Christmas and the Seasons of My Life

December 30, 2014 / Anne (Grace is my Superhero) / 3 Comments

I love the Christmas season. I am sorry to see it end so quickly. As I enjoyed the sights and sounds and smells of this glorious time, I remembered all of the Christmases that I have known.

As a child, the magic of Christmas emerged from the basement and took residence in our home once again, as we hung our stockings, trimmed our tree and set up the manger scene. I would study the solemn cast of characters in the small wooden stable all covered with moss. I would lie under our artificial tree, looking up through the branches at the multicolored lights and soak in the wonder of it all. We would attend our Quaker Meeting’s yearly tradition; a potluck dinner (with an entire room full of desserts) followed by a carol sing and candlelight service.

I would sit on a bench in that meeting room surrounded by the scent of evergreen branches and the flickering, golden light. I would listen to the members of the congregation read the Christmas story from the Bible. The words sounded so beautiful and sacred to me.

I remember the Christmases of my teenage years. I had a small group of friends who were all very talented singers. I could sing a melody clear and true. My friends could harmonize any song in the most beautiful way. We began a tradition of gathering at my house and then venturing out into the cold to sing carols to my neighbors. The most beautiful music I have ever heard was made by our voices lifted into the frosty night air. I felt so blessed to be a part of that wonderful sound of praise. I have not been able to make such beautiful melodies matched with such lovely harmonies since that season, and I miss it, especially at Christmas. I console myself with the thought that someday heaven will be filled with music like that all the time!

I think back to our very first Christmas as a married couple. We were excited to have some family and friends over to our very first place for Christmas dinner. It was only a tiny apartment with no real furniture, but it was ours. We got a little tree and decorated it with the set of tiny, wooden ornaments that my grandmother had given us…our only ornaments!

Those precious little things have since gone into hiding, being choking hazards and not suitable for a house perpetually inhabited by at least one baby and one toddler. But that Christmas, there were no babies yet. I wanted to make some dessert for our dinner, yet I hadn’t planned ahead. I had only flour, sugar, and some Hershey Kisses. I made a trip to the closest gas station (the only place open on Christmas morning) and made some short bread. That evening, everyone piled into our small kitchen to eat around card tables, and it seemed a very joyous occasion.

I remember Christmases with little ones. It was hard to keep the ornaments on the tree, and the wrapping paper was much more appreciated than the gifts themselves. I remember the 7 Christmases that I was pregnant. I wasn’t feeling very good during most of those, and didn’t care if we even put up a tree. But I still enjoyed the joy and excitement in those little faces.

One of our children was conceived over the Christmas holiday. What a precious gift! The baby was a boy, and all our boys have names that begin with the letter “C.” Chris and I joked that we should name him, Colorado Christmas Conception. We decided to go with Chai Erik instead!

This year was a lovely Christmas. I was pregnant but feeling very good!

We had our 8^th annual Christmas party with a house full of friends and caroling around the neighbor hood.

Chai demonstrating the joy of caroling!

We attended the candlelight service at our church and felt that holiness again. On Christmas morning our house was full of two parents, one grandmother, teenagers, preteens, children, and a toddler.

We had a little of everything from toys to video games,

from big helpers to little messer-uppers.

A glorious chaos of noise and joy,

frustration and love!

I wanted to soak in every detail of the present Christmas, as I knew it would never come around again.

The teenagers will be thinking about college. The preteens will become teens. The younger ones will grow into more mature ones.

We will get older and wiser and never be quite the same people we are right now. Only God knows what each new Christmas will bring. My vision of Christmas future is a huge dining room table surrounded by my children, their spouses, and their children; my grandchildren! There could end up being quite a lot of them…perhaps 10, 20, 30, or more!

Looking back over all the Christmas seasons of my life there is a common thread. Always there is Jesus, lying in the manger; whether he is small or large,

made from wood or ceramic,

set up high on a self or cradled in the arms of a child.

Jesus is always there. Yet the baby Jesus is just a symbol…a symbol of God’s amazing, crazy, unfathomable love!

Jesus is a baby so longer. He grew and became a man. He pleased his Father in every way. He was obedient in everything, even obedient to die on a cross. He was revealed as the Lamb that was slain before the foundations of the world. He decided to die for us before any of us were even here. He set us free to enjoy all the wonderment and joy that the human heart can possess!

Yet looking back, I also see him as a Lion. The Lion of the Tribe of Judah, always at my side, whether I knew He was there or not. A strong and ferocious kind of God; violent in dealing with my enemies and fears and doubts, unrelenting in His jealousy for me, bold and courageous in the ways He loves me, yet soft and gentle when He draws me near. That Lion was always with me; during the innocent years of childlike faith when I would talk to Him every night before falling asleep. During the cynical early teenage years when I sat in that candlelight service and thought how foolish someone must be to believe that a baby born in Bethlehem was actually God. During my last years in High School, discovering the wonder of a real God who loved me just as I was. During my young married years when I didn’t know very much about anything. During all of the pregnancies and births and babies and toddlers and growing and learning and sorrows and joys. Jesus was there!

