Memories of Grandma Vaupel

 

My memories of Grandma Vaupel are like a patchwork quilt. So many different colors and textures fill the shape and substance of her 98 years of life.

Pot holders, Christmas stockings, doilies, and tea towels. To look around my house is to see little evidences of her love woven into countless hand-made gifts. Each of our children has cherished (almost to pieces) the soft, warm blankets that Grandma crocheted. I don’t go a day without using a towel she embroidered. And it’s not just my house. Children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, neighbors, and friends have been recipients of her gifts. Military laboring overseas have received her hand-knit little Christmas stockings. Countless homes have been brightened by her personal touch of love. 

Gardening, canning, picking raspberries, freezing corn. Such warm childhood memories of Grandma’s industrious efforts to gather, prepare, and provide. I remember her rubber-banded bread bags, shielding her shoes from ankle-deep mud, as she ventured into the woods to hunt for morel mushrooms. When I got a little bigger, I gained my own spot at her basement tables with a knife and huge bowl of corn on the cob to trim and scrape and bag, for winter enjoyment.

Grandma was the epitome of a fit helper for Grandpa on the farm. Up before dawn, helping with chores, fixing a hearty breakfast, cleaning the kitchen to get it ready for a full spread at lunch. Always with a cheerful smile, a worn apron, capable hands. 

Grandma could feed chickens, calves, and all the people who could cram into her cozy kitchen. And who overflowed into the living room. Of all the memories I have of Grandma, the majority involve large quantities of delicious, comforting food. It’s not just that Grandma made the world’s best chocolate chip cookies, butterhorn rolls, and pies. It’s more that every dish and pan, every bowl and pot that stacked in never-ending piles at the end of a meal held the stamp of her love. I think that’s a legacy that she passed on to her daughters, and probably has trickled down to many of her grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Thanksgiving dinners, Christmas, Easter, and birthday celebrations were made special because love flavored the abundant and delicious spread of food.

That is the thread that runs through most every piece of the lovely patchwork quilt of memories I have of Grandma. She knew and received the love of Jesus for redeemed sinners. And she overflowed with that love. Love for family. Love for neighbors. Love for church. Love for the Lord. 

The last time I got to hold her strong, soft, wrinkled hand and look in her warm eyes, just a couple days before she finished this earthly course, I leaned close, kissed her cheek, and said, “I love you, Grandma, and the Lord loves you.” And she gave her sweet, meaningful wink, as though to say, “I know, I love you, and I’m glad to be going home to Jesus.”  

 

The Really Big Problem ... and the Greatest Rescue

There is a big story unfolding in these days, and we don't know all the chapters it will bring. But for all the seriousness and impact of COVID-19, a far greater story of peril, sacrificial love, and rescue surrounds it:

For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person--though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die--but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Romans 5:6-8

The problem: We are ungodly (all of us) and under a penalty of eternal death.

The risk: Not just unknown danger or potential hazards, but certain death on the part of the rescuer.

The motive: Love. Not our kind of love that settles on those who are lovable or already part of our people. This is love for the ugly, the enemy, the ones who have created the problem for themselves.

The rescue: God himself sent his own Son Jesus. He lived perfectly, keeping the standards that all of us have broken. He gave his life as a substitute payment for what we owe.

The offer: Receive him. Give up your way of trying to produce your own worth before God. Look only to Jesus for your perfect righteousness, your fully paid debt, and the resources to live in God's ways by God's own strength and Spirit.

It's an awesome story. Let's not forget it, no matter what unexpected twists come our way.

Stomach Flu

We had just arrived at Como Zoo to meet some friends when Victor said his tummy hurt.

Go potty. Walk a little. Sit on a bench. He would crouch down between exhibits. Not good.

But he rallied after some pretzels, ate a decent lunch, said his tummy was feeling better, went potty again, and came home for a nap.

At 3:30, he came out (with vomit dripping down an arm and leg) and let us know he had spit up.

Oh, Stomach Flu. You are such a never-welcome guest here.

3:30pm.
4:30pm.
6:00pm.
7:15pm.
9:00pm.
11:00pm.
11:53pm.
12:55am.

