Sparrow Songs

He couldn’t have chosen a better day to have a stroke. 

That was one mantra that got us through the first few days.  We’d repeat it to everyone who came, with the litany of things we had celebrated in the days before his brain hemorrhaged.

Because really, what can you say when you’ve repeated the story 100 times to anyone who will listen again? 

On Sunday before the stroke, Suzanne and I celebrated our installation at the church we had just started serving the summer before.  The church was proud and so were we and so was he.   We had a grand time with friends in from out of town, and Dad took all of us out afterwards, celebrating with chips, salsa, queso and tacos. 

The next morning, Labor Day, we all gathered to celebrate Dad’s second granddaughter’s first birthday.  I have this picture of him sitting on one side of the back deck, blowing bubbles with our girls, a picture we would pass around often in the days when Dad was unresponsive. 

He couldn’t have chosen a better to day to have a stroke…after celebrating both of his children and cherishing his grandchildren in grand celebrations of life. 

Back to that installation service- I had only asked for a few things to be included in the service, but I wanted “His Eye is On The Sparrow” sung or played.  It’s a carrying tune for our family- it was played at both of my father’s parent’s funerals, it was played at our wedding, and it was included in my ordination service.  If some songs are on our soundtrack, this song is my anthem. 

I hope you’re singing it in your head now, “I sing because, I’m happy.  I sing because I’m free.  For his eye is on the sparrow, and I know he watches me.”  You’ll know you’re most like our family if you were singing Lauryn Hill and Tanya Blount’s version from Sister Act 2…

The incomparable Lori Tucker, one of the Wild Women of Kansas City, came to sing Sparrow at the installation.  When Lori sang Sparrow that day, she came to the chorus, the “I sing because I’m happy” part.  Her voice slowed and she clasped a hand to her chest, reaching for invisible pearls; she closed her eyes, smiled and prayed the words more than sang them, “I sing because I’m free.”

It was a moment, one of the seldom ones, where someone is so completely giving away what they have that you feel immersed, enveloped, in the intensity and truth of it; it’s a moment sitting in the sun glow of love.  As she sang, Lori brought her hands away from her invisible pearls, swinging them out as though amplifying waves of her joy, casting them out on us. 

Back to the hospital- in the early days, the neurologists, neurosurgeons, and rehab specialists told us that music was a unitive force, that music required executive function from both hemispheres of the brain and that, given our family’s love for music, Dad could benefit from it.  A friend of Dad’s brought a small boom box to the room with a box of inspirational and religious CD’s, and we invited friends with willing (if not necessarily good) voices to sing to Dad. 

Whenever it was me, alone with him, though, I could only think of one song to sing. 

It was all I could do to choke out the chorus through tears…I sing because I’m happy…

I choked through the words because I wasn’t happy.  I choked through the words because I worried that the next time they would be sung would be at his funeral.  I choked through the words because I was exhausted and angry and afraid and overwhelmed and…

I still sang them.  Because in them somewhere was some small pearl of mercy that I needed. 

There’s a song we sing in church, I often sing it when I pray.  The chorus is simple: No storm can shake my inmost calm, while to that rock I’m clinging.  If Love is Lord of heaven and Earth, how can I keep from singing? 

Music breaks in because, how can I keep from singing?  The lyrics of the music change from moment to moment, though:  I’m broken wide open.  I’m shattered.  We’re hopeful.  We’re hopeful but terrified.  We’re so scared.  Things seem to be better today.  Things are so much worse today.  The doctors think things are working. The doctors don’t know if anything can help.  There is no treatment.  He has to be strong.  We have to be strong. 

Back to church- Lori Tucker was back at the church a few weeks ago to sing.  I went to her because my heart still resonated with that sun glow blessing she had cast froma  year ago.  I needed to go to her.  Embracing me, she smiled great big and said, “Baby, how have you been?  How’s your Dad?” 

I told her about Sparrow, about singing it to Dad and about how we were just past the year anniversary of the stroke, how her faith in the song had carried me in those first days.  She listened and her eyes filled with tears as I told her I’d try to sing it to Dad. 

And then Lori told me more about her husband.  Lori’s husband Ham is with her when she sings, partly because he loves her so deeply and loves to hear her sing and partly because seven years ago he had a stroke similar to Dad’s that placed Lori in the role of his primary caregiver.