The Great I AM limited Himself to the smallness and helplessness of a baby just so He could always and forever BE WITH US! May we never get over the miracle of Christmas; that the Lion and the Lamb, the Almighty God IS WITH US! And we can spend eternity exploring the height and depth and breadth of His great love for us.

Merry Christmas!!!

The Very Poopy Christmas of 2008

December 16, 2014 / Anne (Grace is my Superhero) / 1 Comment

I hope this story isn’t too personal or gross to qualify as a heartwarming Christmas tale, but this was all I had within me during the very poopy Christmas of 2008.

We had a beautiful Blue Spruce standing in our living room. The Christmas decorations had been brought up from the basement. The soothing voice of Bing Crosby was coming through the stereo. Ah, this is just like the Christmases from my sweet childhood memories. Well…not quite the same. There were six children instead of two scrambling to grab Christmas decorations. The older children seemed to clump all the decorations onto one section of the tree, while the younger children were intent on pulling them off as soon as they were put on.

I was not feeling as excited this year about decorating as in my youth. Yes, the exhaustion and nausea of my first trimester was definitely putting a damper on my Christmas spirit. I realized that the tree was being trimmed rather haphazardly, and it was leaning slightly to the left. Yet I had no energy to fix it.

“Oh well,” I thought, “It will just have to lean this year.” Truly my deepest heart’s desire was to crawl into bed and sleep until New Years. There was also a strange smell drifting through the house that was never present in my childhood memories.

Clang! Bang! Loud noises were emanating from the downstairs bathroom. Chris was entirely missing the tree trimming this year because of a project in the bathroom. Earlier in the week our toilet began backing up. After it got clogged for the 7^th time, our oldest boy Cole spoke up.

“Oh yeah, I remember that I saw Cooper drop a toy in the toilet and then he flushed!” he offered. I suspected that the toilet clogger was really Cole himself…yet Cooper does have an unusual fascination with the potty. Chris was in the bathroom having to rip the entire toilet off of the floor.

“I found the toy but I can’t get it out!” yelled Chris in frustration.

“Try putting oil on it!” I suggested.

“There’s enough poop on it!” He yelled back.

“I don’t think poop is very lubricating.” I said.

“I AM THE EXPERT ON POOP AROUND HERE!” he bellowed.

Considering the smell and the amount of time Chris had been working, I believed him!

Our tree eventually got trimmed.

The bathroom got put back together. Yet I prayed “God, there has to be more to the Brandenburg Christmas this year, more than nausea and broken toilets.”

Then I thought of Mary having to birth her first baby alone, in a stable. It probably didn’t smell too good either. Yet she had angels come sing praises to her baby. And of course there were the shepherds and wise men who came to confirm what she knew in her heart; that her baby was a King. Those visitations must have helped her through some difficult days ahead.

In these difficult days it is hard to see the purpose in our crazy, exhausting lives. I had no angels singing when my children were born. Yet I had something even better – The Word of the Lord! I heard God saying at the birth of each of my children, “This is a chosen one. I knew this one before I made the world and he has a destiny. She will conquer mountains and do great exploits for me!”

When I see the mess that my house is right now and the mess that my children make, I keep my eyes on eternity. I can see each child standing before the throne of God. I see Jesus embracing each one and calling him or her his friend. I see their reward for the spoils they took from the enemy. I know that their reward is my legacy. And here is the key to my hope. I know that all this is true; not because I am a good mother but because GOD SAID it was true.

So I thank God for this holiday season with all of its promise. Promise that is symbolized by a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a stinky manger!

Broken is the New “Just Right”

December 10, 2014 / Anne (Grace is my Superhero) / 5 Comments

Sure, I am a mother of many boys with aggression and hyperactivity all around me all of the time. But I am still a girl who likes pretty things, who wants to make her home a peaceful oasis. My efforts are continually being thwarted by those unruly boys. My lovely house plant becomes inhabited by plastic frogs. My beautiful framed art is accessorized with suction cup Nerf bullets. My delicate blue and white china collection is transformed into a war zone for Star Wars Lego Storm Troopers.
I had just finished decorating for Christmas when I noticed this sorry fellow in the photograph, still bravely manning his post despite the fact that he had both of his arms ripped off.

He seems to be telling me, “Yes, I know that I am not as you were hoping me to be, and you would like to remove me from your shelf and toss me into the trash. But wait…God uses the imperfect and impossible all the time. I may be just the finishing touch that you need.”

So there you have it. Broken is the new “just right,” and God can use all of us! I am so thankful so that He can use me even though I am broken…maybe because I am broken. And I am thankful for a house full of boys who break things…and sometimes make them better.

The Term is Over: the Holidays Have Begun

November 17, 2014 / Anne (Grace is my Superhero) / 4 Comments

It doesn’t take much. Just a cool breeze, the smell of bread in the toaster, or the sound of a train whistle. I am transported to my carefree childhood summers, spent at my maternal grandparents’ home in Wisconsin. The memories flood my mind and I am filled with a sense of peace and order…and a terrible longing to go back there again. Not just to the home, but to the time when I didn’t have the responsibilities of adulthood on my shoulders. To the time when my days consisted of sitting in the sun reading an old book I found in the attic (like Louisa May Alcott’s Old Fashioned Girl), or feeding chipmunks out of my hand, or playing Cowboys and Indians in the yard.

