Out of the Darkness

The sun was shining as we stepped out of the car and walked the brief expanse across the warm, asphalt parking lot. My sister, Deb, and I had spent the morning at the Seattle Gift Show and we had driven across town to check out the permanent showrooms. The trip had taken us on the city streets through the commercial warehouse section of the city that we’d never seen. As we stepped up on the sidewalk, Deb notice the flowering trees and leaned into to it to check out the beautiful, white blossoms. The trees were located on the western side of the building, close to the awning which only provided it with afternoon and late afternoon sun. As a result, the trunks on the trees each had a distinctive bend to them…appearing to reach to the sunlight to the west.

“You know why the trees are leaning to the west, don’t you?” I asked my sister.

“Well yes,” she responded. “Plants always grow toward the light.”

“Actually the light is retarding the growth,” I replied. "The growth is actually taking place on the dark side of the plant. The light is actually preventing the growth."

My comments stopped her in her tracks. I had taken college Botany close to 30 years ago and I remembered performing the experiments in the lab where light was only provided to a plant on one side and we would monitor the growth of the cells. In other experiments, we would measure the growth of plants where they had light 24 hours a day or where we would deny the plants light at all. What we discovered was that plants will grow faster then they don’t have any light at all…for a while anyway. If the light is restricted long enough, the plants will die. I know now my explanation wasn't completely scientifically correct, but it is the dark side that is actually growing taster.

As we drove back to Tacoma later that day, we talked about the light…and darkness…and growth. It is amazing when we think about the interaction that occurs between those three elements. And not only in plants, but in our lives as well.

Like many people, one of my phobias is the fear of the dark. I really think that it is a natural, innate fear in most of us that gets reinforced in a variety of ways throughout our life. For me, I had plenty of opportunities during my childhood to reinforce the fear. His name was Geoff (my little brother.) He seemed to take great pleasure in finding ways to startle…or outright terrify me in the dark on our farm in North Idaho. Eerie old barns and garages and trees gave him all the tools that he needed. Very few people like the dark.

But sometimes the seasons of our life can also be filled with darkness. They are times when we can’t see clearly what’s going on…or where we are headed…or what the future holds. I’ve been there more than once. The three years I spent in prison were one of the darkest times of my life. I saw a lot of men there who were slowly dying. Not in a literal sense, but dying nonetheless. They hadn’t learned the lesson of the plant.

An interesting phenomenon is actually occurring in the plant on the dark side…on the side away from the light. When the light strikes the plant, a hormone is produces that migrates to the cells located in the darkness. And this hormone causes an amazing thing to happen. It causes the plant cells on the dark side to stretch!! As a result, these elongated cells “bend” the plant toward the light (which we interpret as growing toward the light.) I love this lesson of nature because that’s what I need to do when I find myself in a season of darkness.

When we are surrounded by darkness, that’s when we have the opportunity to grow the most. We get stretched in ways we’ve never been torn before and find ourselves facing situations that we don’t have an answer for or an understanding of. The real growth in our lives occurs during the darkest times. It’s when we feel hated and ostracized that we can best learn to love and forgive. It’s when we are poor and have nothing that we learn the real value of giving…even if it means we give the last that we have. It’s when we are sickest that we appreciate what little health that we have remaining…or choose the live out the last days of our lives the best we can. It’s when we see someone that we love dying (or hear of their sudden death) that we examine the true value of every person’s life.

But like the plant, we have to allow the “light” that is there to stir within us the willingness to be stretched. We have to be willing to endure the dark season because it leads us to the light season. A time when our life flourishes and grows stronger. When we can celebrate the lessons and changes that occurred in the darkness. A time that we can let our light shine into the lives of those who find themselves in the dark.

Photo from Bing Images

NUMB3RS

I’ve always loved numbers. I remember as a little boy…laying in bed at night and silently counting as high as I could before I would fall asleep. Not counting sheep, just practicing my numbers. I did the same thing with the multiplication chart. Over and over, I would do them in my head. As the train would pass by on the Great Northern railroad tracks that ran behind our dairy farm in North Idaho, I’d try to count how many cars were in the trains as it whizzed past. Even as we would lay out on the front lawn in our sleeping bags in the summer at night, I’d look into the sky and count as many stars as I could. Counting cars on our Sunday drives provided a nice distraction to the bodies of three siblings squeezed into the backseat of the Rambler station wagon with me.