Then Josiah started.

2:00am.
3:15am.
3:55am.
4:38am.
5:36am.
8:01am.
9:40am.

I'm just not sure how many loads of laundry we ran in the past 24 hours. (Josiah, in particular, is not a particularly good aim.)

I have a pretty good idea how much sleep I got, but I don't want to dwell on it.

The harbinger cough. The call. The retching, even after the belly is empty. Oh, you are a terrible thing. A picture of our awful Fall.

But on the other hand.

How thankful I am for a washer and dryer, so easily available.

I'm so glad neither of the boys got terribly dehydrated.

Only 10 hours apiece. Really not so bad.

Elliot has been spared, thus far.

Ben was able to help with a fair bit of it all.

We still have a few days before welcoming family and friends here for Easter.

I had a mental flash, sometime in the night, of the scourge of ebola that loomed so large a while ago. I could imagine the horrific dread that must have fallen on mommas and caregivers with the first signs of sickness. In comparison, o Stomach Flu, I could indeed nearly call you a friend.

And this week of all weeks, we remember our great Hero, who stepped into our Fall-tainted world and wore a flesh that was susceptible to the flu bug, the bite of a thorn, the explosion of pain that a nail could produce.

Victor over sin and death. Firstborn from the grave. Promise of coming joy. Thank You.

My Best Birthday Gift

Flashback to September. Birthday wishes and kindnesses were very sweet.

But my best birthday gift came two days before my birthday, when (honestly, to my surprise) an efficient technician zoomed in the ultrasound view and detected a precious little heartbeat still fluttering away inside.

* * *

After our miscarriage in June, we were thrilled, elated, delighted, overjoyed, grateful, amazed, and humbled to find ourselves pregnant in August. Again, I suspected right away that something was stirring, but it was a gut-wrenching day-by-day wait, peppered with frequent alarm that the movement had stopped, that I would lose this little one again before we even began to know him.

Finally, a positive pregnancy test. I started feeling gross a week later. And almost three weeks later, an ultrasound, which (somewhat to my dismay) showed that I was not yet even 6 weeks pregnant. But, there was a tiny slow heartbeat, barely detectable.

Both my little boys' pregnancies were survived on Zofran, right up to heading to the hospital. So I waited nervously for the "gross" to turn to "incapacitating" ... but it stayed at just a low-grade gross, according to my earnest prayers for the past many months that God might allow me to come through this pregnancy without such intense sickness.

Day by day slowly passed. (It felt like I spent this whole summer waiting for 6-weeks-pregnant to arrive.) The daily grossness was a reassuring reminder of the reality inside.

And then Tuesday night, in the middle of dinner with company.
Blood.

A flood of memories. Reliving the painful days of June in an instant.

After we said our good-byes to our guest, I just sank into our big blue chair, too drained to move. A call to the ob office.  

Rest tonight, and come in for an ultrasound tomorrow, she said. It may not be another miscarriage.

It was a night-long wrestling match between prayers, fears, threads of hope, and the crushing reality that always, always before, blood means no baby.



I called the office twice at 8:00am, and finally at 8:01am they turned off their answering service and I could at least wait on hold. The nurse couldn't find an opening for an ultrasound and needed to call back after she talked to the techs.

I texted family and the friends who already knew about the baby and waited. An 11:00am ultrasound appointment.

I arrived 10 min early and sat in a full waiting room. Minutes passed, and the room emptied little by little. It was perhaps the longest, hardest, loneliest wait I've had in a doctor's office.

And I dreaded hearing my name called. Dreaded the finality of seeing on the screen a still small body, absent of life.

Psalm 121.
Psalm 34.
Psalm 96.
Isaiah 41:10
Jeremiah 29:11
Fragments of verses and prayers and songs.

I was starting to feel woozy, my half bagel for breakfast too long past. Do you have any crackers? I asked the receptionist. I'm feeling light-headed. 

A few saltines later I felt better and ready to face the next step. Even if today is a sad day, I believe there will be happy days ahead. This is not the end of the story.

11:30am.
11:40am.