The memories are a bit fuzzy and golden with age. I remember more of the good and less of the bad. I remember the cleanliness and order of the home, the cool wood floors and the shaggy aqua carpet. I remember the wall paper in the kitchen, decorated with pictures of fanciful boutiques.

I remember eating Papa’s homemade rhubarb jam at the kitchen table that boasted an eating surface made entirely of glass. How enchanting that table seemed to me. It was like the table in Alice in wonderland through which a shrunken Alice saw the all important key. The tragedy of being able to see your heart’s desire but being unable to reach it was not lost on me.

I remember the sun room that served as the bedroom for my brother and me on those summer nights. We would lie on the perfect sofas, full of swirling colors and patterns from the 60s and listen to Alice and Wonderland on the record player as we were falling asleep.

I said goodbye to my grandmother at her funeral on a frigid Wisconsin winter day. I felt like I wanted to say goodbye to her home as well, which contained most of my memories of her. My husband drove me to 921 Humbolt Ave. Grammy had sold it years before, but I was surprised by how different it looked. Sure, it was surrounded with snow rather than all the greens and reds and oranges of summer. But it just wasn’t as beautiful as I remembered it. And there was a hot tub outback were Grammy’s cucumbers used to grow! Was it that my memories were just better than reality…or had the place really changed so much under new ownership? One thing was clear to me; I could never physically return to the place that had brought me such joy. I could never relive the memories in that house of the people who were so dear. I felt a grief flood my soul at the irrevocable loss.

I felt a similar grief and bewilderment when I drove past the childhood home of my father after his passing. I had wonderful memories of that little house as well, the home of my Grandmother and Grandfather Beyer. The yard was like a fairy wonderland, full of trees and ferns and mosses, dotted with bird seed for the always welcomed feathered friends. The inside was always exactly the same. Every piece of furniture, every old and charming knickknack, just where it had been the last visit, always polished and dusted. The only change I remember over the years was the addition of a large TV the sat on the floor. My brother and I thought we had hit the jackpot as we watched the early years of MTV on that TV.

Grandfather always had to show us some wildlife slides, play a classical piece on his record player, or read us the Robert Louis Stevenson poem about how the robin ate the “fellar raw.” He would always let out a loud chuckle after he read that line. Grandmother wanted to sit on the sofa with us and read Snip, Snap, and Snur.

Their kitchen always smelled like coffee and contained one of my favorite treats…malted milk tablets. The upstairs had beds for all of us, a strange bath tub, and a little kitchen that we never used. We visited during the Thanksgiving holiday each year. I remember my mom addressing what seemed to be hundreds of Christmas cards, spread out over their living room.

When we drove past the home after my father’s internment, I was shocked at what I saw. The yard had been cleared of most of the trees and looked barren. The house was tiny and rather unpleasant. What had happened to the 75 Prospect Street that I remembered. It was gone forever…and I mourned that loss.

But are they truly gone? Need we mourn when something beautiful on this earth passes away, or is destroyed, or is changed beyond recognition? I found a lovely picture of hope in The Last Battle by C.S. Lewis. It is one of my favorite books containing one of my favorite descriptions of heaven. The Pevensie children, along with their Narnian companions, find themselves in a beautiful land after Narnia had been destroyed. They grieved for their beloved land, but they began to notice that this new place was oddly familiar.

“Kings and Queens,” he (Farsight the Eagle) cried, “we have all been blind. We are only beginning to see where we are. From up there I have seen it all – Ettinsmuir, Beaversdam, the Great River, and Cair Paravel still shining on the edge of the Eastern Sea. Narnia is not dead. This is Narnia.”…

“The Eagle is right,” said the Lord Digory. “Listen Peter. When Aslan said you could never go back to Narnia, he meant the Narnia you were thinking of. But that was not the real Narnia. That had a beginning and an end. It was only a shadow or a copy of the real Narnia which has always been here and always will be here: just as our own world, England and all, is only a show or copy of something in Aslan’s real world. You need not mourn over Narnia, Lucy.”

I believe that it is true. We need not mourn over what we lose here in the shadow lands. All that is stunning and marvelous and true and real and loved in this world will be healed and restored and renewed and made to be all that it was intended to be from the beginning. All that is precious to us in this life is being kept safe for us in the “real” life that we will someday enter into, if we trust Jesus to take us there.

Then we will say, like the noble Unicorn in Narnia, “I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now.”

We will hear Aslan (Jesus) say, “The term is over: the holidays have begun!”

And it will be a holiday full of sights, sounds, aromas, and tastes that are as familiar as being home for Christmas, cozy and surrounded by family. Yet they will be brighter, fuller, more majestic, and more magnificent than anything we had ever imagined. After millions and millions of years, the wonder of it all will still be fresh and new. All mourning will be long forgotten and our joy will be everlasting!

Happy 100th Birthday, Grammy!

October 18, 2014October 18, 2014 / Anne (Grace is my Superhero) / 5 Comments

La Vera Gisselman, Senior Picture

If my grandmother, La Vera Gisselman were still on this earth, she would be 100 years old today. She was an extraordinary woman, and I remember her with such fondness.

