Option G

I have a friend a few of you know, Clark Stanard. Clark has this saying, that whenever you face a problem or an issue, there's only one answer, Option G. You may lay out the choices, "Option A," "Option B," or "Option C." But no matter how hard you try, no matter how insightful your analysis, it comes back to there only being one, "Option G," or giving it up to God.

This has always been good advice. I mean, these are sound words. But what happens when good advice becomes real? I mean, you can know that something is right. But what happens when you discover that it is right? Book knowledge to street knowledge.

This advice has never been truer. Option G is all there is. It's not giving up or giving in, it's recognizing the answer before you screw up the question!

So how are we surviving? Option G. If it all feels wrong, it'll still be alright. I have no idea how I got to this point; it baffles me. Good advice is one thing. It's not just that acting on it is another, it's more like, how did I find the faith to see Option G. It's not entirely my choice-- even there, it's still Option G!

Remember

I was saying before that thru these tough days, especially looking back on Sissy’s Holy Week, I saw something more clearly about the Gospel, especially the life of Jesus. Then it was something like understanding why it’s so important to remember His life, the things He said and did. I was thinking particularly of that last week of His, where there was so much activity, so much time He wanted to spend with His friends.

Now that is being refined a bit. As I try to deal with the guilt that comes when I realize that because Melissa is no longer struggling here, and more time is opened up in our lives, I ask myself a question: what would Melissa want me to do? That is easy enough to answer, because as I so graciously know, there was nothing left unsaid between us. Even before she had cancer, we would talk about what do we do in case one of us dies, and it was always: take care of the boys. And we always knew that that meant staying close to God. The best thing we could do for each other, for our family, was love God.

So when I answer the question, what would Melissa want me to do, I live a moment with grief and hope, sad that she is not here, but knowing that if she were here, we’d be doing what we’re doing. That is an incomparable gift.

This weekend was a good one. Saturday night, we had a cook-out with Melissa’s parents, brother, his wife (Erin) and her parents. We had steaks, cooked corn on the grill, had some good potatoes and bread, dessert. We sat around and laughed and had a high time. Before the dinner, Connie (Sissy’s mom) was remembering how when Sissy entertained, she didn’t fret too much. The goal was not how good anything was (Altho it always was; I lose a man card here, because Sissy was actually the grillmaster), but rather spending time with friends and family.

Tonight (Monday) we had a fish fry at Sherman and Diddy’s (Melissa’s aunt and uncle). We caught fish (well, I didn’t; Roz caught three and told me to stick to preaching…), everyone just kicking back by the pond. And Sissy was not there. But she would have loved it—she liked catching bluegills and crappie, liked a fish fry, liked hanging out in such simple ways.

When we do those things, we honor her memory! We keep a part of her with us. We can, if we remember, do it in remembrance of her. The sacraments are really pretty straightforward if looked at that way.

Saturday night, did I tell too many Melissa stories? Did I remember her too much for comfort? I don’t know. When Brandon put the corn on the grill, I told him about how Sissy would grill garlic and the cloves would spread like butter. Or I’d recall how she did this or that. I regaled everyone with the story of me and Melissa’s first winter, when we lived in an old historic home, and she would sleep with the windows open, how it actually snowed in our room one night, and she had no clue why I was in bed with layers of clothes and a toboggan…

There is a curious moment in John chapter 11. John tells us that Jesus is coming to Lazarus, who is dead. When John says that Lazarus is the brother of Mary and Martha, he takes a moment to say, “this is the same Mary who poured perfume on the Lord and wiped His feet with her hair…” But that doesn’t happen until chapter 12. Obviously, everyone already knows the story, and John is heading them off at the pass so they don’t say, “Hey, isn’t that the same Mary who…” You can see the scene; John sitting with a group of people who want to hear about Jesus. “Tell us again,” they say, “we would hear about Jesus…”

Sometimes we don’t really get that Jesus was tragically taken from His friends. We get too theological, too church-y. His death is an historical fact, a religious doctrine. But the only reason we have a doctrine or a church is because His friends have said for 2000 years, “Do you remember that time He…”

One day, Melissa came with me to Lexington during the week. I said, “let’s go visit some folks.” Melissa—and this is just like her—said she wanted to visit some of the Congo families. We could have seen anybody—important people in the church, whatever. But she wanted to see someone who might really be blessed, and bless us. SO we ended up visiting with Noela, David’s wife. We had John and Joe, and they played with Noela’s boys Malipo and Benjamin.

We were there for three hours! They hit it off immediately. They talked about everything-- having boys, loving babies, cooking. It was a long conversation about the different foods in Congo and Kentucky. They talked about breast-feeding, and look, I was translating and I was kind of worried I might be crossing some cultural taboos. They just connected in a deep way. Noela, and this was so like Sissy, was Melissa’s first friend at The Rock La Roca.

After church Sunday, Noela asked me, “Is it okay if we name our baby girl after Melissa?” Remember…

Human Culture

When I was working on the butterfly garden, digging and sweating, I remembered some times we had at the church in Winchester. Well, it was not in Winchester, it was in Trapp, but you know what I mean.

Melissa and I were digging up a part of the garden for asparagus. We were really working the ground over—double digging, it’s called. It loosens soil in about the best way possible. But it is hard work. I would turn over a chunk of ground with a shovel, and Melissa, at a right angle to me, would start to break it apart with a grape hoe. We’d go over it that way a few times, and move each row of soil over into the one next to it. If you do this over a period of years, the soil gets totally moved around and it leaves a richer soil. It is hard work.

But it is human work. It may not get anymore basic than that. This is the work that humans have been doing from before civilization—it was the groundwork of civilization. There is a reason that culture and cult (worship) are tied linguistically to agriculture.

This was the work that God gave Adam and Eve. This is the work of Jesus’ parables. We have more or less lost this in the modern world, and its replacements are few and far between. That is to say, what ties a man and woman, a family, together? There is hardly any substitute for sweating together, doing the work of survival together. When on some fundamental level you realize you need each other, there’s a deep quality to the relationship, something beyond attraction, “love,” mutual compatibility, whatever. Fidelity becomes more probable in this kind of home economics. Or maybe it’s that we feel the loss of this human culture so completely that when we taste it or feel it for a moment, we sense that we have found some bond more binding than what we say and more permanent than what we “feel.”

We knew we were not going to be farmers. But if we had been, we knew we would have been the types whose work was a complete family affair, with all the work dependent on love and fidelity to each other and to the work. And so it was a gradual realization for us that we were “at work in the fields of the Lord,” as we put it. That the earth was souls, and the seeds were the Word and the crop was faith. So when we prayed as a family to be preachers together it was with a serious intent—on one hand knowing that the illusions of the world can easily take us away from plain human work, and on the other, wanting to strengthen the work of our hands.

The Hammer

It hit me on the way into church this morning, a trip the boys and I have made countless times, a trip that we never made with her, that Melissa is not coming to the Rock with us. You’d think I would have already made that connection. Before she had those last days in the hospital, before her Holy Week, she and I would talk about how she was feeling stronger, and how we hoped that not only could she come on Sundays, but maybe during the week, she could come in with me and if she got tired, she could go rest at Steve’s house. How quickly things change.

John is sad, Joe is mad. That will be the way of things, it looks like. Joseph seems to think she will be coming back. For four months now, she has been absent, in a way that was more thorough than even the transplant hospitalization. And she came back. So it seems that to him, this is another long absence. You can come back from heaven, he thinks.

The phone rang a few days ago, and John asked, “Is it Mommy?” It’s hard to do the little things like get rid of her cell phone. I was the last person to call her, the Sunday afternoon before she died.

When I told the boys that Melissa had died, we were in my mom and dad’s hotel room. Joe kind of blocked it out, but John got really agitated and said he wanted to go into the bathroom and cry. I went with him. He asked me, “Are you going to get another Mommy?” He has asked that two more times since, and I was not sure what he was asking. Last night, he says, “Are you going to get another Mommy?” We were having dinner with my brother-in-law and his wife and in-laws. We were all a little uncomfortable, and what am I supposed to say? Then John explained what he meant: “Mommy in heaven can be our special mommy and the new one can be our Take Care Mommy.” Poor little thing—Melissa spoiled him and Joe so much with love and affection, now they’re feeling lost. And it hit me at that moment—we are mourning in different directions. Each of us feeling a different loss acutely, looking for completely different answers, solutions. I hope and pray that the very thing that keeps us close—our loss—will not become a source of friction when we realize we have different needs, desires, and hopes for outcomes. John is afraid he won’t be taken care of how he was used to. Joseph is on edge about absence. Me? I am not sure.

And there’s still that messed up layer of guilt. There’s was always this “when you get better” talk, about how things would be. Well, those things are in various ways coming to pass, and perhaps more will, and others will be revealed. Only she’s not here to be part of it. Steve said, “she did get better.” And that’s true, more deeply than we know, but that’s not at all what I had in mind.

Prophetic Burden

I have been hanging out in a weird place:

“The word of the LORD came to me: "Son of man, with one blow I am about to take away from you the delight of your eyes. Yet do not lament or weep or shed any tears. Groan quietly; do not mourn for the dead. Keep your turban fastened and your sandals on your feet; do not cover the lower part of your face or eat the customary food of mourners ."

So I spoke to the people in the morning, and in the evening my wife died. The next morning I did as I had been commanded.

Then the people asked me, "Won't you tell us what these things have to do with us?"

