I am told that in late 1954 our minister, returning from a trip to the Holy Land, brought home a container of water from a sacred river. As family legend has it my entry into the world aligned nicely with his return. Thus, I was baptized with water from the River Jordan. As a child I did not understand the significance of this symbolic gift.But life makes the most sense in hindsight. We all journey along somewhat random paths, sometimes to unexpected destinations and often with stops along the way. For some, the path is established early on and the road is merely followed. And then there are those of us more prone to stumble, willfully heading off in new directions, only to find that we never left the path at all. That’s when a look back becomes clarifying.
I have officially been a Lutheran since 1990. That’s the year my young family moved to a new town and sought out a church to call home. My wife was raised Catholic and I was brought up Methodist. We were both open to compromising our affiliation so long as we didn’t compromise our values. Around this time my wife discovered that her grandfather had been Lutheran. Apparently her grandmother insisted he convert, but the discovery brought with it a sense that her family’s faith had come full circle.
Twenty years earlier my family suffered a sad series of losses. We lived in Park Ridge, Illinois at the time. The first tragedy we didn’t see coming, though had my stubborn Swedish father acknowledged symptoms that are now considered classic warning signs of a heart attack perhaps the story would have ended more happily, or at least not so soon. We were thankful that he was transported to Lutheran General Hospital and received life saving care in the 8th floor Coronary Unit, but his delay in seeking treatment prevented a positive outcome. He died two days later as the result of a very preventable accident while we stood horrified at his bedside. But that’s another story.
The metaphorical black cloud that settled over those of us he left behind continued to hover for the next five years. The day after my father’s funeral my grandfather went into the hospital. He never came home. My mother soon experienced a resurgence of Lupus, a mysterious illness that sickened her while in her twenties. This time it would not go into remission, ravaging her in seemingly random eruptions of increasingly debilitating symptoms. Her mother moved in with us to help care for her daughter. They had both lost their husbands within three weeks and soon Grandma lost her only child. She and I became unintended roommates, the remnants of a family that had rapidly dwindled from five members to only two.
At age sixteen, I had no familiarity with Lutheranism. To me, the name possibly indicated a region within a country or reflected some major donor’s last name. As a result of the traumatic episode that ended my father’s life, that Lutheranhospital became a place of painful association that I never cared to see again.
But see it I did, as if summoned for a reckoning. As a recent graduate with a degree in Medical Technology, I was placed in an internship at Lutheran General, graciously near my home in Park Ridge. I was thrilled to have a nearby placement, but conflicted over feelings that surfaced regarding my last time spent in that building. I recall that during the first week on site, distracted by unresolved feelings of anger and grief, I got on the elevator and took it to the 8th floor to face my ghosts. To my surprise, the unit had been totally transformed since 1970, which helped alleviate the haunted house images I carried through the intervening years. The place was gone. Cleansed. Different. It brought sudden and necessary closure I would never have received without my fortunate placement. I worked there for the next eleven years, and in 1985 a beautiful young Technologist from another laboratory became my partner for life on a journey together down a newly shared path.
Within a year my grandmother could no longer live in an unsupervised environment. A sequence of events including a fall at home, a broken hip, gallbladder surgery and a heart arrhythmia made it clear that she required nursing care. The search began within several miles of home. One location after another proved disappointing or downright disgusting, until we happened across a smaller, less industrial looking setting within a mile of the house. There it was – Saint Matthew’s Lutheran Home. That word again, familiar now and taking on increasing significance. It began to seem that at every turn, Lutheran people and solutions stepped into our path and took us by the hand. Was it caring, concern, human kindness, good business or good works? I still didn’t know. But the Lutherans certainly had my attention.
Any sense of sadness Grandma may have felt at “losing” me to my young wife was tempered by the realization that she was one step closer to achieving her fondest wish, becoming a great grandmother. She began to repeat, chant-like, “I may not be here next year,” often with a sigh and a look of resignation out the window. Ah, yes, she could certainly hand out a heaping helping of guilt along with her tasty home cooking.
Holidays came and went and her aging body began to fail. My wife and I visited frequently, and I stopped by almost daily on my lunch hour from my Lutheran workplace across the street at the hospital. Finally, one warm spring evening we planned a special outing and gave Grandma the news. We were expecting! Widened, misty eyes were supported by a smile from ear to ear.
