A Place for Things

All right. I'm revamping. 

That is one strange word. 

Since the blog is named Five Walkers, I think that the home page ought to have stories about the family. Some days I don't have a lot to write about what we did, because does anyone really want to know that we got a late start on school, or that it took Michaela forty-five minutes to finish her breakfast, or I forgot Christian's lunch two Wednesdays in a row? I've written extensively about my laundry. Should I really show one more picture of the mountain in the hallway? (It does move around. (I mean, I move it around. It doesn't move on it's own. That would definitely be blog-worthy.) I'm so sure that could be interesting...my clean laundry pile here. My clean laundry pile there. My clean laundry piles are everywhere. It's like laundry with Dr. Seuss.) Our days are not so very interesting a lot of the time...so I'm often at a loss regarding what to post.

Lately, however, I have been reading. I have joined an online discussion group, which has been a lot of fun, and given me a great deal to think about. Writing about what I'm reading helps me process it, and encourages me to think harder about it. (Duh to the duh.) (And speaking of brilliant writing, it doesn't get much better than that parenthetical, folks.)

I have devised a plan. (Shocking, I know. Making a Plan and I don't usually get along so well.) I will continue to share family stories on the main page of the blog ("Our Journey"), and use the "I'm Writing" section to share the other stuff. Or it will be a way to document my monumental monologues on what I'm reading, because sharing would imply that someone else might be reading it...and I'm just not sure that that's accurate. Ha!

We shall see how it goes. Thanks for walking along with me...

Sometimes Things Just Don't Work

I had a post planned. However, I have just spent no less than one hour, and more likely one and a half, trying to get some pictures off my phone and onto my laptop so that I could put them in a post. Everyone knows that a blog post with pictures is much more well-received than a post without photos, hence my time on this project.

But I have decided that for now it is not worth it. I might take my laptop and throw it across the room if I continue with said project right now. My phone would not be far behind. I really don't want to throw my phone and laptop. I like both of them under more normal circumstances. 

Signed,

Hanging On With All I've Got

Moved or Moved to...

Christian was saying tonight that it seemed like the weekend went by so fast, and it felt like we were just at church yesterday.

Well. He does go to school at our church...but I think he meant worship. 

And while I often think that time is zipping by so quickly that I might develop vertigo (which is no joke, people...I've been laid out on the couch for hours because of a swing), I feel like last Sunday was weeks ago. 

Maybe it is because I have been wrapped up in a cocoon, almost in another world. I am having a hard time even remembering this week and what I did. I fell behind on laundry. I didn't really cook that much. One or the both of Mike and me were gone each night until Friday. I know we did a little schoolwork, but it really was just a little. I think I ran around a bit too, like that proverbial headless chicken: headed in no particular direction, making a mess wherever I happened upon. True, my mess was more along the lines of dishes and clothes than blood, but still...someone has to clean up at some point. I read whenever I could and have been so moved by the story of Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

I finished the Bonhoeffer book today. I must let it sit for a while, in my heart. I'll be rereading along with the group (or at least skimming in order to respond to the group questions), and sharing along the way. It was a good thing to read as we head into Holy Week, remembering Christ's passion, his suffering. 

As well and good as it is to be moved by these stories, it is greater to be moved to action by them. It is here that my faith butts up against the wall of my will. However, we know that God is good at busting down walls...and tearing veils...

I think I am ready for tomorrow. I want to go to worship, and I want to worship. May you be blessed as we enter this week of remembering. 

A Time of Waiting

I have been racing, and yet not so quickly as that, through my book on Bonhoeffer. I have to set it aside at times, after reading about some of what was going on at the time. Even Metaxas' carefully worded accounts of the atrocities cannot hide the horror of what happened. 

I hurriedly closed the book after marking my page at the end of this last chapter, "Bonhoeffer in Love." The following one is "Killing Adolf Hitler." Bonhoeffer has unexpectedly met a young woman and fallen in love with her, in almost the blink of an eye. In a letter to this woman, Maria, after she has told him that her answer will be yes to the question he has for her, he writes so joyfully and so hopefully. He looks toward the future, as he encouraged another friend to do upon hearing of his (the friend's) engagement: "this self-assured glimpse into the future and the confidence that there is a reason to look forward to the next day or the next year, the joyful grasping hold of happiness where God still gives it to us." 