My wife Paula was always amazed that I could remember phone numbers…and dates. I knew (and still know) the date that we met, the date of our first date, the day I proposed and our wedding anniversary date. Sadly, I also know the date that our divorce was final. The birthdates of our children and our grandchildren and engraved forever in my memory. I guess sometimes, it’s a curse to remember too many numbers.

August is a month full of numbers for me and I have found them swirling in my mind a great deal this past week. It seems each one is associated with a memory…mostly painful. A grandson’s birthday. Release from prison. A date with Paula. Since I’m not getting any younger, I thought I’d put down a list of numbers that seem to have some significance.

6427 - Number of days Paula and I were married
2564 - Days since I last saw my grandson and grand daughter
2552 - Days since I kissed Paula
1463 - Days I've been out of prison
1086 - Days spent in prison
851 - Average number of days between seeing Paula in the past seven years
365 - More days of supervised release
341 - Number of days I've had my antique business
284 - Number of days that I've been selling antiques at the Tacoma Antique Center
260 - Miles round trip my sister Deb drives when she comes to auction with me
137 - Milepost number on I-5 that you take to go to my antique space
43 - Number of antique auctions I've attended in the past year
41 - Number of months I was sentenced to serve in prison
26 - Number of birthdays my grandchildren have had in the past seven years
26 - Number of birthdays I’ve missed for my grandchildren in the past seven years
23 - Hours spent on a bus from Seattle to Bakersfield, California
23 - Date in July of 2004 that my marriage ended
23 - Date in February of 2004 that my life changed forever (can you spell FBI?)
13 - Date in December of 1986 that we were married
13 - Date in August of 1999 that I had my first grandchild
6 - Thickness of a prison mattress…in inches (if you're lucky)
4 - Number of grandchildren
3 - Numbers of siblings that I've renewed a wonderful, loving relationship with
3 - Number of children
1 - Years until I can move freely…anywhere I want to without permission
0 - Number of parents still living

Not all numbers are bad. They are just real. And they serve as reminders to me. There’s one other thing about numbers that I like though…some of them change. Some get bigger, and some get smaller. As I reflect on the list, there are numbers to celebrate...and numbers that I'd like to just let slowly fade from my memory. Maybe....just maybe, time will allow that.

Photo from Bing Images

Resilience

The footfall on the deck outside the door to the office caught my attention as I sat at my desk putting price tags together for my antique business. I wasn’t expecting it yet…Lee usually doesn’t return from lunch until about 1:30 and the clock was reading just after one. A moment later, the door opened and Luann walked in…visibly shaken. I wasn’t expecting her either. When they had left for lunch an hour earlier I thought that I had heard Lee say he was taking his wife home before coming back to the office.

I glanced up at Luann as she closed the door. She took a couple of steps and stopped. Her hands shook slightly. “My purse was just stolen while we were at Starbucks.” I sat there, looking at her as she took a few more steps and paused. Before I could even comment, she added, “and I had just taken $5,000 out of the bank.” I could hear the pain in her voice as it cracked…and as she turned away, I could tell that she was on the brink of tears.

All I could say was “oh, Luann!!” What other words are there? I could feel my stomach knot up as I watched her walk around the cubicle to her desk. Why did this have to happen? Of all people to be faced with this, Luann should have been on the bottom of the list. Both she and Lee have faced so many changes and obstacles in the past year or two.

Just a few months ago, their home was broken into and robbed. Beyond of the loss of valuables were electronic photos of family that can never be replaced. When I met them almost four years ago, their net worth was in excess of $12 million. Today, they are on the brink of bankruptcy as a result of the real estate market crash. No one is building houses so no one needs the work of our site development business.

Lee and Luann are an amazing couple. Old enough to be my parents, they remain active and vibrant. Even in the midst of all they have lost, Lee maintains one of the most positive attitudes I’ve ever seen in a person. At nearly 77 years old, his mind never stops. He reads voraciously and in his mind he creates constantly. Unafraid of technology, if we had the resources in the business we would have the latest and best that money would buy. And he would be looking to upgrade next week.