So I said to them, "The word of the LORD came to me: Say to the house of Israel, 'This is what the Sovereign LORD says: I am about to desecrate my sanctuary—the stronghold in which you take pride, the delight of your eyes, the object of your affection. The sons and daughters you left behind will fall by the sword. And you will do as I have done. You will not cover the lower part of your face or eat the customary food of mourners . You will keep your turbans on your heads and your sandals on your feet. You will not mourn or weep but will waste away because of ^[a] your sins and groan among yourselves. Ezekiel will be a sign to you; you will do just as he has done. When this happens, you will know that I am the Sovereign LORD.'

"And you, son of man, on the day I take away their stronghold, their joy and glory, the delight of their eyes, their heart's desire, and their sons and daughters as well- 26 on that day a fugitive will come to tell you the news. At that time your mouth will be opened; you will speak with him and will no longer be silent. So you will be a sign to them, and they will know that I am the LORD." Ezekiel 24:15-27

Back in the dark days of the late spring, early summer of 2006, when Melissa was undergoing the bone marrow transplant, I was reading Ezekiel a lot. Part of that came because I was teaching Disciple 4 Bible Study, and Ezekiel was part of the reading. The class was really wrestling with what to do about this prophet. As I was studying and preparing classes, I kept coming back to something: more than any of the other prophets, Ezekiel himself is the prophecy.

That really resonated with the two of us, because Melissa was sold out to whatever came from this process. No matter what, she wanted to be a witness. So if she did well and could say, “This is awesome,” how wonderful. But if things were difficult, she would testify to God’s power in the worst times. And maybe she would strengthen somebody else for the journey.

She was ok with that, I was not. I knew, figured, understood, whatever, that no matter what the outcome of this, there would be much walking with God, much to say, to learn, to pass on. I have often said that this life is war, and success in war depends on there being some veterans who survive long enough to teach the new guys how to survive long enough to fight back. I did not want to be that guy. Melissa didn’t mind.

So I would read Ezekiel. And when things would get tough—when the radiation was at the peak of its destructive power and her mouth and guts were were shedding like snake skin; or when her liver was swollen, because radiation is like a million punches becoming one; or when huge waves of anxiety would hit because of the massive doses of steroids, I’d be reading Ezekiel, aggravated because I say too much some times, am too transparent, and yet God uses that to help others. I’d get really mad when I felt like she was going thru something that prayer would get her thru and she might tell someone or say something about it… I did not want there to be anything to witness to…

And then there was my own message, what I have been preaching to one degree or another for a few years, that there is a difference between joy and happiness. Happiness is tied to your external factors, things that are mutable, perishable, and utterly untrustworthy. But joy is tied to the inner condition of the heart, to faith in God. So I can have all things, but totally lack joy—and what a wreck of a human being is the spoiled brat who has it all and still manages to screw up life!! Or I can be stripped bare but still have joy because of the love of God in my heart.

So between my message of joy and not wanting there to be anything to witness, I would walk around outside, taking a break from being in the room and say to God, “Enough! I get it!...”

And so now: I am not really left wondering what this is about, or what it all means, or what is supposed to happen. It’s not just that Melissa and I talked about a future without her in it. It was that we talked about such things in light of the work of God in our life, especially her life.

It’s pretty plain, this thing I have come to call the prophetic burden: speak plainly about what God has done in our lives, making special reference to a plain fact of faith: none of what we believe depends on getting what we want, but on faith. It simply has turned out that the Word I get is about endurance in prayer and perseverance in faith in spite of bad news, in spite of tough times. I wish I had a different message. I wish I had a pleasant word, a nostalgic word. I wish I got to be one of the pastors who is a “leader.”

Instead, I preach as one refined in fire, and not like gold or silver, or even some alloying process to make steel. More like rock that fell into some form as God saw fit. Nothing special, they’re all over the place, except most stones don’t speak.

And what do I say? For the moment, that is plain, and has been plain for a few months now. One day Tim Jones and I had some prayer, and we came out of that prayer in serious agreement that what the Lord wanted was for me to preach about how we are getting through all this with our faith intact. I sat down and prayed some more and fleshed out 7 sermons about hope. They all made sense. Basic hard-core pastoral theology. They were on the docket.

And then, Melissa died. There was a temptation to lay off for a while, to sit back and lick my wounds. That may come in fits and starts. But I began to remember what Melissa would have expected of me—to get right back at it, to charge hard, to bring some to their knees, to lift others from their pits, to convict some of sin, to assure others of forgiveness, to be beloved by some, disliked by others (it happens, actually. Sweet as I am, it still happens.) I began to hear from God almost immediately about Ezekiel, to remember that where I am and where we had been is not so much the subject of preaching as the sign of the faithfulness of God.

In the middle of all this, I actually thanked God for being present, and for letting me mourn for my wife, unlike Ezekiel.

So I sat back down in prayer, to take a look at the sermons. I wondered: are they still the same? Does anything change? I was ready to preach them, I worked on them, in the hope that Melissa was going to be ok, that all kinds of plans were going to work out. And now?

I looked hard at them and marvel at God who seems to have negotiated a future. If Melissa were still here, these sermons would be ok, good reminders of God’s faithfulness. So I won’t change anything about them, because now that she is not here, there’s no doubt but that He means His Word, and I mean it, too. I wonder at God, to lay something on my heart, no matter what. So I won’t change them; not the word about all things working to the good, not the sermon I will preach on healing. It is not dependent on getting what we want. It depends on the faithfulness of the One who spoke the Word from which we preach. As Harold Dorsey told me at the visitation, “God is a very present help in the time of trouble. If that’s not true now, son, it never was.”

Finally, I am not surprised by all this. Not only not surprised, but also strengthened. The Word, even the obscure and difficult parts of The Prophets, is full of power. And then there is the mystical truth that the fundamental condition of poverty is being on display—whether it is the physically poor who can not dress right to hide their condition, or the spiritually poor who, like Christ on the Cross, are something of a spectacle in times that seek ease and happiness as opposed to peace and joy.

Poverty sticks out, and this is its crushing force. In the long hospitalization in February, I think Melissa was at her lowest moments emotionally. So much poking and prodding, so much intestinal pain and problems, so many interns checking out the weird case, so much alternating anxious despondency and frenetic thinking because of the massive doses of steroids. One morning, she was having a lot of trouble breathing. Her mom and a nurse were helping her sit up straight. She was getting ready for an unpleasant test. That was the day when I was afraid my words were trite, coming from me. I said quietly to her, “Jesus was powerless, disgraced, and humiliated,” something like that. She said later that helped her very much. She was very much on display, under a gaze, I think Lacan would say. Scopophilia, C.S. Lewis called it.

I wonder, too, at the power of prophecy. About 5 years ago, at an Easter Sunrise Service at Dunaway, in anticipation of celebrating the Resurrection, I kept us at Holy Saturday. I had been reading the Cappadocian Fathers (Basil, Gregory, Chrysostom) that week. Part of what I distilled from them was that the pastor’s job, among other things, is to prepare people to die. To do otherwise is to avoid the reality of earthly life and the deep consolation of the faith.

I suppose you can’t help feeling weird in the wake of a death. People are attentive, tentative, because you want to say something, but what can you say? You wonder, “Will he fall apart?” “What about the boys?” So it is a time of spiritual poverty, of not feeling right about anything. “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. Blessed are those that mourn, for they will be comforted--” by Him, but by others as well.

If there is to be a time where who we are is on display, then let us be fools for Christ, mourning with great hope and joy. And may it be that who we are in Christ is plain to everyone, and our lives be signs of God’s faithfulness. If Ezekiel is something of a guide, and there is any example I may give, then let it be, that armed with the Life, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus, you, too, find peace in the dark night of the soul.

California Dreamin'

I was working on a poem for Melissa these past months. It’s not like I put a lot of time into it, and you’ll see that. I just never finished it, never got it right.

The squeaks and groans of sleeping boys
Have been my lullabye.
If I seek their warmth on a winter night,
They make me their apprentice,
Teaching me the tools of life together:
Piling on, woven legs, contented sighs

I don’t even know if there is anymore to it, other than trying to say something about not making room.

I expose the boys to lots of things they probably shouldn’t hear. For example, when they get out their swords, Melissa had to tell me that “eviscerated” is not a word a 4-yr old should know. And maybe Robinson Jeffers is not the best poetry for them…

“But for my children, I would have them keep their distance from
the thickening center; corruption
Never has been compulsory, when the cities lie at the monster’s feet
there are left the mountains

And boys, be in nothing so moderate as in love of man, a clever servant
insufferable master
There is the trap that catches the noblest spirits, that caught—they say—God,
when He walked on the earth”

---Robinson Jeffers, “Shine, Perishing Republic”

Robinsons Jeffers made Big Sur, the atavistically beautiful peninsula south of Monterey, his home. And so that makes me think:

My sister-in-law’s mother, Lynn Grogan, made a great collage for Melissa’s visitation. I hope you got to see it. Each picture has a great story to tell. But one is getting to me. It’s a picture of Sissy on the California Coast, below Santa Cruz. We were out there in ’99, December, a lovely time on the Central Coast. We took a great drive over from San Francisco, HWY 17 over the mountains and to the Coast. Then it was HWY 1 all the way to Cambria and over into the Salinas Valley. I had always wanted to show her Big Sur.

Anyway, the picture captures a moment before a moment. She is sitting on the edge of a cliff. You can see, if you know to look, some thick clouds on the sea. Those clouds were but a few minutes from rolling into the cliff to be shot up and envelop us. I told her to get ready for something cool. We stood there and then we were in the clouds, a cold, misty, magical moment she always loved.

