This old dog learned a new trick today

A friend wrote me about a family rift that was long standing.  It had endured for several decades. I was reminded of this prayer/poem I wrote in my book Prayers of an Omega: Facing the Transitions of Aging.

Blessed is he whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered (Ps. 32:1).

I come before you, almighty God, Redeemer, forgiver of sins, with my tail between my legs.  Today you taught this old dog a new trick. Not that you didn’t try to teach me this before, but I never caught on. You spoke to me  about it again and again, but I didn’t want to learn.

I believed in Christ’s love. I knew and cherished your forgiveness of my sin. But I couldn’t forgive her for what she had done to me. And I never saw my hardness as sin.

Today I learned that an older person like myself can forgive someone even for something that happened long ago but left a bad and lingering memory. 

The hurt happened unexpectedly—she made fun of the way I talked in front of my friends. She ridiculed me—and I could never forget. Every time I thought of her, my hurt leaped onto my back like an angry cat I couldn’t shake off.

I often thought what I would like to say to her if I ever got her alone.  In the night hours when I couldn’t sleep, I prepared long speeches that would make her sit back and recognize her offense.

Other times I dismissed it. Just a problem in personal relationships, I told myself. Stay apart. But this robbed me of the opportunity to know her better and to benefit from her friendship.

Yet, Lord, I reminded you often she had no right to speak of me in that way, especially before my friends. She had turned me into a useless piece of trash thrown into the gutter.

I tried to numb myself to the pain. No use. 

I lost the joy of fellowship with you because her face always stood between you and me. I became bitter and watchful of her and of others. I wanted her to admit her guilt. Then I’d forgive her.

Then you showed me through your Word that  you set up no preconditions for forgiving. The father forgave the prodigal before he returned and made his big statement.

You showed me that my pain, my unforgiving spirit, was my problem, not hers. As long as I couldn’t forgive her, I was bound to her. The chains would become  tighter and more painful with the passing years.

So your word was “Forgive as I forgive. Seventy times seven. Release her. Don’t bind her to you with your anger.”  You said, “In faith, reach out and forgive. Let Christ’s work on the cross give you the power to do so.” 

And I did. I could say, “I forgive you, friend. I know you in your weakness and your strength. I see you as a person made in the image of God. I see you as person who also needs the love of Christ. I know you and I love you.” 

With these words, I was free. Free of my burden. She and I could start again. It didn’t matter if she felt guilty about her idle words. That was her problem with you. She may hurt me again, and I may have to forgive her again. But the slate has been cleared.

You have released me from the past, healed the present, and made the future a possibility of joy.  I praise your matchless name. Amen.

Saturday is Hymnday

This is another selection from my book Prayers of an Omega: Facing the Transitions of Aging 

Saturday is Hymnday

Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. (Eph.5:19-20)

Lord of song, I woke this morning with joy in my heart, for today is Saturday, and Saturday is Hymnday. This is my comfort time, my time to sing my way through the old hymnbook.

I don’t want to forget the old hymns I learned as a child, for then I’d be turning my back on our journey together. I’d forget some of your love toward me.

I need this old hymns like a desert traveler longs for water in a dry and thirsty land. I will need them till I walk through the valley of the shadow of death.

Lord, you know I don’t like to complain, but I can’t get used to these new praise songs we’ll sing tomorrow in church. I try to clap and sway, but this old body doesn’t work that way. So Saturday I sing the old songs. To myself and to you.

They are a record of my pilgrimage with you these many decades. And this record of your faithfulness slips from me unless I go over it again and again.

“Sing them over again to me, wonderful words of life ….” That was the first piece I learned to play on the piano. And when your Word became wonderful to me, I enjoyed the hymn even more.

I liked singing “Shall we gather at the river?” because we actually gathered at the river for a baptismal service. Scores of your children celebrated the decision of young Christians to walk with you. And dozens of unbelievers from the community watched from a distance.  Outdoor baptismal services had something to say for themselves.

Our first choir song at college was “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me.” From our director I learned to sing with meaning, not just to make sounds.

