Chapter 3: More beautiful

Beautiful Women

Women sit or move to and fro, some old, some young,

The young are beautiful – but the old are more beautiful than the young.

-       Walt Whitman, Voyages: Poems

I get it that human fathers are fallible, but heavenly fathers are supposed to be perfect, and maybe even predictable? I wasn’t expecting the mysterious capriciousness of my heaven father during some dark years of my marriage. There were many months of feeling like I was psychically confined to a single dark room with scant movement or light.

Dad’s illness and dying in 1999 was juxtaposed with what turned out to be the final year of four years of marital infidelity. I struggled intensely and had deep questions around feeling rejected and alone during that time. It might help to back up to closer to the beginning of those years.

During the first fifteen years following our most intense marital difficulties, I both desired and loathed to recant the story; I would put off writing it out, yet still be inextricably drawn to transcribe it onto the page. I asked myself: why revisit those times and relive the pain? Often I wasn’t sure it was wise. I started and I stopped. There were times when I spent a few afternoon hours emerged in those difficult years as I read over my journaling and by evening I was a mess: tearful and discouraged. But as time has passed, I grew more distant from the pain.

Times does heal, along with many good and grand moments together with Gregg. Gregg is a kind, decent, warm, witty, all-around good man and husband. Much time has moved me toward understanding Gregg’s perspective and extending empathy for those most difficult years. I am not the easiest person to live with: I am too often melancholy, critical, cold. Less than compliant to Gregg’s attempts to make me happy. Unfixable. Unaffirming. For a time, Gregg maybe needed me to be something other than I was. 

Gregg has his side of the story and I welcome his telling. I can say this much: I know that his regret for some of his choices runs deep. I hope and think he has forgiven himself and forgiven me. He hung in there with us and worked as hard as anyone could to make things right again and love us well. He continues to work diligently at our relationship and love his family and me so well. Please keep Gregg’s goodness in mind while reading what follows in my story, knowing that my story is not the whole story. Gladly, from the perspective of now, around two decades later, the story reveals light emanating from the experiences that seemed dark: goodness of what has been gained, a beauty of metamorphoses.

What does the psalmist mean by "darkness is as light?" (Psalm 139:12) Does darkness overcome the light? Or does darkness lead us to light? Or, even though we attempt to name what is darkness and what is light, do we not really know the difference? Sometimes seemingly dark stuff turns out to be light producing.

"The wound is the place where the light enters you." 
- Jalaluddin Rumi

My tendency is to equate wound with darkness: or so the infidelity seemed. But if it (wound/pain/dark) lets in light, then maybe it's not so dark?

The writing of this story is an attempt to give attention to this stuff—not only the concentrated difficult years of our marriage, but to all of what has formed and transformed me, dark and light. 

In Writing the Sacred Journey, author Elizabeth J. Andrew relays that Anne Frank wrote in her diary, “I want to write, but more than that I want to bring out all kinds of things that lie buried in my heart.” A similar expression is offered by author Andrew, “The longing I feel today, poised at the keyboard, is the press of the Sacred yearning to emerge. When we write, we help bring holiness to birth. Writing is a way to participate in the world and in its continued creation.”

I too feel the press of the Sacred yearning to emerge, allowing Reality to transform whatever life brings into Love.

So, back to a beginning: not the only beginning, but a start of a difficult absence of answers and considerable personal darkness. 

Chapter 2: Monte Carlo Dad

“But as for me, I trust in You O Lord, I say, 

‘You are My God, My times are in Your hand.’”

- Psalm 31:14-15a

Even though I don’t much like unpredictability, mystery draws me. Since my girlhood, I’ve been intrigued by the miracle stories in the Bible – like when the sun stood still, and the Red Sea waters parted, and food suddenly appeared or multiplied, and people rose from the dead.  

But when the miraculous mysterious un-understandable turns toward the personally un-advantageous, I grapple. Like, in a huge way, when a child is abused. Who is this God I’ve been looking to all my life? What’s He or She all about? Why did IT do THAT? Or allow THAT!

On a much smaller scale – of neglect not nearly comparable to abuse – I share a story of the night my dad left me on my own in a casino in France. Mostly I share it just because it’s a good story.

Based on experiences with my dad, my picture of God has both positive and negative hues. Dad did many things well: he worked long hours and provided well. He found us a house with a swimming pool, he took us out to eat on Sundays with only a modicum of hesitation to our begging, he suffered through long car rides with us on family vacations, he footed the bill for the family to go to Hawaii. He even gifted us with taking his offspring, one at a time, along on his many trips to Europe.