John and Amelia Seipp

She grew up in Wisconsin. Her small family lived in the second story above a store that they owned. She was full of love and admiration for her sainted mother, Amelia. She had much respect for her father, John, although she described him as being strict and favoring her younger brother over her. She told me her father was a very handsome man, always attracting the attention of the ladies. Yet he had a certain smell about him, being very opposed to the overuse of precious and expensive water. (La Vera was one of the most cleanly people I have ever known, almost to a fault. As a child, I would wait on her heels and beg her to play with me. Yet, she could not settle down to play a game or read a comic book until she felt that she had sufficiently cleaned my parents house. This included taking the mattress off of my bed and vacuuming underneath it!) Well, as a young woman, she described sneaking around when her father wasn’t home, filling up the wash tub with the rationed water and taking many forbidden baths.

When she was 16 years old, she met the love of her life, Harold Gisselman, at the ice skating rink. He was immediately taken with her and offered to walk her half of the way home.

She thought to herself, “What kind of a guy is this, that he would only walk me part of the way!”

He ended up walking her the entire way to her front door, and it sounded like they were inseparable after that! He was 20, so he had to wait for La Vera to grow up a bit before they could think about marriage. Yet, they waited more than 10 years before they tied the knot. In the frugal and patient way of their generation, they purchased a plot of land and had a house built before they got married. (I remember looking at pictures of the basement being dug and the piles and piles of rocks that were pulled out of the ground. Some of those rocks were used by Harold’s father to build a retaining wall in the back yard. Many changes occurred to the house and the yard over the years, but 921 Humboldt Ave. remained their beloved home for all of their 50 plus years of marriage. I have such wonderful memories of that little two bedroom, always clean and orderly, always meticulously maintained. I remember picking cucumbers in the perfect, weedless garden. I recall many neighbors and friends commenting on how the yard, bordered and overflowing with plants and flowers, was the prettiest one in Wausau. Whenever an unusually cool breeze blows through Pennsylvania, I am taken back to those cool Wisconsin summers. Whenever our radiators kick on that first cold day of fall, I am reminded of the smell of Grammy and Papa’s radiators that they had to turn on even in the summer!)

Finally, when Harold was 31 years old, he wed his beautiful La Vera on Nov 1, 1940.

Harold and La Vera Gisselman on their wedding day

They honeymooned in Chicago to pick out some furniture for their new home. When they returned to Wausau, they separated to continue living with their own parents until their home was completed. Harold was the youngest of his mother’s four boys, and Anna always told him that when he moved out, she would just die. The day he moved into his own home, which was just up the street from his mother’s home, she did pass away. Much sorrow and joy were woven together in those early years.

Anna and Erik Gisselman

Grammy told me that one day Harold was requested to report for duty. It was WWII, and he had received a summons, but there was a possibility that he could be sent right back home again. Grammy passed the long hours waiting for him to return home by scrubbing every inch of her home. Then she received a call. He would not be returning but would be entering the Army Air Corp! He went to an army base in St Louis, Missouri. They discovered that he was very good at typing, so the army, in their wisdom, decided that he could best serve his country by doing office work in the states. He was never sent over seas to fight, and I was always so thankful for that. La Vera was able to visit him in St. Louis, and she became pregnant with their first and only child, my mother! How very important that child was!

La Vera had to spend most of her pregnancy alone, although she did have the help and company of her mother. When she told her father-in-law, Erik, that he was going to be a grandfather, he would walk up the street to help her as well.

The time came for her to give birth. She entered the hospital and they put her to sleep. She doesn’t remember any of the birth! (She would become very uncomfortable when I would broach the topic of my natural childbirth experiences. She preferred to stay in the dark about the whole mysterious affair.) Harold received some leave and returned to see his baby girl!

After his time in the Army, Harold was hired as a bank teller. He worked his way up the banking ladder until he was eventually the bank president. Everyone called him Chick, and he was known and loved by everyone at the bank and most everyone in town. He was an honest and intelligent man, always ready with a joke and a smile. Years and years after his retirement and even years after his death in 1994, I still heard people around town talk about him with respect and admiration.

La Vera got a job as a kindergarten teacher’s assistant at Franklin Elementary. Then she was the secretary at Horace Mann Junior High School and worked there for many years. She was wonderful with children. She gave me a box full of years and years worth of crafty invitations she helped to make, promoting some sort of school event. She would often be a part of the school’s variety show in which she and Harold (along with many others) would deck themselves out in various costumes and perform skits.

Once they both retired, they would spend their winters in Florida and Arizona and their summers gardening and visiting their two beloved grandchildren (myself and my brother Jason) in Pennsylvania. La Vera despised the heat and humidity of PA. She would end up playing games with us in our cool basement to find relief. We would also go to visit them in Wisconsin for 2-4 weeks in the summer. Oh the fun we had playing at Marathon Park, hiking on Rib Mountain or the Eau Claire Dells, and visiting the cottage up north. We would swim in the frigid water until our quivering lips turned purple. Once we all took a trip to Yellowstone National Park. It was one of the best times of my childhood!

