Exiled

Dear Old Friend,

I was reading these verses from Lamentations 5 the other day,

“Remember, O Lord, what has befallen us;
look, and see our disgrace!
Our inheritance has been turned over to strangers,
our homes to foreigners.
We have become orphans, fatherless….”

…and I got a knot in my stomach because I was reminded of a painful time in my life; one which you helped me through.  My parents had separated and agreed to sell my childhood home.  I had pleaded, argued, cried and declared that I would not move; but, inevitably, my protestations were to no avail.  It was summer, and arrangements had been made for the move to occur during my annual week at a church camp in the Blue Ridge Mountains. 

I’m sure that everyone’s intentions were to try and make the transition as easy as possible for me, so when I left for camp the moving process had not yet started.  Nothing had even been put in boxes. Although, intellectually, I understood that I would be coming home to a new apartment which I had never seen, emotionally my twelve year old brain had not been prepared for that fact.  In hindsight, it probably would have been better if I had been allowed to watch the house become less and less like my home; but, when I walked out my front door for the last time, I had the illusion that my home was still intact and would be awaiting my return.

I remember nothing about the week at camp, but I do remember your parents picking both of us up from the camp bus drop-off and explaining to me that they were going to take me to the apartment.  I have to admit I was grateful that you were going to be with me!  Your parents tried to make the best of the situation, cheerfully asking if I was excited.  Excited wasn’t really the word.  Distraught and a bit nauseous were the words.  It was surreal.  I was being asked to accept that my home with the big treed yard, where I had lived since I was four, was gone without a proper goodbye and to pretend that this box-like apartment I saw when we pulled up was now home. 

We parked in the lot and lugged my suitcase up the stairs and through the metal front door, which closed with a hollow bang.  And there, in this foreign place, were my mother and all of our familiar belongings, looking very much out of place.  My mother urged me to go with you to see my new room which was all set up with my white French provincial bedroom furniture and my bed with the purple canopy. You dutifully oohed and aahed at how nice it was, and then your parents murmured that they had to be going, and soon the hollow bang of the door sounded again as you left.

You know all of that.  What you don’t know is that the recurring nightmares began soon thereafter and continued for many years.  In them, I would always go back to my old house where someone else now lived, but they were not at home so I would sneak inside.  Everything was exactly as I remembered, except that it belonged to another family.  I was always in the process of looking around when suddenly I heard a car door slam, voices and then footsteps.  I was terrified that I would be discovered and tried desperately to hide…and then I would wake up, heart pounding.

I felt somewhat like Jeremiah must have felt when he wrote those verses in Lamentations:  Exiled from my home which was now inhabited by strangers, feeling disgraced and alone.  

After several months in the apartment I developed a habit of going for a walk in the evenings after dinner.  Nearby was a neighborhood of houses with yards.  I liked going there at twilight when the lights were coming on inside.  As I walked down the sidewalk I could see what I imagined were happy families in their happy homes.  To this day, early autumn twilight brings back those feelings of longing and loneliness.

Years later, when my own marriage ended under circumstances similar to my parents’, and I moved out of the apartment which my husband and I had shared, I experienced the very same nightmares regarding that apartment as I’d had when I left my childhood home. 

During both of those periods of my life, God graciously gave me his precious assurance that no matter what was going on, no matter where I was and no matter how I felt, he would be with me.


As I got older I tried to make my own happy home.  We all do, of course. There's nothing wrong with that. But, no matter what, I always felt like there was something missing. 

In John chapter 14 Jesus promises he will not leave us as orphans.  He tells us that if we love him, he and the Father will come to us and will make their home with us, here and now, and then one day he will take us to our eternal home.  That is the home we have all been searchng for;  and it's one which can never be taken away.

I take such comfort in that promise!

Love Always,

Bonnie

Damaged Goods

Dear Old Friend,

Did you know you were the very first kid I ever met who came from a broken home?  I remember so clearly the day my mother told me I would be meeting you.  She explained your circumstances which seemed quite novel to me. It was difficult for me to wrap my ten year old mind around the idea of not having both of your parents around all the time.  I guess my mother wanted to prepare me so that I wouldn’t blurt out some insensitive questions and make you uncomfortable, but after her little talk I had lots of questions I was dying to ask you.  Hopefully I didn’t; I can’t recall now after all this time.  I do recall being relieved to discover that you were quite “normal” and that I liked you.  I was totally oblivious to the fact that the seeds of marital discord were already taking root in my own parents’ marriage and that approximately two years later you and I would be in the same boat! 