She was just barely pregnant with John then, we found out later.

She Tommy Boy-ed me later on that day. I was on the side of the road peeing and she comes around the corner with the video camera.

Man Cards

You start every day with 5 “man cards.” These cards guarantee your masculinity. You lose a man card anytime you do something Nancy. So, presumably, I take a hit immediately every day because I have a light purple boom box. It was Sissy’s and I was too cheap to get another one. But I am too much man to worry about. I’ll spot the rest of the world a card. As the sign outside my office at UK used to say, “Last of the full-grown men.”

I lose a further man card if John Gallaher catches me listening to Alannis Morrissette. A further card if I am listening in the dark. I surrender all man cards if I am weeping while singing “You Oughta Know.” None of that has ever happened, but John says it has. But this is the same guy who has twice been REJECTED going to the hoop by the fat old preacher, who plays on a knee that has been operated on twice. I am the sultan of swat, the duke of Tenacious D, the earl of funk, the ayatollah of rock and rollah… wait… wrong scenario… How many man cards do you lose there, John?

Why all this talk about man cards? Because I suppose I will lose a further one on a permanent basis for what I am about to share. But like I said, I can spot the world a card or two.

I basically finished the butterfly garden today. It has been my therapy, my solitude, my getting away, my time of communing. I like hard work outside. Some of the last plants I put in were some clumps of lavender in various edges. As I put them in, I could smell the fragrance on my hands. Lavender was one of Sissy’s favorite plants and favorite scents. There’s a baby soap and lotion that has lavender in it, and we always used it on the boys before they went to bed, and they smelled so sweet. These past months, I would bring the boys to her so she could smell them before they went to bed.

Sissy bought some lavender ironing water, and she would use it on our pillow cases so we’d go to sleep with that soothing smell. And here’s where I lose the man card. She also used it on my shirts. I’d get inured to it pretty quickly, but first thing, it was invigorating. And later on during the day, I might catch a wiff and think about the boys and Sissy, who always did a million little things that you never quite pin down, some you didn’t know she did, some you took for granted, accepting gratefully but not always consciously that that was just how she was.

You're A Dirty Dog, Melissa Mansfield...

We got so close. Melissa was cancer-free since August. There was general confidence. She overcame, we thought, one of the worst cancers. ALL has a 2 yr survival rate of around 20%. So, to die from the treatment, well, that’s hard to take.

If you haven’t seen what happens in a bone marrow transplant, you probably don’t know how brutal it is. You ask a lot of “Why are we doing this exactly?” But Melissa did not do that as much as the rest of us did.

Man, we came close. We thought that after getting out of the hospital last time she was turning the corner. The last week of her life, one of the clinicians told us, as we were facing some of the difficulties with the liver, that most people who had been thru as much as Melissa had were already dead, and that everyone was amazed not only at how tough she was, but how she did it without complaining.

So last night, after I put the boys down, I went out driving, clear my head, get some quiet. Listened to the radio and had to laugh because “Every Rose Has Its Thorn,” by Poison, came on. I can’t stand that song, and Melissa liked it. I always talked about how bad the song was.

She used to laugh at me for going on various rants. They were predictable, so much so that she would start them for me before I did!

There’s a bridge in Louisville that the state has been trying to paint for 3 years, paying millions and it’s still not done. I would always say, “Me and Niedermeyer ( a custodian at Christ Church I was close to) would paint that for $1 million a piece. Give us a budget for spray paint, and we’ll do it.” So every once in a while on the way into the clinic, she would head me off at the pass and say something like, “I bet you and Niedermeyer could paint that bridge…”

Or if anything about the Queen came up, esp if someone tried to teach us commoners about protocol with the Queen, I would say, “We fought two wars so I don’t have to worry about her,” or “Andrew Jackson settled my right to chew tobacco in her presence if I want to…”

Or if Bob Seger’s “Turn The Page” came on, I would start in on how I did not feel sorry for any rock star. “He’s making millions, so it’s really hard for me to feel sorry for him if he has to be on the road for 16 hours a day, or if yokels make fun of his long hair. Cry me a river.” She’d say, “you ruin every song!”

So, the Poison song was a favorite target. But there it was on the radio. I couldn’t change the station! I had to listen. I was just laughing, “Melissa Mansfield, you are a dirty dog!” I know, I know, she didn’t have anything to do with the DJ’s song choice. But the next song was “Love Me Two Times…”

L.A. Woman

Melissa and I always liked to listen to music in the car. She had her favorite songs, I had mine, and then we had some together. She got me into Guns-n-Roses a little more than I had been. She never got much into Rush and definitely didn’t like Primus, which was ok, as THEY NEVER PLAY THEM ON THE RADIO!!! But I digress…

Our favorite song together was no doubt Ted Nugent’s “Stranglehold.” I preach a sermon called “Stranglehold—“ that’s how much we liked it! One evening about 6 or 7 years ago, we were coming back from something, and Stranglehold came on the radio. We were about 2 blocks from home, so we kept driving. Then “L.A. Woman” by the Doors came on (and I love the Doors, too. Influence of my old man, I guess.) So we keep driving. Then Skynyrd, I think “That Smell.” And then a double shot of Van Halen. When that ended, we were in Harrodsburg, KY! We always laughed about that evening. Such a good ride.

So last night, I was driving up to Louisville, to have dinner with my family before they left. “L.A. Woman” comes on. When you think that the Doors rocked that hard with no bass player… So there I was wondering—ok, what’s the response? This is a song we really got into. Just happy. So there I was, window down, doing my best Morrison impression—“we were rocking and rolling in the city of lights!....” What can I say, except that all day yesterday I felt ok.

It goes back to a few things: first, there was nothing left unsaid—about how we felt for each other, what we wanted for the boys, what to do if she died, etc etc. Second—I know her faith, her assurance, her peace. She was a Methodist Wesley would have been proud of. Methodists have been known for “holy dying;” that is, because we preach God’s grace, and the assurance of salvation through faith in Christ, there is little doubt in our minds where we’re headed. So, we die and it is going home. We can be happy for and jealous of those who go home. And when we mourn, it is not as those who have no hope. When you know someone like Melissa intimately, when you know how deeply she believed and trusted, it rubs off.

The visitation was unbelievable—it was so good to see so many people come to pay their respects—so many people whose lives she touched. People who did not know her, who maybe worked with people who knew her came. I can’t tell you the number of stories that were told to me about something she said or did that someone remembered. An off-hand kindness that stuck with someone. A few that are sticking out:

Karin Ceralde told me that she remembers a children’s moment where Melissa said you should not put your Nativity set away, you should always keep baby Jesus out.

A woman who was in her Bible study said that one day Melissa said, “I have this knot on my collar bone I have to get checked out, and Aaron is traveling, so remember to pray for him. That’s how she was, always concerned for you and family.”

Leo Bartlett, from the Rock, said something that maybe is her greatest testament. Leo greets people at the door on Sundays. Melissa came in one Sunday and Leo said, “You must be Melissa!” He said there was some instant connection. She stopped and talked to me and looked right at me.” See, Leo is one of these guys that in his life has been overlooked, walked past and stepped on. It was just like Melissa to take a moment and let him know she saw him, talk to him like he mattered.

I don’t know how many people came, but I was glad they did. It took a long time, but I was not really worn out as much as I thought I would be, because it was so energizing to see so many people.

And I am thankful for all the pastors who came. My brothers and sisters, you showed what we mean when we say we have a connectional system; folks there were pastors there I did not know personally.

Melissa’s funeral was what I think she would have wanted. No, I know, because we talked about it. It was great to see so many people there. Friends, family, all kinds of people from all over—from Winchester, Louisville, Lexington, Shelby County and all around; some of our Hispanic worshippers, our Congo families.

We sang the songs she loved. We had a worship service. Tim Jones has been a close friend to us, esp Melissa for close to two years. Howard was our pastor. Dan Stokes—what can I say about Dan—he played his heart out for her!

The eulogy was not as hard as it might have seemed. I feel a little weird about that, because I don’t want to seem like a Terminator, or some kind of machine that can just get up and do whatever without regard for the situation. I felt like somebody needed to get up and say something for her, to say who she was. And, really, folks, she was such an awesome person, the reason this hurts so much is because she was so wonderful and gave us so much.

Howard said something in his sermon that hit it right on the head—trust is planting a tree whose shade you’ll never sit under. Yikes, that’s who we are as a family. I have planted more trees than I can count; very few do I expect to see again. We planted apple trees at the church in Winchester. We may never eat the fruit, but we planted them anyway. It’s funny, we were ok with that. Ok and more, because we took a great joy in knowing that we could plant something—trees or faith—and trust God for the rest. And I guess the visitation and funeral were proof of that.

Our little parsonage at Dunaway—we worked to spruce the yard up a little. No one lives there now, and it looks a little wild. But—it is taking on a cottage look around the porch, which is what Sissy was aiming for. You know, a profusion of plants and flowers around near the door, something Hobbity—and boy did she love the Lord of the Rings story. So we planted lilies along the fence, around a small maple. Around the maple I think we got from Carol Parker. Along the fence from Hilda Kinghorn. We planted black-eyes susans, again from Carol. Hollyhocks and clematis. The clematis was blooming when I had Stephen and Kristy Horton’s wedding a few weeks ago. I went to the parsonage to look around. I took a clematis bloom back for Sissy. It kept its beautiful blue hue for a week or so by her bed. It really meant a lot to her. The apples had bloomed, and there were bees all over them! That’s the first time I have seen bees on them. Before, I think the flowers were immature—it takes the variety I planted a while to reach maturity. And then the frost hit, so I think we won’t see apples this year.

