Hazel Clem and Hope

It's Christmas day.

A few days ago, on December 22, a very good friend, Hazel Clem, died. She had struggled with cancer, struggled valiantly, but now the struggle is over. We are all poorer now.

Hazel was the mother of Keith, one of the best friends I have ever had and the best man at our wedding. The lives of Keith and I have diverged over the years. He is hundreds of miles away now, and I haven't seen Hazel in years. But Keith and Hazel (and Keith's dad Eddie Wayne) are still very much part of my life because when we were closer, they worked their way into who I am. I am much better since I know them.

Hazel enjoyed life. She lived fearlessly. She lived on the New Madrid fault, and had a collection of crystal platters and china plates. 

She loved the color red. I don't mind just liked the color red. She loved red. Everything in her life which could be red was, in fact, red.

I used to visit the Clems pretty regularly when I was in college and graduate school. It was more than worth the short drive out to Arkansas. She was never anything but hospitable. No, "hospitable" is too bland a word these days. Hazel gave of herself, made room in her world for me, and never let me imagine that it was anything but her pleasure. Even when I felt that there were few places where I really belonged, I knew I belonged with the Clems.

Now, all Advent season, I've been struggling with something. Advent, in the Christian church, is a time of looking forward, a time of hope.

What's been playing through my head as I read and tried to discuss the Advent scriptures in the Sunday school class I lead is that there are plenty of people ready to claim that there is no hope in the world. Sandy and Sandy Hook are what the world is, and where it's headed, they claim. To believe otherwise is to be foolish and naive, they say. And I don't say that they're entirely wrong.

There are others, including many Christians, who believe that every day, in every way, we're getting better and better. Sandy and Sandy Hook are just mysteries, they say, and if we knew all that Jesus knows, we'd find out that they happened to draw more believers to Christ. To believe otherwise is to be faithless or even blasphemous. I can't believe that either.
 

I can't close my eyes to the horror that is the world, but I can't close my heart to hope either.

 

It's hard to hope. I know it's not supposed to be easy, but it's hard to look at roughly TWO THOUSAND TWELVE YEARS of people saying and living into the promise of God, the belief that God has defeated sin and that we see a "great light." Sometimes, it seems like it's all like a dream that is so good, so fantastic, that waking up feels bitter and depressing.

And then, I think of blessings like Hazel Clem. And I can't do anything but hope. Hazel made the world better, made my world better anyway. So, while I can't say how things will change, and I can't even say precisely what the changes will be, I hope. For Hazel, Hazel's family, and for all of us.

Merry Christmas.

 

Copyright 2012. Timothy H. Ruppel. All rights reserved.

This work by Timothy H. Ruppel is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

69: Safe Parenting

The prompt is to write about a quote from Erica Jong: "If you don't risk anything, you risk more."

A while back, a friend of mine explained to me why, after years of being an almost atheist, he returned to the Roman Catholic church. It had little to do with a sense of religious conviction, or a sense of penitence, or even a desire to have something to do on a Sunday morning. He returned to Christianity because of his kids. He'd been raised Catholic, and his wife was raised Catholic, and they both turned out OK. When he had kids, he had to raise them Catholic too, because, and this is a quote: "You can't take chances with your kids."

I believe he was wrong. I care for my kids so much that I have to push myself to take risks with them.

I'm not talking recklessness. I don't dangle my kids over cliffs, and I didn't let them drive when they were six. We put caps on the electric outlets and a gate on the stairs when the kids were small enough to accidentally fall down the stairs. However, there are a lot of people who don't seem to see the difference between letting a five-year-old play with a loaded nail gun and letting a teenager surf the internet without sitting over their shoulder.

Now, this is not cut and dried. Each kid is different, and for some, walking to the park really is risky. And each parent is different. I'm sure the kids think their mom and I didn't let them do enough when they were little. (They certainly thought so at the time!)

You do the best you can, and trust God. For some parents, it takes all their will to let the kids do their homework without constant supervision. Maybe they're right.  I'm not interested in being the best dad. I'm interested in being the best dad I can be.

I do the best I can, and trust God. I refrain from comparing myself to others, but I stay open to learn from them. I love each kid as if he or she were my only kid. I take risks with them, partly so that they realize that I believe in them, partly so that they get to learn how to succeed and fail at something that matters, and partly because it makes me a better man, even when it's scary or painful. I fail at all of those things to some degree, but I trust in forgiveness from God, and I hope in forgiveness from them.

I love my kids too much to play safe. I think God loves me (and them) that way too.

It's been a while since I did one of these creative writing prompts. Part of the reason for this was that my daughter was participating in National Novel Writing Month, and I didn't want to "run up the score" while she was doing that. It's also true that I had a great number of other responsibilities and claims on my time.

 

Copyright 2012. Timothy H. Ruppel. All rights reserved.

This work by Timothy H. Ruppel is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.