Saturday, December 25, 2010

THE INNKEEPER

It was September 1992.  Mom was in trouble.  Big trouble.  She had often faced significant challenges throughout the years, and just as often, called out for help from family for some sort of financial salvation.  Even as a child myself (Mom’s only child), I had been repeatedly pressed to do my part to bail her out from her most current circumstances.  These events always strained me—financially, physically, emotionally—and eroded my abilities and even my desire to provide support, though duty held me to the course.

Now age 64 and partially-disabled, Mom was in Sacramento, California, living on her early Social Security retirement income.  She was without a car and used one of those battery-powered scooters to help her travel most distances, and while traversing through fair grounds one night, she unwittingly ran her lower leg into a protruding piece of rebar and gashed it wide open.  Infection set in and she became further disabled.  At the time, she shared the expense of apartment living with a roommate—one whom she came to trust and revere as a friend in relatively short order.  After attaining a measurable level of recuperation, she agreed that the roommate should feel comfortable to leave for a desired two-week visit with a family member. 

Those two weeks, however, turned into a month, then longer, before Mom reluctantly and sadly gave into her fears that the roommate had left entirely.  The so-called visit had been a façade; realizing the shelled appearance of an intended return cut her to the marrow.  Mom was abandoned.  What’s more, having already endorsed her Social Security check over to her roommate to pay her share of the rent, she learned that the rent went unpaid.  An uncompassionate landlord presented an eviction order and threatened, most severely, a lock-out by the Sheriff.  Sadly, Mom returned to alcohol for release, which she had successfully quit a few years before, following a lifetime of addiction. 

In her soulfully-injured condition, she called and begged me to turn chaos into order.  So uncertain of what immediate recourse I might take, especially being 900 miles away, I took inventory of my financial condition once more.  It didn't have to take long.  I already knew.  In just three month’s time, it was my plan to return to the University of Arizona full-time and complete my degree.  I was 31 years old and had grown weary of the meager salary that my technical vocation had afforded me.  According to plan, then, I would soon be without an income at all, dependent almost fully on school loans to see me through.  Now, given our history together, I was expected to also find a way to support my mother once her predicament was revealed.  I labored to sustain Mom emotionally, and objectively researched her situation in Sacramento, calling upon a few key people for understanding and guidance.  And, I prayed—much.  Still, the biggest part of me desperately wanted to run.

One Sunday evening in mid-September, I attended a satellite broadcast of a fireside at my Church, that I might find spiritual relief for my own self and temporarily escape the pressures of my mother’s situation.  During that fireside, the story of The Good Samaritan was presented.  I had heard it and read it many times before:
And Jesus answering said, A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves, which stripped him of his raiment, and wounded him, and departed, leaving him half dead.
And by chance there came down a certain priest that way: and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side.
And likewise a Levite, when he was at the place, came and looked on him, and passed by on the other side.
But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was: and when he saw him, he had compassion on him,
 And went to him, and bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine, and set him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn, and took care of him.
 And on the morrow when he departed, he took out two pence, and gave them to the host, and said unto him, Take care of him; and whatsoever thou spendest more, when I come again, I will repay thee.
(Luke 10:30-35)

Suddenly, I was profoundly and undeniably struck with a realization and a spiritual witness.  Samaritans are known to have been most despised in the region.  Similarly, Jesus was “despised and rejected of men” (Isaiah 53:3).  Having understanding, I saw that the Savior was, himself, The Good Samaritan.  And, though my mother had been stripped of her money and abandoned by her supposed friend (yet, a thief); though she was wounded without and within; though her landlord had not compassion on her; though even her only child had considered passing by on the other side; even then, the Savior readily sought to bind up her wounds and carry her to a place of safety, where she might be nursed to health again.

 
And so it was that I was called to act in another role in this story—
the Innkeeper. 

My heart and throat swelled, my cheeks flushed, and tears intensely poured down my face and neck.  It was such an astonishing and singular spiritual event that all attempts to describe it in mere words are defied.  Fear not was the Lord’s word to me.  My mother would be delivered to me for care and healing.  I would be sustained in all ways, financially and otherwise.  Then and there, the Lord promised me that if I were found lacking at the end of the day, I would be repayed.  And so he did. And so he has. And so he will.