But aside from his intelligence and creativity, the attribute that I admire most in Lee is his resilience. It seems there is nothing that can keep him down. A strong believer, his faith keeps him going each day. The loss of $5,000 is significant but he knows that he serves a God who provides. Even though we have submitted bids on more than 25 projects this year alone (and come up short on every one), he keeps a positive outlook and simply encourages me to keep looking for new work.

These people are one of God’s blessings to me in the four years since I’ve been out of prison. When no one else would give me a chance to work, they did. In a business that two years ago had a payroll of more than 100 employees a week, today there only two of us. Only Lee and I remain. And I’m here because I was the only one that he wanted to start over with.

There are days that are difficult for me. Days that I wonder if I will ever be able to move completely beyond this season of my life where it seems I am reminded daily of the cost of a poor choice. But I am also reminded daily by this energetic man who holds a big place in my heart that today holds new possibilities. Reminded that even in the midst of all the negative that life can throw at us, we have a greater purpose that we may not see. He reminds me to simply maintain my faith.

As a side note, Luann’s purse was returned…minus the $5,000. All of her personal items, including her driver’s license and credit cards were still there. The sheriff deputy took the report, but told Lee that there is so much of that type of thing happening today that they won’t assign an investigator to follow-up. The case load is simply too great. But even as he gave me the update, I could hear strength in his voice…not defeat at being robbed. The vacation plans for next week are still intact. It just means that they won’t spend as much. Once again, his resilient spirit denies the enemies attempts to discourage him.

The Last Family Portrait

The warm sun licked my skin as I sat at the patio table scanning through the photographs that had been most recently uploaded onto our family Shutterfly page while sipping an ice cold can of Diet Coke. I’d spent an evening the week before with my older brother Frank helping him to add his pictures from our Mom’s funeral and from a recent golf tournament that we had played in as a family. I also looked again at the pictures my sister Deb had added a couple of weeks ago from our childhood.

There are literally hundreds of pictures that grace our “Den of Lyons” webpage, and while we’ve only had it for a little more than a year, as I peruse the photos I can see the changes that can take place even in a couple of handfuls of months. That’s one of the wonderful things that pictures provide for us…an opportunity to look at things as they were at a particular moment in time. As I took my time under the warm July sun to look at some of our family photos there, two struck me more than any of the others.

The first one had been taken in 1964-65 at the dairy farm in North Idaho where we grew up. I hadn’t seen it for many years until Deb had given me a copy as part of a box of old family photos at Christmas this year. While we all look so pathetically poor in the picture, it is still one of my favorites. The picture shows our family as we were. Four children ages 7 through 13 and mom and dad…and our wiener dog, Clementine.

The picture reveals so much about us I think. Geoff, the youngest with is mischievous grin. Just looking at his face makes you wonder what he just did that he didn’t get caught for…yet. It seems he always did eventually. The torn knees in his jeans and the rolled up legs most likely a hand-me-down. His shirt, unbuttoned half-way down is one that I had probably worn the year before. His hands hanging at his sides, not willing to be held still in a folded gesture.

Frank, the oldest son standing with his hands neatly folding in front, standing tall with his shoulders back…his legs straight. Perhaps an indicator of his future as a doctor in the army. Or maybe just being careful to stand tall as he had undoubtedly been told to do countless times by mom and dad. His shirt buttoned to the top…stained with a variety of “who-knows-what”? His jeans also reveal tears that have yet to be sewn up. A tentative smile reveals a sense of peace and confidence.

Located between my brothers, I notice that I’m standing a little behind them…my body turned slightly askew. Mom is only touching one of us in the picture…me. Are her hands placed there protectively…or for some other reason, I’ll never know. My smile is one of shyness, not really sure what to think of this backyard family photo shoot by the local newspaper. Unlike my brothers, my jeans appear intact and “hole-free” revealing my aversion to getting too rough or dirty, even as a young boy.

Deb stands in the back row, a beautiful smile gracing her face. The smile I’m sure part of the reflection of her status in the “adult” row, standing beside mom. The toes of her bare feet scrunch into the quack grass that we called a lawn…her eyes squinting slightly from a source of sunshine not apparent in the old black and white photo.