Lori told me about the weeks Ham was on life support and how she’d sit just like I did singing Sparrow to him.  She said this, “When we were in the hospital, I only prayed for one thing: I said, Lord, I don’t know what will happen, but I know that you will heal my heart no matter what.”

“I know that you will heal my heart no matter what.” 

Then Lori got up that Sunday and sang, “We have come this far by faith…Leaning on the Lord…”

Faith is singing the sparrow song, the one you sing when you aren’t sure if you can get the words out.  That’s all it is. 

Faith is the tiny pearl of mercy there when we forget the words to the songs, when we can’t choke out the words, when our only prayer is for the broken heart we hold in pieces saying “heal this.”  It’s the persistent willfulness we have to put one foot in front of the other, to take whatever words there are and say, “these are going to have to be enough.”   

When Lori sang just a few weeks ago, with the words, “We’ve come this far by faith,” it felt like sparrow words that had carried us forward and are still carrying me today in many ways.  And all I could do was be grateful that they were enough because they were all the faith we could hold. 

And if you need sparrow words today, you can hear it Lori sing “We’ve Come This Far” with Father Timothy Whitmer on the keys by clicking right here.  

Surviving My Jesus Year

A year ago yesterday, my Dad had a stroke.  It was the night before my thirty-third birthday. 

My Jesus Year.

Whether we’re twenty-three or thirty-three, I feel it to be a fairly rational goal simply to make it to our next birthday without being crucified. 

I wanted thirty-three to hold some inflection point for me, some significance.  So, I set a goal. 

I would write thirty-three pieces for my blog in my thirty-third year, as acts of public spirituality and theology. I began to brainstorm ideas.  I wrote a covenant and shared it with the contemplative spiritual community I was a part of.  I readied myself for thirty-three groundbreaking blog entries. 

We had a houseguest the night before my birthday.  A visiting Japanese scholar who had become part of our church during his study at a local university, to whom I had offered a bed for the night and a ride to the airport early the next morning. 

As he shared dinner with us, he began to share stories about his home: Hiroshima.  Using my tech know-how, I fired up the TV, mirrored my computer on to the screen, and suddenly we were immersed in his hometown thanks to Google Earth. 

Our guest was beside himself with excitement; it was the first time he’d seen his home in months.  He pointed to exterior windows and said, “that’s the room I share with my wife.  Here is my son’s room, and my daughter‘s!”  He laughed, “my wife did not sell my car while I was gone!”  He walked us around the corners of his neighborhood, to the nearby subway station, and almost cried when he saw his favorite street food vendor. 

And then he took us up high and brought us to Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park.  The Park is home to the major memorials and remembrances of the 1945 bombing. 

As we stood virtually amidst the stone memorials and leafy green trees, his face fell.  He said, “My loneliest day in the United States was August 6.  That day we remember the bombing of Hiroshima.  Now it is a day we spend with our families in remembrance, together, for peace.” 

My phone buzzed.  A text from Mom: I just got home and your Dad’s not here.  He’s not answering his cell phone.

It would be a short twenty minutes before the bomb landed, this time with a phone call from Mom: “The police called.  They found your Dad in a parking lot.  They think he’s had a stroke.” 

Boom. 

It took five months before I felt like I could really hear again after that explosion.  There was plenty of listening in the midst of chaos.  Dad responded well to treatment at first, but threw two pulmonary emboli that developed into C.Dif., that developed into sepsis and then kidney failure.  There was Overland Park Regional and then Research, then Select Speciality, Madonna in Lincoln, and then…suddenly…home…with daily rehab and care, after nearly six months in hospitals.

In those months (and still today, praise be to God), Mom and Dad’s communities were constantly overwhelming us with phone calls, texts, emails, and visits, and everyone just wanted to know the same thing we wanted to know: How is he?

So, we did the only thing we could to keep folks informed about the journey: we started a CaringBridge page and began to journal. 

I took main charge of communication and put myself to remembering as many names and details as I could.  I wrote down doctor names, numbers, nurses (and their snarky nicknames: Good Looking Nurse Keith, No Nonsense Nancy, and others), room numbers, visitors and volunteer helpers, cups of coffee drank, meals made, bought, brought and consumed. 

I wrote down flickers of Dad’s eyelids, twitches of his fingers.  I wrote down the color of his skin, the swollen-ness of his legs.  I wrote the rattle of his breathing.   