I was the Innkeeper.  Me.  That great privilege and honor was bestowed upon me!

It should not take long to discern what any of us might have wished to have done differently if called to fulfill the role of a certain Innkeeper—some 2,000 Christmases ago at a little town called Bethlehem—when Our Savior’s birth was imminently at hand. 

Take a moment.  Reflect upon your senses.  It may transform your life’s direction, interactions and relationships with others, and personal reservoirs, as it did for me.

Monday, August 2, 2010

Skinhorse Poetry: "Written"

She knew what she wanted to say
And she said it.

She wrote it in words for all to see.
But, dull, passing glances
Observe only the obvious.
And few know well how to attune
Soulful, comprehending eyes
Between the lines of what is written.

Written on her face
Was a longing for more—
More understanding and empathy.
More sharing of hearts.
More long hugs to help her feel
Connected.
Even short ones might do.

Written on her frame
Was the peculiar personal pattern
Of weathering
That which all must bear:
Heat.  Cold.  Storm.  Wind.
Urging, ever-urging, change.

Written on her sleeve
Was the pain that had taken its toll
After all those many years
When she was at once convinced
That everyone loved the idea of her,
And yet, no one loved her—really.

Written on her hands
Was the traced evidence of strength
From planting and lifting and building and such.
Unpreserved, weakened, from holding on
To so much that could have been let go,
Should have been let go,
So very long ago,
And Forgiven.

Written in her heart
Was the desire to become
Better than she had been—
A bearer of light and compassion.
Sounding a resonance of past days,
Understanding, finally, the meaning
Of all that had been, and is being,

Written.

- Jacqueline J. Hancock

Saturday, July 31, 2010

Forgiveness: The Personal Journey of Two Families

After all of the silence, this is what finally moved me to make a post.

 

Monday, June 14, 2010

After the Murmuring

In 1993, and while living in Tucson, Arizona, I was asked to work with the Young Women of the Church for the first time; specifically, the Laurels (ages 16-18).  It floors me now to have even considered it, but at the time, I really did not want that assignment!  In retrospect, I can't help but laugh and become a little misty-eyed, too, as I skate along my memory banks, reliving some of my experiences with this blessed group of girls.  As it turned out, this period of my life was to become one of my most favored, cherished, and sustainingly joyful seasons.  Funny, isn't it, that our views of so-called uninspired "mistakes" that leaders make at times culminate to land for our souls our grandest blessings?

My girls during this initial introductory time to the Young Women's program included: Andrea Greenwood, Michele Anglin, Heidi Luke, Heidi Martin, Sara Offen, Jaime Smith, Susannah Rexroat, Marisa Henderson, Jennifer Clark, Cassie Meadows, Joanna White, Julianna Smith, and Melanie Raehl.  Did I get everyone?  Well, one of these gals will remind me if I left out someone.

I'm laughing again.  I just wish I could recapture, for example, the craziness of Sara and Jaime, acting like foreign exchange students (or as a blind student) on the public bus.  We sure had some tender and tough times, too.   All in all, though, our shared experiences brought us about as close as a leader can be to any one group of girls.  I owe it all to them, too. 

Well, with that introduction, the following is a journal entry of mine that illustrates the struggle I experienced in letting go of one church calling to assume the responsibilities of another.  Perhaps only my former Young Women will be interested enough to read these pages.  I'm fine with that.  Not everyone can handle my verbosity.

CLICK EACH IMAGE TO ENLARGE.






To the Young Women mentioned above, and others whom I haven't mentioned, I offer an extreme debt of gratitude.  Oft-times, when I have trembled with certain doubts that have weighed upon my heart, I have been brought back to the relationships we enjoy, one with another.  Truly, I have been unalterably changed and repeatedly sustained because of my bond to each of you.  And to think that, in the beginning, I murmured.  Now, all I can seem to do is cry out in gratitude.

God bless your lives for the ways that you changed mine.  I love you all.

Sunday, May 9, 2010

My Mother, Yvonne


My mother, Yvonne, struggled nearly all of her days to find peace and joy and love in her life, as was given by family and friends during her latter years.

