Hear the Bell?

One day early this week when I was on my way to work, I encountered an unexpected obstacle to my normally easy commute.  My regular exit off US Highway 65 in Springfield was backed up, making getting onto Chestnut Expressway from the south slow and difficult.  I decide to take a side road south to Cherry Street, where I found the reason for the traffic snarl. A train was stopped on the tracks at the Cherry Street crossing, meaning that it was also blocking traffic flow on Chestnut.

I was of course annoyed by this unexpected hindrance, and my immediate concern was how it affected me.  I had to find a way to work.   I tuned into the local traffic report and heard that a pedestrian had been hit by the train and killed at the crossing on Pythian Street north of Chestnut. This disturbing news immediately raised lots of questions. Who was the victim? What was that person doing on the track?  Was it an accident, or maybe suicide by train?

Hearing that news made me feel a little ashamed that my first concern had been how the snarl-up impacted me.  I hadn't really considered that someone might be injured or even dead.  Now I was struck by the thought that some unidentified fellow human had met with a violent death, and as a result hundreds of my fellow commuters and I were having a different kind of morning drive than we had expected.

Later at work, everyone was talking about the traffic issues and the news that someone had been killed by a train.  One person said that the victim should have been able to hear the train and get out of the way if they wanted to.  That reminded me of  a story about my great-grandfather, who was also killed by a train.

A couple of years ago, I met my second cousin Paula Baird from Texas. Paula is a genealogist, and her mother Shirley and my mother are first cousins. Paula and her mom came to visit us at Mom's house in Oklahoma. Paula and I share a set of great-grandparents, James and Martha Lake, who were the grandparents of our mothers. As we were visiting, we discovered that we both knew the same story of how Jim Lake died.  Great-grandpa Lake had a habit of walking home from town on the railroad tracks.  Since he was deaf, this proved to be a very bad habit, because in 1927, when he was 70 years old, he was struck and killed by a train he did not hear as he was walking on the tracks.  When I learned that Paula also knew this story, that it was also part of her family culture, that she had heard it from her parents and grandparents the same as I had, I felt a connection with her that I might not have otherwise felt.  It became clear to me that besides being cousins, we were connected in ways that might not be immediately apparent.

In a previous blog, I wrote about how my grandsons are connected in unexpected ways to my dad, whom they never knew.  When I learned about the fatality on the tracks in Springfield this week, I again felt a strange sense of being connected with other people in mysterious ways. What was the victim's story?  How did he come to die this way?  Might I someday face a similar death? Because someone we did not know died in a horrible way, my fellow commuters and I were faced with not only traffic challenges, but yet another reminder that, although the details of our lives may be very different from others' experiences, ultimately we all share our humanity and we all share our mortality.

In his John Donne's famous "No Man is an Island,"  the poet expresses this bond we share in life and the idea that when one of us dies, all of humanity is reduced.  When the funeral bell rings, it rings for all of us.

"Larrapin" and Other Down-Home Expressions

My dad passed away back in 1999, about four years before my oldest grandson was born. For a long time, I resented the fact that he never got to know any of my grandsons and they would never know him. 

There were lots of things about Dad that made him memorable.  When I was a boy, he sometimes seemed larger than life to me, with his army uniform and forceful personality.  I have written before  about some of his verbal eccentricities, and foremost among those were his folksy expressions.  Some of these originated in his native east Texas, and I remember some of the my older relatives using similar sayings. He had also picked up other expressions during his years in the Army.  Soldiers often have an interesting way of talking, and sometimes "interesting" means not appropriate for polite conversation.   A few of his family-friendly expressions are still common among the Fouse clan.

If something was really tasty, even better than delicious, Dad would say that it was "larrapin'."   This was from Texas, and is common to the southern US.   If there was something that he didn't like, he would add it to his list of top things he hated, and then recite the whole list, "hot tea, cold coffee, wet toilet paper, second lieutenants, and  (whatever the new thing was).  This was clearly an Army saying, and I heard him say him it a thousand times, always followed by his hardy laugh.  

Many of his sayings from Texas stemmed from his rural roots, and some of those didn't mean much to a kid who had never lived on a farm.  For example, if someone had got a really lucky break, when

good fortune came to that person though no effort or skill on their part, he would say, "Even a blind hog finds an acorn now and then."

This one originated from the fact that hungry pigs will dig in the dirt with their noses looking for food, such as roots, insects, and also acorns.  Since I never lived on a farm, I did not know this about hogs until Dad explained the meaning behind the blind hog adage.  That was just one of the old sayings about hogs that Dad used. 