At some point each day I’d try to translate these into a narrative for the net of grace that was supporting us all, and I’d post them.  Later, I’d go back to read the comments of affirmation, encouragement and the very few small pieces of unsolicited advice, and I’d just cry.  There was so much love in them, and I needed that love.  We needed that love.  We were so afraid. 

All the posts ended with the same affirmation: “God is good.  All the time.  We’re not okay, and we don’t know when we will be.  But we know we will be, and that the only way we’ll get there is together.  Thank you for loving Dad and thank you for loving our family.” We believed it then as we do now, but that affirmation was the small handhold our faiths latched to, most days with only one or two fingers clinging desperately.

Dad’s been home now for nearly seven months.  Those months have been filled with near-daily physical, occupational, and speech therapy, and have seen him move from nearly immobile to walking slowly with the help of a cane.  His speech frustrates him constantly, as he understands everything being said to him but struggles to form the correct words and sounds with his mouth in response. 

Most of our conversations are held in “Yes” and “No” questions, where we figure out what he’s trying to say to us slowly, sometimes with great victorious fanfare and often with conceding resignation. It’s a process, we know that.

Just to be vulnerable for a moment (or perhaps more vulnerable than I’ve been so far): although I’m certain he himself does care about this, I don’t really care if my Dad can never carry on a conversation with me again although I hope for and with him that he gets to the point that he can.  I’m just grateful that he is still with us, that he has a will to live and a faithful perseverance to which he shows us everyday, and that he knows the love of my daughters and my niece in every moment their toddler selves are willing and able to give it.

Yesterday was the one year anniversary of the stroke. That means today is my thirty-fourth birthday.  I made it through thirty-three without being crucified, although I certainly made the journey to Calvary more than once this last year. 

Perhaps it will seem strange that one of the weirdest by-products of the last year was writer’s block.  In the midst of a season of loss, I lost my words. 

I spoke with my wife about it.  I spoke with my therapist about it.  I spoke with my spiritual director about it. 

The words were just not there. 

This blog has often been a repository for “perfect” words for me.  I’ve written mostly things that I’ve found heavy-handed and/or un-vulnerable, and they’ve come as the result of eight hour writing binges spent obsessively writing and re-writing and editing and re-editing sentences and paragraphs to come up with the “perfect” phrasing, the smartest thought or the most significant meaning.  I’ve polished all of them to an invisible standard important only to me. 

But this year blew up perfection and in its place it left vulnerability, compassion, the need to ask others for help, the need for grounding my spirit in the immovable and ever available grace of God, and the desire to only seek engagement with the things that are truly mine to do. 

In a conversation with my therapist, we were talking again (for likely the tenth time) about the Writer’s Block.  He said to me, “Didn’t you write all those CaringBridge posts?  Isn’t that writing?” 

I made some quick excuse, “Yeah, but that’s informative writing.  Not transformative writing.” 

He lifted the left side of his lip underneath his freud-shaped glasses, tapped his pen against his temple and pilfered out a “Hmm.” 

“Hmm” is the Holy Spirit saying through another beloved, “You need to listen to the assumptions you’re making about where you want the Spirit to lead you.” 

I went back to the CaringBridge that week after session.  I read old comments and stories from the stroke.  I cried again in moments of brokenness and lostness that we felt. 

As I read the thought occurred to me: how many of these things did I write? 

Thirty-four. 

I get it, Holy Spirit.  I get it.  God is good. 

All the time. Especially the times when we’re so wrapped up in our stuff we can’t see it.

For this birthday year, I’m committing to writing here on a regular basis.  I’ll keep the Dad updates on Caring Bridge, but here I’ll post my own stuff.  I don’t know if that means thirty-four entries or four entries or fifty entries. 

But I’m going to push through my Block and write.  To do that I’m also committing to write posts in two hours or less, and posting them without neurotic editing.  I’m committing to only checking view stats and comments once or twice a day, and I’m committing to saying things that come from a place of gratitude and vulnerability instead of “professionalism” and “polish.”

I know I’ve learned a lot in the past year, but I still don’t know if I’ve learned anything valuable or worthwhile for anyone else.  So in the spirit of being another pilgrim on the journey, I just want to share some of the things that have happened, that I’ve heard or experienced, and hope that you might find yourself and the Holy Spirit in them too. 

Because on the anniversaries of the bombs blowing up in our lives, what better thing can we do than remember to gather around each other in love, in care and compassion for one another, in remembrance, in peace, and in purpose for a new day.

What better can we do than to remember that God is good, all the time, thirty-four and more times over.