The Bridges of Fair Haven by Pastor Welty

In October I spent a few days at a Christian retreat center in Tennessee called "Fair Haven".  It is a beautiful, isolated spot, without TV, internet or even cell phone coverage.  That took some getting used to, especially during the baseball playoffs.  A babbling mountain stream runs through the property and a series of trails wanders through it as well with an occasional bridge crossing the stream.  During my stay, I felt a strange attraction to those various bridges and spent hours sitting on them.  As I sat there watching the water rush by, I spent time thinking, praying, crying, worshiping, and journaling.  I wondered why these bridges were so significant to me and then it occurred to me. 

 When a person passes away, it is sometimes described as "passing over".  Jesus himself said: “Very truly I tell you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be judged but has crossed over from death to life."  (John 5:24)  In fact some evangelistic literature uses a picture of a bridge to illustrate what happens when one enters into a personal relationship with Christ.  So on July 25, 2015, Stephanie crossed the bridge from time to eternity and crossed into the presence of God.  She crossed a bridge, and that left me to cross a bridge also, a bridge into my new life.

 My daughters sometimes use this expression "This is me now".  I asked for the source of those words,  and they told me that these words were uttered by a character on a TV show called "Bob's Burgers".  Having watched a couple of episodes of "Bob's Burgers", I don't feel it is worthy of something so existentially profound; however, I am borrowing those words because I feel that they describe me.   When your identity is wrapped up with another for as long as mine was, it's not easy to find your way on your own.  This is the first time in my life that I've lived alone.  I lived with my parents until I went to college.  Lived at college for four years, and Stephanie and I were married in September after we graduated.  But "This is me now."

 I am a widower, and unmarried man, a bachelor.  I am getting used to being alone in my "big house".  Several friends from our church or neighborhood have invited me to share a meal with them which I greatly appreciate, but there are nights when I end up eating supper alone with the nightly news or more likely "Sports Center" as my companion.  One night I was hungry for fried chicken, so I went to our local grocery and picked up a piece.  I also spotted the "Ben and Jerry's " section of the freezer, so I picked up a mini container.  As I stood in the check-out line looking at my items, I thought,  "This is what my life has come to" or "This is me now".  In my defense, I did have a salad at home. 

I am half of a whole.  I was just me for twenty-two years of my life.  Then for thirty-five years I was part of "us".  Now I am just me again.  I was half of "Jim and Steph" or "Pastor Jim and Miss Stephanie".  It was a great partnership, but now I feel like half of a whole. 

Along with that I am the odd man out.  No one has made me feel that way, but it just comes with the territory.   Whenever I sit at a dinner table with friends whether in their home or in a restaurant, there is always an empty chair.  Once when I was out with some dear friends, the man was staring at the empty chair next to me with a sad look on his face and said, "This isn't right", and I agreed.  There used to be four of us, now there are three.

I now experience tears at the drop of a hat.  I've always been a softy  inside, but now for no apparent reason, I'll be fine one minute and in tears the next.  The tears can be prompted by a song, a picture, a card or just a sense of "This is me now".

So I'm crossing over a bridge to a new life.  Fortunately I am grounded by my other roles and relationships.  I am a father to two beautiful, talented and intelligent daughters.  I am a pastor of a church that is very dear to me.  I am a brother to my very supportive and loving siblings.  And I am a friend to some very understanding and caring friends.  So I'm crossing a bridge and staying where I am at the same time.  "This is me now". 

"Home For Christmas" by Pastor Welty

Stephanie loved Christmas.  Christmas music would start playing in our house as we were picking the meat off of the Thanksgiving turkey.  She would want to get the decorations out and up as soon as possible, and our decorations stayed up well into the new year.

 Advent was a big deal at our house.  We had a log with enough holes in it to hold a candle for every day of Advent.  After dinner we would light a candle, read a passage from the Bible, sing a carol and pray together.  When our girls were younger, Steph had a cloth calendar for the month of December, which she had made hanging on the wall of our kitchen  with a ribbon on each day.  With those ribbons she would tie a piece of candy to the calendar, and as the days went by the candies would be removed, alternating between our daughters.  The children in Kids' Klub may remember Miss Stephanie's Advent chain, a paper chain made out of multi-colored construction paper links which were torn off as each day of Advent passed by. 

 Decorating the house was important to Stephanie.  I can still remember disagreements over how many ornaments should be put on our Christmas tree.  She liked to put on so many ornaments that you couldn't see the tree for the ornaments.  I am more of a minimalist and would be happy to just have lights on a tree, so we compromised and put every ornament we owned on the tree.  I should have just built a green cone out of plywood and we could have decorated that.  The end result would have looked the same, and you don't have to water plywood.  She used the tree to entertain her piano students.   She gave clues and the students would try to find a particular ornament on the tree based on the clues.  Can anybody say "needle in a haystack"?