A few months back, our oldest grandson Corban was at our house right before supper time.  Dana asked him what they were having at their house to eat that night.  He replied, "Dad said we're just going to root-hog tonight."  Without knowing it, Corban was quoting his great-grandfather, whom he has never known. 

When I was a boy, if no one was going to cook the evening meal, Dad would say, "OK, everybody it's root, hog, or die around here tonight."  Again, this goes back to pigs digging in the dirt to find food, as my father explained it to me. So on those nights, we knew we were on our own for supper. Peanut butter sandwiches or leftovers were on the menu, and we could serve ourselves or go hungry. 

When my son (Corban's dad) and daughter were kids, I used the same expression to tell them to fend for themselves.  When my son grew up, he said it to his kids in the same circumstances. Now my grandson, three generations removed from our rural roots, uses a piece of it ("root-hog") as a verb for what he does when the kitchen is closed.  

It reminds me of a story I heard once about a woman who cooked pot-roast in a unique way.  She would cut the roast in half and cook each half in a separate small pan. When her friend asked her why, she explained that that was how her mother had always done it.  The friend still wondered why, so the woman called her mother and asked her.  Her mother told her (for the first time) that it was because she had never had a pan big enough for the whole roast. 

When Corban said he was going to root-hog, I laughed out loud.  A piece of my dad was being expressed by my grandson, who never knew his great-grandfather, but carries some of his genes, and sometimes says things he used to say.  So, although my grandsons never knew my dad, they know their parents, and they know me.  We all knew Dad and were shaped by who he was and the things he said. 

How much of what do, think, and say is impacted by those who came before us, whether we knew them or not, without our even knowing it?

My great-grandparents, Jim and Martha Lake, and family, circa 1902

Some More Reasons Why

Recently my wife and I binge-watched Netflix's original series "13 Reasons Why."  It's the story of Hannah, a teenage girl who kills herself.

The viewer is told from the outset that she has committed suicide.  Before she dies,  Hannah records a chronicle of her struggles and the things that she says are the 13 reasons why she chose to end her life.  Each of those reasons involves someone she knows and how that person contributed to her desire for death.

The show is well written and well acted, although sometimes Hannah comes off as a bit over dramatic.  However, it is a story about young people, so a lot of drama is probably not surprising. It is also often hard to watch, including lots of f-bombs, depictions of the characters' cruelty to one another, two rape scenes, and the graphic depiction of Hannah's actual suicide.

It is the kind of show that gives the viewer a lot to think about.  When a person kills herself or himself, how much blame do other people bare?  Why would someone ever make the choice to commit suicide?  Is there anyone I know who might be suffering the way that Hannah did, enough to want to die?  What are the signs of such overwhelming pain?

I don't intend to try to answer those questions, but rather to suggest some other reasons why Hannah ultimately died at her own hand, reasons that she does not recognize herself.

Those reasons involve the way Hannah sees her life and the people in it.  She unfortunately has some toxic thought habits, habits that more than a few people share, whether or not they are suicidal.

One of Hannah's toxic habits is believing that she knows what other people think about her.  In several situations, Hannah decides what someone else thinks  without discussing it with them.  She projects what she believes they are thinking and allows that projection to color all her interactions with that person, including events that might otherwise disprove her beliefs about the other person's thoughts. This way of thinking distorts Hannah's perceptions of her life and adds to her suffering.

The other toxic habit is related to the first.  Along with thinking she knows what people think of her, Hannah cares too much about the opinions of others.  She gives others too much control over her own happiness by making their opinions too important to her.

While it is true that Hannah is the victim of much mistreatment and cruelty at the hands of others, she also allows what happens inside herself to contribute greatly to her
suffering.  By falling into these toxic thought patterns, she contributes to her own suffering.  It is not an exaggeration to say that she is as cruel to herself in her own mind as others are in the real world.

Most of us probably would never consider suicide. But how often do we allow our thoughts to make us miserable?  How often are we guilty of allowing our own inner voice to mistreat us and diminish us?   If you are like me, your answer is perhaps too often.  What are we going to do about it?

Let It Be

When I was growing up in the sixties and seventies, the Beatles were always one of my favorite bands, and some of their songs speak to me in profound ways.  One of those songs is "Let It Be."  I have often thought about the meaning of the phrase "let it be" and wondered about its significance.