There was something else going on these past weeks. Ever since she came home from the hospital after transplant in June of 06, we were not able to sleep in the same bed. She pretty much always had some stomach problems associated with this, and I am a real thrasher and mixmaster in the bed. So I would put the boys down, and lay in bed with Sissy until she fell asleep, then I headed back to the room I had with the boys. When she came home about three weeks ago, she felt so much better (no stomach problems) and so we were able to sleep in the same bed again. For the two of us, that was huge, because we were always snugglers. We had a king-sized bed, but always ended up in the same little sliver of it. The four of us could actually sleep in a twin bed.

Sissy’s mom and I are going to build her a butterfly garden. Someone gave us a butterfly bush and someone else a tree that attracts them. So we’ll plant those and some others, set some chairs out, a few windchimes, have a meditative place, where hopefully we’ll see all kinds of butterflies.

Things You Didn't Know

Melissa was a good shot. A really good shot. She was an ace with a 9mm. She hit a bull’s eye at 50 yards the first time she ever fired a black-powder rifle. Back when we were at UK, some of us used to go shooting Friday evenings after we’d eat at Sam’s Truck Stop in Georgetown. She’d skunk us all.

She didn’t like my .30-06, too much kick. She liked her grandfather’s varmint rifle, a .22-250. We loosely talked about getting her one, but never did.

She liked football, especially the Bengals.

You start to think—liked hunting, shooting, football, eating at truck stops and Waffle House, we were peas in a pod.

A Ring

A few years ago, Melissa bought me a simple ring. Silver, with Hebrew on it, “I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine.”

The ring did not fit, so she sent it back to get another size. It didn’t fit either, and then for whatever reason we did not do anything with it. Anyway, as we were getting things ready to put on Melissa in the coffin, we found it in her little box with her wedding ring. I picked it up, thinking that she had just sent it back. There it was. And I remembered what the deal was. It did not fit on my right hand. I slipped it on my left hand, above my wedding ring. I guess it looks kind of goofy there, but it fits.

Here Comes the Rain

Things caught up with me last night. I put the boys down, went driving around, ended up in a theater watching Delta Farce. I was the only one in there, and I knew why; the movie was awful. So I left after about 20 minutes. As I was cruising around, a song came on that we absolutely loved—The Eurythmics “Here Comes the Rain Again,” a very plaintive love song.

Melissa was always worried about the time I was taking away to be with her. For this year, it has been hard on all involved—her, me, the boys, her family, the church. She really felt like she was a burden. But I treasured every moment with her, because Melissa sick is better than most people well. I treasured the times we went to the clinic—we’d watch three back-to-back-to-back episodes of Walker Texas Ranger. We’d sit and talk, laugh, whatever. The ride up and down was a time we had.

But she felt bad about that. And then it hit me: well, now, she doesn’t have to worry. I’ll have more time for the church. Well, let me clarify that: more time for the work of the church—there’s a difference. But I feel really bad about that. First, there’s guilt. I mean, she’s gone and we’re moving on, and a selfish anxiety of mine is creeping up. And then, I just don’t want the time. I’d rather be taking her to the clinic. I didn’t even mind staying in the hospital with her—helping her walk around to build strength, reading to her, singing hymns to her, for her when the pain was bad. Funny how that works.

But Melissa stayed up with all that was going on in ministry. She was always into it, praying for it, strengthening me. And when the evil one does his prime work of discouragement, of trying to beat down calling and ministry, she always was there with encouragement. And I feel weird because I know she is doing that even now. About 5 people have confirmed something that the Lord was speaking to me, something that is brewing in prayer and meditation, that I will share as it becomes clearer.

I think I was faithful to my calling in spite of the severe limitations these past 2 years. In brief, what is coming to my heart is that now that she is in glory, no more struggle, no more suffering, what better reason to carry on with the very ministry that is our faith, so much so that she continues to offer peace through what she believed? This is all very ham-handed; I am not quite sure what it is—a wrestling with things she and I talked about when she got sick—that no matter what, we continue in our calling.

The scar there is that in order to do so, it has meant her passing. It came down to either her healing or her passing. And I don’t know how I feel about that. I want to kick the devil around. I want to snuff that punk. But it feels weird to think about getting back down to business.

Maybe what happened today is a better indicator of the churning going on. Maybe if I separate it from calling, I can get some picture. Today I took the boys to see Shrek the Third. Funny. But as were walking out, it hit me: this is really no different from how things have been the past year and a half. A few times in that time, Sissy got to do stuff with us. But not much. And so there really isn’t much different about it just being me and the boys. But every time we did something without her, every time, there was the hope that one day it’d be all of us together again. I used to get mad thinking people thought I was a single dad with the kids for the weekend. I wanted to say, “No, wait! One day, my wife will be back out with us!” But now she won’t, and now what? We’ll keep doing stuff, and move on, and that’s just perverse.

A friend of mine, about a year ago said, “You need a beer.” Hell, if I started drinking, I’d never stop.

I have a Doors CD in. She always loved it when I sang “Love Me Two Times.” “Love me two times, babe, I’m going away…” What was also getting me last night was that I am kicking myself for not spending my time with her differently. What if I had stayed up all night with her, Monday night?

Something John Said

Yesterday (Friday, before we left for the visitation), John said, “whenever I see a sycamore, I am going to think of Mommy.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because a sycamore is so pretty, and so is Mommy.”

The boys were a bit confused about why she was in the coffin if she was in heaven. I got a chance to talk to John and Joseph about that Saturday morning. They were wondering what do our bodies look like in heaven, and really, how can she be up there if she is down here?

I said to them, “Do you remember what a sycamore tree looks like?” They did. “Do you remember the sycamore seeds we saw?” That, too. “Does the sycamore seed look anything like the tree?”

No. So I told them about Jesus talking about the kernel of wheat that goes into the ground and produces a plant. And we talked about how we would rough up the balls of sycamore seeds to loosen them up, throw them into the creek and see how they would wash up on the bank somewhere and start a new tree. We talked a little bit about the stunning part of 1 Corinthians 15, where Paul talks about the resurrection and the resurrection body, where we are analogous to a seed. We put a seed into the ground—the seed has one body, the fruit another.

So I hope that when they know that Melissa’s body was put into the ground, what is perishable will rise up in imperishability.

Melissa's Eulogy

Melissa Gayle Eggen Mansfield was born on April 9, 1971 in Shelbyville, KY. She died May 15, 2007, at the University of Louisville Hospital after a long and courageous battle with cancer. She is at home with the Lord, because we are sure that absent from the body is present with the Lord.

Melissa grew up in Waddy, and attended Waddy Christian Church. She was very proud of being from Waddy. It may have been the first thing I ever learned about her! She was involved in a number of clubs and activities. She took dance classes from the time she was 4 until she finished high school. She was also very active in 4-H, winning some state championships for canning among other things. In high school, she was in the drama club, FCA, and Beta Club. She attended EKU as a Presidential Scholar, majoring in English. She continued in FCA, and went on to do Master’s work in English at UK. Melissa and Aaron were married on August 30, 1997. She worked at Asbury Theological Seminary and UK until John was born, and she took on her greatest role and accomplishment as a stay-at-home mom.

At First UMC, she worked with the youth group, various Bible studies, children’s ministry and prayer ministry.

At Dunaway UMC, she started a children’s ministry, a women’s small group, was instrumental in a powerful prayer meeting, and setting up a food pantry.

At Christ Church UM, she was in children’s ministry, Bible Study, Sunday School, and women’s bible study as much as she could be. She loved the Fellowship Service, especially the children!

Who She Was.

Melissa was a most beautiful little girl. Vivacious, funny. As a baby, she was known for a distinctive, deep laugh that she always graced people with. She was talkative. Loved being a country girl, a self-proclaimed girlie-girl. Some of the things I always heard her talk about from her childhood are: how much she loved being with her mom, especially baking and cooking. Her dad owned the Waddy mini-mart, and she loved being there, meeting the characters, and going with Bill to the produce market in Louisville, riding in the truck with Spike, the dog. She was also bossy to Brandon, beat up by Brandon, and ran intereference for Brandon when he was in trouble. She loved being with her grandparents, staying on the weekends and fighting to not have to go home. She loved her Aunt Lisa, especially getting to sleep in the bed with her. She loved having fun with Aunt Diddy, and said that anything and everything would turn into an adventure with Diddy. She loved family dinners at Uncle Jerry’s, and she was so happy, Jerry, when you found faith in Jesus. She loved her cousins so much. She just loved family. All she needed to be happy was to be with family. Mom, Dad, Nathan, Heather, you don’t know how often she would say, “I miss your family.” Once she got sick there was not much chance to get together.

Melissa was entirely unassuming—what you saw is what you got. One time at Annual Conference—and boy, did Melissa love Annual Conference! She hoped she would be well enough to get back to it. One time, she told me about a conversation she had in the hall of the convention center. She sat next to a woman and they got to talking, and the conversation turned to Susannah Wesley, John and Charles’ mother. Susannah was in reality the actual founder of the Methodist movement, and Melissa would tell that to anyone who would listen. Well, Melissa and this lady talked for close to an hour about how Susannah modeled Christian motherhood—in love and piety. A wide-ranging conversation. She said she found a kindred spirit. A little while later, Bishop King’s wife was introduced, and Melissa said with a gulp, “That’s the woman I was talking to!” She started worrying that she had talked too much or said something crazy, and what would she think? I was a little worried, too! Anybody else would have been a real crawler, trying to get in good with the bishop’s wife. In the end, Sissy just found a good friend. That’s how Melissa was—she would talk to anybody. A bishop’s wife, a homeless fellow looking for food. And they would get the same attention, the same love.

