Happy Birthday, Jean. (updated)

Posted on by

Photo Credit: http://www.twincities.com

We held a party at work last night in honor of our friend Jean. Jean had her birthday on Friday and we knew it was something we needed to honor.

Jean has worked with our company for over 35 years. She just had her anniversary celebration a few weeks ago. I didn’t get a chance to go, I was wired up with electrodes for a sleep study. But I can proudly say I helped plan the menu. She picked all sorts of great things from Mayslack’s in Northeast Minneapolis. Over the past year or two we’ve gotten their roast beef sandwiches and onion rings on occasion. She liked the food and since the company was throwing her a party she got her choice of eats. I’m sorry that I didn’t get to attend. But she saved me a piece of carrot cake and it was there for me a few days later when I came back to work. Jean was that kind of woman – looking out for her friends.

Yes, was. Jean was killed in a traffic accident on Friday morning. After a long week of work she left to visit her family in Iowa. Right around sunrise she ran a stop sign and was killed by a truck. I feel badly for the truck driver. It wasn’t his fault but that’s a hard thing to live with in the end. Nobody else was hurt in the accident, Jean was alone in the car.

And that was her birthday – she was born into the Kingdom of Heaven that morning right around Sonrise.

And so we celebrated last night. Everyone on our shift has a good heart. Some have stronger faith than others, some kind of at the edges of believing. Some still seeking. But all of them good people. And we wanted to say goodbye to a friend. Like all families we’re a bit dysfunctional. Sometimes we love each other and sometimes we squabble. But we were unanimous in our affection for Jean. So the group, small enough to count on two hands, gathered in the dark of the night to talk about a friend and remember her.

Midnight shifters are a different group. Kind of stand-offish, a bit contemptuous of the “day-weasels,” and certainly sleep deprived. But most of all we are we. It’s a family. We don’t just work together like most people. It’s hard to explain to day workers but the crew that comes in night after night and gets the heavy maintenance done is a close knit group. We often have coworkers on the day shift we’ve never met. They’re just names on the department phone list even after years of having the same bosses. Most of us have worked the shift for years out of preference. We actually bid to the shift. Our friends are on the shift. We don’t hit the bars after work (well, most of us don’t) or go bowling. But our lives are intertwined because of the social isolation and unique nature of our jobs.

We had hot-dogs, Polish sausage, blue corn tortilla chips, chili, and all the fixings. We cooked it in crock pots. Jean would have liked that: she introduced us to crock pot liners. And she was a good cook. Whenever we had a food night she’d really go out of her way to bring something special. There were no store-bought cupcakes from Jean. It was always top-shelf stuff she made herself. For desert we had birthday cake because while we won’t see Jean again on this Earth, we wanted to celebrate her life and her arrival in Heaven. During the night her friends and coworkers for the past three decades cleaned up her cube. They lovingly packed up her possessions and separated the work stuff from the personal stuff.

Jean leaves behind kids and grand kids. And at least one coworker who’s monitor isn’t working so well this morning. The darned thing is all blurry and it’s making my nose run.

I’m going to time this to post on Monday in the evening so that all of her coworkers will have had a chance to find out the news before this goes public. God speed, Jean. We love you and will miss you.

I know it had to be pithy…

Posted on by

But darned if I can remember what it was I wanted to say. That’s what happens when you start reading about the new plugins and widgets that WordPress has available for you. I’m like a squirrel with a shiny dime in front of me – mesmerized.

But, as long as I’m babbling I had a revelation this morning about old dogs. My friend Edzell is a very senior citizen. His walk is wobbly, he has poor vision, deaf as a post … kind of sounds like me for the first twenty minutes of each day.

Seriously, he’s having a tough time navigating. But he’s such a good friend, and such a sweet soul that it’s hard to get mad at him for delaying his entry to the room because the light level is different, or the flooring is slick. His most annoying flaw is that he’s always been a pain about going up the back steps. Dawdles and stares at you like his greatest hope is that you’ll go away and just let him stay outside for the rest of the day. And once he starts up the steps it can take him five minutes to make the journey. Three or four false starts that require a trip to the bottom of the stairs can now be called the norm.

This morning I realized that he doesn’t do it to make me nuts. He does it because his body has never been designed to do stairs. God hadn’t put that into his model when construction began. He doesn’t do well on stairs. He’s fearful and it is hard when you’re a big dog with balance problems. I get it now. I just have to remember to be patient and love him more. Going down the steps and standing next to him helps. He’s not worried about falling down the stairs if you do that for him.

I hereby resolve to do that for my friend. Rain or shine, I will patiently wait for him or go down the stairs to help him up said stairs. Because I fear I won’t be looking out into the yard for him much longer. And that will be much harder to take than a short wait for the arrival of a cherished friend.

Book review – An Eye for Glory: The Civil War Chronicles of a Citizen Soldier by Karl Bacon

Posted on by

Full disclosure is in order: I met Karl Bacon (the author of this book) at the American Christian Fiction Writer’s conference in Dallas. I spent a thoroughly enjoyable weekend with Karl and my good friend Larry W. Timm. I now consider Karl to be a good friend as well. He’s a marvelous man with a heart for Christian writing and an immense depth of character.

