Ironing an Old Man’s Pajamas
Once in a while Himself and I, in our 50th year of marriage, consider our surroundings and ask each other, how did this happen? How did two kids from the upper midwest end up deep in the heart of Texas? How did the straightest, stodgiest people on the planet wind up doing prison ministry?
Today I found a journal entry that helps explain. Here it is, from July 16, 2006, when we’d been here two years:
Let me go back about 25-30 years. For a brief time I did home nursing care for Manpower. I’d been a medical transcriptionist and understood medical terminology; I’d worked as a nursing assistant and had always had an interest in and some knowledge of nursing care. Further, I had a Realtor’s license and had managed a Christian bookstore. All that to say, in my own opinion, I was not somebody fresh off the street. Self-important, one might say.
Imagine my indignation then, when the wife of the man I was to take care of that afternoon asked me to iron her husband’s pajamas. Iron pajamas for this old man? I don’t even iron my own husband’s pajamas.
I brewed my annoyance for a while as I took the man’s temperature and blood pressure, gave him a bath and dressed him in fresh clothes. Just as I was about to sit down and read a book while waiting for his wife to return, I sensed that “still small voice” intruding into my thoughts.
Daughter, I thought I heard HIM say, I’d like to iron that man’s pajamas. Might I trouble you to stand by the ironing board and let me use your hands to do that?
I ironed the pajamas.
It changed my life. I then understood ministry as servanthood. We do nothing unless we are available to facilitate HIS ministry.
Another time I believe I heard “the still, small voice” was when we contemplated moving here and heard “Count the cost.”
It didn’t take a genius to figure out the meaning: If we moved to deepest, darkest Texas we wouldn’t be seeing nearly as much of our grandchildren.
So I’m feeling all of that–the cost, the loneliness…when I go to work Thursday. Here’s what I wrote in my journal Thursday night.
Today at the prison, God met me and reminded me why we are here, and why I’m so glad we persevered through my health, Carl’s health, relationship issues, the whole thing. I visited (I hate to say counseled) with a woman who has just returned from the psychiatric unit.
She’s schizophrenic/affective, a “cutter,” and I don’t know what else. She’s a scary looking woman, with wild eyes staring out of a haunted face. There are those cutting scars in various stages of healing all up and down her arms. She’s skinny, very tall–like a man you wouldn’t want to meet on the street. And let’s not forget: she’s in a maximum-security prison.
But she looks at me with those deep, sorrowful eyes, tears ready to drop, and wants to know, “Am I hearing demons, Miss Elaine? Who is talking to me? I know it is not God. He wouldn’t tell me these things. But do I have demons? How could I have demons? I love God. I’ve been born again…”
Who on earth is going to love her but Jesus? And if He’s asking me to put my arms around her and love her for His sake, I am HONORED!
Yes, the cost is great. I can barely see for tears now, just thinking about the dear faces of my precious, beloved grandchildren and our own children. But they have lots of people to love them. These women in prison don’t.
We had a wonderful time raising our children. But that’s over. It’s painful to recognize that, but as my Uncle Hez said, “the work is finished.”
This season has just begun.
Colors of My Christmas
“I’m dreaming of a white Christmas, just like the ones I used to know…” So the song goes, and having grown up in South Dakota and spending most of my married life in Wisconsin, I know all about white Christmases. No question, it is beautiful when the new-fallen snow rests on the tired and bruised landscape, bringing with it a quiet so profound that, as my daughter says, you feel you should whisper.
Snow, in addition to being beautiful and white, is cold and wet, and my husband and I agree, a white Christmas is a highly over-rated concept.
It is Christmas morning. The sun is peeking over the edge of the earth, illuminating the Texas landscape with its colorful palette running from pale oat shades on into dark grey and finally black. Live oaks make a valiant attempt at green.
Green is a valid Christmas color, I tell myself as I roll twenty-dollar bills around a pencil and attach the resultant cylinders to red bows atop the eight gift bags containing each grandchild’s annual tree ornament.
The grandchildren are growing up and quickly growing out of the trucks and dollies and even the CDs I might buy for them. The underwhelming enthusiasm they exhibited as they open these gifts in past years has persuaded me to cease trying to create magic for them and simply give them an ornament, the idea being that they would each have twenty ornaments to take with them when they established their own traditions. I doubt that any of them give much of a hoot now, but perhaps they will in time to come. It’s the attached twenty-dollar bills that spark their interest.
My smile is wistful as I recall when our children were young, and the frenzy of trying to make sure each child had the same number of presents as the other kids, and that the one item for which they were hoping most, would be there. We were never locked into any certain tradition, but our Christmases were always happy times. Good memories. Good times.
But those times are over. These are good times, too, and we’re making new memories. I realize, though, the main green of Christmas this year is on the White House side of twenty-dollar bills, and I can’t help it; I’m a little blue.
Remembering Karen
It was totally unexpected. This morning her son sent an email saying that Karen had died during the night. I still can’t believe it; Karen. Funny, deeply spiritual, gifted writer and teacher, devoted mother to her three children…that Karen.
Most of my relationship with Karen, in the last few years, has been by phone or email. We talked a lot about writing, but more than that, we shared our joys and sorrows as Christian mothers. We both cared deeply about our Christian faith, and wondered endlessly about this new movement or that odd principle or another emerging star in the pulpit.
We laughed at how, when we got together, we could always pick up where we left off. She was a very fun and funny friend. Our times together were so seldom and brief, even when we lived in Wisconsin, that we “parallel-talked,” which is to say we’d both talk at the same time, and never miss a beat.
One time we met at a coffee shop in Oconomowoc because I’d called and said I had to talk to her. We were sitting in a booth and I told her some really bad news about our family. Karen stared at me for a moment, and then stood up and signaled the waitress, shouting and jabbing her finger at our table: “Chocolate! We need CHOCOLATE here! NOW!!!”
There was another time, when we got kicked out of Applebee’s, she tipped the waitress $20 at the restaurant we went to, and told her to tell the manager at Applebee’s how much we’d spent after he told us we couldn’t stay.
In April, 1999, Karen gave me the daily devotional EXPERIENCING GOD DAY BY DAY. I read it almost every day, and always think of Karen when I do, thanking God for her. I’ve spilled coffee on that book, cried while reading it, had the words in it strike a chord in my heart, and I’d write Karen a note, or perhaps call her on the phone to talk about it.
And now, for the tiredest cliche of all: I can’t believe she’s gone.