Standing in the center is mom in a sleeveless plaid dress, not looking at the camera…apparently trying to avoid eye contact with the photographer. Or perhaps in her mind she believes if she doesn’t acknowledge the camera, it might mean that she really isn’t in this place…that perhaps this life that she is living is only a dream. Her eyes reveal a depth of fatigue that can’t be described. Or is it disdain? Clearly, she doesn’t look happy.

Beside her is dad, standing in his uniform of the day…the white pants and short-sleeved shirt that identify him as the “milkman”. The ever-present pipe protruding from his lip…although this one had a straight stem rather than the bent style that he usually smoked. In his arms sits Clementine, herself a little apprehensive about all that is going on. Ironically, dad too avoids the camera with his eyes and his expression masks any feelings that he may have. Are they pride in what he has accomplished on this dairy or is it covering the dreams that he still holds that are unfulfilled?

Whatever this family portrait reveals, it is what our family was nearly four and half decades ago.

The second photo is actually our “last” family portrait. We never had a formal portrait taken of our family growing up. Only the occasional snapshot that an aunt or uncle may have taken when the six of us were together. Maybe it was because it was dad who usually had a camera and his nature wasn’t to ask for help…even a passing stranger to take a picture of his family all together. Or perhaps because there were very few times that seemed to be worthy of capturing on film as a reminder of where we were, or perhaps of who we were. And certainly, it would have been a cold day in hell before dad would have paid money to have one taken professionally.

But on a cool, misty June day in Newport, Washington we all gathered for one last day together. Forty-five years after that black and white picture in the backyard was taken, a new image was captured. We had come to celebrate and remember the lives of our parents, and to bury their remains together.

Ironically, just as in the photo from our childhood, the four of us kids are all facing the camera and smiling. Deb’s eyes are twinkling as they often to when she reveals her beautiful smile. Frank stands beside her, holding her in a loving and protective grasp. A fedora covering his graying hair. On the opposite side, Geoff stands with his arm around me, his other hand still hanging and his mischievous smile bracketed by his goatee. Slightly behind, my balding head in the shadows, I smile as I feel my hand against Geoff’s back…feeling his presence close beside me.

In this photo, mom and dad don’t have an opportunity to face the camera. But they are there. Mom in a beautiful black, floral urn…a reminder of the beauty of her youth. And dad in a plain, bronze box…in a similar way a reminder of the simplicity of his way of life. We can’t see what expressions they might have shown the camera on this day, but I’m certain that it would be one of pride and joy and a sense of completion. Their family had gathered one last time, caught on film for all eternity.

Black & white photo- Unknown

Color photo by Clare Lyons

A Tale of Two Calls

As Debbie knelt down and placed two long stem roses…one white and one red, into the rectangular hole on top of the two urns, it was finally over. What had started five years earlier with a phone call while I was in prison was ending in a way that I had never expected.

It was early June in 2006 and I remember the announcement that came across the “yard” as I was walking back from my job assignment in the chapel.

“Patrick Lyons, report to your counselor’s office immediately.”

I didn’t often hear my name broadcast over the PA system and my heart quickened when I heard my name called. I walked into the unit and took a quick right and knocked on the counselor’s door. She looked up and motioned me to sit down.

“Do you have a brother named Geoffrey Lyons”, she asked.

My mind raced as I told her that “yes, I did” and she reached over and picked up the phone and started dialing without saying another word. I sat quietly and watched, wondering what was going on. A moment later she handed me the phone and I listened. After a couple of rings, I heard my younger brother’s voice on the other end.

I asked if everything was OK and he briefly told me that our mom had been moved to hospice and the doctors gave her less than two weeks to live. I was dumbstruck for a moment. I knew that mom was in the nursing home but had no idea that her health had been failing. I asked a few questions as the counselor sat quietly across the desk…watching and listening. He said that he would call when she had passed away and wondered if I would be able to make it home for the funeral. I told him that I would look into it and let him know.

We hung up and I quietly handed the phone back to the counselor. She said that we was very sorry and that if Geoff called back, she would let me know immediately and see what my procedures would be to get a short-term release from prison to go to my mom’s funeral. It became apparent very quickly that I would not receive permission from the prison to go home and in my mind, I accepted the fact that I would never see my mom again.