Harold and La Vera celebrating their 50th anniversary

My Papa passed away the night that I graduated from High School. La Vera was devastated and heart-broken. He had prepared her for his death, and she knew how to take care of herself. She was strong and self-determined. One of her most memorable character traits was that she ALWAYS knew the right thing to do in EVERY situation, and she NEVER hesitated to speak her mind. She could be taken as rather prideful and bossy at times, yet to me, that was just Grammy.

Several years passed and Grammy moved herself into a retirement community, selling her beloved home and going through all of her belongings. Years after that she moved herself into a new retirement community, because it had a balcony off the living room that she liked better. She loved that place and never wanted to leave. She kept herself busy with cribbage games and a string of adoring boyfriends, always much younger that she was. She lived independently up until two months before her death at age 96. She was a marvel and a wonder to all who met her! Her secrets to long life and vitality? Exercise, fresh air, gardening, and a table-spoon of vinegar and black strap molasses everyday. Her father, who died in his own home at age 96, swore by his vinegar and honey, and she carried on that tradition with a twist.

One point that Grammy was rather adamant about over the years was that I should not be a “baby making machine”, as she put it. She was overjoyed with the first few children we had. Then her excitement waned with the next few. Somewhere around the 6^th child, she acted annoyed when I announced a new pregnancy. Pretty soon I was very hesitant to even tell her that I was pregnant again, almost wishing that I could assure her that we would absolutely have no more children and gain back her approval. Her approval was always something that I highly coveted. Woe to the person who had lost it! Yet I knew that God had more precious babies for me, whether Grammy liked it or not!

My Grammy, LaVera Gisselman

In her final years, La Vera appeared to become less controlling and more accepting of others. I had the privilege of spending the last week of her life by her side. She had a stroke and was no longer capable of making decisions on her own. Chris and I traveled to Wisconsin and moved her into a memory care facility. She was the most talkative, most opinionated, and spunkiest resident in the entire place. She could hold the most lucid conversations, and a few times Chris and I thought we were making a horrible mistake by taking away her freedom, her apartment, and her car. Yet the next moment she would think that Chris was a nurse and that another resident, Leonard, was actually her boyfriend, Harry. She had the most hilarious conversations with Leonard, still believing that he was Harry, even after he refuted that fact in many ways. Yet Leonard was smiling the whole time as though he didn’t mind the thought of being her boyfriend.

She passed peacefully in her sleep on February 4, 2011. I was hard to say goodbye, but I was thankful that she didn’t have to live very long with dementia.

Later, in her belongings I found at least four typed note cards listing the names and birth dates of all her great-grandchildren (including Jason’s two children), as though she was afraid that she would forget one of them. I also found a precious little bundle wrapped in white tissue paper. It was a group of seven silver angels, one for each one of my children that I had at that time. Each one was inscribed with the child’s name and inset with their birthstone. Each great-grandchild was precious to her…I could see that clearly. Now that she is on the other side of eternity, I know they are even more precious in her eyes. I know that she is cheering me on as I am expecting our ninth little one in April. She can now see into the fathomless depths of time; generation after generation, thousands of years upon thousands of years. Every good thing my children accomplish during their lifetimes is part of HER legacy! Their imprint on history is also HER imprint on history! And their love of humanity and their love for God add to HER eternal bliss.

I love you Grammy! I can hardly wait to see you again!

The Golden Days of Summer

August 6, 2014 / Anne (Grace is my Superhero) / Leave a comment

Ah, those glorious days of summer, kissed by the golden sun!

I was sitting on the back steps under the sunflowers. My children were running barefoot in the green grass. I wanted to drink it all in and not miss a thing. Summer won’t be around much longer. The sunflowers only last for a few weeks.

We will never be exactly the same as we are right now. My children are growing taller and getting smarter every minute. Soon the toddler will be a little boy and the little boy will be a young man. As I watch my children playing in the summer twilight, I think back to the summers gone by, memories now faded and misty with time.

The absolute glory of the end of school. The days suddenly full of free time, balancing between excitement and boredom.

Discovering new things.

Riding bikes.

Playing in the cool creek water. Catching fireflies that turn the dark into a magical fairy land.

Picnics outside.

Birthday Parties.

Fun and laughter.

Get-together with friends.

Now I am grown, and my friends are grown, and we have children of our own.

We still feel like we are teenagers. Full of fun and adventure. Youthful and energetic (at least during the first half of the day)! Still trying to figure out what we want to be when we grow up.

Yet we see that some of our babies have become teenagers.

Mature and responsible. Standing on tiptoe to peak out over the horizon to catch glimpses of adulthood. We realize that we are teenagers no longer. We are adults barreling down the road of life to middle age.

And look at the fruit our lives have produced!

Nineteen children who play in the golden days of summer.

Soon these days, now crisp and sharp, will fade into memories. School will start again. The air will become cool. The leaves will change.

But God’s goodness is unchanging, unwavering. We can savor every drop of summer while we look forward to the glories of autumn.

The radiators turning on for the first time. The nippy air, permeated with the smell of wood smoke. Children romping in the leaves. We can treasure the past, revel in the present, and joyfully anticipate the future. We are pursuing God and dwelling in His love, day in and day out. We are going from glory to glory, going from good times to even better times. We are confident in the promise that these golden days of summer will come around again.