Her Boys

Melissa always said she had three boys—John, Joseph, and me. I have said many times, with gratitude and amazement, that Melissa accepted me for who I am. Never tried to change anything. Always stood by me, always supported me, and you absolutely need that in ministry. We had a love that was a gift from God—how else could we have found each other? She was the first person I met in Kentucky. A year later, we had become friends, were both just out of hurtful relationships, and realized we were meant to be.

I think everyone else saw it, too. She came to church with me here, at First Church one Sunday. As the choir processed in, and Susan Arnold came by, she pointed at Melissa in a very exaggerated way and mouthed for all to see, “She’s the one! She’s the one!”

There was an unconscious intention in our lives that we treasured once we realized what it was: there wasn’t anything worth fighting about. Altho we did argue all the way from Memphis, TN to Jackson, MS whether or not little boys should have pink bikes…

Our life together got deep when we had the boys. John and Joseph—you made Mommy happier than anyone or anything could have. Her wisdom about life with them was profound: “Life’s too short to clean up all the time.” It really is a choice between having an uncluttered house and holding babies as much as they want to be held. John and Joe, for the first year at least of their lives, took a nap while she held them. They soaked up the love. She would drop everything for a crying baby, a dirty baby, a hungry baby, a laughing baby (to join in the laughter). She would sit and teach them, read to them, love on them. So you have to understand how hard this is on the little men. The Mommy who was always there, always had energy, always had her loving presence for them, this Mommy got weak, and was not always able to be with them like they were used to. But she gave to them as much as she could.

John and Joe, I want you to know how much Mommy loved you. I will help you to remember that. She fought very hard for you. She wanted nothing more than to be your Mommy. She gave us a lifetime of love in the short time she was here. We’d have liked more time, but we had all the love we could handle.

Melissa’s love for us, Melissa herself, was a gift from God. Human love can only go so far. But the love of God flowing out of a person fills others up completely. And that’s what we had, and thru the mystery of the resurrection, it is what we have. Melissa loved worship. That’s why we’re here like this, not in a funeral home. It goes back to something that happened here a while back. When Ann Orr died after a long battle with cancer, Melissa was so impressed by her funeral. It was a worship service. “That’s what I want,” she said. “Hymns, sermon, Apostles’ Creed. A worship service. Joyful.” Howard Willen will preach the gospel today, as he did to us for the 5 years we were here. He married us. The Bach piece, Arioso, that Dan played for us as a prelude, was played at our wedding. He baptized our babies. At this altar, over there, Melissa had a powerful experience. She was worried that she might have a difficult pregnancy because of her epilepsy. Taking communion, she heard Jesus say to her heart, “This is the hem of my robe for you.” It seems right to be here, worshipping.

Of course, we’re doing this 40 or 50 years too early. But what Melissa wanted was to worship God.

Melissa loved prayer. I suppose that she kick-started my desire for prayer. When we would say our prayers at night, I would be vaguely worried, thinking, “If she gets what she’s asking for, boy, will there be some upheaval in life!” Her prayers were direct and powerful, simple yearning for the will of God to be done in our lives, in our family, in the church. Melissa always prayed—for healing, for strength, for endurance, for me, the boys, her whole family. In the last prayer time she and I had together, she prayed for the The Rock La Roca. She so wanted to be with us there. She wanted the children to break her heart. She wanted to love on them. She only came to church with us three times. She kept waiting to get well enough to be there. She was so touched by everyone’s prayers, by the cards she received from people she did not know. Her prayer was that The Rock La Roca would become what God needs it to be.

Melissa loved the Bible. She loved to think about Jesus and what He did. She was a constant Bible student. She taught it thru her life, thru straightforward devotion. She fit right into how I prepared my sermons. I have a bunch of ideas running thru my head. She’d listen to how they developed over time before anything was put down on paper. We’d just discuss and she would help me think it thru, pray it thru, and compare it all with Scripture. My sermons, finally, came from our life together.

In the end, Melissa was the better preacher. People generally do not remember what I preach. Heck, I don’t remember what I preach. But a number of people have stopped me and said, “I remember a children’s message she gave…” I do, too. Many of them. I will always remember her life. Her life and her love, they were the same thing.

Things

Things come in waves. I might be ok most of the day, then something hits. My father-in-law built a ramp for her, so she would not have to climb steps into the house. She was too weak for that after all the steroids. I guess it’s been up for a month. I hate seeing it. I want to stomp on it, break it, set it on fire, pee on it. Who knows why?

John has been asking me what we’re going to do the next few days. I told him tomorrow is visitation, and as I explained it, he said, “Like Hugh’s.” Well, it was Hugh’s father, but yeah, just like that. He said, “Joe and I said, ‘we haven’t seen a dead body, and you wouldn’t let us. We obeyed you. But we won’t this time. We want to see Mommy.” I told them they could, and they could stay as they wanted to.

Then I told them that Saturday would be the funeral, which I explained as a worship service. “It’ll be in the church where Mommy and I got married. The man preaching married Mommy and Daddy, and he baptized you and Joseph.” At that, his eyes got big.

Melissa’s mom told me about talking with John about being sad about Mommy, about missing her. John cried a little bit, and told her that he had a way to talk to Mommy. He cupped his hands to his mouth, said, “I love you,” opened his hands in front of his face and blew towards heaven.

Butterflies—they have been special for Melissa. There’s “The Butterflies,” a women’s group at Christ Church that prayed for Melissa. People would send cards that had butterflies on them. One day in prayer, Tim Jones told her he had a vision of her as a little girl, walking thru a field full of butterflies. This had happened to her when she was a little girl, so she was shocked that he saw it in such detail. Then he said he saw her walking with the butterflies, holding Jesus’ hand. She held on to that time of prayer, that vision, and it brought such great comfort.

Someone sent us a butterfly bush, and I think maybe we will plant a butterfly garden, outside the porch, by the window where she sat. For hours she would sit and watch the woods and the field here in Waddy.

I told the boys that when we see a butterfly, we’ll think of Mommy. They saw one today.

The kicker is, we thought we had this licked. The doctors did, too. Geoff Herzig was shocked and disappointed. He is normally the picture of reason- analysis, calm decisions, quick thinking when you need it. Roger Herzig came into her room and cried. We came to him in December of 2005 and he seemed to know everything about what she needed after only having her chart for 30 minutes. We were comforted by his words and demeanor. Everything went so well. Cancer free since August.

The staff at the bone marrow clinic said they never saw anyone fight so hard and have such courage and grace. We spent parts of every week there with them. You get to know staff and patients. Folks, remember to pray for the Herzig brothers—they bring a lot of knowledge and care to what they do. Their staff is full of compassion and care. We’ve never seen such nurses! And if you need a place to send some money, send it to the Blood and Marrow Transplant Clinic at the James Graham Brown Center. Dr. Geoff told us that they will take what they have learned from Melissa’s case and use it to benefit other patients.

Melissa said at the beginning of this cancer journey that she wanted to be a witness for God—His love and His power. Whatever happened, that was all she wanted. She was ok with whatever. She wanted to survive for me, her boys, her family. But if she did not make it, she wanted to be a witness to those she came into contact with. Just last week, she talked to two patients who were distraught at how badly they felt. I sat there amazed, knowing that I was witnessing the best pastoral care I have ever seen.

The night she died, my parents, brother, and I grabbed a bite to eat. I did not want to go anywhere she and I had been. But when we got to a place we had not been, it didn’t feel right. It felt wrong. Does life go on? That doesn’t seem right. We always liked Harper’s restaurant in Louisville. I saw that it closed down, and I was glad—a place I could not go anymore. And how sad is that? I mean, people lost their jobs.

I had a million nicknames for her. And for the boys. We saw a restaurant called Buca di Beppo, and my mom said Beppo is an Italian nickname for Joseph. Wow, a new name for one of my boys. And I thought, no way. Sissy doesn’t get to call him that. It seems stupid, but there you have it.

Melissa's Holy Week

On Saturday, we saw the first signs of a problem. Didn’t know it was a problem. She had received an injection in the back of her arm that morning. Later that evening, it started bleeding and it took a while to get it stopped. Not a huge amount of blood, but a steady flow from a pin-prick hole. I thought, “Well, her platelets must be really low.” Got it stopped, no more problem. She went to the clinic for her usual visit Sunday. We knew her liver numbers weren’t great. But when she got there, they were worse and with the bleeding, they admitted her.

Apparently, your liver has a huge role to play in clotting, and even if your platelets are good, if the liver is not helping, you’re in trouble. I stayed with her Sunday night. We watched The Big Lebowski on tv. We saw it for the first time Friday night, and were laughing that it was on again.

She was weak Monday morning. I went on to the church. Came back, got the boys settled, returned to the hospital about 7:30 or so. Connie (Sissy’s mom) told me she was not so good. And she wasn’t. But, I thought, she’ll get past it. She always did. I had seen her weaker. She had liver problems right after the transplant. She did not look as bad as then. Her eyes were a little yellow, but not bad.

Through the night, she’d get up and I’d help her to the bathroom. She was still getting up, still strong enough to get up and walk. We didn’t talk much—I was tired, she was, too, and I had no clue how things were.