Days turned to weeks and weeks to months as mom got better. When I was released from prison 14 months later, she was back in the nursing home. The doctors had adjusted her medications and she had regained her strength. When I visited her when I got back, she never did recognize me. She would smile and appreciate the fact that “a nice man” was coming to visit and would smile and giggle when I would give her a kiss good-bye. When I visited with Geoff, he would tell her that “Mark” was her to visit and she would smile and nod, but there was never a glimmer of recognition.

Mom went into hospice again last month. As I was leaving work for lunch two weeks ago today, my phone rang and it was Geoff. I asked how he was doing and he said that he had just received a phone call from the nursing home.

“I got a message from the nursing home to call them. Mom passed away at 5 minutes to twelve today”, he said quietly. I could hear the pain, and a little anger in his voice…not only from the loss but the way that he had received the news. I asked if he was OK and he acknowledged that he was and said that he would get me more information when he could.
My mind was momentarily numb as I continued to drive. It’s not that it wasn’t unexpected…mom hadn’t been well for a long time. We just weren’t expecting it to be so soon and thought that maybe we would have the opportunity to be with her when her time came. Instead, she simply didn’t wake up for lunch one day.

For the next week, Geoff contacted all of the family members and friends’ of mom that he felt would be interested to know of mom’s passing. Plans were made for the service to take place in Newport, Washington where her ashes would be buried near her mom and her brother and with our dad.

Because the funeral would be across the state and out of my “probation territory”, I made contact with my probation officer to get permission to travel. We visited on the phone and she told me that it wouldn’t be a problem and to get her the paperwork. I mailed it off and waited for the permission form to be mailed back. By the Thursday morning before the Saturday funeral, I began to get a little nervous because the permission slip still wasn’t in the mail. I made a call to my probation officer and left her a message with my concern. When I checked the mail again Thursday night and it wasn’t there, I began to wonder if I would end up missing the funeral after all…even though I was no longer in prison.

I placed a phone call, leaving a message and followed that up with an e-mail from my Blackberry asking my probation officer to contact me. My mind started to process what was happening and I considered calling my sister Deb. She had asked me to facilitate the service and travel to the funeral with her. I knew that she, and the family were counting on me and she was planning to pick me up at work on Friday afternoon. A while later, my cell phone rang and I looked at the “caller ID” and saw that it read “unidentified number”. I answered and it was my probation officer on the other end.

“I just got your e-mail. When is the funeral?” she asked. When I told her that it was on Saturday, she apologized and said that she thought it was the following week. She said she would process the request first thing in the morning and asked if she could send it by e-mail when it was completed and I told her that would work great and thanked her as she hung up.

I finally received the permission just before noon on Friday and I put everything in my luggage in the car with the notes that I’d prepared for the service. My sister arrived in the early afternoon and after an overnight stay at Geoff’s, we made the 350 mile trip across the state to mom’s final resting spot.

The rain danced softly on the roof of the canvas tent as each of us said our good-bye to mom. It was a small group…ten of us in all as we sat and listened. An occasional tear would fall from someone’s eyes as stories were related about mom and letters of farewell and love read aloud. After a final song of “I’ll Fly Away”, we removed the Astroturf covered plywood that covered the small hole and Geoff carefully and gently placed the urns holding mom and dad’s ashes into their final resting place. Debbie knelt down and placed two long stem roses…one white and one red, into the rectangular hole on top of the two urns, and it was over.

Photos by Mark Lyons and Deb Shucka

Spreading Our Wings!

I stood and looked for a moment at the drab, pale yellow walls and tried to visualize in my mind’s eye what this space might look like when we were finished. We’d made the little cut-outs of the furniture we’d be placing so we had a general idea of the layout. And many of the antique items we’d be placing in the various pieces of furniture had already been in the case that I was moving out of. But still, I wasn’t quite certain how it would all turn out.

My sister Deb had driven up to help me this weekend as we were expanding our antique business and moving into an actual space that could hold furniture and other larger antiques that couldn’t fit into the small five foot glass case that I had occupied for the past seven months. We had been keeping our look out for the right pieces of furniture to put in the space and sought out other items that might fit the “look” we were trying to accomplish. My little fifth wheel trailer that I call home had become so full of boxes and small pieces of furniture that I gave up on trying to sit on the couch weeks ago. It was beginning to look like one of those places you see on programs like “Hoarders”.