Before we know it, a summer will come when children will go off to college. Someday some of them will get married in the summer…perhaps to each other! We may be gathering as childhood friends turned into family, watching our grandchildren playing barefoot in the grass. And we will be different too. Our hearts will be stretched and expanded to contain more love…more of the goodness of God…more golden days of summer.

Happy Heavenly Birthday Dad!

July 31, 2014July 31, 2021 / Anne (Grace is my Superhero) / 4 Comments

My Father, George Redman Beyer, passed away last year on July 31. In honor of him, I would like to post here the words I spoke at his memorial service.

All you who knew George, whether it was for 5 minutes or fifty years, knew that he was very kind, calm, patient, slow, methodical, and very intelligent.

He loved history and could remember facts and figures with an almost photographic memory. Most of those official blue and yellow signs you see around the state of PA were written by my Dad. When I was little I couldn’t remember the name of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, so I just told people that my Dad was a Historical Marker Maker. They gave me funny looks.

I got even stranger reactions when I told them that we were Quakers and went to Meeting instead of Church. Dad was always a man of peace. I almost never heard him criticize other people and I almost never saw him get angry.

In recent years, he had to bear with my five wild boys running around the house with nerf guns, squirt guns, and cap guns. Still he was very patient with them. He spent hour after hour after hour reading to all the grandchildren, snuggling on the sofa.

He answered question after question, read book after book. He rejoiced at the birth of every new grandchild and enjoyed them immensely.

This was an intense week for our family. Dad was sent to the emergency room on Monday with blood clots in his lungs. He stopped breathing and received CPR three times. When I saw him that evening, he was unconscious and the hospital was still trying to stabilize him. That night I prayed those deep, desperate prayers. I love it how God draws so near to me in times like these. I felt like He said to me, “This will end in death, but it is OK.” Then I saw a picture in my mind. I saw my dad as a young boy, running in the summer twilight.

He had perfect shalom, “perfect peace, nothing broken, and nothing missing.” He was running into the arms of God the Father. They both had such joy and excitement about being together.

On Tuesday the hospital thought they might be able to stabilize Dad and wake him up. Then we received a call that he had taken a turn for the worse, and we better get in there as soon as we could. Again I began praying in the car, and I was desperate with God. I said, “You can’t let him die if he’s not ready, if it is not his time. I haven’t done enough. I haven’t told him enough about you. I haven’t shown him enough love.” Again the sweet presence of God surrounded me and said, “It is already done. I have already done it all. All that is left is to trust me.”

So as we sat in Dad’s room watching him peacefully pass away, I again thought of him running into the arms of his Father. I heard the Father God say to him, “George, it doesn’t matter what you did or didn’t do in your lifetime. I want you! You are my reward; You are my pearl of great price.”

Mom told me that Dad had recently attended a conference at Life Center and loved the song, “Abba” which means Daddy. (Click here to listen to the wonderful song.) We sang that song in Worship tonight. This confirmed to me that he had a longing in his heart to know God as his Daddy, and now his heart’s desire is fulfilled. He feels for the first time the full strength of the unconditional, all consuming love of the Father. Dad had loving parents and a loving family. Loving relationships are the joy of this life. But they are just the first morning rays of sunlight peaking over the horizon. Now he is standing in the brightness of noonday, and I am so happy for him!

I love how God gives us signs to explain what is happening in the unseen realm. He gave me a sign. My mom had transplanted a lot of flowers from her yard to into my yard. The irises and hyacinths have been blooming for many years now, but I have never seen the resurrection lily. I just thought it had died, and I had forgotten about it. But the day after my Dad died, I looked out my window and I saw it blooming!

I love you Dad!

Blue, White and Yellow = The Goodness of God

July 25, 2014July 25, 2014 / Anne (Grace is my Superhero) / 2 Comments

It all started in my parents’ basement; the part of the basement that was used for storage of boxes of old stuff, stacks of newspapers, flowerpots with dirt still in them, tomato stakes, and odds and ends.

I found this lovely example of blue and white china down there, and I claimed them as my own. I placed them in my room among my eclectic collection of all things I considered pretty as a young girl. It was one of the only decorations I took with me when I got married and moved into my first apartment. It took an honored place on my grandfather Beyer’s old bookshelf, one of the only actual pieces of furniture we owned in those early years.

Somehow that piece of china took hold in my mind as a representative of a happy home. I developed a picture of my dream home over the course the next few years. It was a big farm-house with a wrap around porch, a happy place for our happy family. The most important rooms of the house (the kitchen and dinning rooms) were painted a warm, sunny yellow and adorned with white trim and white shelves. And what graced those white shelves? Blue and white china!