Dad had his reasons to travel: like attending a play in London over an extended weekend, or like picking up a Volkswagon auto from the factory and driving it to the northern Germany coast for shipping.

The car pick-up was the purpose for my trip with him.

I’ve heard it said that “there’s no such thing as a bad experience; there’s only good material.” In that spirit, my favorite story to recant happened on that tag-along-with-Dad-to-Europe trip.

Having a knack for black jack, Dad enjoyed a good gamble.

[An aside, on that idea of Dad liking a good gamble: In 2016, we uncover – while going through the hope chest upon Mom’s death – love letters that Dad wrote to Mom in early 1954 when he was 20. In them we learn that Dad was excited about making a potential profit on his $800 investment in raising chinchillas, in five years or so, by selling their pelts. 
He writes, “I believe there is potential in chinchillas. But don’t be concerned, darling, I love you a million more times than my chinchillas – believe me. But it’s fun to start on something comparatively new. That’s what makes life interesting – to gamble on something. Now don’t think I’m such a big gambler, honey. If you didn’t want me to gamble honey I wouldn’t… It’s just doing something different and if you succeed you get more pleasure out of it."]

Back to my early 20s: we arrive in Monte Carlo by train as the 1979 Grand Pri race is just ended: I observe a sea of humanity ascending the hill and coming toward us on their way out of town while at the same time we hope to descend to the casino near the coastal heart of the city. 

Making our way through the immense crowd, we arrive at our casino destination. At Loews Casino, the black jack dealer is a feast for the eyes. He is a dark and handsome Frenchman, and while my dad plays cards, my entertainment is enjoying the eye candy. Our outing is to be just for that evening, with hotel room in Nice about a 20-minute train ride away. Traveling by EuroRail pass is Dad’s preference, likely because it’s the cheapest mode of travel until we’re to fetch a newly minted VW toward the last part of our trip.

I pass some time at the casino by becoming acquainted with a couple of young adults about my age: one a rather cocky, young American male of the United States Navy; the other, a polite Lebanese young man named Bilel. Dad is winning at his black jack game, but as the night wears on the alcohol intake causes some impairment. I occasionally gently suggest that we leave the casino so that we might catch a train back to Nice, but Dad is having too good a time and wants to stay, and says repeatedly when I suggest leaving, “We can catch a taxi back.”

As the hours tick by, I tire, and Bilel notices. He graciously offers to take me to his friend’s apartment where he is staying. I can rest there, he offers, and he will come back for my dad.

I think, “Foreign land, unfamiliar male. Alone. NOT SAFE!” and say, “No thanks, I guess I’m not so tired; maybe we’ll get a cab soon.”

Much later, around 3 AM, Bilel offers again to take me to his friend’s apartment. I think of an easy way out: I tell Bilel, “I’ll ask my dad.”

When I relay Bilel’s offer, Dad too quickly responds, with hand gesture for emphasis, “SURE, you go.” 

Flabbergasted, I think, “What? He’s going to let his ‘little girl’ out of his care into the hands of a man he doesn’t know and into a situation of potential danger?” Shocked, I fumble my way out of going away alone with Bilel, feebly offering,

“I guess I’m not that tired.”

About an hour later we cash in the chips I hoarded while Dad was winning. Since there are no longer any transports back to Nice that early morning, we take Bilel up on his kind offer. Both Dad and I follow him to his friend’s apartment and crash for a couple of hours, before rising at 6 AM to get a train back to our hotel room in Nice.

In case anyone wonders: Bilel was a perfect gentleman.

I think back to that story when I feel like I’m on my own, and try to remember that my heavenly Parent is different than my earthly father on that night. It comforts me to recall God’s word to God's people in Isaiah 49:15-16a, “Can a woman forget her nursing child and have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget but I will not forget you. Behold, I have inscribed you on the palms of my hands…”  Jesus reminds us in John 8:29 “He has not left me alone.” Deuteronomy 31:8b reveals, “The Lord will be with you. He will not fail you or forsake you.”

I used to more easily cling to the ‘truth’ that our Father God, Abba, does not leave us alone. In my head I’ve acknowledged what those verses proclaim – that God is a “will not forget you” kind of mother and a “will not fail or forsake you” kind of father. But in my heart, I have wondered. Sometimes it FEELS like a benevolent God is not much with us, and maybe impaired as Father. 

I’ve felt abandoned and quite alone. I muddled through many months when that aloneness was almost unbearable.