I was intrigued not because of my love for history, nor for my fascination with how people I meet in the Christian writing world match up to their books. (It has been my experience that the books are a pretty good reflection of the man or woman. You can see that their hopes and wishes are in the pages as much as they are in their face as you talk with them in person.) No, my interest was because of Larry’s effusive praise and solemn reflection on the book. It had touched him deeply.

And, I confess, An Eye for Glory: The Civil War Chronicles of a Citizen Soldier has had the same impact on me. I just finished the book within the last hour. It as an absolutely haunting, beautiful, skillfully written, and loving account of a man’s journey through war and its aftermath. Karl has captured the Civil War at a new level. I could taste the dust on the march. I feared the next barrage of musket fire. I knew the loss of comrades. And it all came from this talented man’s imagination and understanding of human nature.

Karl has written a thoroughly Christian journey in his pages. Michael Palmer is the main character and we see him grow from green recruit to … well, read the book.

It is a book of wounding and salvation. There is no way that a thoughtful man or woman can read this book and not be brought to the brink of tears. It is that beautiful. I am eagerly awaiting Karl’s next book.

Maybe review is not the word for this post. Perhaps “Fanboy-mancrush” would be in order? Or, “Oh, I wish I could write that well” might sum it up.

I’ve read well over 5000 books in my life and it’s safe to say that this book is in the top 20. I think Karl will forgive me for saying that it’s a lovely and elegant read. There is a fair amount of violence in the book, but then you would expect that in reading about a conflict that tore our nation asunder. Head over to Amazon and get a copy today. You won’t regret it.

Phone Ministry.

Posted on by

I wrote a little bit about being at KTIS radio for the fall fundraiser the other day. It was nice, but I didn’t feel like I’d earned my lunch when I left.

So, I went back for the final four hours on Friday morning. I’m really glad I did.

During the four hours I was on the phone I had the chance to go back about 15 years to my call center days. I have actually done call center work on and off since high school, but for serious inbound calls my time goes back to being a representative with USWEST in the 1990’s. The biggest difference on Friday was that not one person said a harsh word to me. Being in the collections department of a phone company you learn new words and combinations of words even if you were a sailor. (It might, in fact, have been good training to be a sailor given some of the interesting suggestions people made to me in that job.)

Friday was blessed. I got to talk to wonderful people. Lonely people who just wanted a voice to pray with, people with not much money who wanted to do what they could to support the Ministry of Northwestern College and the radio station. Some folks were calling to express their love for the station with large gifts. More than once I heard someone talking about how they wanted to share the gifts God have given them with the station because it played such an important part in their life. Others could only do a little but needed to thank someone for the station being there 24×7 for them. I don’t think many people realize how important that voice in the middle of the night is when the walls are closing in and lonliness and depression crowd out all but the smallest speck of light. That light is KTIS beaming into their lives and keeping the hope of dawn in front of them.

I had more than one person increase their donation while we were on the phone. One man doubled his donation “just because God has been good to me and I love Him.” Awesome.

But the personal high of the day was the opportunity to pray with so many people I didn’t know on a personal level. It made me think of the best days I ever had as a Deacon. I was sitting in a chair with a phone headset on, but in my heart I was down on my knees in front of God, holding the hand of the person on the othe end of the line. I was pouring out my heart and lifting them up to God. And it was blessed and wonderful.

I left the station walking on the clouds. I had one of those mornings where the Holy Spirit had reached down and touched me personally. I knew Grace.

And all in the space of four hours just talking to listeners.

Thank you, Jason, Rich, Julene, all the air personalities, all of my other friends at KTIS who welcomed me into the fold to take calls this week. You were gracious and kind and fed not just my stomach but my soul by allowing me to participate.

Soap.

Posted on by

I wish to write an ode to soap, Lava in particular.

I spent the previous weekend at a very nice hotel in Dallas. Like most hotels it had some wimpy soap that was a cross between Ivory and Cheapie. Soft, left a residue, smelled vaguely of girls. (I like girls and the way they smell, but it’s not the smell for me when I shower.)

It made me pine for great soaps. The best hotel soap I ever found was a small disk of Oatmeal soap. Nice scrubby feeling, no scent, cleaned well, stayed solid in the shower. I still have one of those years later that I carry as my “emergency” soap when I travel.

The other soap that it brought to memory was the bar of Zest that the United States Navy issued in basic training. It not only kept the recruits clean, but it made your white hat (Dixie Cup, Dog Bowl, Grinder Lid, etc.) nice and white since it didn’t leave any residue. I have heard people complain that it gave you dandruff, but given our hair length of approx 1/2 inch it wasn’t a big issue. And, back in the day, you weren’t eyeing your fellow recruits as potential dating partners.

Today we switch around between brands in our house. My beloved has switched the sink soap to the little electric dispensers that sense your presence and spray soap. It’s good enough and it does cut down on residue in the sinks.

But I’ve hit the point in life where I get to use the soap I like in the shower. Yes, we’re a “two-bar” family in the shower. Mine? Lava. Yes, it is made by the fine people who brought us WD-40 and that’s probably enough for manly men. It’s a great exfoliant, leaves no residue, smells manly and lasts forever in the shower.

So, that’s it. My ode to Lava. I’m done now. back to serious posts.