"Amy," at last the white-clad technician came for me. She did not smile or make small talk. "So, when did the bleeding start?"

"Last night."

I took a deep breath, looking at the large blank screen facing the reclining table, the screen which would soon reveal ... life or death. 

She didn't speak as she began the scan. I watched the screen, trying to pick out a little dark mass which would be our baby.


There it is. 
So still. 
There should be movement, should be a little flutter there.

My heart sank. So still.
No movement.
No movement.

Then she adjusted her instruments, zoomed in on the little mass. And like a miracle, I thought I saw something move.

She adjusted again. And there, as beautiful a sight as I have ever seen, was a quick, rhythmic flutter.

She measured the little peaks and valleys.
167 beats per minute.

My eyes full of tears, my heart full of gratitude.
167 beats per minute.

 * * *

And that, as I knew with greatest certainty, was all the birthday gift I could ask for.



 

A Letter to My Little One

Dear little one,

We officially confirmed your presence a week ago Tuesday, but I knew (at least suspected) you were here for about a month.

A gentle stirring within.

Growing, knitting, living.

We were so overjoyed, so enthralled,

A quiet, secret joy.

A Valentine’s Day baby, maybe.

A new precious girl?

Or another sweet brother?

A gift to us.

You were a gift to us.

You are a gift to us.

We loved you so, so much.

But God gives different gifts.

And this one, for us, He gave and took away.

He is our kind Father.

Our hearts break for such a short hello

And too soon good-bye.

Another baby, squirming, bloody,

Plunged into this broken world.

He lived pure,

Took my blow,

And rose to redeem

Our too soon good-byes.

So good-bye for now, little sweetheart,

Until we meet again.

Love,

Your momma

Good-bye, Grandma

The first time I saw a photo of a young Grandma Anderson I thought, Oh, that's where I come from.  I don't share a strong family resemblance with my sisters, but in the gilt frame on my mom's piano, that young Irene Anderson looked like my kin.


Grandma A (as I knew her for most my life) died on Saturday.

So many memories...

The warm little kitchen in Vinton, IA with spoon rests from everywhere covering the walls.  We girls really wracked our brains to try to count them all, pretty much every visit... 97 or thereabouts is my recollection.

Packs of Bubblicious gum always tucked into the big white drawer (because sugar-free gum is not for grandmas!).  When we were little, a piece of Bubblicious could keep our jaws chawing for a pretty long time.  And then we'd try to have contests to blow the biggest bubbles (a real bummer when it popped in our hair).

Sometimes we'd get to go to Grandma and Grandad's for an overnight.  They'd take us to a bakery in the mall to get some huge, frosting-covered pastry, and then we'd look around at exotic stores like Dollar Tree.

Grandma played the organ at her little Baptist church for 50 years.  She had an organ at home too, and I remember turning on the little light on top, looking through her Christmas hymns album, and marveling that someone could simultaneously play a left hand, a right hand, and foot pedals.

Saturday nights of pizza and pop and Rummikub.  Her crispy sugar cookies.  Orange Jello salad with carrots and pineapple.  Reading her Good Housekeeping magazines.  Wearing the slip-on fake plastic fingernails with bright red polish.

Our "Anderson side" weekends in Rochester were wonder-filled for me as a little girl.  I couldn't sleep the night before, it was so exciting.  We would meet Grandad and Grandma at McDonalds in Waterloo and eat pancakes with warm syrup on a yellow styrofoam plate.  Then we'd caravan with them the rest of the long, long trip to Rochester.  Grandma would have little baggies of animal crackers, which really helped to pass the time.

After f o r e v e r, we'd arrive at the Best Western and meet up with the rest of the family in The Dakota Room.  Normally, we celebrated Grandad and Grandma's anniversary, and they always sat in the middle of the U of tables, sweetly happy with one another and with their family.

Laughing, laughing, laughing.  That was the bulk of those Rochester weekends.  Games of Pictionary, "dictionary" (what is a mome, we can all now tell you), swimming in the indoor pool, fuseball, pizza, lots of pop, and some pretty crazy April Fool's jokes.  Grandma had a sense of humor right up to the last time I saw her, and that was a pretty strong gene that passed down in the family. 