Steph loved the Christmas story told in all of its forms.  Whether the Biblical account or her favorite children's account of the nativity where the angels show up in work boots and many other versions in between.  During December our TV only got one channel, The Hallmark Channel.  (I am being hyperbolic, or course.  Any football fan knows that there are a couple other necessary TV channels during December.)

She loved entertaining as well.  In her hay day, we would invite everyone from our church over for an open house, usually the Sunday before Christmas.  We did this for many years until the church grew larger and our house seemed to grow smaller.  She would bake and bake until we had plastic containers all over the house containing the treats.

One of her favorite stories of our Christmas occurred when I was in Seminary.  We would try to get home to see my family, but one year Steph's father was very ill, so we didn't feel the freedom to leave.  I told my family that we wouldn't be traveling to Ohio that year.  At the last minute, Steph's father rallied, so Steph felt the freedom to go.  She knew that a trip home would be good for me. We left on Christmas Eve and drove all night, arriving at my parents' home sometime around 6:00 Christmas morning.  Our dog was dispatched upstairs to wake up my Mom.  When Mom felt that cold nose on her face, she got up quickly and headed downstairs.  What a great surprise.  Steph loved that story.  It was a happy ending worthy of a Hallmark movie.  We made it home for Christmas.

Every year during the Christmas season I make an appointment with a Christmas song by Stephen Curtis Chapman.  It's a ballad about his grandmother and her love for Christmas.  He tells how she prepared decorations, food and gifts for that one day when all of her family would be with her.  One year she became ill and ended up in a nursing care facility, but she vowed that she would be home for Christmas, and she continued to make plans from her room at the facility.  Sadly, she didn't make it home for Christmas but went to her ultimate home with Jesus.

After losing my mother in 1994 and my father in 2005, this song always touched my heart and led me to tears.  This year it was even more meaningful and significant for me because my Stephanie is now home for Christmas.  Here is a link to the song. Home for Christmas  Before you listen be sure to  have some tissues ready.  Here are the lyrics of the final chorus.

"And now she's home for Christmas, and now she's home to stay.

She's home for Christmas, and nothing could have kept her away.

She'll be face to face with Jesus, as we celebrate His birth.

This gift will be worth more to her than anything on earth.

She's home, she's home for Christmas"

 Dear Stephanie,

I know how much you love Christmas.  This year I was tempted to hunker down and not decorate, but  Abby and Emma wouldn't hear of it.  We got our tree up and decorated the day after Thanksgiving.  They also got out your collection of international Nativities that you love so much.  They carefully placed them around our house in spots that worked for their artistic eyes.  You would be so proud of how they carried on your traditions.  The Advent log is in place and loaded with candles that I light during my morning devotions.  I even hooked up the electric candles in windows.  The house looks so much warmer with those lit at night.  I also got a wreath for the front door and am blaring Christmas music in my car although there is no one at home to acknowledge the blaring music as I pull into the driveway.

I can't help but wonder how is your first Christmas in heaven?  I imagine the music is spectacular and live.  The decorations must make Rockefeller Center look like Kmart.  The treats, I'll bet, are delicious, truly heavenly and good for you as well.  (I'm guessing the recipes for "manna" have been perfected over the years.)  Do they celebrate Advent like we did at home?  Do they have a living nativity with the original characters?    For your sake I'm glad that you're truly home for Christmas, but I miss you terribly.  Merry Christmas, my love.

Love,

Jim

Unfinished by Pastor Welty

I like things neat and tidy, but I married a very creative person for whom tidiness was low on the list of priorities.  Sometimes my desire for tidy interfered with her desire to be creative.  I remember more than once I would be in the kitchen with her while she was baking.  I would assume that she was done using a particular ingredient and would return it to its place in our cupboard; however, she wasn't quite done and would get very frustrated with me.  "Mr. Tidy meet Miss Creative".  As time passed I relaxed, and she tried to control the chaotic aftermath of her creative surges.  But now as I have been working to clean out our house, I realize that our house is a reflection of her life.  She wanted to finish well as everyone who attended her memorial service heard, but honestly she left much unfinished.  I remember hearing her say more than once that she could never live long enough to do all the things that interested her.  Those words seem strangely prophetic now.

So I began the process of cleaning out our house beginning with the plethora of baskets that contained various craft supplies.  (I didn't know there were that many baskets in our house or the world for that matter.  I now know that my wife was a basket-holic.)  Stephanie kept large quantities of material swatches in those baskets.  I was able to give those swatches to some friends who are quilters.  The exploration of that section of our house revealed a lot of unfinished projects: quilting projects, needle point work and other various initiatives requiring fabric.