Chapter 1: An appearance

If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me,”

even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you.

–Psalm 139:11-12

“I can’t believe he chose me,” we hear him say as he wakes from morphine-assisted sleep. Dad, mostly bedridden for the previous seven weeks, is surrounded by his four daughters on a Sunday early afternoon in late February 1999. I stand at the foot of the bed, looking at the familiar blonde headboard with shelves of books – Dad’s favorite genres of crime and mystery and Mom’s of self-help and “getting the love you need” – and now also with top shelf full of meds and sickroom paraphernalia.

Dad’s mumbling gets my attention: I listen carefully.

He repeats, “I can’t believe he chose me,” and continues in disjointed sentences –

“Jesus picked me.”

“Cindy, Kathy, Kaye, Dee, and I were there.”

“It’s a miracle.” 

“There’s no scientific explanation: smart people sometimes don’t believe ‘cause there’s no scientific explanation.”

Ever the pharmacist, Dad had commented some days before, “Ya know, this morphine can make you hallucinate sometimes.”

I wonder, and pray, “Oh God, is this what I hope it is? Have you made yourself known to my dad? Has he ‘seen the light’?”

Some weeks previous, I had asked Dad what he thought about the afterlife. I said that I hoped to see him in heaven; did he think he’d be there? He shrugged – no answer. I said I’d be praying for him. He said, “Good, someone should,” in his characteristic sardonic way: pretty funny when I think back on it. But at the time I was scared as hell, and of hell, for him.

”I signed a contract, with the Holy Spirit,” continues Dad. 

Being extremely literal, I think to myself, ‘wait a minute, sign a contract? With a spirit being? Doesn’t eternal relationship with Jesus have to do with mere belief in Christ’s sacrificial death on a cross as the way to God?’ Still, I am aware that his “seeing” is beyond my immediate understanding.

Even though mysterious, Dad’s encounter has merit to me. In the book Final Gifts, read by our family in the months of Dad’s cancer struggle, authors Maggie Callanan and Patricia Kelley write, “Dying people often employ symbolic language that evokes their life experiences.” Dad was a businessman, and sold his two drugstores the preceding summer around the time of his 65^th birthday. He understands contracts, and loves a good deal. He’s always looking for the best deal, which is likely where I inherited my love of a deal.

[An aside: I fondly recall Dad coming home – where five kids ate, drank, and peed, and where four of them were female teenagers – with bags and bags of toilet paper, saying, “I really stuck it to ‘em this time.” The on-sale toilet paper was a loss leader at one of Dad’s retail competitors, our small Midwestern town’s first big box discount store. Numerous closets in our house had shelves full of bargain toilet paper. A few years after Dad passed, it was a sweet hilarity to see a cabinet stuffed full of toilet paper when visiting dad’s favorite brother, my uncle Walt. Neither of them knew the other was a fellow deal-loving, toilet-paper hoarder.]

My sister Kathy recalls Dad saying, “My name is in the book of life.” Cindy wonders if he mentioned seeing a light. Memory is reliably unreliable. Author Barbara Brown Taylor quips, “Like all who write what they remember, I am inventing the truth, but what I think I remember is…” 

My invention of the truth is of him repeating, “It’s a miracle.” And, “I can’t believe He chose me.”

Being chosen is a big deal. I don’t know why, yet am still amazed, that God pursues humans, and chooses us. “You did not choose Me, but I chose you…” Jesus reminds in the gospel of John (15:16).

Then Dad says the words that bring me to quiet but exuberant joy.

“It’s like DeeDee’s been telling us all along.”

I had been the evangelist in the family, sharing my convictions about Jesus via written and verbal means over the years, with unenthusiastic to no response. The attempts to proselytize diminished in frequency over time, as I partly gave up and partly gave in to respect of each family member’s path. After Dad died, in some final cleanup of the Iowa small-town Aurelia drugstore, we girls found a letter in Dad’s ‘office’ desk, written in my small and sometimes nearly-illegible script. The letter outlined my understanding of our way to relationship with God. I was amazed and delighted to see that Dad kept the letter: it may have conveyed some interest on his part in spiritual things, but more certainly spoke to me that he cared about what his daughter had to say, whether he agreed or not. 

Dad cared about me and what I thought? I rather despise my younger self’s extreme need for approval; that need has diminished some over the years but I am well aware that in my early 40s when Dad died it felt warm and sweet to find that keepsake.

