Dove in the Rock

My dad, my kids’ Poppy, passed away July 8, 2009. For a home so full of preschoolers, our farmhouse now has a strange undercurrent of silence beneath the rambunctiousness. Dad needed me so much in the last two months that I now feel at a loss without him to tend. Although he had a terminal disease, his sudden decline and death took us very much by surprise. We had plans for many future years of sharing life with the aid of technology.

He wanted me to share this song: When I Get Where I’m Goin’

If you’ve ever lost someone you loved, do yourself a favor and watch it.

Posted on July 12th, 2009 by Dove
Filed under: ALS | No Comments »

My tears too began to fall as I put my arm around my dad’s shaking, shrunken shoulders.

“I just… I just….” he wept, his gray head hanging. Occasionally he looked up and out the window to the bright inviting day outside. The tall summer grass was laying over in the breeze, the flowers on the porch alternately dimmed and illuminated by the patchy clouds moving swiftly in and out of the path of the sun’s rays.

With effort, he pulled his shoulders up to draw a ragged breath. “I just feel so restless, to be outside,” he said, pausing to pull in more air between phrases. “I hate sitting here, lying here, dying.”

For a man who arguably spent two-thirds of his life, and certainly his best hours, out of doors, the greatest theft ALS has wrought to date is that of his freedom to be working outside on our farm. So much of his day is now spent resting in bed, or forever anticipating a bowel movement, or waiting for my availability to convey him to the porch to enjoy what nature he can from the porch.

And I, as always, am torn. I hug my dad tight, kissing the protruding vertebrae at the top of his bony back, but I hear angry squeals from the other end of the house, and the thunder of several pairs of preschool feet tearing toward me for justice. Sure enough, the door to my dad’s room bursts open and their pleas and accusations pour forth as they pile through the door. I order them out, and my dad pats my leg and gestures after them, releasing me to tend to their needs. I give him a lingering look as I head for the door. His face is still wet. I want to stay and give in to the sorrow, to walk with him through this loss. But my four kids, his grandchildren, call me away. So I return to them, to living and growing and learning and squabbling and playing, while my dad curls up on his bed again, staring out the window.

Posted on June 16th, 2009 by Dove
Filed under: ALS | No Comments »

What fun! I decided to try the ciabatta recipe to make buns for sandwiches, and they came out delightful! They’re similar to Schlotsky’s and about the same size, I plan to use these for BLT’s for dinner tonight.

This time I baked them on cookie sheets instead of a pizza stone, and this resulted in greater ovenspring*. It is very difficult to get a consistent shape, and more often than not I ended up deflating them almost completely in cutting the dough into the individual servings. At 500°F they baked for a scant 10 minutes, but turned out terrific! Unfortunately, I also learned that if you get any excess cornmeal or flour on the pan, it will burn and fill your entire house with smoke, causing your children to flee to the nearest open window, gasping for air. But it won’t harm the buns!

Good thing, too!

 (You’ll just have to imagine that bun full to bursting with thick bacon, crisp lettuce, fresh tomatoes and slathered with mayo. I can’t take a picture of them anymore, because we ate them all!)

* When the loaf is first placed in a well-preheated and hot oven, the heat from it causes a final burst of fermentation and expansion called “oven spring”. This gives the bread a nice rounded and well-risen top. Oven spring continues through the first five to ten minutes of baking and stops when the loaf has reached 140 degrees F when the yeast dies. The flour’s starches gelatinize and the gluten sets, making the loaf’s shape permanent.

Posted on April 11th, 2008 by Dove
Filed under: Food | 3 Comments »

“And so then I got a call from him saying we don’t have to worry about money no more and I said, ‘That’s good. One less thing.’” –Forrest Gump, upon learning he was wealthy

Sometimes money seems like such a stupid thing to pray for. Money doesn’t fix broken relationships (like mine with my mom) or heal awful terminal diseases (like ALS) or make any of us truly happy. But it sure can simplify the logistics of difficult circumstances, by paying for lots of expensive equipment to make living with ALS easier, for instance. As long as your hope isn’t in money and your motives are pure, well, I can’t say I have a problem with praying for money.