Mom was born on August 29, 1928—the second of six children.  Her siblings include her brother, Donald, two years her senior; Juanita, five years younger; and Deborah, nearly 10 years younger.  One other sister named Carol June lived only a month; another of the six was stillborn.  Mom was affectionately known as “Sis” to each of her siblings and all of the rest of the family, too.  Even her own parents called her “Sis.”

The family grew up in Oklahoma, primarily in Guthrie, but often traveled between Oklahoma and the Houston, Texas area, where Mom was born.  Seeing her first light of day on the cusp of the Great Depression, Mom would not be left unscathed by its dark effects, which took a tremendous toll on the family as a whole.

Mom remembers her parents, or the retelling of stories about her parents, as fun-loving people who enjoyed life and one another.  However, with money troubles constantly at the threshold of their lives, her father, Earl Roy Plaskett, a carpenter by trade like his father before him, became a kind of man that even his own mother did not recognize. 

It is a great understatement to say that Earl was less than kind to the family; and concerning money, he remained very tight-fisted with it throughout life, presumably because of the effects of the Great Depression.

The family tells of a rather humorous story when little Deborah had one of the biggest toothaches of her life.  “Sis”—now a young adult herself—had “come through” Guthrie (that's what they called all of her meandering travels) and found Deborah in such a state of great pain and discomfort that she took her little sister to the dentist immediately.  With bravado, Mom asked that the dentist please charge her father’s account for the work done.  Shortly afterward, Sis left town, Earl got the bill, and Deborah heard his wild rantings for weeks.  All of the family thought Mom's financial retaliation to be great fun and laughed together over the story several times in later years.

Her mother—Lois Laura Hollon—was the third sister in the Hollon family to marry Earl Plaskett!  (Why these sisters never talked to one another following their divorces and all is beyond me! Oh, the stories I could continue to tell you!)  Lois was one of nine children herself.  She was very pretty, and, with spit curls hugging her cheeks, could easily be called a flapper in her day.  Following the Great Depression, however, things changed.  By all accounts told of her by family and others who knew her, Lois eventually became a religious fanatic.  Most of her attachments were made within various forms of the Pentecostal religion.  Two of her sisters, Maydell and Helen, influenced her to a great degree in this.

Mom recalls the day that her mother, Lois, came home from some type of revival meeting where it was taught that it was a sin to imitate any of God’s creations.  So, to conform with what she felt was God’s will, Lois ripped up all of the family photos and tore out all of her very own hand-embroidered stitchings of butterflies and flowers and such from blankets and handkerchiefs and doilies, a talent that many of her family appreciated very much up to that point.

Mom once wrote:
I just can’t separate my fears and anger from the woman called Lois . . . my mother.  She should have never painted into the eyes of my soul such vivid pictures of a pit of fire stoked by a devil somewhere in the bowels of the earth that was surely going to consume me for all of eternity.  I just knew that was to be my fate.  It had to be because that is what she told me.

When Mom was but nine years old, baby sister Deborah was born.  Following the birth, Lois became so disabled by back pain that she was laid up in bed for a year.  The condition was known as "milk legs."  During this time, Mom took on all of the responsibility of becoming a mother herself, which wearied her greatly. 

Then, when Mom was around 13, Lois left the family.  Though six year-old Deborah refused to budge from off the top of her mother's closed suitcase, her shrill cries filling the air and begging her mother not to leave, Lois left anyway.  Not only did she leave  the children, she left them in the care of their father.  Difficulties for the family now multiplied, perhaps beyond our ability to comprehend.

Mom's brother, Donald, got on his own early in life.  By age 14, Mom moved out on her own as well.  With the compassionate and protective help of the long-time family doctor, Dr. LeHew, the teen-aged Yvonne was taken out of her father’s home and was given her first real job: washing dishes and setting up trays for patients at the local hospital for $30 a month and room and board.  She also ironed bushels of baskets of starched, long-sleeved nurse’s uniforms for $1 a load.

Mom told me often that it was Dr. LeHew who stated that, had it not been for Grandmother Plaskett, she would have committed so-called “infant suicide” for that love found lacking in the home.  Mom spoke to me often and fondly of Grandma Plaskett, and once wrote, “My happiest times during childhood were the days I spent with my grandparents.”