Her levels of different things were spiking up and they tried to get them down. Some of the clotting numbers were improving. Then at 5 a.m. or so, she started bleeding massively—her heart rate went sky high, blood pressure dropped. The crash team came in and after about 40 minutes got things under control, but Sissy was never really responsive much after that. You could call to her, and she’d look at you. I told her I loved her. Melissa’s parents came in as soon as her nurse told me she was doing bad, and they needed to be called. We had to make decisions—she might need to be on a ventilator.

We knew from long before she ever got sick she didn’t want that. And thru this all she told me that if it got to the point where she was fading, let her go. She stabilized. Dr. Geoff Herzig won’t give up, and he felt like if she could get her past this, the liver would regenerate and we’d be back where we were, a positive place where she was doing good in recovery. But by noon, it was clear that was not working. We could give her blood, blood products, clotting drugs and all it would do was work a little. The liver just didn’t have anything else in it. Her kidneys did not seem to be functioning.

So I had to say things I never thought I would. I broke my own heart and said, let’s let her go.

I left about an hour after that to go get the boys. To tell them something. To take them to be with my parents and brother who had come in. I knew that Sissy might not last until I got back. But I also knew she would want the boys taken care of. I knew her love for them is what would send me. My goodness, what love she gave to us, that even in the most desperate moment in my life, when all I wanted to do was stay with her, to watch her, to touch her, to speak to her, I knew I could leave because she loved those boys. And there has never been anything left unsaid between us. There was nothing more to say to her that she had not know long before she ever got sick.

My brother drove me to the house. Got clothes for the boys, got them from school. I told them that Mommy was really sick, that her liver was not working, and when that happens, people don’t live. John fell into me and Joseph jumped around like he head not heard and then snuggled with Nathan. As I had been told, they would hear it and then move on, trying to deny it. We sat around loving on them, then took them to Dairy Queen. Dropped them off at the hotel with my parents. The boys were so glad to see them. It was a great distraction, a great aid for them to be with family, where the grief would not be so open and raw all the time.

My dad drove me to the hospital. When I came onto the unit, one of the nurses, Shellie, came and got me and rushed me back. I stepped into the door way and Sissy stopped breathing. Y’all, she waited for me to come back. She knew I had that darn squeaky left shoe. Could hear it coming down whatever hall I walked. I prayed over her. And then there was so much crying. My dad held me like he has never had to in probably 30 years. “I wish I didn’t love her so much.” He said, “no greater love…” a reference to his favorite verse. Jesus laid down his life that we might live.

But now let me tell you about what I am calling “Melissa’s Holy Week.”

I think she knew something was up. I am not sure she knew she would die. But I think she knew that she might have something going on she would not recover from. So it was time to hang out. Monday, she had the best day ever, as she said. We left the clinic, ate at Skyline, got the boys. She did not want to go home and sit or sleep. So we all went back to town, dropped off her handicapped parking permit, went and got some periwinkles. We came back and planted them, me and the boys, while she sat in the garage and watched. We had a picnic outside. Maybe that day she really did feel good. She wanted to hang out with us. Periwinkles—a chemo drug Melissa took is made from African perwinkles. They are my favorite annual flower, I guess. And now, like all things, they are freighted with memory.

Tuesday, she hung out with her mom. Wednesday I think, she drove around with her dad, more energy, doing more things. I think she knew she had to soak up some time.

Friday was the last good day. I took her home from the clinic, we got the boys, planted what was left to plant while she sat in the garage. There was nothing but patience with the boys, where I was a little impatient. Then she wanted to watch the boys ride their bikes at the school down the road, something she had not done yet. She was really quiet as she watched them, and me. I should have known.

We had another picnic. She told me, “I am glad you like to be outside.” She knows this is important to the boys. I think she was telling me, as she had in a million other ways, even literally, “You’re a good Daddy, and thank you.” Dummy me, I said, “When you get better, maybe we can adopt some kids,” because all we wanted was a lot of kids. Connie bought her some new clothes, and we see now that Melissa looked at her with a look that said, “Why buy these now?”

What a good week it was. She spent her time with us. She didn’t say how she was feeling. A mother and a wife to the end—her love for us spent time with us. She took care of us to the end.

I married Melissa because: we were good friends; she was the most beautiful woman; she was funny; she accepted me for who I was; when we held each other, all was right in the world; I knew she would be a good mother; she loved Jesus; I knew she would stand beside me.

Melissa and I were submitted to each other before we knew of the biblical doctrine of submission, that each would seek the other’s good before his/her own.

She was never more beautiful than when she had her babies. She loved them more than anyone could. They know it, and it’s our task that they remember it. That’s what she told her mom when she came out of the hospital in June after the transplant. “If I don’t make it through this, you have to tell them how much I loved them, how hard I fought for them.” Do this in remembrance of me.

I am as heartbroken and beat down as I have ever been. But I have peace. I can’t explain this power of Jesus. It’s not only that I know her faith, her trust, and how it grew these two years. She is a model of grace under pressure, of the power of faith in Christ in times when it’s easiest to give up, to ask where is this God everyone keeps talking about. My peace also comes from knowing that if her love sustains me now, to the point I could go to the boys, not knowing if she would die before I returned, how much will Christ’s love sustain us?

Y’all, I am beat down. Crushed. There are no words for my grief. But there are no words for my peace. He lives. She lives in Him. John and Joe have kept saying that they know she is with Jesus and one day they will see her again. “Jesus has better food even than Mammaw.” But Melissa might beg to differ.

During the day, I read her favorite Scriptures to her. Revelation 5, esp 5:8. Matthew 11:28-30. Psalm 62. Then some others. John 12, the seed that dies to produce fruit. 1 Corinthians 15 on the resurrection and the resurrection body. Philippians 1, because she says she wins either way—she got that from Ann Orr, when Ann was dying of cancer.

Remember us, especially my boys. It’s a long road. One that will need light on the path. I’ll need wisdom and discernment to discover how I live now, how I continue in my calling. There was a time in the desperate days before and right after transplant when I said, “Maybe I should quit and take a regular job where the time demands are not as great or at least not as demanding in times when you could spend it wit you or the boys?” Or when we talked about what might happen if she died: “Do I quit for a while, find a regular job, something where I can take care of the boys in the best way?” She had a quick answer, “You wouldn’t be happy doing that.” She always supported me in everything. Always will.

Let me tell you one of those stories you hear, a strange moment. I was coming back from my parents’ hotel, going back to Waddy to be with my in-laws, make arrangements, etc. I turned on our (the four of us) favorite tape, Jars of Clay’s Redemption Songs. I like, “God Will Lift Up Your Head.” John likes “On Jordan’s Stormy Banks I Stand.” Joe’s favorite is “It is Well With My Soul.” Sissy’s favorite is “I’ll Fly Away.” I turned it on in the car. I said, “Sissy, I am playing your song.” Then I did what I too often do: start talking too much, analyzing, thinking out loud. Do they hear what’s going on down here? Do they care up in heaven about this miserable place? I was wondering, “What would Aquinas or Chrysostom say?” Then I heard clear as day, “Be quiet and let me listen!” How many times has she said that? I’m a ranter and raver, a think-out-louder, and so many times she would just ask me to be quiet for a spell. Or, one night when she could not sleep she said, “Tell me about Pol Pot” (because I know just about everything there is to know about Pol Pot…) and she went out.

I looked over in the passenger seat, a seat she sat in all the time, we would hold hands all the time. And it was empty. But my heart is full of love for her and her love for me. Folks, it’s like I get a clearer picture of the gospel: the disciples (loved ones) don’t quite get it, that the end is coming. Jesus spends some real time with them, even tho He always had anyway. Some last words, some powerful love. He dies. Then we go about keeping the memory alive. Keeping the love and the power of the love alive.

One day, things will recede. I won’t be constantly heartbroken. The devotion to her memory will not be as fierce. But it will be there, I pray, a constant source of strength. She loved me, the boys, her family, like no one else. I floated around constantly, did whatever, had confidence in all things because I knew simply that at the end of the day, no matter what, I could go home to love.

I suppose I will say a lot more. It’s how I process things, I guess. And more: I want you to know her.

Mother's Day

Last night John and Joe made me so proud. They were lined up facing each other on their bikes. John had his fishing pole out in front of him and Joseph had his pirates of the Carribbean sword over his head. They were ready to charge! I had to put a stop to it, but I was so proud!

In Sunday School, I think the kids learned how to tell the story of the loaves and fishes. One evening last week, John sat down in the garage, took out some clay and made loaves and fishes, and used them as props to tell the story.

Joseph likes the Old Testament, it seems. When we were in the garden a few weeks ago, he and John were pretending to be slaves, and Joe said, “And Daddy is Pharaoh.” He’s also pretty intent about Adam and Eve and Noah, and more than just the little kid parts; he wonders about the serpent, or how things didn’t get settled when God started over with Noah. You know, kid stuff.

And that came back into play today as we got to talking about Melissa coming into the hospital. Joe said, “Wherever you go, Jesus is following you.”

John said, “Well how come He doesn’t always do the miracle to keep people from getting hurt?” Kid stuff.

“Well, this isn’t our home. We’re here for a little while. And the devil is here—there’s sin and evil…” I was grasping. What do you say to two little boys who are asking about the problem of evil. There’s no answer for philosophers. Ok, so there is. But it’s complicated. And probably does not matter. In the end, it is the Cross of Christ that you look to, that you need. In the dark night of the soul, it’s not fine arguments that matter.