Especially when that prayer is answered so succintly, so beautifully, and so wonderfully like it was today. Dad’s long-term disability income was approved.

Woo-hoo and praise God!!

Posted on January 22nd, 2008 by Dove
Filed under: ALS | 1 Comment »

I just received a fwd about the Christian ire raised by Kathy Griffin’s remarks at the Emmy awards. Besides my intense irritation at receiving an email that says, “If you delete this, nothing bad will happen to you, but if you pass this on, you will truly have stood up for Jesus Christ,” I crafted my own response to this forward and am planning to send it to everyone that received it. I think it needs to be said. I’m just trying to decide if I’m brave enough.

Here’s the original email:

I don’t really watch the comedian Kathy Griffin, but I must say I am appalled that anyone could be this bold in making such a public statement about Jesus. We are truly living in a modern day Babylon.

At the Emmy awards, Kathy Griffin’s acceptance speech said, “A lot of people come up here and thank Jesus for this award. I want you to know that no one had less to do with this award than Jesus.” She went on to say,”Suck it, Jesus. This is my God now!” referring to the Emmy.

As a Christian, I am offended by her hate speech. What do you think might have happened if she had made the hate speech against Muhammed???? Kathy Griffin has the right as an American to say what she thinks. As a Christian-American, so do I.

Today I will refuse to watch any show that she may be on or purchase tickets to any event at which she would perform. What will you do? If you delete this, nothing bad will happen to you, but if you pass this on, you will truly have stood up for Jesus Christ.

And here’s my response:

This woman doesn’t make me angry. We are not necessarily living in a modern Babylon. This is the normal reaction of the unsaved when confronted with the cross. Jesus is foolishness to the world, remember? He is offensive to the unsaved (1 Pet 2:8). How else do you expect them to respond to him? Kathy Griffin has no relationship with Jesus, so do you think he is offended by her words? Hardly. The unsaved have been thumbing their noses and shaking their fists at God for thousands of years, and will continue to do so until he comes back to end it.

I am not appalled that anyone could be this bold in making such a public statement about her opinion of Jesus, I am more appalled that more Christians are NOT making such bold public statements about THEIR opinion of Jesus. We Christians getting our feathers ruffled because we are “offended” by this is such a pompous, American attitude. Where in the Bible does it say we have the right to not be offended? Rather the opposite, we are guaranteed trouble in this world by living our lives for Christ. It is the American who thinks he has the inalienable right to live life without being offended, that’s what puts the gold trim on the BMWs of so many lawyers.

And really, why is this so offensive? Most folks live their lives that way, she just said it aloud. She’s not even guilty of hypocrisy, because she was honest and her actions are consistent with her words.

I find Griffin’s words challenging. She, a non-Christian, openly acknowledges to her audience that she does not submit to Jesus as God, and tells us exactly what god guides her actions. We too have an audience that is paying attention to our behavior, and our behavior tells them exactly what god guides our actions. Whom would your audience identify as your god? Fame? Money? Stuff? Approval? Affluence? Comfort? Personal happiness? Anytime we ditch the teachings of Jesus and the instruction of the Bible to pursue these, we are showing our audience what god truly directs our steps.

So while non-Christian Kathy Griffin can tell Jesus to suck it as a publicity stunt, those of us who name him as our Savior can tell him to suck it by flouting his teachings for our own pursuits, and that’s something that truly offends him. And our audience takes much more to heart what they see in our lives rather than what they hear from a stranger on TV.

I highly doubt she’d be gratified to know that her words inspired such edifying reflections in this Christian.

Updated to add:

I’ve thought further on the subject and also realized two other things. First, that her remarks were not “hate speech.” (See the wikipedia article on hate speech: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech)

Second, that boycotting the products of a person you’ve never before heard of has absolutely zero effect on her. How many of us had ever heard of Kathy Griffin before this? Now we all know who she is and that she won an Emmy, so her publicity stunt has worked 100% perfectly.

Updated again:

I did send it, and the only response I got was from an irate person who was sure I’d been writing about her and was mad that I’d sent it to the whole list “to embarrass her.” Guilty conscience much?

Posted on January 18th, 2008 by Dove
Filed under: Learning | 2 Comments »