One of the highlights of Mom's life as a youth was her playing of the French horn in the school band.  She earned first chair, in fact, after enduring much practice in the wooded creek bank area behind Grandma Plaskett’s home.  (How emotionally intriguing it is to me that, as a teenager myself, and even before learning of Mom's skill in and love for her chosen instrument, the French horn had became one of my most favorite musical instruments.)

Due to her difficult circumstances, Mom never graduated from high school.  Instead, she hit the road on her own somewhere around age 15 and began her life as a self-proclaimed vagabond.  The following writing symbolizes very well, I think, the difficulties of Mom’s life on the road and outside the influence of loving ties with family and friends:
I was in Oakland, California on VJ day—the day the Japanese surrendered—and in New York City when the end of the war in Europe was celebrated.  One birthday was celebrated somewhere in Wisconsin.  Another in Santa Fe.  I became hardened.  People believed me when I passed as twenty-one.  Then, after I finally tired of truck drivers and traveling on buses, I learned how to be a waitress in diners all over the country.  Sometimes I would work a week or two, but always restless, I would move on.  I felt lonely and desolate going from place to place.  I reached in vain for some place to plant roots, for someone to love me; but love eluded me, and I would go on.  Liquor became my friend.  Drinking dulled the negative feelings.  Sitting on a bar stool eased the feeling of isolation.

For most of her life, alcohol supposedly became my mother’s most cherished friend, though it betrayed and consumed her again and again and again.  There are not enough words for the pain caused by this bitterest of enemies—in her own life—and in the lives of those who loved her, including me.  Alcohol was a difficult adversary for her to overcome; but, in the last 10 years of her life she did overcome it, though the scars of years past remained in great measure.  In spite of the grave difficulties of her life, and perhaps because of them as well, Mom did find meaning and purpose, and felt enough love and joy to know that God was with her and that he loved her.

During the summer of 1968, at the age of 40, Mom did an amazing thing: she earned her General Education Diploma!  She then entered a junior college in September of that same year and began studying Psychology.  Eventually, she earned her Bachelor’s degree in Sociology and had original plans to earn her Master’s as well, though that never did come to fruition.

Mom was a social worker for several years and loved all those she cared for very much.  In fact, as a youngster of but nine years of age, I remember sometimes feeling jealous of the people she worked with—usually teens.  However, even at my young age, I also figured out that working with all of these people who were but strangers to me was the one thing that held my mother together and that helped to keep her from drinking, so I just silently observed and never complained.

One of Mom's most cherished jobs was when she worked at a place called Pisano in Miami, Florida, where she was a live-in housemother for 47 troubled teenage boys, all between the ages of 11 and 18.  She stayed there for close to two years when I was about 11 and 12 years old.  They all called her “Mother” and loved her dearly.  She needed that.

Mom walked tall.  She was six feet most of her life.  As a seven year-old, I remember jumping on the concrete wall of the Royal Castle hamburger joint in Key West, Florida, exclaiming, “I’m almost as tall as you!”  She would laugh a little and I’d jump down.  Upon serious reflection and all things considered, I’ve never really been sure if I’ve reached some of the heights she reached in life.

Before I was born, Mom married three times.  After I was born, she married twice.  She remained heartbroken all of her life over the loss of her second marriage with Morton Rosenzweig.

Prior to her first marriage in 1950, Mom did some very wild things that landed her in the Federal Reformatory for Women in Alderson, West Virginia, where a few notable bad-girl celebrities lived, to serve a sentence of one year and one day.

It was here that she knew Billie Holiday, the great black jazz singer, who lived in a segregated cottage on the far Eastside.  It was here that she taunted Tokyo Rose, the WW II propaganda queen, who lived in the same cottage that Mom did.  It was here that she was also befriended by Machine Gun Kelly’s wife, Katherine, who liked Mom and treated her like a kid sister—who gave her lipstick and sweets and food sneaked in from the kitchen, and who taught her little tricks in alteration.