A week after Dad’s dream, though enduring a virus- or stress-induced exhaustion, I share the story with my church family during the morning service with these words:

“I want to thank all who prayed for my dad’s salvation. God privileged His people to participate in accomplishing His good intent in choosing my dad for Himself! Dad had a dream that he relayed to his immediate family last week early Sunday afternoon, where he was ‘picked.’ We’ve come to find out that our Sunday School class prayed not only for my father’s salvation, but also for that salvation to be clear to me. Gregg’s sister-in-law prayed the same thing around the same time. So, even though there is much ache over his pain, there is such rejoicing in my heart that I will see him in heaven – and that God has been so good as to both miraculously save Dad, and also encourage us with the knowing of it. God has done it all. All glory is His.”

Dad died on March 7, 1999, the same night of the Sunday morning church announcement. I’d relay my interpretation of what happened differently now: I don’t have the same cause-effect, I-prayed-and-God-did-just-what-I-asked-for conclusions that I allude to in the church proclamation.

Rather I have many questions. Maybe what I had in my earlier years was more akin to religion, and where I am now to spirituality?

It has been said that religion is largely filled with people who are afraid of hell, and spirituality is for people who have gone through hell. 

I have had an awe of and an uneasiness with the Divine/God/Mystery/Unknowable, in years previous and present. I have not welcomed the uncomfortable, disorienting sense of not knowing the answers. For so many years I’ve preferred predictable and black and white. God used to be tidier for me. I believed that if we try to live well, we will reap some benefit. We pray, God hears, God does something – or so I wanted it to be.

The prayer for Dad to know God before he died was answered in the way I hoped back then, and God even gave a gift of loud and clear confirmation. But to my request for physical healing, God did nothing. Dad died – we siblings lost our dad and my kids lost their grandpa at an early age. I had to let go of this Dad that I could now, after his new spiritual awareness, possibly have related to in a less-fearful way. And what about all the suffering Dad went through with the cancer? I wonder, “Aren’t there better ways to go, God? You want the terminally ill and their loved ones to suffer as the sickness takes away function and dignity? Really?”

Some might label my wish for tidy as being rigid. I have struggled with rigidity around faith beliefs. I have liked answers, and having the answer. I was the kid in Sunday School and confirmation class that always had a hand up ready to spout a response to whatever was asked.

Unstable is how I’ve felt during the time of ever-increasing invitations to embrace many questions and few if any answers.

For years I found myself resistant to start into the book Encountering God that daughter Rebekah recommended (truth be told, I never did get to it). The back cover blurb intrigued me but moreso scared me: “Eck has put the structure and content of her beliefs on the line while opening herself to encounter deep places of living, vibrant faith in other religious traditions” and “Eck…reveals how her own encounters with other religions have shaped and enlarged her Christian faith toward a bold new Christian pluralism.” If I read a book like this will my faith be shaken even more? Put my “beliefs on the line while opening” myself? To what? “A bold new Christian pluralism”? Pluralism has been a ‘bad’ word among my earlier Christian environs and some friends who are “evangelical.” 

In areas outside of religious beliefs I often can listen to various sides of an issue or ideas, so I haven't wanted to admit to anyone that I’m not sure I want to be open to whatever a religious pluralism invites. I could hardly admit it to myself.

I've liked the firm ground I had when I was assured of Jesus as Messiah. I didn’t want to let go of that familiar way to relate intimately with GOD. And/but I also want to be willing to entertain various questions. I certainly have questions presently (2016): I think I know that there is a God (or some sort of being beyond me or sacred presence), but now have scant idea of what or who or how God is.

I want to be open and soft – not constricted and hard as I’ve so often been. In my early 40s, therapist Maureen told me that she sensed a tightness around my neck, a strangling need for control. She said the way to get a good depression going is to NEED to be right, good, and in control. I had those needs then, and certainly had a grand depression going.

I had some sense of the constriction, but little capacity to loosen it much while in the middle of deep pain. And yet, the pain provided motivation to begin to slip out of a noose of my own making and to stop cutting off parts of self. Though I’m still often afraid as I navigate a different path of a less rigid theology, I feel freer.

I also feel out-of-control.

I wonder if I am grieving the Divine, or myself? So in my questioning, I cling to hope offered in Psalm 16: 11, “you will make known to me the path of life.” I cling to the hope that God – whoever or whatever God is – won’t let me get far away from where the Divine or Universe wants me. I still cling to a hope that God (Love/ Mystery/ Goodness/ Beauty/ Sacred: substitute whatever idea resonates) will save me even from myself. I enter in to this prayer of Thomas Merton:

“My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope that I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and will never leave me to face my perils alone.”