Soon, the walls were being transformed from a state of depression to a palette of vibrant and lighter pinks. As I walked from the space to go out to my car to get some more supplies, one of the antique mall employees called me over to his desk. “You know…your space is looking a little ‘gurly’”, he said. I smiled a little and told him he just needed to wait until it was finished. As I walked out into the parking lot, for a brief second I once again wondered if it would turn out as we had imagined.

Deb did most of the painting while my brother Frank and his wife Clare brought their trailer over so we could move some furniture down to the mall. Unfortunately, Frank had ‘tweaked’ his back that morning and was in considerable pain. The furniture ended up being a little bit too large for the trailer to transport in one trip so our plans were altered slightly as we placed the first piece of furniture in the space as Deb continued to transform it. As the day ended, the paint was still too tacky to put the finishing touches on the walls…a dark mahogany chair rail that we hoped would add the touch to the space to give it the look we desired.

We knew we were going to have a long day in front of us as we sat in the small restaurant nearby. Deb and I talked about all that we needed to get done this morning to be able to get finished by the time the mall closed tonight. While we thought that we had given ourselves plenty of time to load up all of the antiques and some furniture from my place, we still ended up starting the day about 20 minutes behind schedule.

The walls in the space looked radiant as we carried the tools into the mall. We were soon busy getting ready to cut the chair rail and miter the ends so we could start to move the antiques into the space. I should have know when the miter box I was using didn’t open wide enough to accommodate the chair rail that this part of the project wasn’t going to go smoothly. After two attempts to cut the miter with the saw failed, we decided that this wasn’t going to work. I called my brother Geoff who was coming down to help us to bring along the “right” tools to get the job done. The problem was, it would still be close to an hour before he would get there.

Deb and I looked at each other and she suggested that we at least place the chair rail on the back wall so we could move the first piece of furniture in and start to load it. Our time was too valuable to spend the next hour doing nothing. Pulling out the small coping saw, I tried to “eye-ball” a 45 degree angle and started cutting. Somewhat satisfied with the results, we nailed the rail to the wall and stepped back to check it out. I can’t describe the difference that having the dark, mahogany wood made in the space. The mall employee who had said the space looked “gurly” the day before walked up a few minutes later to check it out. His comment this morning said it all. “It really looks rich”, he said. Deb replied back, “that’s what we were hoping for.” And it was really beginning too.

Patience isn’t one of my greatest attributes (nor is it Deb’s) so we decided to try to hang more of the chair rail so we could keep working. Using the handheld coping saw, I carefully cut the pieces we needed to finish two of the three walls. While the miters weren’t perfect, they were good enough to hang. With each piece of chair rail placed on the wall, the feel of the space continued to be transformed.

I was soon moving the smaller pieces of furniture from the truck to the space and placing them against walls and in corners. It was fun to watch the reaction of the mall employees and other dealers as each piece was brought in. After each item was placed in the space, we could count on one of the workers coming back to see what we had this time. They seemed to be as curious as we were impatient.

A short while later, Geoff arrived and with the right tools and we cut and hung the last pieces of chair rail and the palette was complete. While Geoff and I made one final trip to pick up the rest of the furniture, Deb began to place our treasures in the various display cases and curios. As Geoff and I moved the final pieces of furniture into place, I smiled to myself at how well it all fit into place as Deb and I had envisioned.

The rest of the day was spent unloaded containers and placing them in the cases. Geoff artfully filled the case with the sterling pieces while Deb pointed out where the pictures should be hung and carefully unwrapped the smaller items and placed prices on them. Soon, there were more empty boxes than full ones and the places to put the antiques were filling up.

Before we knew it, the announcement was made that the mall would soon be closing. Fortunately for us, this was a “dealer night” and we would have a little more time to work after dinner. Geoff left to go home as Deb and I visited with other dealers over the chicken dinner the mall was providing and soon lifted our tired bodies out of the chairs to finish our project.

I have to admit…the space didn’t turn out exactly as I had envisioned it. I’ve been in a lot of antique malls and have walked into literally hundreds of dealer spaces. They all seem to have their own feel and identity…and there are some that I’m happy to get out of quickly because they are not inviting.