“I’m going to live to hold that baby!” became Grandma’s new mantra.
Our happy news was to be short-lived. Grandma’s health continued to decline. She went through a progression of rooms at Saint Matthew’s in which were provided increasing levels of care. And then my wife began to bleed. We lost the baby.
We discussed our options amidst our grief. If Grandma failed to live nine months she would never know the difference. To reveal the truth might hasten her decline. Instead, we kept up the appearance that everything was fine. Her malfunctioning sense of time was on our side.
Six months later my wife’s belly began to swell again and we carried on the story as if nothing had happened. We counted heavily on Grandma’s disorientation with the calendar not to give us away. The weeks passed. Grandma weakened. Urgent calls in the night were followed by hospitalizations and long recovery periods. I prayed for the first time in years as I felt my last link to the past, my only bloodline, slipping away.
“Dear God, please” was all I could say.
A baby boy was born at Lutheran General on a hot July morning. I nearly ran across the street to the nursing home, camera in tow and a frenzied look on my face. I was advised against taking Grandma out in the heat, but by then the caring staff at Saint Matthew’s was monitoring our progress and making special concessions.
Grandma was confused by all the commotion. I silently said my thanks to God for the opportunity. Our baby cried in Grandma’s arms as she cradled and rocked, raising him to her lips to kiss his little face and urging him to behave. She held his tiny hand in hers, wrinkles against newborn creases, age against innocence, frozen in time on a priceless frame of film.
Our race was over. We finished and won. Grandma seemed to rally temporarily, but then began to slip away forever. We visited her with the baby as much as possible during those few remaining weeks. On what proved to be her final afternoon, she seemed more alert than usual, but drifted in and out of sleep, aggravated by a feeding tube in her nose. The faded orange curtains on her window rustled softly in a hot August breeze and blocked the summer sun as we held our final conversation.
“I’m sorry I’m such a burden to you,” she whispered, sadly looking up at me.
“Why do you say that, Grandma? You’d do the same for me”
She nodded her head slightly and tightened her lips “But you shouldn’t have to go through this again” she said.
I considered the best response to such a soulful concern, and simply let it come from the voice in my heart.
“I’m a very lucky guy to have had two mothers” I confided to her with an unsteady voice. And then I choked and whispered, “It’s just so hard to lose you both.”
I left the room as she drifted off to sleep. From the doorway I turned to look back at her motionless body, just as the curtains lifted away from the window in a gentle gust of hot air and then settled back, as if from a breath. Grandma stirred and said a few words that I couldn’t hear. She may have commented on the motion of the drapes or the sun in the window. She may have said nothing at all, I’ll never know. But a part of me would like to believe she was true to form at the very end, saying:
“I told you I’d live to hold your baby!”
Against all advice about making changes in the wake of loss, we took new jobs, moved away and essentially re-invented our lives. Settling into a similar town fifteen miles distant we found a place that would be our church home for the next twenty-five years. The choice was made – Lutheran Church of the Holy Spirit, an ELCA congregation in Lincolnshire, Illinois. There it was again, the name we’ve come to know and love.
Our daughter was born shortly after and was the first baptism by a newly called married pastoral couple who became our dear friends. Years later, hers was the final wedding they performed prior to retiring. To call this place special does it a disservice. It was core to our faith, family and friends and became the center of our servant-oriented lifestyle. We couldn’t imagine it any other way.
But there would be another way. Children grow up and move on. Adults retire. And so the search began again in a distant setting over 1300 miles away. Our new community in Florida is demographically quite different than Illinois. I am frequently called, “young man” by newly discovered friends in Port Charlotte. I’ll take that! And as we settle into Holy Trinity Lutheran Church we marvel at our good fortune for having located a congregation led by another married pastoral couple! What are the odds?
And here’s the latest channel marker on this voyage through sometimes-turbulent waters. A nice gentleman and his wife sit just in front of the pew we have “claimed” on Sunday morning. At this church we all wear nametags, and I joked when I noticed his last name was Luther.
“Well, you certainly joined the right church!”
It is no joke. He proceeded to tell us that he is a direct descendant of Martin Luther!
We hope to remain at this church, and in this home for quite some time. The path that led here could not have been planned better had we tried, and now it all makes wonderful sense. We’ve been Lutheran all along.
😎
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