Years took their unavoidable toll, and eventually the Rochester weekends ended.  But Grandma wrote letters--typed on her age-old typewriter, with the typos endearingly included.  We all got them, but she would often write a little note at the bottom just for you.

"I'm so proud of you."  If there was ever a gracious, thankful, and encouraging matriarch of the family, it was Grandma.  She may have begun scrambling a few names and losing track of the babies, but she still had words of affirmation and care to the very end.  It wasn't that we gave her no reason to complain--but I never heard her say a cross or discontent thing about God's care for her or her family's care for her.

I think the words of the hymns she played so long must've lingered in her heart, even when her fingers couldn't maneuver the keys anymore.

’Tis so sweet to trust in Jesus,
And to take Him at His Word;
Just to rest upon His promise,
And to know, “Thus says the Lord!”
 
O how sweet to trust in Jesus,
Just to trust His cleansing blood;
And in simple faith to plunge me
’Neath the healing, cleansing flood!

Yes, ’tis sweet to trust in Jesus,
Just from sin and self to cease;
Just from Jesus simply taking
Life and rest, and joy and peace.

I’m so glad I learned to trust Thee,
Precious Jesus, Savior, Friend;
And I know that Thou art with me,
Wilt be with me to the end.

He was with her.  And because she trusted Him, and now Grandma's laugh is freer and brighter than ever before.

We love you and miss you, Grandma.  

Obituary

Maundy Thursday

A quiet Thursday night, like tonight.  Thirteen men in a borrowed room, leaning on elbows hardened by wind and work.  The dim light flickered, casting shadows bigger than the figures that bent over dinner.  Unleavened bread … the centerpiece of this season, cracked and crumbled into shards.  “This is My body.”  Broken, crushed, snapped in two.  Fragments melted in their mouths as they weighed those words.  My body, what a curious phrase; what could He be saying, do you think?

Shadows deepened, glancing off the stream of wine poured into a cup.  He bowed over the cup, this cup that held so little wine, so much less than the blood coursing through His veins. 

“Thank You, Father.”  He meant it, somehow.  A word of thanks, though the hands that held the cup might just have trembled, letting one small splatter hit the table, leaving a dark red stain.  “This is My blood, poured out for many.”  One drank, and passed the cup along to another, rubbing his mouth with the back of his hand.  He looks so grim tonight, though He said He was eager for this meal. 

A hushed company trooped behind Him, leaving the quiet security of the room.  They muttered to one another on the way.  The wind felt cold in the dark, pulling at their hair and moaning around the bushes.  They were only twelve now, though few had noticed when Judas slipped outside, on some business or other. 

He brought the three further into the garden, close enough to see that there was sweat on His forehead and trouble clouding His eye.  “Please keep watch.”  And there, just feet away, He fell, a groan of deepest, bleakest grief.  The dampness from the ground seeped through His tunic, while He wrestled forces that could not be seen.   “Abba!  Father!”  What does a son do, when facing every nightmare come to life, but cry for papa’s rescue?  But what is this desperate yielding, which will not cling but resolutely steps into the arms of hate?

Ashamed, bleary from sleep and grief, his friends stumbled up at His word.  Advancing torches blazed above a hoard.  One drew forward, a comfortable, familiar greeting, “Rabbi,” and kissed His cheek.

And so broke the tide upon that Rock.

One hour they were granted.  To seize Him.  Desert Him.  Accuse Him.  Condemn Him.  Spit, beat, slap Him.  Mock Him.  Deny Him.  Scourge Him.  Adorn Him.  Crucify and crush Him.  Complain against and catcall.  Cast their lots and shake their heads.  Linger while He hangs there.   Watch Him til He’s good and dead.

One hour.   

And as its capstone, He cried aloud and with His body ripped in two the veil that kept wicked mortals from the presence of the Holy One.

Facing Death with Courageous Confidence in God

I just watched this video of the editor of a book on Facing Death with Courageous Confidence in God.

You'd think that's a fairly morbid topic... but it is a very helpful and hope-filled interview, and it made me want to get the book.