I know you remember how active my parents were in our church and church school, helping out in just about every area.  I had grown up feeling securely a part of the “inner circle”, something which shouldn’t exist in churches and church schools but always does.   However, when my parents’ marriage exploded into a million pieces, the rest of the “inner circle”, after carefully examining the causes of the explosion, which included marital infidelity and my father's admission that he was gay, took formal steps to disassociate themselves from both of my parents, and I was the sole survivor of the blast. 

As you recall, I lived with my mother who began attending another church.  She expected me to go with her and intended to enroll me in the church school associated with that congregation, but I balked.  I had gone to the same church since I was five and the same school since the year it began holding classes, which was when I was in third grade.  My family had participated in the planning and building of the school.  All of my friends were there.  I pleaded my case by telling her that my church family was all the security I had left.  The guilt worked and I was allowed to remain; but, it was a hollow victory.

As a middle school aged sole survivor I was an awkward reminder to the church of my parents’, and perhaps their own, failure.  No one knew quite how to relate to me.  I relied on your mother and others to take me to church each week.  Fortunately we were in the choir together so the sting of not having my family present in the congregation was lessened. But it was still painfully obvious that a child without adult family in church is relatively invisible.  Occasionally one of my parents’ old friends would make eye contact and self-consciously ask me how I was doing.  I would say I was fine, but we both knew it wasn’t true and neither of us knew what to do about it.  I was grateful no one asked about my parents.

School was better in some ways, worse in others.  I had you and my other good friends and none of you seemed to treat me differently; but because neither of my parents felt welcomed they  would not agree to attend any of my school events, including my middle school graduation, which left me feeling pretty alone and abandoned.

Around that same time I read an article in a magazine which talked about the damage suffered by children of divorce.  I can’t say what the writer’s intention was; I can only say that what I gleaned from the article was that I was damaged goods.  There were dire statistics about higher divorce rates, suicide rates, and an overall poor prognosis for life in general.  The article made me furious! I felt like this was how everyone looked at me now.  I felt like the world declared me to be a poor risk because of something over which I had no control.  I made a vow right then to prove to everyone that, not only was I not a ruined person, I was a better person because of my circumstances!

How noble that sounds; the makings of a Horatio Alger success story!  And I did try.  I tried so hard to be okay, to be good, to be undamaged; but, inside I always felt broken and ashamed that the magazine had been right after all.  It wasn’t until after many years of trying, when I finally heard the Good News of Grace, that I realized we are all damaged, most often by circumstances beyond our control, and that our brokenness is what God uses to draw us to him; the one who has always loved us, never left us and is able to heal our deepest wounds.

And sometimes, thankfully, He also gives us the blessing of dear friends with whom we can share the journey.

Love Always,

Bonnie

Rebel

                               

Dear Old Friend,

In my last letter I told you the story of how we got our dog, Quiz.  This time I want to tell you a bit more about what he is like, as background for a funny story.  From the very beginning we could tell that Quiz desired to understand what we wanted from him so that he could do it.  Because he had been homeless we weren’t certain whether he was completely housebroken. The rescue worker who brought him to us assured us that he was crate trained, and suggested that when we left the house we should put him in his crate because it would prevent accidents and would also give Quiz a sense of security. 

I was the person who left the house last each day, so I had the responsibility for putting him in the crate and to my relief he always came when I called and went straight in with no fuss.  One day, about a week after we got Quiz, I called him when it was time for me to leave, and to my amazement he was already in the crate! I told him he was such a good boy and gave him a biscuit.  The next day and the next, when it came time, he was already in place waiting for me to shut the crate door.  To this day I don’t know exactly what my “tell” was which signaled him that the moment had arrived, but he had watched me and learned my routine better than I had and he was so anxious to be good!