Each Sunday at the end of the service in the little white church, the congregation sang, “Take thou my hand, O Father, and lead thou me.”  This was more than a token song to end the service. It was a prayer asking you to go with each one of us in that congregation into the struggle of the week. Those were the Depression years. Not all of those people in their much-washed clothing were certain of enough food for the coming week. I never felt ready to leave until we had sung that song, even as today I don’t feel ready for the coming week until I have prayed that song.

We used to sing “There shall be showers of blessings” with more gusto than an overflow crowd at a close basketball game.  But we dragged through forty-seven verses of “Just as I am without one plea,” waiting for someone to heed the minister’s earnest call. Sometimes I felt like walking to the altar to make him feel better. But there was another time, another place, when I did come to you without one plea. That song reminds me of that coming and of our beginning life together.

“Great is thy faithfulness” and “How great thou art” bring tears to my eyes whenever I hear them. When it seemed everyone had deserted me, you, Lord, remained close. You gave strength to turn the valley of bitterness into a well of life.

The “thee’s” and “”thou’s” and other old-fashioned words that upset some people don’t bother me because I know you, the Giver of all words.

When I've sung the old hymns once again, my soul is at rest. They place my feet firmly in  your truth. Thank you for songs of faith that speak the language of my soul. Now I’m ready for tomorrow, for the tumbling loud music of today, and for all the rest.

Maybe, just maybe, when this generation is as old as I am, they’ll have their own Saturday, not hymn, but praise chorus day.  I’m betting on it, Lord.

Widow Psalm

The following is another of the prayer/poems in my book Prayers of an Omega: Facing the Transitions of Aging .  These writings reflect my own thinking  but also that of people around me. I begin with a  verse from Psalm 84 which I made my motto after my own  husband died  in 1962.  Baca means place of bitterness.

Widow Psalm

“Blessed are those whose strength is in you, who have set their hearts on pilgrimage. As they pass through the Valley of Baca, they make it a place of springs” (Psalm 84:5).

I will praise  you, O Lord, for you have kept me in your way these many years and didn’t let me fall by the wayside, even when I despaired of finding the right path.

I called to you for help during the years after my husband’s death. You brought me out of the bitter darkness of sorrow.

You said it was all right to cry.

You said it was all right to be angry at those who had shoved me outside their circles.

You said it was all right to feel the pain I was enduring at the time.

Praise God, all you who mourn, for you will be comforted.

Praise our Lord’s name, for his absence is not forever. Weeping may endure for a season, but joy comes with the dawn.

When my husband died, though I was sad, I felt secure. I said to myself, “God is with the widows. I will be taken care of. We’ll make it --  God and I. With God’s strong arm underneath me, I will be able to weather the worst that can confront me.”  The Bible assured me of your promise.

But when you hid your face and everything went wrong, the latter darkness was deeper than the first. It was if all my moorings had broken loose at once, casting me adrift. My former friends left me. The congregation seemed indifferent to another widow added to the growing list, another unmarried older woman to visit. Now I didn’t know where to turn.

I called to you, Lord, again and again. I cried for mercy, for someone to lift the heavy burden that was bending me so low, that I couldn’t drop it even during the night.

What glory was it to you if I had no joy, no strength to carry on? Does defeat praise  you? Does joylessness and bitterness bless your name?

I cried for help. Don’t leave me. Show me where you are. Give me some small evidence that you are with me in this mess.

You turned my sadness into gladness. I waited and found joy for the journey. You showed me that if you loved me as I was, husbandless, I could love myself. You gave me back myself. I could stand erect spiritually. I had worth in your sight. I had found the place of springs. 

 May my heart continue to sing your praise. I will bless your name forever, for you are my God. Amen.

A Strong Frailty: Aganeta Janzen Block

Having a book published is like having a baby.  Both have a long incubation period and painful birth process. After the birth you are ready to show them off. You desperately want people to like your offspring. 