He writes to Maria: "I want to care for you and allow the dawning joy of our life to make you light and happy." In response to her concern regarding the possibility that he has (from her letter to him) "a false picture of me," and her statement,"It makes me unhappy to think that you could love me for what I'm not," he assures her,"I want no 'image,' I want you, just as I beg you with my whole heart to want not an image of me but me myself; and you must know those are two different things. But let us not dwell now on the bad that lurks and has power in every person, but let us encounter each other in great, free forgiveness and love..." 

This is just the thing that Keller is reminding us of in The Meaning of Marriage. That person we marry is not, in the end, the person we will be married to in even a week (or a day!) after the ceremony! Marriage changes a person, and immediately. And yet when we commit ourselves to our spouses, one of the fundamental promises that we are making is to help the other to grow in Christ's likeness. We are not "to dwell now on the bad that lurks and has power in every person, but let us encounter each other in great, free forgiveness and love!" Decades may separate the two men, but their minds are quite in step on this point! 

I could not help but cry, blinding hot tears which blurred the words on the page, knowing how his story ends. But even so, what joy he was able to have for a time! What a gift, during such a difficult, lonely, and uncertain period, even though he was firmly confident about the path he was taking. 

Even now, I am so sad. But I am determined not to remain so. There are many reasons to look to joy. The foremost one is that Sunday is coming...

On War and Marriage and Bad News and Faith (Stuff I'm Reading About)

I have been reading about Bonhoeffer, and his story is leading up to World War II.

I have been reading about biblical marriage, and how marriage is meant to work out the gospel in our lives, and yet our culture pushes envelope after envelope regarding this sacred institution every day.

I have been reading headlines, and they illustrate all too graphically that for all of the positive progress that has been made as the centuries go by, people are still just as prone to depraved acts as they ever were.

And my heart breaks and I want this broken world to be fixed back right and I wonder what place does faith have in it all. 

Everywhere I turn, there are crossways and intersections of ideas, realities, and truths, from the books to the news and even to the field trip I took with the girls today. We went to a small flight museum today and saw many planes that were from the WWII era, but what was an unexpected bonus is the special traveling exhibit that we were able to experience, "Rise Above."

This exhibit purposes to introduce people to a little known group of Airmen who had to fight to even be able to fight in the war on behalf of their country. The traveling exhibit shows a film that tells the story of the first African American pilots and their crews. It is an incredible story. These men wanted to be pilots for the U.S. military and eventually to go fight in a war against a leader who was systematically eradicating an entire race based on their heritage. Even as the U.S. entered the war supporting the Allies, at home they were still advocating the belief that black people were inferior to white people. At the time, segregation was still in full force. However, these young men found an ally themselves in an unexpected person: Eleanor Roosevelt. She visited the Tuskegee Army Air Field (an "experiment" of the Army) in 1941, before the U.S. had entered the war, and insisted on flying with one of the African American pilots. She had a photo taken of herself in the plane with Charles Anderson, the flight instructor at the time. According to her request, the photo was developed immediately so that she could take it back to the White House and show her husband, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and to encourage him to allow the Airmen to fly in combat. 

In 1943 they were sent to North Africa and eventually became escorts to the bombers. The Airmen were known by several names (as far as I can tell): the Red Tails (because of the color of the tails of their planes, which let other pilots know that they were an Allied plane), the 99th Squadron Fighters, and the Tuskegee Airmen. And they are the only squadron or escort unit never to have lost an escorted bomber. In fact, the bombers' pilots began to request that the "Red Tail Angels" escort them on their missions. 

While they were extraordinarily successful on their overseas missions, one of the most important achievements was to open the way for the desegregation of the military in 1948.

I'll save a rant over the fact that it took so unfathomably long for that to happen for another day. I, apparently, have some Very Strong Feelings regarding our country's race-relations history. It boggles my mind that, as a nation, the U.S. was so outraged about the treatment of the Jews, and yet were so slow to recognize how much needed to change on this side of the Atlantic. 

I wish everyone could know this story. I want to know more about it! While I feel blessed to have seen the film and to have learned about this hidden story from our nation's history, shaking the hand of one of the gentlemen who were a part of leaving such an incredible legacy was the highlight of my day. I told him it was an honor to meet him and I thanked him for his service. He smiled at me, and looking me straight in the eyes said,"God bless you." 

He certainly did.

And I find that bad news in a broken world is not the only constant. That faith that seems to waver at times? That faith that seems to be weak and fragile? That faith is actually the thing that, once I'm on my knees, is the one thing that can keep me on solid ground. 

Here are a couple of links if you want to learn more about these extraordinary men (I highly recommend that you do):

http://www.redtail.org/
http://docs.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/tuskegee.html