We lived many years in rentals or in a home we thought we would soon sell. I lived with the Realtor beige and white, still seeing those yellow walls in my mind. In 2007 we purchased a nice home in Pennsylvania. It wasn’t a farm-house, but it was big with a porch in front. I didn’t have “THE dream home” or the yellow walls…or the white shelves, but I started to collect the china. My in-laws purchased my next few plates at an antique store for my birthday. I had nowhere to display them, so I carefully packed them away. I started picking up pieces here and there, at thrift stores or yard sales. A tea-cup with delicate blue flowers, a plate with a cozy cottage and a bridge, a pitcher with an unusual design of blue triangles. A dollar here, fifty cents there. Each one a treasure, each one unique, each one a representative of God’s goodness to me. He has the entire universe to run, yet I felt Him share my joy with each special find.

Some friends had a china cabinet in their basement that they didn’t use, and they offered it to us. I was overjoyed! I had a place to store my treasures where I could see them each day.

It was my birthday in February of 2010. That was the glorious year that IT happened! My husband bought me bright yellow paint! I could hardly believe my good fortune! Our weird sage/aqua walls in the kitchen and dinning room were going to be transformed to yellow! We still had many young children, so we had to prep and paint after they went to bed. We continued to paint until 3 o’clock in the morning. Chris was a trooper. I was high on excitement and hardly felt tired. I was getting my yellow walls!

It was quite a shock at first. It wondered if I had picked the correct yellow color. But the sun was shinning inside my home 24 hours a day, seven days a week! “Daffodil” yellow grew on me until I couldn’t keep from saying, “I just love this!” It is amazing how small things can make such a dramatic different. Slowly I acquired some white shelves and more blue and white china. Now I am surrounded by beauty everyday, and it has improved the quality of my life.

Some days I marvel at the fact that we are still dwelling here, in this beautiful home. We were close to foreclosure during the hard times. While we were living through those difficult months, we thought back to the miracle that this home was. We knew that God had given it to us, and we knew that He could take it away. Chris was walking on our porch one night, feeling the heartbreak of loss, when God spoke to him.

“This is YOUR home, and you will sell it when YOU want to.”

When Chris told me that, I was so touched by the loving heart of my Father. He owned everything, everywhere. He had bought our very lives with the blood of His son. He did the miracle to get us this house. Yet He said that it was ours, and that we could choose when we wanted to sell it!

God was true to His word and worked out the details so we could continue to own this house, our dream home! He has done many more miracles to enable us to put food on the table day after day, pay all our bills month after month, and go shopping for blue and white china year after year.

Each piece reminds me of His incredible concern for every small detail of my life. Here I am, living my dream! My husband doesn’t care a thing about blue and white china; but to me, it symbolizes the amazing, unending goodness of God.

Interior Decorating According to Children

July 23, 2014 / Anne (Grace is my Superhero) / 5 Comments

I don’t think my children understand what “interior decorating” means.

I love to daydream about rooms in my house that I will remake into works of art. I enjoy looking at pictures in magazines and collecting ideas from TV shows and friends houses. I dream about getting yards and yards of inexpensive fabric at the PA Fabric Outlet for future curtains. I create floor plans in my mind, full of colors and patterns. When I think about decorating my bedroom, I think about fresh, light blue paint on the walls and a beautiful blue and white quilt for the bed.

I used to have daydreams for my children’s rooms as well. Areli’s room was going have purple bedding and yellow walls featuring lovely framed photos of Anne Geddes baby butterflies. Twelve years have passed since those dreams, and Areli no longer wants purple and butterflies.

Cooper and Calvin share a bright red bunk bed which matches nicely with their area rug of bright red, blues, and greens. Their walls still sport the pastel yellow, mint, and pink colors that were painted by the previous owner for their little girl. It doesn’t bother me too much because in my mind, their walls are the perfect shade of blue. At least we removed the sparkly chandelier.

Nine months ago we created a fifth bedroom in our home for the baby, and I have filled up a file cabinet in my brain with ideas for his room consisting of a many shades of orange and a lot of lions. The walls of his room are still stark and messy white, all patched with putty, waiting to be sanded and painted a warm yellowish, orangey, brown/tan color. The actual official color has yet to be researched and determined. Something like Sherwin Williams’ “Delicious Melon.”

Will my interior decorating dreams ever come to pass? I am still hopeful, although I have not yet been able to do any of the children’s rooms in my 15 years of being a mom. Just for fun and so I could more accurately daydream about decorating their rooms, I posed the question to each child.

“What if you had your own room and you could decorate it any way you wanted to?”

The answers amazed and inspired me, but I realized that they don’t think about decorating in the same way I do. Not by a long shot! The answers ranged from:

“Camouflage loft bed with green walls and a huge closet that locks so no one can touch my stuff.”

“A wall covered with books shelves and books, my own laptop with editing software, new and better cameras.”

“Entertainment center with flat screen TV and game system that flips around to become a dresser with all my clothes inside, blue walls, black ceiling with lights shaped like stars.”

I explained that none of their bedrooms would ever contain a TV or a game system as long as they lived with me, but that did not deter them.

“Flat screen TV, many game systems, and a slide that goes out my window. It will be a water slide but I can shut the water off, and then it will just be a regular slide…Oh, and I want a pool in my room.”

“A bed that comes out of the wall by itself and a pool and a hot tub and a slide and…” This answer was given by Calvin, my talkative 5-year old.

He continued to expound on the details of his dream room for the next 20 minutes. I must admit that my mind kept wandering in and out of the conversation. I caught fragments of his chattering.