A few weeks ago my book A Strong Frailty: Aganeta Janzen Block Heroine of the Faith in the Former Soviet Union was published by the Center for MB Studies at Tabor College, Hillsboro, Kans.  This was a great cause for rejoicing because the book was more than two decades gestating. 

When I was in Moscow in 1989 I met my aunt Neta and realized she had an amazing story to tell about her long, eventful life, so I encouraged her to tell it through letters.  I collected well over two hundred or more letters from her and other relatives that I translated and sorted to find the story line.  Her stories were not necessarily in chronological order.  But I knew her life story was one worth preserving as a legacy for my children and grandchildren. 

I wanted my children and their children and other people’s children to know something about the underside of this particular history – what happened in the lives of thousands who made up the statistics we read in daily news report and history books about the events following World War II behind the Iron Curtain. 

My father’s extended family made it out of the former Soviet Union to Canada in 1923.  My mother’s family stayed behind, never expecting to be exiled to 11 years of forced labor in the northern regions before being given a measure of freedom at Stalin’s death.  

Two families. Could I tell their stories?  A Strong Frailty is the story of my mother’s family.  My Emigrant Father, due to be published in spring is  the story of my father’s family.  

I can’t tell you about the exact moment of conception but I have stacks of research files, pages of time lines putting events in the right order, and early drafts.

My aunt Neta, whom I met in Moscow in 1989 was an amazing person. She was a born story teller.  She began telling her story in letters to me and other relatives over a period of years. Her husband was the son of kulak (wealthy peasant), so he had been disenfranchised. He lost his citizenship rights. No one was supposed to hire him. 

A major event in the lives of Germans living in Ukraine was the invasion of the Nazi army  in 1941. These  two powerful regimes had once been allies but were now battling for supremacy.    When Germany retreated from Ukraine its military pushed all Germans in the area before it to Poland.  This is known as the Great Trek with hundreds upon hundreds of small makeshift wagons pulled by worn-out horses loaded with a few household goods inching their way to the north.  No hotels at night, no MacDonald’s to buy a hamburger, not enough fodder for horses, no medical attention – just keep moving to stay out of the clutches of the mighty Soviet army.  

In Poland these Germans who once had lived in Ukraine, including Mennonites, Lutherans, and Catholics,  were naturalized as German citizens and given work. The men were conscripted into the German army. Neta’s husband was killed at the war front.  

As the Russian military pushed toward Berlin, the Germans fled, knowing they would be killed as collaborators with the enemy.  Some of them escaped into the Allied zones but some were caught in the Russian dragnet and told “We’re taking you home.”  Home?  They were herded into cattle cars and shipped like livestock to the northern parts of the former USSR to work in mines, lumbering, and factories on starvation rations.  They had become slave laborers. People were dispensable. Lots more where these had come from. They never saw their former home again.

My aunt was sent to the Kirov region, where overseers of the various industries looked them over and selected the strongest for the work they had in mind. Women with children like my aunt with her four youngsters were low on the list of desirable workers.

In this book my aunt tells the story of life in these camps, interrogation by KGB,  struggles to find enough food, and  being shipped from place to place.

I added a chapter in which I attempt to interpret her life and answer questions I have been asked: How did she survive hardships she didn’t deserve at a time when society said a mother without a husband by her side to defend and support her couldn’t make it?  How did she maintain her faith?  How did she pass her faith on to others?  How did she deal with the brutality of camp life, rape, deaths, and  lack of medical attention?

Not all questions have been answered, yet when I think back to meeting her I recognize now even more or so than then that she had incredible inner strength. I am humbled to have been entrusted with her life and words. 

Dr. Marlene Epp, Mennonite historian, writes that “these never-to-be-forgotten stories should be read by everyone in the free world… an amazing chronicle of resilience and grace through years of brutality and despair… this is a story of family and faith, and, despite the book’s title, also one of fortitude more than frailty.”  

A Strong Frailty is available from Center for MB Studies, Tabor College (peggyg@tabor.edu), Watermark Books in Wichita, KS, and from Kindred Productions (kindred@mbchurches.co)  in Canada.