Paul McCartney wrote the song after he had a dream about his mother Mary McCartney, who had died when he was 14.  Paul said the Mary in song refers his mother, not the Virgin Mary, as many people have often assumed.  (It is, however, interesting to note that according to the gospel of Luke, when the angel Gabriel told the Virgin Mary she would be the mother of Jesus, she replied, "let it be to me according to your word.")

Paul also said that in the dream, which occurred during a difficult time in his life, his mother told  that everything would be all right, and he should just let it be.  Often when Paul was asked whether the song was about the Virgin Mary, he would reply that people were free to interpret the song any way they liked.  So, with the permission of none other than Sir Paul McCartney, I offer some thoughts about what the song means to me.

First, the phrase "let it be" is good advice about how to to think about the past.  In recent years, I have learned something about how to deal with difficulties from the past, things that make me angry, and things that sometimes seem beyond acceptance.  I have learned that when I am reminded of bad things that I can do nothing to change, I tend to ruminate on them excessively, to allow them to dominate my thoughts and emotions.  Continuing to do this would only result in my becoming bitter, and would not change the thing I am trying to accept.  So I've developed a mental trick to keep from obsessing over such things.  I imagine a wooden cabinet with drawers.  When I find myself dwelling on something too much, I imagine that I am putting that thing in one of the drawers and locking it up.  Then for awhile, while it is in the drawer, I am able to let it be.  Usually the thing I have locked up  eventually escapes that drawer and I will find myself focused on it again. But then I lock it up again, and I find that the more often I lock it up, the less often it escapes the drawer, and the less often have to deal with it.   

Secondly, the phrase "let it be" is good advice about how to think about the present.  Another thing I have learned in recent years is that most of the things in our lives that we think we control are actually beyond our control.  I am a planner and an organizer, and I am often surprised and irritated when my plan for today doesn't work out like I wanted. Stuff happens, as Forrest Gump famously said, and much of that stuff can neither be foreseen nor controlled.  I have found that instead trying to control things, it is wiser to be courageous, and to accept each day as it comes.  Instead of trying to completely control the present, just let it be. 

Lastly, the phrase "let it be" is good advice about how to think about the future. For me, the future has often been a scary place.  I hate not knowing what is coming.  Since I'm big on planning things, thinking about the future offers extreme challenges, since there is just no way to foresee the next 10 minutes, much less the rest of our lives.  So, it is easy to worry over the future, and sometimes events in the present contribute to that worry.  (Anyone with anything in the stock market has probably experienced at least a little of that worry in the past few weeks.)   

Jim Bishop once wrote, "The future is an opaque mirror. Anyone who tries to look into it sees nothing but the dim outlines of an old and worried face."  I find that thinking about the future is usually just worrying about it.  In "Let It Be,"  Mother Mary says, "There will be an answer.  Let it be."  For me, that means two things.  One is that if I'm worrying about the future today, I need to lock those thoughts up in that cabinet shown above.  The other thing is that although future is unknown,  I will not be alone, and there will be solutions to the things I face, just as there are in the present and there were in the past.  The future will come, and I must relax and let it be. 

Copyright © 2015 by Steven W. Fouse

What, Me Worry?

Anyone familiar with American pop culture over the last 50 years or so probably knows that the funny little guy to the left is Alfred E. Neuman,  the mascot of Mad magazine.

If you recognize young Alfred, then you probably also know that his signature phrase is, "What, me worry?"   The phrase sort of capsulizes the zany comedy in Mad magazine, along with suggesting a carefree, possibly irresponsible attitude about life, focused on finding the humor in any situation.  It does that effectively, I think.

If you know me at all, then you know that for most of my life I have been the antithesis of Alfred E. Neuman.  Although I do look for the humor is situations, and often find it,  avoiding worry has never been my strong suit.   My signature phrase might have been, "What, me not worry?"

I have always been goal-oriented and have taken my responsibilities seriously.  I have always planned my life and how I think it should go.  These are not necessarily bad qualities, but the problem I had was that I tried to plan and take responsibility for things I could not control.

In a blog I wrote in 2013,  I talked about how my illusions that I had about a safe, certain future were shattered when I was laid off from my job.  That experience was devastating for me, because it forced me to face the fact that it didn't matter how much I planned or shouldered my responsibilities, unforeseen things were going to happen in my life that were outside my control.  Some of those things would be bad.  Part of what I had to cope with when I was laid off was stress and worry about the future.  Somewhere in my psyche, I realize now, was the belief that it would be irresponsible of me not to worry.  If I wasn't worrying about the future, then somehow I wasn't the capable, take-care-of-things guy that I believed I was.  Those ideas were positively reinforced when I was called back to work less than two weeks after the lay-off.  If I hadn't been worried, maybe that wouldn't have happened, or so I thought.