This is the third Mother’s Day that has not been so good for Melissa. 2005, sick. 2006, sick as a dog from total body radiation. 2007, admitted to the hospital. It’s not just Mother’s Day—it’s the pile of days, the heap of trouble. It gets to you. So I asked Melissa how she was doing. Attitude-wise. She says, “I’d rather not be here, but I am ok.” This is a testimony to prayer, hers and yours.

A-Game

Ministry at The Rock La Roca is always kaleidoscopic, sometimes fast-paced. You might have to change modes and gears very quickly. Yesterday was a prime example. I was going out visiting with Rachel Kochackis. Before we headed out, we prayed on the bus with the Goldenaires, a group of seniors, going on a trip up to Indiana. We drove by the garden so they could see it and we could talk a little about it. Then came the litany of what we needed: “Half runners!” was running neck and neck with “Greasy Grit beans!” Greasy grits are a mountain bean. If you read Kentucky Explorer, this time of year people are always asking for greasy grit bean seeds. I wonder how a variety becomes popular and spreads thru a region? What is it about it that definitively says, “Home,” “Old Times?”

So then Rachel and I hit the road and we have a series of productive visits. Rachel has a real heart to see the church do some practical things in the community while sharing the love of Jesus at the same time. So when she would ask someone what they thought needed fixing in the neighborhood, they just opened up. We hit one house where the lady was just floored that not only did we show up to talk about Jesus, but that we were also intent on being here, living here, doing life here. She and her husband have been out of church for years because they felt like they were hit hard by a harsh, legalistic church. Rachel told something she let go of at the altar with me, and I could see the woman’s eyes get big like, “You said that in front of a preacher? And he prayed for you right there? And he’s walking around with you now?” Then she hit us, “I was praying that someone would come. I know what this is. This is that Holy Spirit!”

So after a few of these visits, I see a woman pushing a stroller. She is dressed in African garb and I have to go talk to her! I catch up (Rachel broke her ankle and I had to leave her behind. I mean, she broke her ankle a few weeks ago. Not right then. Altho, I suppose to do some evangelism, she might have had to take one for the team. I’d do the same. If I go down while we’re winning souls, keep moving y’all!). But back to the point: the woman is from… Congo! Lives in the neighborhood, doesn’t know the other Congolese families. I talk to her husband, they’re freaked out to be speaking French on North Lime, and, still, so am I. He tells me that some guys from the church had already been to his house ( I think it was Roz and Shutey). Amazing! This is the stuff I have been dreaming of—having other people who visit, who meet people, who feed people, who serve people, so that when I show up they know we mean it!

Bikes

A bike is such an elegant piece of technology. Sometimes it’s hard to believe they are a recent invention. Maybe it’s a shame that they came along so close to the internal combustion engine—maybe bikes never had the chance to get off the ground.

I have tended to like my bikes very much. The first one I remember I got in California, at Christmas. It was a big black and green dirt bike. I kept it for a few years. When we got to Germany, it was really exotic, so I traded it for an old soccer ball (the best kind—they float when you kick them) and a bow. I saved up some money and bought my next bike, a 12 speed Huffy that I rode all over our part of Germany. A bike was the most important piece of kid technology. You could go anywhere.

I rode that bike throughout high school in Texas and Mississippi. It finally just about fell apart my first year in college. Then I bought an eminently forgettable mountain bike from Wal-Mart.

In 94, I was hit by a drunk-driver. The insurance was trying to juke me, so I got stubborn and instead of buying a car, I bought a bike, a Mongoose cross-bike. I bought it at Moore’s bike shop in Hattiesburg, MS. Tom Moore is a great guy and his shop really shows a love of bikes. A good thing to do: support your local bike shop. Sure, you can get a $70 bike at Wal-Mart, but you can’t trust a $70 bike.

Since I did not need a car, I did not need the paltry settlement they were offering for my car. So I toughed it out for 6 months and they had to offer what I was asking. Sweet. Always good to stick it to the man.

When I left Hattiesburg, I gave my bike back to Moore’s bike shop so he could fix it up to give to someone who couldn’t afford it. That bike took me to work, to the grocery, everywhere. One day, the guys at Physical Plant used a torch to cut thru my lock and used the bucket loader to put my bike on the roof. They always got a kick out of my bike, with its baskets all over the place to carry my stuff. I guess it did look weird, kind of like grandma delivering flowers on a pretty cool bike.

I am thinking about getting a new bike, to keep at The Rock. I am looking for an old-school bike. You know, one of those that doesn’t even have any gears, just a pedal-brake. Something I can put some baskets on to carry all the veggies that will be coming in, something that can get me up and down the streets pretty quick.

But the real impetus of this is that now that the weather is good, it’s great to take the boys riding bikes.

Joseph’s bike won’t be his bike much longer—he is outgrowing it. And he is a real speed-demon. Both boys have become dare-devils, riding off the curbs, taking sharp turns. How long can I keep them from the knowledge of ramps?

We go up to a school down the road. It has huge flat surfaces to ride on. They have made great improvements in their riding. It seemed that before, riding on sidewalks, John especially had trouble. He would get easily frustrated when he couldn’t get it going from a stop on an incline. And you can only imagine the kind of help my frustration added to his is!

But lately, he is really doing well. It’s almost time to take his training wheels off. Which is a huge thing given where he was just two months ago, and he has not ridden the bike much since then. I am not sure what makes the difference. Well, in a way, I do know. A lot of things have picked up for him. He was having a really hard time in school, since about Christmas. He was acting out. He was convinced he could not do anything right—anything that did not turn out, there was something wrong with him. That was hard to watch, hard to hear. Especially hard was knowing that I added to that. Home for us right now really has to be the place where you can recuperate from the world. Because I can say to John and Joe all day long how much I love them, how proud I am of them, and then they go out into a world that can have a wildly different message.

Maybe I have to say it, they think. I am their daddy. And maybe they experience me in the times when it doesn’t look or feel like I am proud. And for little kids who internalize everything, it might feel like they aren’t loved.

So what changed? If you ask John about it, why are big things and little things going so much better—from behavior in school to riding bikes, he will say it’s because Melissa is home. Even if she is weak and sick, she’s there. It doesn’t take them long to trust again, to quit watching her as she goes out the door to the clinic, wondering if she is going to be back tonight or sent back to the hospital.

I guess it makes sense that when they get to the school parking lot, they go to the flag-pole and pray. At first, I thought it was because, as John says, “It’s not a Jesus school” (that is, it’s public). When I asked what they were praying, John said, “it’s in our heart.” But Joe said, “We pray and thank God that Mommy is home.”

Prawnsong

A few weeks ago, me and John Crissman, The Roz and Shutey were sitting around some bar-b-q. John has known me for 10 or 12 years I guess, and he told the other guys, “Look, if Aaron starts a story by saying, ‘This is weird,’ or ‘You’r enever going to believe this,’ there is a 50% chance the name Steve McKinney will be in it.” John neglected to point out that Steve will also show up in stories where he has no role at all… Thus the following.

One of my favorite bands is Primus. I suppose they are an acquired taste. They call themselves “the most self-indulgent band in the world.” As proof of that, they refuse to play the song they are best-known for, precisely because they are best-known for it, largely by people who aren’t fans and see the song and the band as a novelty. They’re hard to define. Is it heavy metal? Acid rock? Funk? Yes. At one time, Talking Heads were trying to be “urban country.” Primus pulls it off, with a decidedly freaked out sound and songs about fishing and car-racing. Back in the day, one of my cousins from the Bay Area told me, “You’re so into RUSH, there’s no doubt you’ll like Primus.” This was when all Primus was was a band from El Sobrante that no one knew about. I didn’t listen to her, thinking, there’s nothing that will ever compete with RUSH. Was I wrong.

Primus almost never gets played on the radio, unless it’s the aforementioned song they don’t play anymore. I used to call up Double Q in Lexington and complain that they never played Primus. And they never would.

When I was working for Steve McKinney, and we were redoing Omar’s horse barn on Iron Works, we’d listen to Double Q. Everyday at the same time, I think about 2, the DJ would play Jethro Tull’s “Aqualung.” It’s on ok song to hear a few times a year, but not EVERY day. It got so bad that Jeff swore he was going to take a shot at the radio with a nail gun next time the song came on. You don’t know Jeff, so it’s safe for me to say he doesn’t always hit wood with the nail gun…

I called and asked them to quit playing “Aqualung.” I guess they did for a little while. And I kept up my campaign for more Primus. Heck, ANY Primus.

Fast forward a few years. I am listening to Double Q and cannot believe my ears. It’s Primus. Well, maybe. I mean, it’s Primus’ bass player for sure. There’s no mistaking the sound, the style. But the song is Black Sabbath’s “Nativity in Black.” (don’t get freaked out that I listen to Black Sabbath—if you want a clear picture of how people get sucked into sin, you need to listen to Nativity in Black, or “N.I.B.” as it’s known.) Ozzy had put together some people to redo old Sabbath songs, and I guess Primus were the guys for the job. (It makes sense; when I saw Primus for the first time, opening, of course, for RUSH—Superdome in New Orleans, 1992, their first song had some clear Black Sabbath influences. For a few bars, it sure sounded like “War Pigs.”)

But then, guess what? They played the song TO DEATH. Every day, numerous times a day. It was killing me. I get a little Primus that wasn’t really Primus and they were driving it into the ground. So I called and said, “Will you guys please stop playing this song all day every day?” The whole time I know the DJ was thinking, “Aren’t you the dude who is always asking for Primus and now you’re complaining when we play Primus?”

Book Review: Animal, Vegetable, Miracle

I am so ashamed of myself.