Having completed that task, I moved into another passion of her life - children's ministry.  This endeavor consumed a lot of time and energy as I tried to sort through and determine which items had value for everyone.  Eventually I offered these resources to our church's Children's Ministry Coordinator who appeared to be as happy as a the proverbial kid in a candy store when she saw the bounty.

Recently I sorted through some of the supplies Steph used for her piano teaching business.  I found clever devices she had created and used to motivate her students to practice.  There were also little games she used to make the learning process fun.  It made me wish she had been teaching when I was a kid trying to learn piano.

One night I sorted through a tub of supplies she had used for Camp CMA - a children's camp she ran in New Hampshire for the New England District.  In that tub were detailed lists of supplies, staff and camper profiles, lesson plans and activity ideas.  She also had detailed budgets and financial records.  There were also many pictures that I sorted through and gleaned a few keepers.

My next challenge is a daunting one - I have to do an archaeological dig on the corner of our house where her business "The Cracked Bead" was located.  I stuck my toe into that current but quickly retreated.  I don't think I can go there unaccompanied.  I might get lost in there.  I might have to tie a tether to my waste before I get in too deep.  I'm definitely keeping my cell phone nearby although I'm not sure how I would describe my predicament if I had to call "911". 

 In all of this cleaning out I have been reminded of how creative, talented and clever Stephanie was and how privileged I was to be married to her.  I also have realized that tidiness can seem boring, but I'm willing to risk it.  But I have also reflected on the fact that she did finish well even though she left some things unfinished. 

Throughout the years many friends encouraged her to publish her children's Bible curriculum entitled "God Wants You Back"  This curriculum is still used and treasured at The Community Chapel.  Stephanie was never able to go the next step of submitting it to a publisher.  Perhaps she lacked the confidence needed. 

Steph also had a book title in mind, "Take Nothing for the Journey".  The title was based on Jesus' words in Luke 9:3 when he was sending some of His followers out for ministry.  It was to be the story of her journey to emotional healing.  The last few months of her life, I encouraged her to write it, even offering to be her secretary, but it remained unfinished.

Finally, Stephanie had been working on a journey to emotional healing.  Raised in a dysfunctional family with all of its secrets and manipulation, she realized that she had been the victim of physical and emotional abuse and neglect, and also sexual molestation.  Steph fought hard to overcome the damage caused by this system, but the wounds were very deep and hard to overcome. 

So Stephanie did finish well, but she left some things unfinished.  I imagine that is true for many people; in fact, when my life is over I hope the same will be said about me.  Being unfinished is a part of living, but what's important is to keep trying, to keep dreaming, to keeping hoping and trusting.

As I was working on this blog I read an entry in a book entitled "From My Grieving Heart To Yours".  Written by Charles Shepson, a retired C&MA pastor,  it is a journal of his grief after losing his wife.  It has been a very helpful companion for me.   In the entry I read today (November 23), he wrote about a little girl named Heather who said to her mother one day,  "Jesus is painting a picture of me, and He isn't finished yet."   Shepson responded to those words by saying:      

"I remember so well the evening when Jesus finished painting my sweetheart's portrait, and she was given permission to step down from the pose she had struck.  Perhaps I should say "up" for at that precious moment she stepped up into His glorious Presence."

Stephanie did finish well, and on July 25, 2015 at 2:15 a.m. she stepped "up" from her pose and into Christ's presence.  The painting of her was complete.

Who Was "Miss Stephanie"?

In looking at our church family, I realize that many people didn't know Stephanie before she became ill.  In fact 50% of our congregation didn't know her before she got sick, and because she wasn't able to participate in the life of the church in the last couple of years, 25% of our current congregation didn't really know her at all.

 Let me introduce you to my wife, not by her rolls: wife, mother, ministry partner, but by her values and passions. 

Stephanie valued people of all ages.  We've heard the stories of "Miss Stephanie" and how she developed the active learning style of teaching that is still a central part of our children's ministry.  Her three year curriculum that covers the entire Bible is still in use today and is entitled: "God wants you back". 

Stephanie also wanted to impact children outside of our church, so in 1992 we started our summer program which became known later as Kids' Kamp.  She was able to leverage our lack of a permanent home by having the Kids' Kamp in Ballantine Park - open to anyone in our community. 

 In a further effort to reach out to our community, Steph had a dream that became known as Kids' Kafe.  Kids' Kafe was a fun interactive evening for families that included games, music, snacks and concluded with a gospel message. 

 The leaders of the New England District, our church's parent organization, recognized Stephanie's gifts in the area of children's ministry, so they asked her to start a camp for children and young people throughout the New England states.  Camp CMA, as it was called, started in 1995 and ran about eight years.