In a more recent blog, I wrote about the ultimate result of that 2013 lay-off, the decision my wife Dana and I made to leave Oklahoma and move to Missouri to be near our kids and grandkids.  That decision recently led me to another lesson, which was that sometimes you don't get to see what happens next.  Your plans don't work out, and you have to trust God.  You have to take a leap of faith.

So, I took the leap, and now I'm in Missouri without a job.  And the surprising thing is that I am less like that planning, worrying guy that I used to be and more like Alfred E. Neuman.  Although I will never replace Alfred as Mad magazine's shining example of the carefree non-worrier,  I am not worried about finding a job.  I am not worried about the future.  And, surprisingly, I don't feel guilty or irresponsible that I am not worried.  I am spending my time enjoying my family, taking it easy, and applying for jobs.

I am not usually a big fan of most church marquees. A lot of them are somewhere between lame and unbelievably hostile and unloving.  But the other day when I was driving home from a lunch date with my son (how cool it is to be able to do that!),  I saw a marquee that spoke right to my heart.  What it said was so profound to me, and gave me such encouragement to keep doing what I'm doing and to avoid the temptation to worry.

It said:  Thank God for what you have.  Trust God for what you need.

Whoa!  What an awesome reminder that I have so much to be thankful for, that God has brought Dana and me to this place, and he knows I need a job.  I don't need to worry, I just need to trust.

Just in case I needed another reminder, today when I was driving home from my morning swim, I heard  a song by Unspoken that fits well with that church marquee I saw the other day.  The lyrics of that song include these words:


And you may never know what your tomorrow holds
But you can know that I am holding your tomorrow.

What, me worry?  



Copyright © 2015 by Steven W. Fouse

Trading Control for Courage

Over the past two years, my wife Dana and I have been striving to fulfill a dream to live near our children and grandchildren in the Springfield, Missouri area. 

Dana is more of a dreamer than I am, so at first it was mostly her dream.  I usually approach things from a logical, practical perspective, which doesn't always allow a lot of room for dreaming.  I shared her feelings that it would be wonderful to be near our offspring and be more a part of their lives, but to me that seemed a bridge too far.

I mean, there were so many things that had to be worked out before we could make such a big life change.  We owned a home in Lawton, Oklahoma, and although it was a nice home in a great neighborhood, the market for existing houses in Lawton was moving very slowly.  Also, we both would have to find jobs.  At first, we assumed that this would not be a problem for Dana, who is a registered nurse, and there are always jobs for nurses.   I did not see how I could responsibly give up my job.  I had worked there for over 30 years in the defense industry.  I just didn't see how I could walk away from that, and what I could ever find to replace it in Missouri.  We also had other concerns about leaving the place we had lived for so long.  We didn't know how all these details could be timed to work together.  What should we do first?  How would we begin?


Since I have always wanted to try to control the way things happen, it was difficult for me to surrender to all these uncertainties.  What if things didn't work out?  What if we got jobs in Missouri, but couldn't sell our house in Lawton?  What if only one of us got a job, but the other one didn't? What if, what if, what if?  It all seemed too hard to me, but I was willing (although sometimes pretty frightened) to try to make it happen.

So, we did some updates on the house, and listed it for sale.  We both started applying for jobs in Missouri.  For a long time, it seemed to me that I was right, that it was all too hard to do.  Neither of us was having any luck finding jobs, and our house did not sell.  There were long periods of time when no one even looked at it.  Dana came to Springfield twice for job interviews, but neither of those opportunities worked out for her.  I was not having any luck finding employment either. 

Finally after nearly two years,  Dana got a great job.  It has proven to be the perfect job for her.  Then a week after Dana got her job, our house finally sold.  OK, great, two pieces of the puzzle were fitting together.  The only thing left was for me to get a job.  We moved Dana to Missouri in April, when her job began.  I stayed in Oklahoma to finalize the sale of the house.  I would join her in Missouri as soon as I had a job.  Or so I thought.

Throughout all of this, Dana and I had prayed for God to show us the way, and to work out the details.  And we were seeing how how the details were all working out and fitting together.  I assumed that God would see the logic of my plan to stay in Oklahoma until I had a job in Missouri.  I mean, how could I be so irresponsible as to leave a good job without another one lined up.  That was just not acceptable.  Right, God? 