“…the toilet will flush by itself….the lava wont hurt me…there will be crazy glue but I wont die…there will be extra feet to put on if you want to be taller…” and on and on it went.

Although I could not make sense of it all, one thing became abundantly clear to me. My definition of “interior decorating” had become much too narrow. What had happened to my big, hairy, audacious dreams? Children seem to be able to tell you exactly what they want, whether or not it is realistic …or even real. And they are not deterred by restrictions and rules. They think out of the box. Or perhaps their boxes are much more vast and exciting than my box. Those boxes become smaller and smaller as the child gets older, I have noticed. But isn’t it impossible, child-like faith that has given birth to solutions and inventions never previously considered?

I pray we can all grab onto that child-like hoping and imagining. Even if it never comes to pass the way we envision it, it sure is a lot of fun! And I pray that my children can hold on to their interior decorating dreams. I would love a house with slides and toilets that flush by themselves!

I Love My Tribe

July 14, 2014 / Anne (Grace is my Superhero) / 4 Comments

The music washes over me. It is not just melody and rhythm…it is the very atmosphere of heaven. The lights are bright, the stage is full of musicians, and I am surrounded by my tribe. Almost every Sunday morning I find myself here, in the sanctuary of Life Center and saturated with the swirling presence of God and humanity. There are so many worship leaders that share the stage, so many musicians that rotate from week to week. They are full of talent and resurrection life, and I love them all! They have birthed an abundance of CDs out of the overflow of their lives of praise.

I watch the senior pastors in the front row, boppin’ to the rockin’ music. They are in their sixties, but they enjoy the youthful expression and energy as much as anyone. They actually lead the rest of us in radical, “out of the box” thinking! They have served this church for over twenty years, and I love them! I see one of the younger worship leaders, passionately singing a song that he wrote; and I think about how I used to babysit him when he was a boy. I look over and see his parents in the front row, beloved pastors who raised me in the youth group; still loving, still serving, still standing for all that is true.

Some folks are out of their seats, dancing. Some are swaying to the music. Others are sitting with their eyes closed. Others are kneeling on the floor. My teenage daughter is up front, worshipping with her friends. I observe many gray heads in the crowd, faces lined with wisdom and love. I see parents holding their little ones. I see children twirling scarves and prancing on bare feet. Life is always bursting forth at Life Center. There are more pregnant women than I can keep track of, and I love them all! I long to be able to tell each one of them how gorgeous they are and how precious they are to God, carrying His little children of promise!

I notice women running to each other in joyful reunions, laughing and hugging. I see people spontaneously begin to pray for the person next to them, passion and concern on their faces. I see others exchanging gifts or notes.

It is time for the offering and one of the “newer” pastors takes the microphone. He and his family have become so precious to me. Every time I see him take the stage, I am alert with anticipation. I know that some stunning revelation will spill from his lips that will rock the way I see the world.

The music subsides and there are announcements of births and deaths; family business that herald joy and tears all at the same time. How we each know that thrill and that pain, and how we each long to share those with our brothers and sisters. I walk to the back of the sanctuary during the meet and greet time, and I am enveloped in a warm and healing hug by a beautiful black mama.

“Look at you! You’re beautiful! Just beautiful!” she always says to me with her eyes shining and her amazing, white smile blazing. She is the beauty! I wish I could describe the indescribable, how dark and lovely she is…but her beauty is so deep and so true, I am at a loss for words.

It is time for the message and another pastor comes up. He and his wife are treasures to me, having led countless youth events, missions trips and prayer times that I was apart of. We have even lived with them a couple of times. Some folks in the crowd are a little confused because he talks too fast, as though he has 4 hours worth of revelation to impart in 45 minutes. Chris and I are fluent in “speed talk” since we grew up under his tutelage, and we just chuckle to ourselves. In his message, he talks about a mission trip that he led 20 years ago. I was part of that trip, and how I cherish those memories!

After the service, I hug my dear and longtime friends. I greet friends I grew up with and friends who were in my wedding. I talk with my children’s pastor, who I went to school with. I see more recent friends, who have quickly taken residence in my heart. I identify new acquaintances as well. I notice many fresh faces and hope to call them my friends someday too. So many personalities, so many gifts, so many stories, so many ways that God reveals Himself to me; represented by these precious people.

“I love my tribe!” I always think to myself on a Sunday morning. The love wells up within me, along with pride. I love my tribe! There are children of God all over this earth, in different denominations, different countries, varying cultures and traditions. But I am so glad that my boundary lines have fallen here, at Life Center. I started coming to this church in 1989, when it was meeting in the old casket factory. My husband Chris started coming earlier than that, in 1985. We left for a time and moved to Colorado Springs. In the eight years we were there, we couldn’t put our roots down, no matter how hard we tried. Now we are back in our promised land, surrounded by family. How good it feels to watch our family tree grow tall and strong with a wide trunk and thick bark, an oak of righteousness, a planting for the display of His splendor.

How glorious it feels to let our roots descend into the rich and fertile soil of Central Pennsylvania! How refreshing to drink the deep, deep waters. How thirsty we had been for those waters!