The space that was created on that Friday and Saturday was something special! We wanted a place that had a Victorian feel to it…a richness that would transform you to another time and place. What we saw as we stood back at the end of the day was a “destination” space. Without question, it is the most beautiful space in the mall. Rich, the mall owner, was visibly pleased as he came back to visit with us as the night ended and told us how much he loved the space.

When I started my antique business, Angelwings Antiques, last August I really didn’t know what it would look like. It just started as a dream. This past weekend, we spread our wings a little bit. Who knows how far this dream will go.

Photos by Deb Shucka and Mark Lyons
A special thank you to Deb who helped to make all this possible!

God Has No Grandkids

She turned nine years old on Saturday. If I saw her walking across the street, I wouldn’t recognize her nor would she recognize me. The last time I saw her or held her in my arms was she was barely more than a year old. I’ve heard stories about this beautiful little girl, and she’s heard some stories about me as well. And surprisingly, what she has heard about me is pretty good.

For obvious reasons I thought a lot about little (or not so little) Brooke this weekend. Paula, my ex-wife has been in Hawaii for the last week with Brooke and her family and she texted me on Brooke’s birthday to tell me how much fun they were having celebrating her birthday. And while I missed being there, I was okay. I knew that her day was going to be special with her mom and dad, older brother, a favorite uncle and Grandma Paula. She would definitely be surrounded by love.

I work with a pretty incredible man. As Lee came in to work this morning, we took a couple of minute to just visit. He and Luann had celebrated Easter with most of their family at their home and he was sharing some stories. Lee is nearly 77 years old and has experienced a great deal during his walk on this earth. He is a very godly man who loves Jesus with all his heart and he is never hesitant to give a testimony or simply talk about how great life can be when we have Jesus in our hearts. He was telling me that he was visiting with his grand-children about how God created each of us as human with the ability to make decisions. And then he made a statement that penetrated to the innermost part of my heart.

“God doesn’t have any grandkids”, he said.

It is such a simple statement, but it struck me in a particular way because my sister Debbie has been working on a memoir for the last couple of years. When she titled her first draft, she called it “God Has No Daughters.” I didn’t like the title (and actually shared with her why and offered a few “little brother” suggestions for something better) but as I reflect back now, it was the right title for her story. She had never felt loved by God and as a result she didn’t feel like a daughter loved by God.

Debbie and I have spent more hours visiting in the last three years than we had in the previous fifty combined. During that time, she has shared with me her perception of who God is, and was, to her and has helped me to understand why. Debbie gained her understanding and perception of God through our mom and through the experiences she had while in a cult for a number of years. She was having her picture of who God is painted with the brushes of others, and as such she was not seeing God as He truly is.

I love to take pictures and often these days take photos of the antiques that I sell. Sometimes I use my camera on my phone and other times I use my small Nikon camera. Each one takes a different quality of picture. They both look pretty good with the original shot, but when I try to enlarge them something happens. The more picture is enlarged, the farther the pixels are spread apart and pretty soon what seemed to be clear is now indistinguishable. Even with the higher quality Nikon, before long the image is no longer able to reflect the beauty of the original object.

And that’s what God wants with us…with me. He doesn’t want our image of Him filtered through the eyes and experiences of others. He calls us to be His children, not His grandkids. Dad’s discipline more than grandpa’s do. And they withhold more than grandparents do. Dads don’t spoil their kids nearly as much as grandma and grandpa do. Because of His nature, God simply can’t be a grandpa. So we can’t be His grandkids.

But God is a lot different from many dads in one important way. He is able to love us like a grandpa does. He’s never too busy to play with us or to come to our events. He doesn’t judge or try to live His life through us. Actually, He wants just the opposite…for us to live our lives through Him. When we need to talk to Him, we are more important than the game on TV, the golf date with His buddies or work. We don’t have to get straight A’s in school, be the captain of the football team or the head cheerleader for Him to glow with pride in us. And when we fail, He doesn’t ground us for life or tell us how worthless and “good for nothing” we are. He simply helps to pick us back up, show the direction we need to be going and loves us. He loves us the way most grandpas do…but how every dad should.

Photo from Flickr, by riffsyphon1024