I remember the slow process God took Kraig and I through toward a new life, a life that would take our family from this dear home to a sunny apartment and new friends in Guadalajara, Mexico, and then two years later, to a shady, rambling ranch house in Longview, Texas. I know now the hope and prayer that we will be in Texas for a long time.

Our new home in Texas

Life is an adventure, and our houses are a part of that. They are integral to our lives, whether we live alone or have big, crazy families that fill spaces to the limit. But houses are what we make of them; they are not simply what they appear on the surface. They are so much more than a limited first impression. They are homes.

We're praying that a family will walk into our home and realize that, not just because we want to sell the house, but because we want others to have the chance to build beauty there.

The Truth of the Matter

They exchanged the truth of God for a lie...

~Romans 1:25a

"What is truth?" Pilate asked Jesus. It's a question that has echoed down through the ages, and still confounds people today. My high school English teacher often challenged us to ask ourselves, "Is it truth with a capital 'T' or lowercase?" Is it absolute truth, or is it relative? That's an even more difficult question in our culture now where absolutes are shouted down absolutely. We are encouraged to be tolerant toward all...unless someone's conviction doesn't permit acceptance of all views. It's an impossible weight to carry, and at times it seems like the world is fracturing under the stress of it. This past year has been the worst I've seen, and I've found myself shaken when I've discovered many of my truths are at odds with friends and family whose beliefs and values I've trusted. I do believe there is Truth with a capital 'T', God's Truth, but I have to be careful to define it on His terms and not my own. 

Recently Kraig and I started watching the series The Man in the High Castle. Its premise is an alternate history 1962 in a world where Germany under Hitler won World War II. The eastern United States is now part of the Reich, and the Pacific States have been ceded to Japan; an uneasy alliance exists between Japan and the Reich, and a stranger relationship has developed between the former Americans and their captors. The story is intriguing and unnerving, obviously because the thought of the United States under an ideology like the Reich is horrible to imagine, but also because there are so many plot points that reflect realities that are in our own world today.

One of the most disturbing characters is Obergruppenführer John Smith, an American-born high-ranking official of the Reich in New York. Though he was born before the war he is, at least as far as we've gotten, completely loyal to the aging Hitler and the ideology of the Reich with its fierce anti-semitism and annihilation of anyone who doesn't fit the Aryan model. He is ruthless, and would be impossible to sympathize with in any way if he did not have a family which he obviously loves, particularly his teenage son, Thomas. 

(For those who haven't seen the show and hope to, the following bit is something of a spoiler, though I have no idea how it's going to play out as the seasons continue. I'll leave the decision to go on up to you.)

In an episode 8 of the first season, Smith takes his son to the doctor to check out a strained wrist. After the appointment, the doctor privately pulls Smith into his office and reveals that Thomas is in the early stages of a terminal congenital disorder. In the scene, Smith is visibly shaken, and I remember thinking, Whoa, this will make him more human! Smith asks the doctor if they can get a second opinion.

"You have that option" the doctor replies. "But you should be aware that if he is submitted to others for examination this would become an institutional issue."

"Oh, I see. Yes, of course," Smith responds, flustered out of his typical reserve. 

What? I thought. That's not an option! And it hit me that under a totalitarian system, there wouldn't be the freedom to privately seek other opinions, particularly in a system where illness was seen as imperfection to be eradicated.

But the scene didn't end there. The doctor counsels Smith that he and his wife can treat their son at home (quietly and behind the scenes, I thought, to get around regulations). Then the doctor pushes a syringe and ampule across his desk to the dazed father. 

"As for medical assistance..." he says, describing the ingredients: morphine, scopolamine, and prussic acid. 

And finally the full truth of what was going on in the scene sank in. The "medical assistance" was death. In the Reich, there was no room for disabilities or long-term care for anyone terminally ill. They had to be terminated. They were a drag on society, or worse, a blight. Later that evening in the same episode, Smith flips through an old photo album of he and his brother. His wife looks over his shoulder reminiscing and speaks of how she wished she had had siblings and the great relationship like what he had had with his brother. "Seeing your brother like that, it must of broken your father's heart," she says, revealing to the audience that Smith's brother must have died of the same disease Thomas has. Then, in complete contradiction to her own logic regarding the joy of siblings, and in oblivion to the truth she says, "Well at least now, when someone is terribly ill, they're not allowed to suffer. That's a blessing."

I was still mentally reeling over the sight of that bottle and ampule. This was not an alternate history. Oregon already has its doctor-prescribed death-in-a-bottle for terminal patients. Colorado and California passed similar laws in their November votes. It's not our policy-makers who voted in these laws, it is "we the people." We don't have the excuse of a dictator with a hit-list against anyone who doesn't fit his ideal of humanity. In our country, the arguments seem to run along the lines that these prescribed suicides are for overall "health" in a  way--family health, society's health, the removal of an individual's suffering. We should not allow suffering. We should not create an economic drag on society. All the while we move blindly into a new Reich where prescribed death is acceptable and cheap, while actively researching potential cures and caring for those who are weak and suffering, and learning from them in the process, is seen as an impediment to cultural advancement.

Eight years ago today, our daughter Keren died. During the course of her life, from before she was born to the day she died, and since, she had purpose and significance. This wasn't just because we loved her, but because we saw that every piece of her Trisomy 18, genetically-flawed, body had been given to us by a God we loved and trusted. She was not a curse; she was not an object of suffering; we were not heart-broken by her brokenness. We were transformed by her existence. We grieve her death, but it is not grief without hope.

In addition to our own walk, throughout her life we were surrounded by family, friends, doctors, and teachers who were there for us and for her. They sought ways for her to reach her full potential. No doctor or teacher could really state her full potential with "facts" because in this world where we can help the sick, people are continually seeking to discover things about our bodies and about diseases. There is always the possibility of a cure. It is only in a world where suffering is considered unacceptable, life expendable, and death preferable that nothing will be done to improve it. 

We have a choice. We can go with the current flow and accept the "truth" that suffering is unacceptable and that there are certain people who disrupt things by their flawed existence, or we can stand against it by holding those who are suffering and learning together what true love really is. Yes, the world is broken, but it is God's Truth that it will be made new, and in a small, faithful way, we can be a part of that restoration.