It was also here that she experienced solitary confinement a few times, one of which followed a work assignment when the cottage matron ordered Mom to take steel wool and sandpaper to remove the finish from the front door, which was made of rich mahogany wood.  Mom refused to do so.  Said she:
“That door was so beautiful that I didn’t want it marred, and the matron had failed to tell me that, after I sanded, the finish would be restored to its natural beauty.”

So it is with the beauty of a soul.


Perhaps the beauty of my mother's soul has never been more fully developed than in her love for me, her only child.  I have always felt her unconditional love.  Always.  Even during the last year of her life between 2001 and 2002, when all else seemed so unsteady about me, I knew her love was constant, and this knowledge strengthened me. 

One of my favorite stories told by Mom is that of the day I was born.  She said that Dr. Massey, her obstetrician, stated that there was a moment during childbirth when he almost lost her.  Mom always chose to believe that he was speaking of the moment during delivery when, in her words, she “experienced a most peaceful, serene feeling of walking through a field of brilliant, blue [cornflowers].”  How reluctant she was to leave that field, but after hearing my infant cries, she was soon fully back again in the delivery room.

Mom loved God’s creations, especially flowers and plants.  Her apartment was filled with plants, some of which she attended to for coming on eight years.  She also loved to cook and feed people, being innately generous with her food.  Cooking and entertaining were among the greatest joys of her life—in latter years especially—for there was little else that she felt capable of doing for others.  She never had much to her name—Never!  But, what she had, she shared.  I know God loves her much for this most natural of divine qualities.

Mom tackled crossword puzzles every day until the day of her stroke in April 2002, which helped to retain her high degree of intelligence to the very end.  She appreciated the fine art of playing Scrabble, too, and cheated at it every sly chance she got.  She was generally witty, which naturally attracted people to her throughout her life.  And, how she enjoyed a good belly laugh!  Amazingly, she had no problem retelling the same amusing anecdote several times over, so as to laugh just as hard at the last telling as she had at the first!

She was one of the biggest flirts you ever did see.  In fact, during the last couple of weeks of her life in June 2002, she had to make another trip to the hospital.  Even in her weakened condition, and after six days without food, she kept eying one young fireman about 28 years in age who worked with several others to transfer her from the nursing home to the hospital.  She finally exclaimed to all present: “He’s cute!”  This made everyone laugh and brought a soft blush to the fireman’s face.

Tenderhearted to an amazing degree, Mom cried sweet tears of love and compassion many, many times, as when reading messages of love in cards and letters, either those written to her or by her!  She also cried when she was in a state of worry about sick friends, or even when a touching commercial was on.  She was, in essence, one big blubbering boob.  I think I inherited a little bit of the same from her.


Affectionately known as “Putt-Putt” by her friends at the Martin Luther King Apartments in Tucson, Arizona (for the scooter she rode everywhere she went), Mom became one of the landmark residents there during the last 10 years of her life.  This place was one of the most stable and loving homes my mother ever knew.  Faithful friendships were made and kept there.  And, too, the spillover of love and affection from some of my own beloved friends poured through Mom's life and heart in such a way as to finally help her to find her emotional home.  Constancy of love and affection for Mom finally, mercifully, rested with her in abundance as a senior adult.

I know that our Father in Heaven knows perfectly what it is that my mother faced in life.  True, she made a series of poor choices to contribute to her difficulties over the course of her nearly 74 years, which also served to create a chasm in her own heart between her and God for much of that time.  With empathy, though, I hope that we can all appreciate at least a little of how that kind of thing happens.  I especially hope that we will all strive to ensure that a similar fate does not happen to us.

I remain most confident in the teaching that our Father—our most tender parent—will measure out the greatest amount of grace and mercy possible to give my mother (and each of us), as well as the least amount of justice necessary to address any wrongs committed in the flesh.

My mother, Yvonne, was refined symbolically by steel wool and sandpaper all of her days.  She is as the choicest and richest of mahogany woods.  The natural beauty of her soul is real and deep and eternal.  It will be restored by the touch of the Master’s hand.

Rest in the knowledge of love abounding, dear Mother of mine.  May it—“the Wind Beneath Your Wings”—carry you to eternal fields of brilliant, blue cornflowers—where I should like to embrace you again one day.

Happy Mother's Day.