Happy Birthday Loie!!!

When I was 20 years old I took my first full-time job in a doctor’s office. The office staff consisted of only two other women besides the doctors. The job would have been joyless had it not been for Loie, who worked as the insurance clerk. She happily sang “O Sole Mio” while she plunked out insurance forms on her manual typewriter. She was wonderful to anxious patients. She took her turn at running to get the doctor’s daily fish on rye. And she was a friend to a timid girl on her first job.

Yesterday was Loie’s 86th birthday and if not for the limitations of a broken hip and wrist, I’m sure she would have been up to some tom foolery.

I had thought I would tell some stories on her, but there are so many I wouldn’t even know where to start. Or which category to go to- the many acts of spontaneity that helped loosen me up to possibility, the hilarious stories of her exploits, the many many anonymous gifts I received that I am almost certain I could track to her (she truly invented Random Acts of Kindness), well, I could even make a whole category of just stories about her driving.

Not one story would do her justice. And she’s making new stories every day. Someday I hope to sit in a circle and just hear and tell great Loie stories. Until then, I’ll just say I love her, and she changed my world.

Oh, and the apple didn’t fall very far from the tree. Check out her daughter Suzanne’s blog.

Friends

Several years ago in a conversation with a colleague about her adult children she said that at some point in their early teens she had this insight that she was “growing her own friends”, and that she was then at the point of truly enjoying that friendship.

Both girls were home tonight. My youngest was very attentive and interested as I shared with her some real struggles I am having of late, and she gave me a great insight and gift that was like a load lifted from me. The three of us went out to dinner and talked on top of each other and told funny stories and had a great conversation about love languages. At one point during the evening one of them said, “Look at us, talking woman to woman!”

I grew such extraordinary friends, I should win a prize! Wait! I did!

Fidelity

We finished up a series on Fidelity at church today, and we had each been invited to share an example from our lives. There were some very tender stories of aunts and parents and church staff members and friends who have been faithful on a number of fronts.

I have been a witness to Fidelity- in the lives of so many I cannot even count them all and could never do them justice. The example that was on my heart this morning though was of the man who was my father’s dearest friend. One of the last things my father ever said aloud while laying in a hospice bed was to point to him and say, “That’s my BEST friend.” His name is Mr. Hawkins. A kinder, more gentle man would be hard to find. And he has walked the long road of Fidelity.

His faithfulness is far flung and steady and at times unmerited, often times thankless. He has loved his sweet wife since they were teens, with a love that is both tender and fierce. He is a wonderful father, even though I’m sure it was a rude awakening for both of his kids to get out into the world and find that not everyone is as kind or as helpful or as intelligent as their dad. He loves and cares for his church and church family, with that love made real in transporting widows, coaxing an ailing air conditioner compressor back to life, or sitting beside a family who waits while a loved one is in surgery. His faithfulness comes full circle from tilling to planting to harvest to table, and no visiting preacher or family in crisis has ever gone hungry if the Hawkins had anything to do with it.

Even in the face of his own diagnosis with an aggressive cancer and on days when his energy is clearly diminished, he continues to quietly serve others, blessing those whose intent was to bless him.

To use the title of a Eugene Peterson book, Mr. Hawkins has indeed exemplified A Long Obedience In The Same Direction. I think my dad, another great example of Fidelity, chose his best friends wisely.

Pillars

Quite possibly, our breakfast on Saturday would never have managed to happen had it not been for facebook. What a wonderful time with the best of the best of friends- so dear to me that even looking at this picture feels so tender and makes me want to cry. I often talk about how unhappy my high school years were, how I never felt that I completely fit in. Yet in looking back I realize that some of the great pillars of my life became my friends during those awkward painful years, and I’d do it all again as long as I knew that Sandy and Dana would do it with me.

A loyal friend laughs at your jokes when they're not so good, and sympathizes with your problems when they're not so bad.

~Arnold H. Glasgow

Soul-mates are people who bring out the best in you. They are not perfect but are always perfect for you.

~Author Unknown

In everyone's life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit. ~Albert Schweitzer

It takes a long time to grow an old friend.

~John Leonard

Ah, how good it feels! The hand of an old friend.

~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Happy Birthday to a Hero

For Pentecost this year, several of us were asked to talk about someone who has been a hero of the faith. Many mentioned were saints long gone, but my chosen hero was a very present and very dear friend. He celebrates a big day today, and so I share why he is a hero in my eyes.

Many times during her sermons, and pretty much at every wedding and baby dedication, Cindy asks us to look around the room at all of the people who love us. As I look around the room today, I see a room full of heroes. But also as I look around the room......I see a room. If these walls could talk they would bear witness to the life of this church family. We have said hello to new friends and good-bye to old. We've been married here, had our babies dedicated here, we have lit candles and shared stories. The most sacred moments within the life of this family have happened right here in this room. (Not to mention some of the most irreverent!)

Today I celebrate Mike Jupin, who stepped into a machine shop and saw in it a potential home for a raggedy little group of exiles. Mike's vision for this repurposed worship space was infectious. We too began to see it for what it would be rather than what it was. Several of us had our weddings here paying little regard to the fact that there was still a loading dock over here, and a big sign saying the room was condemned by the fire marshal on the back wall.

Mike has truly been Jeff Street's visionary, pushing us to move forward in faith, literally and figuratively in more matters than real estate. Don't say “impossible” to Mike. He brokers in hope, and we at Jeff Street are forever rich because of that.

Just as you enter the door to this building there is a group of stones in the wall- our Ebenezer stones- our monument to God's faithfulness, carried over from Jeff Street to Liberty Street and set here within these walls. It was a mighty hopeful gesture to step away from that place and into this, and Mike led the way for us. Thanks be to God for the gift that Mike is to our family.