HT: Justin Taylor

Impossible Joy

In Genesis 37, when Joseph’s tunic was brought home to Jacob, torn and covered in blood:

“Jacob tore his clothes and put sackcloth on his loins and mourned for his son many days. Then all his sons and all his daughters arose to comfort him, but he refused to be comforted. And he said, ‘Surely I will go down to Sheol in mourning for my son.’ So his father wept for him” (37:34-35).

For 22 years (by my calculation), Jacob grieved the death of his favorite son. He spoke of the loss when all the brothers returned from their first trip to Egypt; Judah explained his father’s grief when they were detained from returning on their second trip. Jacob’s life was marked indelibly by the pain of losing Joseph.

Which, to me, makes Genesis 45:25-28 all the sweeter:

“Then they [all Joseph’s brothers] went up from Egypt and came to the land of Canaan to their father Jacob. They told him, saying, ‘Joseph is still alive, and indeed he is ruler over all the land of Egypt.’

“But he was stunned, for he did not believe them. When they told him all the words of Joseph that he had spoken to them, and when he saw the wagons that Joseph had sent to carry him, the spirit of their father Jacob revived.

“Then Israel said, ‘It is enough; my son Joseph is still alive. I will go and see him before I die.’”

What impossible joy! What wonder! What ecstasy, to be granted the reunion for which he had spent so many years longing, weeping, heart-broken!

I was reflecting on what it might say of God, that He would build such a story into His Word. What does it point to?

I think of the synagogue leader who was seeking Jesus’ help for his sick daughter, only to be delayed by another woman needing healing. He got word, the daughter was dead. But Jesus, coming and touching the child’s hand, called her, and “immediately, the girl got up and began to walk” (Mark 5:42).

Consider the widow whose son died, walking and wailing in the funeral procession. Jesus told her, “’Do not weep.’ And He came up and touched the coffin, and the bearers came to a halt. And He said, ‘Young man, I say to you, arise!’ The dead man sat up and began to speak” (Luke 7:13-15).

Perhaps the encounter that best defines what all this means for us is the one that brought Jesus Himself to tears, the death of His friend Lazarus. Jesus had something in mind when He heard of Lazarus’s illness: “So when He heard that he was sick, He then stayed two days longer in the place where He was” (John 11:6).

When Jesus arrived on the scene, Lazarus was dead, his sisters grieved, and Jesus Himself wept.

At the gravesite, Jesus commanded them to roll away the stone (and a skeptical Martha reminded Him of the stench that would testify to four days of decay in her beloved brother’s body).

Jesus said to her, “Did I not say to you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God?” (11:40).

So they removed the stone. And Jesus looked upward and prayed:

“’Father, I thank You that You have heard Me. I knew that You always hear Me, but because of the people standing around I said it, so that they may believe that You sent Me’

“When He had said these things, He cried out with a loud voice, ‘Lazarus, come forth.’

“The man who had died came forth” (11:41-44).

Why did Jesus linger, so that His friend died before His arrival? Why did He speak to Martha, promising that if she believed she would see the glory of God? What was His ultimate aim in raising this friend from the dead?

I wonder if all of these stories were recorded so that we could have snapshots of the impossible joy that Jesus will give to everyone who believes in Him--and to show the radical glory that belongs to the One who wrecks the misery of death and vanquishes its stranglehold on this broken world.

See John 11:4: “But when Jesus heard this, He said, ‘This sickness is not to end in death but for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified by it.”

And John 11:25-26, as Jesus talks to Martha: “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me will live even if he dies, and everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die.”

These foretastes may be meant to point us to the final triumph:

“But when this perishable will have put on the imperishable, and this mortal will have put on immortality, then will come about the saying that is written, ‘Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?’

“The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law, but thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Corinthians 15:54-57).

When Jesus said, “It is finished,” it meant that death could no longer win in any who trust Him.

Death, grief, loss are all a part of this world. But one day, no matter the sorrow, Jesus in His exquisite triumph will fill our broken hearts with a joy that seems impossible, unimaginable, inconceivable to us now. His glory will shine, and our hearts, like Jacob’s, will be revived.

Hasten the day.