Today I read a new post in one of my favorite blogs, which is written by Mark Chernoff.   In it Mark makes this statement: 

'When you attempt to control the uncontrollable you automatically block yourself from the truth.  You resist how everything works rather than learning about it.  So here’s a simple challenge for you:  Instead of trying to make things work exactly the way you want them to work, just watch them work today."

Wow!  That was a lesson I learned for myself in recent weeks.  You see, it turns out that my logical plan to find a job before I moved to Missouri did not coincide with God's plan.  Although I've had several promising leads on jobs, and a couple of interviews, I still don't have a job.   I finally came to
understand that I would have to take a leap of faith.  I would have have to walk away from that good job without another one waiting for me.  I would have to trust God.  I would have to give up control and act in faith instead.   I was beginning to understand that when God made it crystal clear to me.  A leap of faith is the only kind of leap I will be capable of for awhile, because while I was struggling with this decision,  I learned that I am going to have to have knee surgery.  I knew then that I had to go to Missouri, that I couldn't stay in Oklahoma until my plan worked out.  My plan was clearly not the plan because my plan sure didn't include a torn meniscus.

So, now I'm in Missouri with my wife, my kids and their spouses, my grandboys, and my Mom.  No job yet and a bum knee.  Sometimes I'm slightly freaked out that I'm not sure what will happen next or how long I'll have to recuperate, or when I'll get a job.  But I'm taking Mark Chernoff's advice to just watch how things turn out instead of trying to control how they turn out.  And I know I'm in the right place, because sometimes God is kind enough to speak very loudly.

You see, on the morning about three weeks ago when I walked into my boss's office and took that leap by turning in my letter of recognition, God sent me a message.  I receive a daily Bible verse via e-mail, and that morning right after I had turned in that letter, my phone vibrated to signal I had a new e-mail.  I opened it, and it said, "So be strong and courageous! Do not be afraid and do not panic before them. For the Lord your God will personally go ahead of you. He will neither fail you nor abandon you. - Deuteronomy 31:6.”  If you read that chapter in the Bible, you'll find that the speaker is Moses.  He's telling the Israelites to go and take the Promised Land, that they could be brave because God would go ahead them, and that he would never fail them.  

Pretty cool, huh? 

Copyright © 2015 by Steven W. Fouse
 

He Did It His Way

A few months back, a co-worker of mine passed away after a long battle with cancer.  I  had worked with him since 1981, and although we did not see each other outside work, we respected each other and I considered him a friend, so I attended his funeral.

A few days later, another co-worker who had not attended the funeral asked me about the service.  I told him a few details and named some mutual acquaintances who had also been there.  Then I told him that there were  two songs played at the end of the service.  One was an old hymn.  The other was Frank Sinatra's standard "I Did It My Way." I remarked that I thought that song was very appropriate for the man who had died, and he agreed.  Then he told me that his minister does not allow that song to be played or sung at funerals that are held in his church.  He allows it at the cemetery, but not at the church.

I thought about that, and I didn't like it much.  I guess I understand the minister's position.  He obviously equates doing things "my way" as the equivalent of disobeying God, or perhaps not being humble enough.

However, I take a different view.  Our co-worker who had died was a complex man.  He could be stubborn and argumentative.  He was often unforgiving to those he felt wronged him, and he held grudges.  He was confrontational and believed in winning by intimidation.  He always said what he thought about everyone and everything, and he didn't care who had a problem with that.  You never had to wonder what he thought, because he would always tell you without any effort to sugar-coat anything.

However, he was also hard-working and passionate about doing a good job.  He loved to work, and continued in his job well past the age when he could have retired.  He and his wife raised and showed  quarter horses, and they enthusiastically enjoyed that endeavor as long as their health allowed.  If he gave you hell, the way to earn his respect was to give it right back.  When you did that, he would often smile a little as if he was glad you had stood up to him. He was loyal to those whom he respected, and under his rough exterior, he loved people.  He faced the cancer that eventually killed him with courage and dignity, and he was open and honest about the toll the disease and the treatments took on him, both physically and emotionally.  He never gave way to hopelessness, and he continued to work until he literally could no longer come to the office.

In other words, my friend lived and died on his own terms.  He was completely and unabashedly himself, the way God had made him.  He had faults and he could be difficult, but he lived life enthusiastically, and he completely enjoyed the things he did and the life he lived.  In other words, he did it his way.

I believe that God was fine with that.



Copyright © 2015 by Steven W. Fouse