I avoid chick-lit like the plague. But I have some in my hands. Now, look, what I am saying here is mean and politically incorrect: I don’t like self-consciously feminine writing. (In the end, I don’t like self-consciously masculine writing, either, so no Robert Bly or Ernest Hemingway for me.) I avoid Bobbie Ann Mason, Sue Monk Kidd, Roberta Bondi, anything that might get cronish given a few years. This is an odious opinion, but there you have it. Don’t say I’m not honest and you didn’t know that about me. But I do like Carolyn Chute. You have to read The Beans of Egypt, Maine.

But a few years ago, Lyle Morton, a man’s man, was listening to Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible on tape. As I was riding with him from Nashvegas, I listened, too. Interesting. But I don’t know. I had a feeling she could get shrill. There might even be hand-wringing in her writing. Lord, do I hate hand-wringing.

But then, my Mother Superior, Paige Williams says, “We have to stop by Barnes and Noble. The new Barbara Kingsolver book is out.” You have to be careful what you say to your D.S. I used to jokingly call Melissa “my old lady,” it really got her goat. One day I was riding with a former D.S. and he just goes off on this fellow who used to call his wife “his old lady,” and how he worked hard to get that guy saved. Melissa was in the back seat, and I could feel her eyes boring into my head. I slunk down in my seat and said, “Yes, sir. That’s right. Amen.”

So when Paige says, “Have you read her before?” All I could say was, “Lyle Morton turned me on to The Poisonwood Bible.” Paige starts telling me what the new book, Animal, Vegetable, Mineral is about. Kingsolver and her family moving back to the farm in Appalachia to live off the land. I start sweating. I mean, y’all, this is my dream. When I was a little boy, I was convinced I would move in with my grandparents, plant trees all over the place and make it rain. And then I’d have a brick hut and… as I got older, it morphed into just wanting a simpler, slower pace. Hunting and fishing bring the great satisfaction of getting your own meat. And gardening is some pretty intense prayer. People say my grandfather lost his hair because he stood at the end of his bean fields rubbing his head, wondering if they’d make it! Melissa and I had a huge garden in Winchester. There was nothing like walking out there, cutting some spinach, arugula, oak leaf and buttercrunch lettuce, endive, and picking a few peas to go with it. Wash it, spin it out in a pillow case, and in 5 minutes eating a really fresh salad. Maybe Melissa had baked some bread. Maybe we’d have a baked beet. I even used to think there should be a liturgy for thinning beets and eating the greens and roots.

So I was thinking, “This Kingsolver woman might be ok.”

I kept thinking about it for a few hours. I broke down and bought the book later that day.

I am so ashamed of myself.

I read about 100 pages that night. I did not know whether to laugh or be mad. Laugh, because she was saying some outrageous, funny stuff. Or be mad because some of the outrageous funny stuff was stuff I had experienced something like, and if I knew I could write a book about the weirdness in my life… Man, she was writing my book, getting my money, and you can’t take that lightly.

I don’t know a lot about Barbara Kingsolver, but I suspect that she probably wouldn’t like me much—both for my literary opinions and because I’m the kind of minister I am. But that’s ok. The book is really interesting. A little far-fetched, but good. The point is that she and her family decided to live off of only what they could grow, or what was seasonally available locally. This a bit of a step beyond organic. That is, they were trying to cut out as much of the petroleum influence in food, such as transporting it across the country. They wanted to prove that you could do it. And also find something of a kind of discipline, a kind of deep joy in being tied to what is available.

On some level, we all resonate with this. We think we’d like to live in Tuscany or Provence and eat like colorful, nostalgic peasants. Kingsolver has the honesty to come out and say, hey y’all, you can call it what you want, but it’s still eating redneck-style. It’s grits, not polenta…

The attempts to learn how to live with what you can grow or get locally is revealing, educating, and often funny.

Josh McDonald, when he saw I was reading it, said, “has she started wailing on men yet?” I said, “I don’t think it will be like that.” “Just wait,” he said. He was right. When it came to talking about finding a rooster to take care of the hens, well, what else is a feminist evolutionary biologist going to say…

But I am telling you, I have not laughed this hard in a long time. Melissa has been giving me a hard time. “You’re always like this. There’s someone whose opinions you can’t stand, and then I know, right as rain, you’re going to love them.” It was that way with Bob Lyon, incidentally. I’d come back from class and say, “Man, he’s tough on people.” Or, “Man, I can’t believe he would say that!” Or, “Man, that guy is opinionated!” Melissa was always sweet enough to never say, “Gee honey, he sounds just like you…” She would say, “Just wait. He’ll be your favorite professor!” I don’t know if Kingsolver will be my favorite writer, but she sure can alienate you and make you laugh in almost the same sentence. That always makes you think.

One night I got a call from an old guy I worked with. He lived way out of town, and I lived within walking distance of the post office and the Physical Plant. (Now, look, it was night, but this old fellow called it morning) He calls and says the Post Office is raising heck because he ordered a rooster for Christmas dinner, it was making all kinds of noise and would I go get it and put it in the fertilizer room of the Physical Plant… That bird was in a box and I was still scared of it. Had that thing strapped on the rear pannier of my bike. I kept praying I would not pass someone I knew, with my bike crowing, flapping, and scratching… And I caught heck from the boss man for bringing it in. Anyway, this is one of my favorite stories, and Kingsolver has a situation somewhat like it. Only she gets the big bucks for her weird stories. There ain’t no justice, but Animal, Vegetable, Miracle is a good book.

Melissa, May 1

Well, endurance in prayer is sometimes a difficult thing. This last hospitalization of Melissa’s brought it home. You pray and pray and… nothing. You get tired. Demoralized. Wondering if there is any point. You blandly assure yourself about the dark night of the soul, that God has enough faith in you that you’ll make it. But that’s not making as much sense as it did when the suffering was less intense, and ideas were ok.

But as I have said before, the philosophical/theological answers to the problem of evil don’t do much in the moment of suffering. You need something you can take with you into the concentration camp, and it ain’t modal logic, or the metaphysics of consciousness. The only thing you can take to such places is the Cross. It is the answer to the problem of evil. It atones for sin, it shows His knowledge of and solidarity with our suffering. It goes all the places we cannot, is in all the places we fear most, laying waste to the plans of evil.

So when it came to crunch time, a holding cross was the answer. One of our buds at Christ Church, Sharon Perkins, gave Melissa a holding cross, a piece of maple carved into something like a cross, but the bars are offset somewhat so that you can hold it in your hand.

We misplaced it when she got out last summer. I ordered another one for her and it came just in time.

Melissa said that this was going to be her seminary. She said this last year, before the transplant. I wondered about that, because, well, I went to the school of hard knocks, and that was ok, expected (my grandfather’s prophetic words when I was about 5). But Bone Marrow Transplant Seminary? That seems harsh.

But at the end of the day, that’s what it’s been. She said she was just waiting, going thru it all, waiting to see. And what came of it, a few days before she left the hospital was a spurt of planning, a spurt of thinking about how much she wants to be part of the church, to jump into our emphasis on children. She said one day she just started making plans and realized that after all the waiting, God was prompting her to start thinking about the future.

Sometimes, when you can’t pray, it’s not just that others are praying for you, it’s also that God’s purposes are in effect.

Working on the Garden

So we were breaking ground for the garden behind the school. Just getting to that point was something. We couldn’t find a tractor, plow, or rotavator in the same place. I could see that was not going to happen. I was about ready to break down and do it with a hand tiller. Possible, but back-breaking. I’ve double-dug small gardens, but there was no way that was going to happen here.

Then Pablo Bailey calls Bobcat and they’ll cut us a deal on a bobcat with a tiller attachment. I was pumped, because there’s hardly anything as fun as driving a bobcat. But that fell thru, because the person who had it before we were slated to get it broke it. As a fall back, they gave us a Dingo, a small tractor. That was pretty fun, too. Dustin Crowe rode it for us, and really got a tough job done.

Dulaney Wood reminded me that I was talking about big gardens to get fresh food to people years ago. Maybe it’s the only consistent thing in my life! Most of it is genetic, I guess—family from the Salinas Valley, the breadbasket you don’t know about and can’t do without!

I am making friends with a Greek guy in the neighborhood, a fellow who when I first visited him told me there is no God, etc etc. We went round and round. He’s the fellow who warmed after we helped Big Doug’s family. He invited me into his house a second time while I was waiting for the tiller. He was showing me how he was fixing it up slowly but surely. Good stuff, long way to go. His wife is a Christian, from India. Their little boy, Akhilles, is such a sweet boy. Forti, the Greek guy, asked me what we were doing across the street.

“Putting in a garden,” I said.

“But that’s madness,” he said, “the school will be building there soon.”

“Yeah, next year, but for now, we’ll use it.” I realized he thought I meant something like a flower garden. When I told him it was for vegetables, he said, “Why?”

As we got into the why of this (there’s not very good access to fresh vegetables in the community) Forti said that cucumbers at Kroger are $1.15, 2 lbs of tomatoes $5, etc etc, so no wonder people eat junk when it’s cheap and right around the corner. His mind and maybe his heart, or his heart and maybe his mind are changing.

Then, while we were breaking the ground up, another fellow walked up to me and asked if the School District was starting to build. I said no, I’m the pastor, this is a garden, etc. We had a good conversation about building up the neighborhood. He’s a young fellow, late 20s, grew up in the house he lives in now, is putting money into remodeling it, one of the guys who is making this a better place to live. He was pretty pumped about something pretty growing on 5 vacant lots.

Before we even put a seed in the ground…