Beauty on the Backroads

Stories of grace for life's unexpected turns

holidays

Disappointment {How We Got Here, Part Three}

On Friday we signed a lease for a new place to live. We’ll be moving soon, a process that has been a long and winding road. Here’s the story of how it happened. Read Part One here and Part Two here.

We’ve missed a lot of holidays, birthdays and family events since we moved to Pennsylvania five years ago. But this was the first time we’d ever missed Christmas. Phil’s new job, at a restaurant near a shopping outlet, meant holiday hours for everyone and no time off. So, we scheduled our visit to Illinois in early January, after the holidays.

Around the same time, I learned that the second interview I’d been waiting for wasn’t going to come.

Talk about a blue Christmas.

We spent Christmas Day with friends who made us feel like family, and on New Year’s Eve, we drove all night to be in Illinois for the start of 2013.

Two weeks at home soothed our spirits and at the same time stirred our longing for resolution. It was hard to leave our hometown when we felt we had nothing going for us back in Pennsylvania.

I’m not much a fan of winter anyway, and I wasn’t looking forward to the dark, cold months ahead.

“Nothing was changing” became in my mind “Nothing is ever going to change.”

I was losing hope.

Losing faith.

My words were seasoned with bitter herbs as I talked about our life. I cried a lot. And for a while, I turned my back on God.

I wanted to fix our life. To make it all work out. But I didn’t have the first clue how, or even what was broken, if anything.

Michael Kaufmann | Stock Exchange

Michael Kaufmann | Stock Exchange

Our daughter turned 5 in March and everyone started asking her about school in the fall.

School. That was the deadline in my mind. I needed us to be settled somewhere before then because kindergarten was going to be a big change for all of us, not just her.

God could do that for us, right? I held out faint hope.

Around this time, another job opened up at the place I’d applied at in the fall. We still weren’t making ends meet and even though I didn’t know how we’d swing daycare and two work schedules, I applied again.

And still heard nothing.

Was God even still interested in us?

When I forget to remember

I don’t always know what to do with Memorial Day.

The kids aren’t in school yet and usually my husband has to work, so it’s not all that different than any other day for our family. We don’t have a personal connection to anyone who has died while serving in the military. And though my husband is a veteran, he downplays his active-duty service and cringes a little when someone wishes him a “Happy Memorial Day.” (A bit of contradiction there, maybe. Would we say Happy 9/11 Day? Happy D-Day? Happy Holocaust Remembrance Day? I don’t think so.)

So I’m torn. Do we celebrate? Do we mourn? Do we have a backyard barbecue with friends? Do we go about our business?

Yesterday, the kids and I went to a Memorial Day parade and service, both of which were in our neighborhood and required almost no effort on our part. It was a nice day. We needed something to do outside of the house. So, we went.

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And the kids waved at fire trucks, picked up candy and let American flags flap in the wind. We listened to a high school band and a Highland bagpipe group and retired officers tell us why this day is important.

Later, we did the backyard cookout thing with friends who are missionaries to Spain and returning there soon, but we probably would have done that even if it hadn’t been Memorial Day.

I don’t know if we did right by the day, if we honored the dead or paid homage to the living.

But I know that I’m grateful for a day that reminds me to remember.

Because I am forgetful. In mind and spirit.

As Ann Voskamp writes in One Thousand Gifts, “I am beset by chronic soul amnesia.”

I forget history, who I am and where I’ve been. I forget the works of God in my life and I forget the events that brought our country to where it is today. I forget about people if they aren’t right in front of me. I forget prayer requests and pressing needs.

I forget. I forget.

So I need to be reminded to remember.

The other day I read these words in Deuteronomy, fitting words for a weekend to remember:

Only give heed to yourself and keep your soul diligently, so that you do not forget the things which your eyes have seen and they do not depart from your heart all the days of your life, but make them known to your sons and your grandsons. (4:9)

The things which my eyes have seen …

On Memorial Day, I remember that freedom is costly, no matter what “side” you’re on. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers have given themselves in service to the cause of freedom over the years. And sometimes others pay the price. In innocent lives. In infrastructure destroyed. In chaotic reign afterwards. Freedom isn’t free for anyone.

And not everyone is free. We need people who have seen bondage and slavery and tyranny firsthand to remind us that freedom is not universal yet. That our way of life is not the way for everyone. That even those living in a “free country” can be enslaved to addictions, attitudes, behaviors, other people. That slavery did not end when the Civil War ended.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAAnd ultimately freedom comes, not from the flag of a country, however “great” or “blessed” it might be, but through Jesus, who said he came to “proclaim release to the captives … to set free those who are oppressed.” (Luke 4:18)

I need to be reminded to remember.

I need a spiritual memorial day. A personal memorial day. To remember the workings of God in my life and the life of those who have invested in my life. To remember who I am and where I’ve been and how God has seen me through impossible challenges.

It is good to remember.

It is good to tell the story.

Not just on Memorial Day.

But every day.