Her influence reached beyond our church and District family.  She began a piano teaching business from our home.  She taught more than just piano lessons; she also taught her students life lessons.  Some of her students didpractice their music, but many of them left me looking for ear plugs. 

One of her favorite expressions was to eulogize the living or bless the living, and she tried to do that.  One of her favorite things to do was to prepare meals for friends and neighbors who needed some TLC.  She referred to it as "food evangelism". 

As her strength was diminishing, she still tried to bless people, and her blog "Grayrock's Window" became the avenue for that.  Her simple and honest insights were a blessing to many people.

Stephanie valued creativity.  Both of my artistic daughters inherited their mother's creativity; in fact, I told them that any marketable skills they have is thanks to their mother.  Their ability to be silly came from me.  Steph used to think that she would not be able to live long enough to try everything that she was interested in.  Our house still has proof of that in the materials and supplies that are here and there. 

One of the expressions of her creativity was her jewelry design business called "The Cracked Bead".  She used that business to express the fact that the most beautiful beads are ones that are cracked, so the light reflects through the cracks, making the beads more beautiful.  She related that to how God's grace can shine through the imperfections and blemishes of our lives to show his beauty through our lives.

Stephanie valued hospitality.  If you were a guest at our home, you knew that Steph worked hard to make you feel special.  She would set a beautiful table and be able to make an ordinary meal seem gourmet.  In order to provide this experience, she used many dishes, and clean up was always my responsibility.  When we purchased our first dishwasher, I told her that we didn't need one since I washed all the dishes.  Her response was"I want a dishwasher than doesn't grumble."   I may have grumbled, but, I always appreciated how special she could make her guests feel. 

 For those of you who knew Stephanie, you can attest that these are true, and for those of you who knew her in recent years or hadn't had the chance to know her at all, hopefully this gives you a little glimpse of who she was.

The Privilege of Serving by Pastor Welty

I recently met up with an old friend who lost his wife several years ago.  Like me, he had the responsibility for her care.  He used a phrase which I have been mulling over since that encounter.  He said that he had the "privilege of serving" his wife in that way.  It caused me to ponder how I viewed the last six years of our lives together.  The opening words of Charles Dickens'  "A Tale of Two Cities"  seems to describe best:  It was the best of times; it was the worst of time.

 It was the best of times because it caused Stephanie and I to grow closer together than I had ever imagined.  Her illness forced us to speak openly about our future.  We honestly grappled with questions of faith and healing.  It also caused us to take pleasure in the small things: a trip to Lake Waramaug or Bantam Lake, an occasional trip to Hammonasset Beach.  Sometimes it was just eating pizza while watching the latest Netflix arrival.  Our lives were stripped down to the basics, and we relished each special moment as best as we could.

It was the worst of times because I had to watch the woman I love slowly die.  But in that I was allowed the "privilege of serving" her.   It allowed me to show Stephanie my love in action by serving her and taking care of her.  More than once I thought about giving up on the dialysis treatments at home and asking her to return to the dialysis center, but I knew that would be difficult for her, and given the amount of snow we had last winter, not easy for me either.  

Both of us developed a greater dependence on God than we had ever experienced.  Daily prayers before the treatment became a way for us to connect with each other and cry out to God for His help.  As Stephanie was nearing the end of her life, we had significant, honest conversations about our faith and our destiny.  These were challenging but rich conversations that were only necessary because of our situation. 

In the last hours of her life, I sat by her bed and whispered in her ear, assuring her of my love for her and my gratitude for her love.  One of the nurses told me that a dying person can still hear what is going on around them, so I wanted her last memories to be precious and sweet.  I hope that it meant something to her. 

My friend also said that he wouldn't have traded his experience of caring for his dying wife for anything, but now that it was over, he would never want to have to do it again. I completely understand those sentiments.  I know that what we went through together deepened our love for each other as well as increasing our faith in God, but now that it's over,  I am relieved - for both of us.

So the last six years were the best of times; and the worst of time.  In looking back, I can see that it was a privilege serving Stephanie, but it was only possible because of the faithfulness of my Heavenly Father.  It was a privilege because God used me to care for Stephanie.

The lyrics of this old hymn became a good companion on my journey.  "He Giveth More Grace" by Annie Johnson Flint.

He giveth more grace as our burdens grow greater,
He sendeth more strength as our labors increase;
To added afflictions He addeth His mercy,
To multiplied trials He multiplies peace.

 When we have exhausted our store of endurance,
When our strength has failed ere the day is half done,
When we reach the end of our hoarded resources
Our Father’s full giving is only begun.

His love has no limits, His grace has no measure,
His power no boundary known unto men;
For out of His infinite riches in Jesus
He giveth, and giveth, and giveth again.