Imagine my surprise, then, when the Great Couch-Throw Tug of War began!  I had a knitted throw on the couch where I always sat and Quiz usually sat on the floor next to my feet.  Whenever I would put the throw over my legs, he would make a tent of the part that hung down and crawl in.  Soon I realized that he was twisting himself around in the “tent” in such a way that he was pulling it off my lap and trying to drag it onto the floor so that it was completely wrapped around him. I, of course, resisted this attempt and from time to time I spoke a stern “No!” as his tugging became more insistent. 

It seemed that, the more I tried to lay down the law regarding the throw, the more determined Quiz became in his efforts to obtain this coveted knitted treasure.  I would come in the room to find him sleeping on it after having dragged it off the couch when I wasn’t looking.  I tried tucking it into the cushions to keep him from getting it, but he somehow managed to pull it out.  I tried leaving it on the top of the sofa thinking it would be out of reach, but he apparently climbed up and retrieved it when my back was turned!  The battle raged for weeks.

I’m ashamed to admit that, in the end, I let him have the throw and bought myself a new one.  I’d like to think it was grace on my part, but it was mostly surrender.  By the way, he still pulls my new throw off the couch from time to time, just to show me he can. 

The thing that struck me the other day was that Quiz’s reaction to my telling him not to do something is a perfect example of how we react to the Law.   Remember in Romans 7 where Paul says that the sin in us “seizes the opportunity”, which a commandment provides, and makes us want to do the very thing we are told not to do?  (Take a look at verses 7-11)  The fact of the matter is, I’m just like Quiz!  Even though I want to be good, when somebody forbids me to do something, I frequently have a crazy rebellious attitude that rises up in me and says, “Oh yeah?  Just watch me!” I’m not proud of it, but it’s true. 

God says we're all that way. In fact, that very reaction is why we needed a Savior who would never rebel, would always do what God asked of him and would ultimately die so that God could forgive all of our crazy rebellions!  Thankfully, God’s response to us is always grace, not surrender!

Love Always,

Bonnie

Rescued

Dear Old Friend,

Dr. Donald Barnhouse once said that all of life illustrates Bible doctrine.  As you know, we have a rescue dog named Quiz.  He spent most of his first year on the streets.  I don’t know why his owners kicked him out, but they weren’t interested in having him back, so a rescue organization took him in and put his picture on their website.  He is part beagle, part we’re-not-sure, but the minute my husband saw that photo he knew he was “the one”. 

The organization’s home base was about an hour from our house, so we went on a field trip to meet Quiz. I took a quick look at him and then wandered off to see a few other dogs I had viewed on the website.  But my husband stayed with Quiz who was in a fenced area with another dog who was very friendly and eager to vie for my husband’s attention. Quiz, however, hung back and whenever my husband tried to approach him he moved away. 

We were avid viewers of Ceasar Millan’s show The Dog Whisperer, so my husband had a few tricks up his sleeve.  He turned away from Quiz and pretended to pay attention to the other dog.  He could see out of the corner of his eye that Quiz was watching him pet and talk to the friendly dog and that Quiz was looking longingly at them and quivering.  My husband interpreted this to mean that Quiz very much wanted to join in, but was too afraid; so he sat down on the ground and continued to play with the other dog and gradually Quiz approached, still shaking. 

Finally, Quiz was near enough for my husband to slowly reach out his hand to be sniffed, and then he was able to pet him.  They sat together for awhile and by the time I came back my husband announced he had made up his mind that Quiz would be ours.  Once I heard the story of how he wooed Quiz to overcome his fear and how desperately Quiz wanted to be loved, I agreed.  

Here is a picture taken when he first arrived:

Today I was thinking about how we would typically expect God to be like Quiz's original owners who kicked him out of the house presumably for one too many rule infractions.  But, because Jesus came and kept all the rules for us, God actually relates to us in the same way my husband did to Quiz. 

When we’ve wandered around the streets of life and have been kicked and wounded to the point where we are afraid to trust that true love even exists, much less that it could ever be ours, God sees us quivering and alone and he gently woos us to him, meeting us right where we are, offering us his grace and love. Then he rescues us and adopts us so that he can begin the process of relieving our fears and healing our broken hearts. I’m so grateful to be a ‘rescue human’!  

I have some more things to share about Quiz.  Maybe next time.

Love Always,

Bonnie